Category: News

GrandCentral is Down

I use GrandCentral as both a business number and as a filtering system. When I fill out a form online that needs a number, I give them my GrandCentral number, that way if they start stalk calling me I can send them straight to voicemail or block them completely.

Imagine my surprise when I found out that GrandCentral has been down all morning, with no information posted on their blog or on Google’s main blog. Their website was down earlier today, but it appears to be up now. Though none of my three GrandCentral numbers are currently working.

For more info, hit up TechCrunch.

April 13, 2008
Goal Line Blitz

Before I begin, let me take a moment for a self indulgent plug. If you click this link and go sign up, I get free points. Go, do it now! Fred signed up for me and all he did was log in a couple time in the following two or 3 days and that’s all that I needed to get the points. Easy right? So why haven’t you done it yet? 🙂

Alright, now that that’s over, I wanted to take a moment to talk about my latest football addiction, Goal Line Blitz. It’s an american fooball mmorpg. The idea is that you sign up (it’s free!) and you get 400 Flex Points. With these flex points, you can create players. QB, RB, and WR cost 300 points each, TE, FB, and Defensive players cost 200 points each, and Offensive linemen, K, and P cost 100 points each.

After using these points, you allocate skill points to create the player in the way you see fit. At the end of the creation process, you get offered a couple contracts by cpu controlled teams so that you can get into the action right off the bat. That’s a great idea, but the problem is, they got too big too fast, and all the teams have been purchased by human players, so until they expand (which they are working on as we speak) you have to keep posting on the forums in order to get a team to give you a shot, which can be kinda boring and drawn out.

More after the jump

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April 12, 2008
Improve Google Maps on the iPod touch/iPhone

This mostly applies to the iPod touch seeing as the iPhone also has cell towers to rely on, but apparently Skyhook has setup a page for users to submit their access points. No word on how quickly they’re added to the database, or if they even actually make it in, but it at least makes me feel like I’m contributing.

You will need the MAC address for your router in order to complete the submission.

[ Submit your AP to Skyhook ]

I live in the middle of no where, which currently yields “Your location could not be determined” on both my iPhone and iPod touch, so I’ll let you know if Skyhook ever adds my AP to their database.

April 12, 2008
What I’m Playing: Inaugural Edition

I sat here trying to think of a catchy title for about an hour, but I finally gave up and just wrote the article. My idea for this is to summarize what I played all week in a week-in-review type article every Saturday. Does anyone care? Probably not. Does it create some easy filler content? Oh heck yes.

Animal Crossing: Wild World. Turn it on, check the mail, check Nook’s, go fishing, get bored, turn it off. Amazingly enough, that’s all you really need to enjoy this game.

Starfox Command. Five minutes into this game I almost put it back up on eBay for ten bucks and walked away. Ten minutes later, I was having a little bit of fun with it. The biggest downside is the awkward controls (hold the stylus in the left hand and scratch around the touch screen control the Arwing, use any of the other buttons to shoot). If they had forgot about trying to make use of the touch screen and stylus and just make a good port of the 64 game I would have been happier. Darn those game developers and their fanciful ideas of game innovation.

Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII. I love this game. I finished it on normal difficulty (took me 28 hours…and I think about a third of that time was spent doing missions), and now I’m playing through on hard. I thought I had a pretty good handle on the combat after playing through the first time, but the missions are kicking my butt this time around.

World of Warcraft. My interest is winding down again. I can make it about two months before I have to stop playing for a while, and it’s been about a month and a half since I fired up my subscription again. I got my 70 geared up to the point that I could without raiding the 25 man instances with my guild. I just don’t have the time to commit to do that anymore. The most fun I’m having is playing it with my girlfriend every once in a while. That experience has reminded me that I take a lot for granted when it comes to understanding basic mechanics of the game.

April 12, 2008
Apple Repair “Completed”

I finally got my Macbook Pro back this morning after two weeks without it, and the good news is they did replace my LCD panel, but the bad news is they screwed up the rest of my computer.

The original issue I sent it in for was three defects with the LCD, a dead pixel, a portion of the backlight going super nova, and some weird squiggly lines that looked like a bug or something had been squashed on the LCD panel. I had to send it in for repairs because the Apple store didn’t have the part on hand and said it would take three weeks to get in, plus the nearest Apple store is a bit of a drive from where I live.

Upon getting my laptop back I started noticing several defects… most of it being physical damage to the machine! Here’s what I’ve noticed so far:

Gouges in three places around the edge of the battery, several scratches (they don’t show up as well in the pictures).

A small scratch around one of the screws on the bottom.

The plastic molding/edging along the front is separated and won’t lay flat.

There’s a small gouge mark along the top molding of the around the LCD panel

Currently I’ve not made any headway with Apple. They said I could send it in again, but that they might not cover it under warranty because I can’t prove they damaged the computer, and I really can’t afford to lose my computer for another two weeks with no guarantee of it even being fixed when it returns.

I guess a trip to the Omaha Apple Store is next on my list… Ugh.

April 11, 2008