Happy New Year

I will take one day...or two days...from my Cowboys venting/ranting to wish all my readers a HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Another Day, Another Excuse

Two days after the really big loss and it still hurts. And everyone seems to want to blame one person different from the previous person. Cut Romo, because he can't win the big game. Fire Wade Phillips, because he's never won a playoff game. Fire Jason Garrett, because the defense knows his scheme. Cut Terrell Owens, because he's not a team player and will destroy the Cowboys, etc, etc, etc. Some of them I agree with, and others I can't understand.

From someone who's seen all sixteen games minus a couple of halves, I can tell you this, two things contributed to their bad season. Kyle Kosair, starting Guard on the offensive line, was on IR (injured reserve) for most of the season. Tony Romo, the starting QB, can't throw the ball acurately when he has a 250lb linebacker starring him in the face on almost every play. Don't blame Tony Romo, blame he offensive line. The second thing that comes to mind is the lack of innovation on the offense. Offensive Coordinator Jason Garrett could no longer fool the defense, and when the defense knows what you are going to do, then you have BIG/HUGE/GINORMOUS problems. And that is what happened.

But that's not the bad thing. The bad thing is that this happens EVERY year! Not the OLG going out for the season, or the OC not being able to fool the defense. No, what I'm referring too is that every season, on person on the offense gets injured and the entire team falls apart. In '06, it was Running Back Julius Jones that was injured and things fell apart. Last year, it was Terrell Owens. This year, it was RB Felix Jones, OLG Kyle Kosair and RB Marion Barber.

On the bright side, Jason Garrett is being courted by Detriot to take over as the Head Coach. Jason, please, take that job.

Dallas
Home: N.Y. Giants, Philadelphia, Washington, Atlanta, Carolina, Seattle, Oakland, San Diego
Away: N.Y. Giants, Philadelphia, Washington, New Orleans, Tampa Bay, Green Bay, Denver, Kansas City

Cowboys = Cubs?

I would like to preface this with the fact that I am a die hard Cowboys fan. I have written before about how the Cowboys are the most loved and the most hated team in the NFL, and I would have to say that I am in the first category. I live and die by the Cowboys every season, and right now, I'm dying. I can't and wont blame Tony Romo. In fact, I believe that he has received a bad wrap for someone else mistake. What is causing this drought? Well, I honestly believe that its not the players, it's the coaches. Offensive Coordinator Jason Garrett, Offensive Line Coach Hudson Houck, and Conditioning Coach Joe Jurazek need to go.

Let's start with the Jason Garrett. Every defense that plays the Cowboys knows what plays are going to be called. There whole point to an offense is that after a while, they start to vary the plays to keep the defense off it's balance. That hasn't happened. For the second week in a row, I heard that the defense knew what was going to be called, before the hiked the ball. Not acceptable. Hudson Houck is back as an offensive line coach, and he couldn't have had a worse year, but at least for him, he has am excuse: Kyle Koisar, and Montre Holland were lost to injuries. Corey Proctor has been outright HORRIBLE! CUT HIM or put him on defense. Joe Jurazek has been the the conditioning coach since 1997...and the Cowboys haven't won a playoff game in all that time. Any other question?

Well, I can't help but say, 'Well, wait 'till next year'. And I have been saying that for two years now. And I'm going to say it again. Next year will be better. (I can say it, but I'm not sure that I believe it)

On another note, my mother suffered what was considered a minor heart attack, but actually it was a rapid heart beat and as taken to the hospital in Lynchburg on Friday. I didn't find out until the next day. She's doing much better now, but I can't say I was scared. I was worried, but for one reason or another I was never scared. Maybe I knew that she would be okay. I hope that was the case.

The Days of No Productivity

This past week has been BORING! I understand why, but to me, the bosses of the world should just give us these days off, because we don't actually do anything anyway. Please bosses of America, let us take the day off instead of us goofing off all week!

Happy Holidays

Just want to wish everyone a Happy Holidays and a Merry Christmas!

Hulu And Netflix...I Love You

I love streaming video. I never did get into it before because it was such a hassle and not optimal for sitting on my couch and holding a computer in my lap, for a long period of time. Netflix was pretty good at having the discs of that season on hand to ship me, so I never felt like it was absolutely necessary to stream it. But that has since changed. Hulu, and Netflix have stepped up to the plate and done something that has completely changed my buying and watching habits. 1. I no longer watch shows that I have on DVD over and over again, which is a shame, considering how much money I have put into that. 2. I can now enjoy watching new content on a daily basis. But there are differences.

I would have to give the upper hand to Netflix for three reasons. You can stream movies off of an Xbox 360 from Netflix (and in some cases in HD) and you can’t (at this time) from Hulu. You can have movies delivered directly to your house from Netflix but not from Hulu (and I don’t think that it will ever be an option). But I think it’s the next part that is most important. Netflix steaming is a MUCH better quality than Hulu. In fact, the comparison isn’t even close. If I watch Hulu on a computer, the image is very rough. Netflix, on the other hand, can stream onto a 50” plasma and look better than some DVD’s I’ve seen.

So, thank you to Netflix and Hulu for giving me things to do while I play!

So Much To Write

I have so much to write, but this being the holiday season, I have absolutely no time to write it all.

The Magic Number

This is my 200th post! W00T!

GOTY

The next episode of Geezer Radio (Skypecast Episode 4: GOTY) is ready for download.

Why Go Home?

Oh, Give me a home...okay, so I won’t ever win American Idol, but I do have something to get off my chest about Sony’s new, revolutionary, totally, like, awesome service: Home. When you first boot up your PS3, you don’t get any kind of prompt that asks you to download it, instead you need to go to the PlayStation Store and enter a code in order to download it (I got into the Beta and that’s probably why I had to do it that way). That was the intro to my experience to Home. I wish it were easier, but for the PS3, nothing including games, playing online and those pain in the ass monthly downloads to update my firmware has ever been easy. And guess what; creating an Avatar isn’t easy either. As opposed to my 360 Avatar that was fun and easy, this one was close to creating an exact digital copy of yourself. You could customize just about every facet of your avatar, which is both tedious and time consuming.

Once that’s finish, your prompted to go directly into your Home. I must admit, when I first saw my “Home”, I was immediately jealous that it wasn’t my real home. I had a great view of a beautiful harbor with sail boats and yachts and the most beautiful water that came in close second to the beauty of St. Maartin’s crystal clear water. But, with a 50” plasma and an HDMI connector, what would you expect. I thought that I had lucked out and gotten a primo spot, but it turns out that a lot of other gamers got the exact same thing. Although, I should have been disappointed, I just said, “Figures.”

There is only a couple things you could do in your “home” and that mainly consisted of dancing to no music, watching a bubble machine, re-arrange furniture and sit on the porch and listen to the digital birds chirping somewhere in the distance. I decided to venture out and enjoy some company, so I tried to venture out my door. I was met with a “Please download Central Plaza 39.5 MB”. Okay, so I had to wait for that. After a few minutes, I walked back to the door and ventured out for my first trip into the Home world. I was impressed for about three minutes, and that consisted of three minutes of watching a trailer on a GIANT jumbotron-sized TV that was showing a game trailer for the PS3 (nice product placement, Sony). I then ventured out and saw the theater and was surprised that all I could do was watch a making of trailer for SOCOM: Confrontation. After that I went to the mall and looked at all the empty shops. Then it was on to the bowling alley, but I didn’t go in there. After being disappointed for ten full minutes, I decided to socialize so I walked to a little outside dance floor and started to dance, although, it wasn’t that successful, because no one was paying attention to me (all the other guys were huddled around these two women). So, I decided to just pack it in.

What a waste of my time. I didn’t buy a PS3 so that I can walk around in a virtual world an be absolutely bored. I could have caught a movie, but it was just some making of video and didn’t offer me the option of watching something I wanted. Not only that, but it wasn’t even private, which makes me believe that going forward, all the movies that they will be showing, will not be chosen by me. So much for a user controlled world. Let’s just call Home, what it really is: One Big Advertisement for Sony.