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As consumers, we are often slaves to our cable company by the location of our house. Aside from getting Satellite TV, there isn’t really a choice other than the cable company that’s assigned to your area. Living near the edge of Arlington County in Fairfax County, I am stuck with Cox Cable. Just a few hundred yards away in Arlington County, you can have Comcast Cable. Although many people hate Comcast cable, I’d rather have it than Cox. At least Comcast is trying to take steps forward by making a deal with TiVo to use their amazing DVR software (which is very much delayed), HBO onDemand in HD (which no one else has), as well as consistently adding HD channels like The Food Network faster than Cox Cable to their HD lineup.

The new star on the block is Verizon FiOS. I only know one person that has it, but he likes it because it’s cheaper and you get more. Soon, it looks like he’ll be getting a lot more with the rollout of the new Interactive Media Guide (IMG). It’s rare that a big company will sit back and design a product that addresses the consumer’s everyday gripes about a product rather than just pushing something out into the market just to be there. You can tell that Verizon listened to consumers, and then thought about how to make the TV experience simpler, more convenient, and enjoyable again. It also looks like they took a page out of XBOX 360′s book with navigation tabs (or blades as the 360 calls it). They’ll even be rolling out Weather, News and Stock widgets in the future. It’s a shame I’m not eligible for FiOS where I live.

Take a look at some screenshots or the video preview of IMG’s design and functionality.

As with all weeks prior to this, all runs were during the week because the weekends were too busy. I did hit my goal of a “longer” 4 mile run. I hope to match that this week, and ramp up to 5 miles in a couple weeks. I think the key is not to burn out too soon, as I’m still about 4.5 months away from the race date. Either way, I am much better condition at this point in training than I was last year.

Congrats to Andrew and Kelly for finishing up at GW this past weekend – Andrew’s pictures from his graduation and Local 16 (where I met up with him) are here, but sadly, there were no pictures to document Andrew’s first Ben’s Chili Bowl experience. Hopefully, you’ll be seeing a similar set from me in 2.5 years. Read the rest of this entry »

Working for AOL has its benefits every once in a while. I’ve had the chance to see a few movies before they come out – Harry Potter and Rockstar are the only two that come to mind. Yesterday, I got to catch a preview of one of this summer’s blockbusters: Shrek the Third. As expected, co-workers brought their kids in droves to the movie. It was interesting to see the genius of the Shrek writers in action by having two levels of comedy and see the adults and kids laugh at different parts. Kids laughed at the many fart and poop jokes (embarrassingly enough, so did I), and the adults laughed at digs at current events or when curse words were masked by fog horns. It’s good to know that kids around the age of five weren’t able to extrapolate what curse word was being censored. The adult/kid interaction with the movie is something I usually don’t experience with these kids movies because I see them many weeks after they come out in more empty theaters.

Once again, the animators were top notch with the visuals and animation. The voice acting on par with the previous Shrek movies – although Justin Timberlake, who provides the voice for Artie, had the weakest performance. Overall, this is what you’d expect from the Shrek series – multiple layers of humor, clever story writing, and excellent visuals and animation all taking advantage of the character development established in the first two movies. One thing that was missing was the catch song at the end of the movie. The first movie had (one of my fave bands) Self‘s extremely catchy song, and the second Shrek had a great Counting Crows tune. Shrek the Third didn’t have that memorable song as you’re filing out of the theater. Oh well, you can’t have everything. Anyways, I’m 2 for 2 for seeing summer blockbusters this summer…way ahead of my normal curve…

Excuse the nerd post, but I’m just now realizing why (for me) using Firefox can be a much more powerful tool than the industry standard Internet Explorer: Extensions.

Yes, IE7 has the ability to have extensions, but the general consensus is that there is not much development support from the community, and the fact that some of the extensions for IE7 cost up to $20-$30 each is also lame. For those who don’t know, extensions are add-ons that can add functionality to your browser or particular websites. Bear with me as I run through some extensions I have installed that change the way I browse the internet everyday. Keep on reading if I haven’t bored you already… Read the rest of this entry »