addictive [spugbrap’s blog]

May 23rd, 2007

American Idol 2007 finale

We watched the 2-hour finale tonight, which apparently ended about 10 minutes late. We didn’t watch it live, though; we watched it on the tivo, shifted about an hour later. So, when our recording ended abruptly, and they hadn’t even announced the results yet, we were kinda bummed. Apparently, they couldn’t fit everything they wanted into two hours. To reward their viewers, who cast a record number of votes (74 million or so), they didn’t even announce the results until after the show’s scheduled end time. So, anyone who recorded the results show using a Tivo, VCR, etc. did not get to see the results. Thanks, Fox/American Idol!

Incidentally, the winner was Jordin Sparks. I was happy about this, as she was my favorite since fairly early on. Last month, I mentioned that I expected either Jordin or Melinda to win. Blake beating Melinda seemed like a fluke, but his performance with that other beat-boxing rapper guy was pretty entertaining!

One other thing Lacey noticed in the finale show was this message (technically from Coca-Cola, but that was not terribly obvious in this captured frame):

(”Thanks for drinking.”)

April 19th, 2007

Ding, dong, the witch is dead!

Okay, time to come clean. I’ve been watching American Idol this season. This was supposed to be my ‘off’ season — I’ve consistently watched only every other season of that show. But Lacey had to keep showing me “just a couple of the really good performances”, and before I knew it, I cared. Not enough to vote, as I have on some previous seasons. But enough to watch every damn episode since. Oof.

I thought about blogging about it back when I first got into it, but didn’t get around to it. When Lacey and I honestly couldn’t tell whether Sanjaya Malakar was male or female during one of his early performances (I think this might be it), I almost blogged about that, but didn’t get around to it. Later, I felt like saying something about the girl who was bawling during Sanjaya’s peformance, but again, didn’t get around to it. Now, Sanjaya is finally gone, and I just wanted to publicly express my relief that America finally woke up from its collective drunken stupor, and voted him off.

It does take a little bit of the controversy out of the show, and now there’s nobody left that I sincerely want voted off, but I’ll still keep watching till the end. I’ll probably even vote next week, with their whole “Idol Gives Back” or whatever (votes ==> charitable contributions). I expect Melinda Doolittle or Jordin Sparks to win the competition, but based on how long Sanjaya managed to stay on the show, it’s really up in the air.

Anyways, I doubt I’ll post anything more on this subject. Now, let the finger-pointing and name-calling begin, since I publicly admitted to watching/being into this show. For the record, I will watch “So You Think You Can Dance” when it comes on again, as well. Guilty pleasures, I guess. I’ll probably blog about it once, since I never got around to it last year.

February 26th, 2007

Guitar Hero II

I played Guitar Hero II over at my friend Clint’s house one time, last year, and it was really fun. Since then, I played it on two different occasions over at my friend Kipp’s house, and determined that I really wanted it. But, I didn’t have a PlayStation 2, so that was my first roadblock (we have an Xbox and a Gamecube). The price tag on the game, itself, was bad enough ($70-80 or so). But to buy a game console as well, just to be able to play it–that was just not practical.

Luckily, the PS/3 and the latest round of console competition has brought down the price on PS/2 systems. So, Lacey bought me a PS/2 and the Guitar Hero II game/guitar pack, for Valentine’s day, of all occasions. But I’m not complaining. Not at all! Not even when it overdrew the bank account. hehe.. Oops! (That was half my fault, though, because I was way behind on keeping track of money, so I wasn’t able to tell her what was available before-hand.)

Jena got the same thing for Dallin, too, which is cool because he lives right around the corner, so it’s pretty easy to bring one guitar to the other person’s house to play 2-player.

I’ve been playing it quite a bit over the past 2 weeks. Stayed up late on more than one occasion, to try to accomplish one goal or another. The night before last, I finished getting 5 stars on all 40 songs on Medium difficulty. Now I’m starting Hard, which throws in an 5th button for my 4 fingers to deal with, plus more notes to play, and faster speed. At this point, I’m getting boo’ed off the stage half of the time. But it’s fun!

Matthew likes it, too, and can do a pretty good job. He hasn’t gotten to play it that much, yet, but we were impressed with what he could do after just a few practice rounds. Lacey completed all of the songs in Easy with 5 stars, and is working on Medium now. Skylar has done the tutorial with me a few times, but she’s only 3, so that’s about all she can do for now. But at least she can play it in some way, which makes it officially “fun for the whole family”! Well.. Except for Nikki, I guess. But she likes dancing to the music, so I guess she’s covered, too.

January 15th, 2007

Flash Element TD | Novel Concepts

Haven’t posted in a while, but have a bunch of things in my toblog.txt file, both technical and other stuff. For now, a link to a cool flash game I’ve been playing too much:

Flash Element TD | Novel Concepts

A Macromedia Flash based Warcraft TD game inspired by Elemental TD for WarcraftIII. […]

spugbrap’s blog

May 23rd, 2007

American Idol 2007 finale

April 19th, 2007

Ding, dong, the witch is dead!

February 26th, 2007

Guitar Hero II

January 15th, 2007

Flash Element TD | Novel Concepts

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