The World of Joel

So as many of you know I review video games, I have been doing it for 5+ years and couldn’t find a better thing to do in the world. Days like today are why I love my job. I am obviously still a fan, although I am very critical of games as well, I see them for what they can be often times more then what they are. But today is different, I have been this excited to play a video game since The Legend of Zelda Twilight Princess a few years back. Very few games make me “pumped up” to play, but Grand Theft Auto IV is. So just a word of warning if you are planning on viewing this blog in the next couple of days I may not be posting as frequently because I will be spending as much time as I can soaking up Liberty City. I’ll link you all to my review when it posts! For those who have got it, my XBL Gamertag is The Joelster so hit me up on there! See you in Liberty City.

I am not one that necessarily believes in curses, although sometimes I do find it hard to argue the opposite side of them. The Madden curse however may prove to be broken this year as Brett Farve could have his lowest amount of interceptions yet in a season. I still hold actually that Brett isn’t done playing football, but we do know he will be gracing the cover of the 25th Anniversary of Madden in Madden NFL 09 for every platform known to man. I am a big anti-packer guy, but I have always had an amazing amount of respect for Brett Farve, and I think EA Sports along with Peter Moore hit the nail on the head getting the rights to put Farve on the front. With Farve on the front you can only think of one feature that is going to be added, and that is a new QB Personality, Gun Slinger.

So it will be a year in August that I have had my iPhone, and since purchasing it, I have wanted applications! When Apple announced the SDK a few months back it got my mind racing as to what apps I would want to buy or download to my iPhone. So here are five apps that I want to buy right now for my iPhone.

1) To-Do List: I am big on having schedules, especially for my video game reviews. We have the notepad on our iPhone but I want updates, reminders, and check lists that will help me keep on top of my deadlines.

2) Movie Listings: This should be free, but I can’t tell you how many times I have looked on my iPhone for movie times. I want an app that will not make me search on Safari to find them, and having implemented youtube trailers would be fantastic.

3) Video Poker: More then anything I want games on my iPhone, but I do know that video poker and video blackjack would be great. A whole casino package would be even better. Something to do while sitting in a boring lecture, or in some sort of less then ordinary place.

4) Instant Messaging Software: I know AOL showed off AIM at the SDK conference for Apple, which i think is great. But bring over some of the hacked iPhone software so we can go on AIM, MSN, and GTalk with the same application!

5) VIDEO CAMERA SUPPORT: We all know the iPhone has the capabilities of doing video, and in my opinion (I COULD BE 100% WRONG), but it seems like a software issue that is causing the iPhone not to do video. Especially for those who have 16gb iPhones, its time we got video support.

Some other various things include Simple photo editing, RSS clients, Firefox, and a whole lot more. All I can say is that I am 100% excited for what is to come from iPhone apps.

I love working on projects, most of the time I get a project and then for whatever reason don’t follow through on them or in the recent case of my TV Blogs sell them. I did start up CrusoeTV.com based on the new show coming this fall on NBC title Crusoe based on the book Robinson Crusoe. That is just a minor project that I am hoping does even better then mine in the past season. I saw I already have a competitor on that, but my site is indexed on Page 2 of Google when searching for Crusoe TV, I am hoping by the end of the month we will make it to the front page.

That is not my other project, my other project is bigger then any other project I have taken on. I CANNOT WAIT TO ANNOUNCE IT.. But that won’t be happening today. It is a project I have been working on for years and it is finally coming to life and this Summer I will be able to unveil it. I am really proud of this project, I have already put a good day or two of hours into the project since starting it and figure to have put a good week worth of hours when it launches. Not only do I expect this site to flourish but I hope many of you who read my blog will enjoy it as well.

From there I will leave you with this, my posting has been irregular, posting a few days in a row and then off a week, and for that I apologize, its the last quarter of college and all I can see is grabbing that diploma and running for the hills, and I really don’t want to come back and take a class this summer.

So as many of you know I commute down to UC Irvine, a few days a week with Jenn and others by myself. Its less then an hour without traffic and can get longer then two with it. Its really the typical Southern CA norm. Whatever the case, a few weeks back it was finals week and I had a big final for a class I had to pass to graduate. So instead of waking up the next morning at 3:30-4:00 to make sure I made it to my 8am class I decided to rent a room down in the Irvine area. And for those of you not familiar with the area Newport Beach is literally two minutes from the UCI campus, so I decided to just go for it and stay in a real nice place figuring it was my reward for the long Winter Quarter.

So I drive up at around 5pm on a Tuesday night, and the place is hopping with an Air France conference. I pull up for valet (no self parking at this place) and I get comped valet for driving a hybrid, a thirty dollar value I might add! I had booked my room a few hours before arriving, and everything was good to go. I signed up for there free Fairmont Presidential membership which scored me free Wi-Fi and free NY Times in the morning.

The room itself was extremely nice as you can see from the pictures below taken with my iPhone. Here are some photos of the room and the nice 32″ LCD.

 

 

So as you can see the room is really nice and as you can see from the image below I did do some studying.

 

But of course when you are studying you work up an appetite and that is what is so great about room service. For dinner I had a Turkey Club, a Bowl of Tortilla Soup, and a Coke. Can it get any better?

 

 

 

So it was a great day. I had a real relaxing time at the Fairmont. I got my studies done. A great night sleep in an ultra comfy bed. Came back after my final and napped for 3 hours (got a late check out) and felt great. Plus I got a B in the class so it all worked out in the end. All in all it was a great stay, I hope to do it again on my last quarter here at UCI.

Not me. I came in last. Well a few spots from last, the people who came in last didn’t play so they got a 0 as there score. Otherwise I came in last. I just was not on top of my March Madness picks this year. But as the deal for entering the Pick’Em each player must give a link back to the winner. And the winner is Cage Today! Congrats my friend, you did pick a great bracket, much better then mine and quite a bit better then David’s. Hopefully next year we get a better turnout, March Madness is not a lot of fun without having some great Pick Em pools!

I am a big fan and supporter of ESPN. I have heard many of my favorite radio hosts call it the evil four letter station, but I for one enjoy most of their coverage. Except for Bob Knight, why do they want this son of a gun on as a NCAA Basketball Announcer, the man is an idiot and should be punished for the terrible way he treated people throughout his career. Moving on however. I love how everything is going HD, I for one have DirecTV HD and I really need to upgrade to HD-DVR. However on my 37″ Toshiba LCD, things look fantastic in HD and one channel in particular held it back and that was one of my favorite channels ESPN News. Well now ESPN has upgraded their station and DirecTV within the first day or two added the channel for its subscribers, that is exactly what I like to see!

I have to say the new ESPN News is snazzy. The great menu on the left hand side gives a much stronger look into box scores while still receiving the latest scores in the typical tracker on the bottom. My only issue, its a bit to busy and can be a bit overwhelming at times. Other then that the color is great, the HD picture is fantastic, and I have come back to watching ESPN News over Sportcenter again, because it leaves a lot of the extra frills out and just gives great Sports News, what I like to see! Good work ESPN.

I am not a fan of Hillary Clinton, she rubs me the wrong way. I am not sure who I like out of any of the candidates, but something bothers me about her. Things got worse with that feeling when she recently compared herself to my favorite movie character of all time Rocky Balboa. To give you an idea, Rocky is the only movie franchise that I proudly own the box set of and with that “constantly” go back and watch. I own other Box Sets but none are watched as much as Rocky. Secondly when I heard about Rocky Balboa (the recent movie) I skipped work to see it on opening day. When I watched this clip of Hillary comparing herself to Rocky I wanted to cry.

Rocky has got enough on its own to make it a topic of jokes. We all have seen the many spoofs of the movies with old men in walkers boxing, and of course countless movies have used its theme song, but nothing has infuriated me more then Hillary Clinton comparing herself to Rocky. Here is the video of her comparison.

Does she bother you as much as she bothers me? I watch this video and I just don’t understand any appeal in her. I can’t stand the fact that she used Rocky to compare herself to. And even with all my love for Rocky, would a presidential candidate really want to compare herself to a character who got hit in the head a few to many times, and whose intelligence isn’t firing on all cylinders? Just a thought.

As much as I thought of this as being just a witty post, Obama I suppose wasn’t going to let this comparison go without a response. Obama was quoted as saying in response to Hillary comparing herself to Rocky:

“There’s been some talk about Rocky Balboa over the last couple days. And you know we all love Rocky,” Obama told the labor leaders.

“But we got to remember Rocky was a movie,” Obama continued. “And so is the idea that someone can fight for working people and at the same time, embrace the broken system Washington, where corporate lobbyists use their clout to shape laws to their liking.”

I am sure we will hear more from Rocky’s theme song during Hillary’s campaign in Pennsylvania, but I doubt we hear of any more comparisons. I hope Hillary remembers that Rocky looses in his first and last fight?