Over the Memorial Day weekend, we caught Indiana Jones and The Crystal Skull, which took in over $150 million. The 3pm and 3:30pm showings were sold out and I’m fairly certain the 4pm where we got tickets at 2:40pm was sold out by showtime.

Theater atmosphere was crowded but unceremoniously quiet. One person clapped at the end of Crystal Skull and throughout the flick there were no cheers and only a scattered few chuckles.

The crowd seemed exhausted.

My bottom hurt in the seat which I had to keep switching to get comfortable. The popcorn even tasted old. This sums up the experience which was the opposite from Iron Man (go see that one, if you can, it’s great), which we saw a few weeks back.

Crystal Skull wasn’t terrible, I mean come on, it’s Indiana Jones, but when compared to Temple of Doom, the weakest movie in the franchise to date, it measured up too few times to matter.

The plodding plot
The plot takes place in 1957 and Indy (Harrison Ford) is sporting gray. It’s not long before the KGB is up to no good and thrusting him into a warehouse in Nevada in search of a crate of great value at gunpoint. He’ll escape, of course, but in a more lethargic way than the past. You’ll wonder at times during the fight scenes if Indy is mired in quicksand (and unsurprisingly, there is a quicksand scene later!).

Following a totally unbelievable escape from danger (lead-lined?! BS), Indy is met by a biker with a switchblade fetish in a coffee shop. I couldn’t decide if this was suppose to be the passing of the torch from old to young, but Shia LaBeouf is no young Harrison Ford. I found LaBeouf whiny, unpolished and forcing the overplayed action too much. No thanks if the series continues without Harrison Ford. Spielberg has already said there is no Indiana Jones without Ford, but I’m not buying it. I think Indiana Jones will turn out like James Bond and the franchise will continue well beyond Spielberg’s and my death.

I’ll try and stop with the plot description there. Trust me, you’ll start yawning too if I go much further.

Spielberg and company should have kept the science fiction out of Indiana Jones. The Nazi backdrop worked better than the Crystal Skull using the late 50s. The ending left me shaking my head, not cheering. While exiting the theater a guy in front of me was griping about the science fiction elements too. His friend replied: “hey, it’s Indiana Jones, you expected realism?” If you’ve read the Tommyknockers by Stephen King, or heck many of Spielberg’s past sci-fi flicks, key parts of Crystal Skull feel way too familiar.

Cliche.

That is arguably Crystal Skull’s greatest flaw: the story feeds off other stories we’ve seen before — not in an Indy film, no — but stories that no longer fascinate the way they did the first few times around. We paid $19 for two tickets and $19 for lousy popcorn and soda. There were a few bright spots in Crystal Skull, particularly the romantic interplay and paying some respect to past Indy’s, but it all begged for a power nap. I’d recommend waiting for Blu-ray/DVD. It’s better than the average blockbuster and will make plenty of money, but it’s not the Indy film we’ve been waiting all this time see.

I would have liked the eye candy better in 3D on IMAX, if that is an option, go for it. Worst of the four Indy flicks to date, but still somewhat respectable. It isn’t the abortion that Lucas did with Phantom Menance, and is more in line with Revenge of the Sith vs. the first three Star Wars films. I’m left wondering if the Spielberg + Lucas magic is gone? Hope not. Grade: C+

Got an inside track to who’s going to win the Republican and/or Democrat caucus in New Hampshire today? At Predictify.com you can make a few pennies if you’re right, but hurry and get your votes in.

There is a star system based on user participation ranging from a bronze star at 100 points to a platinum star for 10,000 points. With roughly 30 minutes involvement at the site I’ve made 85 cents and have 62 community points. Being that the minimum payout is $20, talk to me in like, well, a long time to see if Predictify pays. The top earning person on the site has made $113.76 and 76 people have made over $20 as of this writing. In other words, this is not a moneymaking opportunity site.

Community points are received for activities at the site like:

- 10 points: submitting a premium question (this costs $1 per prediction)
- 5 points: referring a new user
- 5 points: submitting a free question (only 200 responses can be received)
- 3 points: send a friend invite that is accepted if you click the Predictify graphic above, that has my referrer code in it)
- 3 points: post a comment
- 1 point: submit a prediction.

It’s strange that the least amount of points is attributed to the most vital part of the site: the predictions. Yes, you need outcomes to predict, but are the questions worth five times the amount of the predictions themselves? I can understand submitting premium questions being more valuable because that’s one of the ways the site is being monetized, but I’d argue that the # of points for predictions, particularly predictions from those who have a higher percentage of predicting the outcome should receive more points.

Predictify does incent those who predict the outcomes more correctly by paying them a higher percentage of the premium questions. I’m at the Scholar level (50-74% accuracy) for Politics, which means if I answer a premium question correctly in this category I’ll receive 1.5 multiplier of the payout. The highest level one can achieve is Guru (90-99% accuracy) which receives 2.0 multiplier. Again, don’t get too excited about the money angle, because there is a small percentage (~5%) of premium questions available.

I didn’t see any banner or contextual ads at Predictify. It appears the only way the site is making money is from taking a cut of the premium questions but I’m guessing at least with the sports outcome questions they could turn around and be selling the Predictify outcomes on a sportsbetting site (outside the US where online gambling is legal, of course). They prevent others for using free questions in certain ways: “Predictify may not be used for securities replication, odds-making, betting, gambling, or wagering.”

The New York Times has a subdomain using Predictify for the NFL playoffs at nytimes.predictify.com.

Not sure the NY Times tie-in as I don’t see any API, but if/when they decide to release one (?) news of this will probably appear first at the official Predictify blog, which uses TypePad.

Summary and grade
There have been so many voting-type sites come and go over the years that the outlook for Predictify is not good. If the site keeps the current clean design and maintains enough interest, they’ll last longer than most. Definitely need a higher percentage of premium questions to help maintain interest and if an API isn’t available, they need one yesterday. Grade: C+

If you haven’t heard already Merriam Webster’s word of the year for 2007 is w00t, but this word did not make it visually into the new Merriam Webster Visual Dictionary. Too bad, just imagine what great images could be attributed to w00T! For a serious example, see weightlifting.

If you didn’t know what was a barbell, wristband, sleeveless jersey, weightlifting belt, trunk, knee wrap, strap or weightlifting shoe the image with related links will help. I was disappointed that Merriam Webster didn’t offer images for words like weird, strange, eerie and haunting. A picture of Michael Jackson would have worked for all those. At the least they could have done a mashup with the Flickr API and offered a visual dictionary based on tagged words (e.g flick search results for w00t). No fun.

Adding to the disappointment, the “TOOLS” link at the top leads to a page which says: “This page is under construction.” Oops. You can leave them feedback which leads to a contact form which requires first name, last name, email address, subject and your message. I didn’t bother filling that out, because my comment would have been simply a link to this blog with the following image:

This sanitized, PC version of a visual dictionary feels like 1987, not 2007. I like the concept and the images they do have are worthwhile, but this service left me hungry for more. Grade: D

Missed most of the opening reggae band before Van Halen last night at the Key Arena in Seattle. We spent a lot of the opening band time waiting in line to buy a sweater ($70) and T-shirt ($35, pictured below).

They had a remote control black Van Halen blimp roving around just above fans heads as they piled into their seats. The Key was about half full at 8:30pm when the lights went dark. By 8:45pm the Key was filled and the place was rocking from the minute Eddie started jamming.

Complete setlist in order played

1. You Really Got Me
2. I’m The One
3. Runnin’ With the Devil - Wolfgang went to the top of the riser and slung the bass high with spotlight on him at the beginning. One of only three songs he was featured to any degree during the concert.
4. Romeo Delight with Magic Bus by The Who interlude
5. Somebody Get Me A Doctor
6. Beautiful Girls
7. Dance the Night Away
8. Atomic Punk
9. Everybody Wants Some
10. So this is Love? - Spotlight on Wolf for a nice bass intro that he handled well. I was impressed with how little Wolf looked at the frets. He has the bass down well.
11. Mean Street
12. Pretty Woman - I was kind of disappointed that they didn’t do the Intruder intro. It’s not that long and has some great guitar effects bouncing off the drums. They transitioned immediately from Mean Street.
13. Drum solo
14. Unchained
15. I’ll Wait
16. And The Cradle Will Rock
17. Hot For Teacher
18. Little Dreamer - this is one of my favorites from VH 1 but was the worst performed song of the night. Guitar tuning was off, too low and vocals were drowned out.
19. Little Guitars
20. Jamie’s Cryin’
21. Ice Cream Man - this was the only time David Lee Roth talked to the crowd at length. He told the story behind the Ice Cream Man and then played the opening on acoustic guitar. DLR is a pretty good guitar player in his own right.
22. Panama
23. Guitar solo featuring: Spanish Fly, Cathedral and Eruption
24. Ain’t Talkin’ Bout Love

End of the regular show, begin encore:

25. 1984/Jump - DLR swung a large red flag at the top of the riser and in the closing of the song performed some other fancy twirling moves. Eddie’s guitar was in tune and sounded good. As mentioned yesterday, would rather have seen somebody playing the keyboards than having them piped in, it worked.

Summary and grade
Wolfgang performed admirably in both the bass and vocals parts. I wish there had been a bass solo too as he can shred on the bass. He’s not as good as Michael Anthony but it seemed awkward that everybody else got solos except for Wolf. I’m sure he didn’t mind, what a rush being 16 and playing with one of the greatest rock and roll bands in history. And as for his relationship with his dad on stage? There was one sweet father son moment where they both were on their knees facing each other during a solo and Eddie leaned over and kissed Wolf on the head.

David Lee Roth sounded better on vocals — when I could hear him — than when we saw him at the Emerald Queen last year. On some songs he was mixed well and you could hear his vocals well, but on too many songs he was drowned.

Alex Van Halen can still pound the skins with the best of them. Surprisingly he was mixed down a bit too. Would have liked to have heard him mixed a little louder. His solo was incredible. My son said this was one of his favorite parts of the concert.

Where to begin with Eddie? First, I was a bit surprised — and happy — to see him wearing his wedding ring. Maybe he and Valerie are getting back together? Maybe they still are? (Update 2:18pm PST: Thanks to ROB in the comments I was pressed to research Janie Liszewski who is both Eddie’s girlfriend and spokesperson since 2006 when she had to “leave” her association with the adult business.) Second, if Eddie isn’t the best living rock and roll guitarist, who is? Malmsteen might be faster, but technically? No contest. Just one example of Eddie’s wizardy was during his solo he took one of Alex’s drum sticks and used it as a pick to pluck out his solo. Most of the solos were either close or dead on and his improvisations were spontaneous and eye opening. Several Eddie just did what? type moments with sounds generated from his guitar and EVH branded amps.

Van Halen’s performance last night was electric. There were a few weak spots where the mixing was off, and I docked points in the grade for this, but it was well worth the secondary ticket prices we paid (over $200 for both tickets + $105 for shirt and sweater + gas = nearly $350 total spent). I’d put this concert in my top five ever seen category and it was the most money ever spent.

How magical was the evening? When leaving the concert a guy walking near us commented that he’d been going to concerts for 30+ years and hadn’t seen crowd energy at this level before. I hope VH can hold it together and cut a new album. If VH is coming anywhere near you and it’s in the budget, go see this tour. Grade: A-

How was your weekend? How many of you spent time trying to inflict pain on a character in a video game? A game about inflicting pain on your character complete with a band-aid in the logo? How about slingshotting “yourself” into some over-sized bowling pins? Bowling over mimes? Yes, mimes!

I couldn’t race to my wallet fast enough for PAIN ($9.99).

The PAIN official website description:

The unique mechanic of the game allows the player to load a character into a human-sized, ultra-powerful slingshot, and fire the character into an active, physics-controlled environment, filled with precarious and humorous situations. Players receive points by stringing together painful collisions and inducing chaos in the environment.

On Thursday afternoon you could buy PAIN from the Playstation Store. By Sunday all I could see was the ability to buy two PAIN characters: one of them in a Santa suit and the other a voluptuous woman for 99 cents each (Update 8:25am PST: A number of players commenting on the official PAIN blog are upset that these holiday characters weren’t included for free and that there is essentially only one level). Although they were still advertising PAIN in the header logo:

This morning I checked and still don’t see the ability to buy PAIN. Was the game pulled or does it no longer show once you’ve purchased it? Assuming you can buy and download PAIN on your PS3, the download clocks in at 201 MB.

Before you can start playing single or multiplayer options you need to go through a short tutorial and learn the controls. I found the R1 button for resetting the slingshot a little too convenient and kept hitting it by accident, but otherwise the controls are nice: X fires the slingshot, add or remove tension with the right thumbstick and adjust angle with the left thumbstick. During flight you can hold L2 and one of the buttons to pull off different air tricks including a helicopter, fart, leg split and cannon ball.

After the tutorial you can enter the single player PAINdemodium mode which is freestyle destruction with your character and two other single player modes. Once you score 1.5 million points in a single slingshot you’ll unlock another area. My best score to date is just over 670,000.

Multiplayer offers a twisted game of bowling (pictured atop). One player bowls with the slingshot character while the other tries to deflect the bowler with things like manholes, grandmas with walkers and more.

This game is twisted and deliciously entertaining; one of my favorite games in the Playstation Store thus far. I only planned to play for a few minutes in between Rock Band sessions (yes, we’re still enjoying that game) and PAIN drew me in for almost two hours of mayhem. There are some hidden areas (hint: don’t forget to look inside objects) in the PAINdemodium where you can score big points. See if you can find all of them.

It’s too bad there isn’t an ability to play online against your friends. For $9.99 if/when you can download in the store it’s still worth adding to your collection, PAIN on! Grade: B

Last night my Hulu.com beta invite arrived. Hulu is a joint venture between NBC Universal and News Corp’s online video. Immediately I logged in and created a new password and started poking around. You mean I can use Hulu to legally watch full episodes of shows like The Simpsons? Right on!

As I write this post, I’m watching Treehouse of Horror XVIII from this year’s season, something I can’t do anywhere else online (legally). Offline we don’t have cable, satellite or even an over the air antenna setup, so even the free channels aren’t an option in our household. For the last 500+ days, our only form of television has been through DVDs purchased of seasons. We just finished watching the first seasons of Benson and Silver Spoons, for example.

The two major problems with Joost I have is that the content doesn’t appeal to me and it’s P2P based. I’ve tried a couple different times to get into Joost but it’s like watching most of the channels on TV: there’s a lot of channels but very little of interest to me. Maybe some others reading love all the Joost content and can tell me what I’m missing? Shortly after launching Joost I’m already ready to shut it down.

Not the case for Hulu where I could instantly scan the available choices and start watching.

Hulu offers professional content from: Bravo, E! Entertainment, FOX, IGN, NBC Universal, Sci Fi, FX, Sundance Channel, Sony, USA, Universal Pictures, Comedy Time, MGM, Fight Networks, Ford Models, Fuel TV, G4, GameSpot, Golf Channel, Movieola, WWE, National Geographic, Oxygen, Speed Channel, TVG, TV.com, TV Guide, Versus, X17, LX.TV, Rehearsals, Reveille, Style Network and TVG Horse Racing.

This includes some of our newer favorite shows like: 24, Cops, Las Vegas, Prison Break, My Name is Earl and The Simpsons as well as some classics like The A-Team, Night Gallery and WKRP in Cincinatti. Also there are some new shows we haven’t seen like: Bionic Woman. Some of the shows listed are only clips like Saturday Night Live, which is kind of lame.

The first thing I tried to do was run Hulu on the PS3 through our 1080p HDTV. No dice in the Playstation browser, so my next test will be to see if I can pipe the Hulu video experience through the Xbox 360 and Vista version of Media Center. I’d much prefer to watch this on the TV, even if it’s still in a browser type setup.

Confined by the browser (F11 still doesn’t cut it)
One strength Joost has over Hulu is not being confined to the browser. If there’s a workaround for this, please let me know in the comments. TV and movies are best enjoyed on a television or decent-sized monitor, not in a browser.

I know the F11 trick in Firefox, but it still leaves remnants of the browser on screen. When you go full screen through Hulu you get large black blocky space around the frame, not truly stretched full screen video as shown in the video screenshot to the right below. In Joost you can get a better true full screen experience than Hulu.

Hulu options available include: a small popout window, full screen (with browser remnants), lower lights which dims frame colors around the viewing area and the ability to rate the shows from 1-5 stars. I’d trade all these options for a single fully stretched, high quality picture. Let me pay a few bucks and get HD and I’ll be reaching for my wallet.

With the new shows you can watch the four most recent episodes which is a bit of a bummer if you’re just now getting invited and the episodes start at #3 or #4. With WKRP in Cincinatti the entire first season was available. Wow, that’s quite a value considering we paid $20 for the DVD! Night Gallery, however only had four episodes from the first season, so not every series is complete. Still, there’s enough content to watch at Hulu to keep one busy for weeks, if not months.

The quality of the video is merely OK. It’s equal to or better than the quality of other TV in browser implementations but it’s not DVD-quality and a far cry from HD quality. When you resize the windows, the video will resize. At full screen you’ll see some pixelation and artifacts.

No, not commercial free like DVDs
At Hulu you will have to endure 30 second commercial breaks that you can’t fast forward through, but these seem less intrusive than commercials on television. In the Simpsons episode I counted three 30 second commercial breaks. No problem.

Summary and grade
With the wide variety and quality content offered through Hulu for free (there are commercials, again), this is easily my favorite TV video site available on the web. Sadly, it’s not available outside the United States at this time but according to a post on the Hulu blog:

Today, the service is a U.S. service only. That said, our intention is to make Hulu’s growing content lineup available worldwide. Given that this requires clearing the rights for each show or film in each specific geography, it will take time. In no uncertain terms, the Hulu team is committed to making great programming available across the globe. I’ve been very encouraged by how many content providers have already been working along these lines so that their programs can be available over the internet to a much larger, global audience.

Hulu doesn’t really compare to user-generated sites like YouTube. You can’t upload your own videos to Hulu and you are kind of an island as far as an individual user (no social features that I can see yet), but you can embed clips from your favorite shows in your site/blog like say Opera Man from Saturday Night Live:

All in all, I’m very impressed and surprised by how much I liked Hulu on a first look. We’ll be spending a good amount of time at Hulu over the next few weeks. If/when they expand this to a global audience and add some more features like videoblogs and user-created content, work on higher quality (yes, even it’s for a fee), they’ll have a serious competitor in the online video sector. They already do with the content alone. Grade: B

We just got back from a mini road trip to demo our newest car gadget: the Garmin Street Pilot c330. I’ve been checking out these GPS navigation systems for awhile and waiting for the right moment to jump in. One of the Wal-mart Black Friday deals was the Garmin c330 which Consumer Reports rated highly. $128? Are you kidding? I’m there.

Official website product page for Garmin Street Pilot c330
Buy Garmin StreetPilot c330 at Amazon (affiliate)

The c330 comes in one of those knuckle bleeding clam shell cases. Take your favorite pocket knife or razor blade to the case and unveil the contents: c330 which fits in the palm of your hand, suction cup mount and circular dash sticky mount, CD and USB cord.

Attaching the Garmin c330 to the suction cup windshield mount is as easy as pressing it into the grooves and snapping it gently into place. You don’t even need to even plug it into the USB to charge the three hour internal battery.

I wet the back of the suction cup, unhinged the clasp and then stuck it on the front windshield beneath the rearview mirror of our 2007 PT Cruiser. The winshield mount swivels so when you aren’t using the device you can push it up near the mirror and give yourself more line of sight. There is a small plugin on the device for the cigarette adapter which powers the c330.

Note: the states of California and Minnesota prohibit the use of anything that attaches to your windshield. You’ll need to use the enclosed circular dash mount for those cases. Pity really, as the c330 isn’t intrusive (see picture above of limited line of sight interference).

During our trip, we decided to move the unit down further so it had a better view of the skies. We had some issues with locating satellites with it closer to the rear-view mirror.

On first power-up the c330 will communicate with the satellite and triangulate your position. Now big brother knows where you are at (just kidding). This process takes a couple minutes. Meanwhile you can thumb through one of the smallest instruction manuals I’ve received with any gadget. It’s like a half dozen pages with color pictures. The Garmin Street Pilot c330 ranks among one of the easiest to setup gadgets I’ve ever used.

After the initial setup the User Interface gives you two choice: Where to? and View Map.

This simplistic UI is surprisingly effective. Both my wife and I found it very easy to tell the Garmin c330 where we wanted to go.

In the above picture four key items are marked in red:

1. The arrival time to your destination. This will be explained in more detail shortly.
2. Menu button will return you to the “Where now?” screen. You can also access the settings (marked with a wrench). These items are disabled in safe mode while driving. You can disable safe mode if a passenger is going to program new or modify existing destinations. If you choose a new destination along the route to another one, the c330 will ask you if you want to travel to the secondary location along the way to your existing destination. This is useful if you are hungry and need to veer a bit off track in order to get to a nearby restaurant.
3. This is your vehicle. Note that your destination is shown in red. As long as you keep the car in the red, you’re traveling the right direction. Funny that they didn’t use green. Your destination is marked with a checkered flag.
4. On the right bottom corner is how many miles or feet until your next turn or action point. We learned that sometimes the c330 would tell us to “stay right” or “stay left” when the text actually says to turn. A little confusing when you look at the screen but if you follow the road, you’re good to go.

One of the neat functions is being able to choose the “near” option which will tell you where points of interest are like shopping malls, gas stations, restaurants and more. When you find a spot you want to go to, like we did with a nearby Godfather’s Pizza you just touch with your finger and choose “Go.”

Perhaps the biggest issue with these devices is the accuracy of the maps and satellite connection. If the maps are too outdated then it will show you places nearby that don’t exist at all. Godfather’s Pizza in Lacey is now a Round Table, for example. We also found a couple other places on our brief beach trip that didn’t exist.

As for the satellite connection, we experienced a total meltdown with the Garmin c330 while driving through Portland, Oregon. It kept losing the signal and when it found a signal it would be off on streets nearby that we weren’t on. I decided to call Garmin support today to see what they recommended about dealing with outdated maps and inferior satellite connectivity through a major city in the United States. If we lived in and/or regularly navigated through Portland there’s no way I’d want to use this device. I learned that there is a free firmware upgrade on the website which specifically deals with this issue.

Another useful feature is bright, very readable text that shows detailed data about your trip such as (pictured above):

- how long it will take to get there. The estimated arrival time is shown in the lower left corner. This gives you the ability to estimate how many miles away you are. The arrival time and miles will adjust as you move closer to your destination.
- miles per hour traveled both current and overall average. There is also a rather useles max speed counter. We found this number getting out of sync frequently showing numbers like 286mph. In a PT Cruiser? Yeah, right. Even got a number 986mph once, I’d like to see the speeding ticket for that one!
- trip counter (”Total time”). Contains stats for how far traveled, how much time. Some vehicles have these features as part of the cruise control package and this would be a duplicate feature but for those vehicles without, it’s handy.
- stop time (”Stopped”). How much time are you spending stopped at traffic lights?

Both the trip settings (”Reset Trip”) and max settings (”Reset Max”) can be reset with a touch to the buttons along the bottom.

Somewhat quirky search
You can also enter in street addresses and search by names, but the search is greatly dependent on the map database. Again, everything goes back to the map database. We tried finding the Fry’s in our area. We tried misspelling (below) and spelling it correctly but the c330 could not locate the Fry’s in Renton.

Fortunately, we could enter in the exact address and have the c330 help us navigate there that way.

The importance of current maps
Business open and close, it’s very difficult for the maps to stay completely current, but after further more extensive testing I was disappointed that the c330 comes with crippled maps. The reason the c330 is being sold so cheaply is because the maps are outdated and there isn’t enough space internally on the units to hold the entire US and Canada. Since we travel to Canada a few times a year, this isn’t a good unit for us.

Surprisingly, the customer support rep at Garmin was very helpful in recommending the following other Garmin units which would fit our needs better:

Street Pilot c340 - this is the newer model in the 300 series and if it doesn’t come with the current 2008 maps, Garmin will automatically send you the new maps for free ($70 USD for c330 owners). This also adds the feature of voice prompts for the street name: e.g “turn right on main street in 0.2 miles” versus the c330 version of: “turn right in 0.2 miles.” Also the c340 comes with a feature that allows viewing the maps on your computer. This way you can map out destinations from your computer.
nuVee 250 (no voice streets) - comes with enough space to hold full US and Canada maps but doesn’t have the voice prompts
nuVee 260 (voice street prompts = yes) - a little more expensive than the 250.

And finally a more fancy and expensive version was offered: the nuvee 350 (voice street yes, MP3 and picture storage). Not sure we need to go this far as we already have an iPod and Zune with plenty of storage for music and pictures, but it’s nice to know what versions come with the 2008 maps. It’s too bad Wal-mart didn’t do anything to educate people on Black Friday that the c330 deal came with a big *asterisk:

*1. maps are outdated and it cost $70 to update them
*2. unit doesn’t have the capacity to hold full maps for US and Canada. Something important that people who live near the border like we do will probably want to know.

Bad Wal-mart, bad. I suppose we should have expected it was too good a deal to be true.

Points of Interest
One last thing to mention that makes these devices cool are programmable points of interest (POI). You can download POI from various sites on the web to an SD card up to 2GB in size and then be able to access them from all the Garmin GPS devices. I didn’t check into how easy this is to do, formats and the like, but it sounds like a great way to make your GPS even more useful.

After using the c330 the last few days, and especially because I love playing around with new gadgets, I’m not sure how or why I haven’t bought and used one of these devices sooner.

Summary and Grade
If you live in the midwest or don’t travel to Canada, the c330 could be an OK first GPS device at the price. I was really stoked about the device until realizing the number of limitations. Now I have buyer’s remorse. I was on hold calling Garmin support for almost 20 minutes before the rep came to the line (bad), but found the friendly service representative helpful and knowledgeable.

I love how easy it is to read the c330 screen. It will automatically switch into night mode display which is also easy to read in the evening. The touch screen sensitivity was just right although my fingers did press the wrong keys a few times. Overall, not something that would turn me off to the interface which I think is one of the strengths of the device.

It’s rare when a customer support person encourages you to take something back to the store because the device isn’t a good fit for your individual situation. Additionally she knew the answers to my other questions and helped me understand what other units they sold would be a better fit. I’ll end up spending more, but then if we bought the $70 maps that we couldn’t even load fully anyway, we’d be at $200 anyway. I’m thinking for $200 we should be able to find the c340. Amazon shows the c340 for almost $100 more than we paid for the c330.

At the price and if you don’t mind the limitations the c330 could provide a whole new travel dimension. I’m going to take it back to Wal-mart and see if I can get the c340 instead. Grade: C+

Great White is on the list of 80s bands that I’ve seen in concert and will buy every new CD, searching perhaps hopelessly at this point for the days that they rocked.

I missed the July 17 release of Great White’s reunion CD Back to the Rhythm until I saw the band mentioned recently (positively) and visited their website mistabone.com and news of their reunion hit my radar. Why the original Great White band members were disharmonious, I don’t know and probably wouldn’t care because what bands get along any more, really? The music is what we want as fans. Bring us the music.

Bought Rhythm at Best Buy this weekend and have been listening to the tracks. My thoughts on each track and the overall CD below, but first a little history on the band.

Great White started as a hard rock band with some impressive tunes like Stick It, Out of the Night, Streetkillers and Rock Me, I’ve been chasing follow-up albums that compared. They seemed to get more and more mellow over the years, at one point becoming ensnared as a Led Zeppelin cover band (see Great Zeppelin). Like a lot of 80s bands that rose and fell in the same decade, they’ve been trying to rekindle that spark ever since.

The heavily Robert Plant influenced Jack Russell takes up the vocals. Mark Kendall grinds the axe and while he started as more of a rocker, he became more blues oriented in his style of playing after the first couple albums. For some that is a good thing, for me, I liked him better the way he started playing. Michael Lardie plays backup guitar, keyboards and harmonica. Audie Desbrow pounds the skins and Sean McNabb is on bass guitar.

Great White won’t likely be remembered for their music. They’ve had only a few decent songs since the early days, suffered various line-up changes and worse, suffered tragedy a few years back in a nightclub fire that claimed the lives of over 150 people and their lead guitarist of the time.

Great White isn’t about to forget this night either, dedicated the album to those who attended that show:

“This album is dedicated to those who lost their lives and those who were injured on that tragic night of February 20, 2003 in West Warwick, Rhode Island. You are forever in our prayers and in our hearts. May God bless you and yours.”

“Back to the Rhythm” - 2/5 - Somewhat lackluster title track. Some good guitar effects, but they are mixed too soft. Bring that edge.
“Here Goes My Head Again” - 2.5/5 - average Great White track, but points for a good Mark Kendall guitar solo.
“Take me down” - 1/5 - seems like weak B-side filler. Wish they would have left this out.
“Play On” - 3.5/5 - first of several mellow songs on the CD. Nice acoustic guitar, keyboard and lyrics. Considering GW’s storied history, this song fits the band. A good “oooooohhhhh yeah” wail before the solo. I like this one.
“Was it the Night?” - 2/5 - Solid opening guitar solo, that winds down to another mellow and forgettable track.
“I’m Alive” - 3/5 - I like the chorus, but the rest of the song is average.
“Still Hungry” - 3/5 - Makes me wonder if Great White is still hungry. This track shows they might be drawing on a few of their roots. Seems a little bit like the song “Hungry” by King Kobra, another 80s band. I like the last third of the song the best. I was left hungry for an extended guitar solo. This one should have been 7 or 8 minutes with a blazing solo. Lost opportunity.
“Standin’ On The Edge” - 1/5 - Like Play On, this one feels too much like filler.
“How Far is Heaven?” - 2/5
“Neighborhood” - 2.5/5
“Cold World” - 3/5 - Listen to the song “Humans Being” by Van Halen and then compare to this one. The similarities are disturbing, particularly the solo. I expected Hagar to sing this one. I should give it a 0/5 for the lack of originality, but since I like the Van Hagar song, this uncredited tribute gets a nod.
“Just Yesterday” - 4/5 -my favorite mellow track on the CD. Opens with an acoustic guitar solo. Similar mellow Jack Russell vocals that can be found on past songs like “Save all your Love” when this was fresh. Another good mellow acoustic GW song this reminded me of was “Gone With The Wind.” Nice way to close the CD.

When I saw Great White touring with Judas Priest on the Defenders of the Faith tour in the 80s it seems like the band was at their prime creatively. I wanted to like Back To The Rhythm Again, but after several listens it would be more aptly titled: Back To The Same Crap Again.

These guys might be trying hard with a reunion and 80s reunions I do appreciate, but this album isn’t anything new. It’s more of the same stuff they’ve been putting out since Once Bitten Twice Shy. Give me their first four or five albums over everything they’ve put out since. I won’t count them out or say they are washed up, but they are stuck in the same rut as the Scorpions (although I like their new CD better): too many songs that sound the same.

I’d like to see Great White go way back before the rhythm to the harder stuff. They were better with that rough, unpolished sound. Come on, boys, “Rock Me” again. This isn’t a terrible effort, but not something I’d recommend buying unless you’re a fan of the band’s last few albums. Many of the Amazon reviewers must like Great White as a blues rock band, as they have 4 out of 5 stars as of this writing. For me, it’s a below average effort from a group that’s capable of better. Grade: C-.

Anybody reading really like peeling fruits and vegetables by hand? This is a job destined for machines. When I first spotted Rotato in the store I thought: hey, that looks like a lot easier way of peeling potatoes, fruit and vegetables. And at less than $9 at Wal-mart, it seemed worth a try.

The only assembly required with Rotato is screwing on the handle. Then you position the target fruit or vegatable on the bottom spikes that rotate when you turn the crank. A spike on the top is used to hold the other end in place. Turn and peel. Easy, huh?

Not so fast. We found the razor blade that the instructions warn not to touch becomes hopelessly clogged with peels forcing you to stop the peeling process and very carefully clean off the razory tip. Also Rotato didn’t peel the top or bottom of the granny smith apple tested, only the center portion and left noticeable varying gaps in the peel depth. It was kind of tasty eating the peels of the insides. That might be one handy use for Rotato: peeling thin pieces of the inside of the apple and dehydrating.

I decided to try an orange for Hmmcast #177 (hey, remember those?):

Click To Play Hmmcast #177 video (will load in popup window)

Hmmcast #177 downloads
PSP .mp4 (480×272) iPod .mp4 (640×480) Windows .wmv (1480×1080 HD)

When I originally received an email about reviewing the Sumo Omni Chair (Regular price $149, on sale: $129 USD, shipping is free) my first thought was pass. I’m not really a beanbag chair guy, especially higher quality — and thus more expensive — beanbag chairs. I prefer not to write reviews for products/services that aren’t typically in my shopping wheelhouse and furniture isn’t really my department. Still, I liked the look of the chairs shown in the Sumo Omni Chair website.

I asked a friend about the chair and he said not only had he bought one, he liked it (see him chanting SUMO! SUMO!). Still not completely convinced, but no disrespect to my friend, I mentioned the chair to my wife — and she looked over the website and said: I want one. Ok, ok, I’ll try it.

So I emailed Andrew back and said, send one along for review. If you want to stop here because I didn’t pay anything for this chair (and am not required to send it back after the review) that’s cool with me. Before sending the chair I warned Andrew in email that if I didn’t like the chair I’d be writing that, but he didn’t mind taking the chance.

My wife chose charcoal green and it took a couple weeks to arrive in the box shown at the top of this post. Extra points for no assembly required. The chairs come in the following colors: pitch black, charcoal green, platinum, midnight blue, fiery red, tangerine, hot pink (yikes!), pure white, lime green and funky brown.

As the Fonz says, “Sit on it.”
For this review, I’m trying something different: I’m actually sitting in the Sumo Omni Chair while writing every word of this review. But before opening that box, let’s take a look at my existing office chair:

It might be on the worn side, but works and others probably spend on a lot more on office chair than me. Office Depot sale special. Now compare to the charcoal gray Sumo Omni Chair:

Just pull out the Sumo Omni Chair, take off the plastic packaging and mold into the format you want to sit in — and sit. Sorry if you were expecting to fill it with beans first. No zipper, it’s sewn shut (Update 8:18am PST: in the comments below darkmoon points out there is a velcro opening to be able to add more beads, if you want a firmer chair.).

Beanbag chairs have always had a cheap, cheesy feel to sit in to me, but not the Sumo Omni Chair, which feels like some kind of high quality vinyl. The Sumo Lounge website describes the chair as having:

space age rip-proof nylon and come[s] filled with top quality Sumo Beads. Omni is 4.5′ x 5.5′ and it only weighs 18 lbs!

Doesn’t seem like it weighs even 18 lbs, which makes moving it around and adjusting easy. Nice for transport from room to room.

And now for the bad: it blows an office chair, so don’t use it for that purpose. The word “lounge” suggests it’s a place for pleasure, not for work though. I’m not sure I’d even want to sit in this with my laptop and type away, but that scenario might work for others.

As a gaming chair, watching TV chair, reading a book chair, it’s comfortable and worthy. I’m not sure I could sleep in it though, but some probably do. It also has the same problem as other bean bag chairs: getting out isn’t nearly as easy as getting in. My wife needed my help pulling her out. It’s like being stuck in quicksand. Comfortable quicksand, mind you, but you can sink in too far.

The Sumo Omni Chair is easily the highest quality bean bag chair I’ve ever sat on. Worth $129? If it lasts a lot longer than its competition, then yes, it’s worth it. Since I can’t wait a few years to review the longevity of the chair — but I will try and come back to this review in a future update — I’ll guess that it will last.

The “space age rip-proof nylon” sounds long lasting and they offer a satisfaction guarantee (emphasis mine):

Let’s make this simple. If you’re not happy, we’re not happy. If our product proves not to be the best beanbag you’ve ever sat in, contact us within one week of use with the order number and your problems. If we can’t make it better, we’ll refund you your money - all of it.

With a satisfaction guarantee like that, if you like beanbag chairs and have it in the budget, at least trying one of these chairs is advised. We’re thinking about buying one as a Christmas gift. If you bought other beanbag chairs at say $30-40 each and had to go through a few of them because of the cheap quality, you’re at the price of the Sumo Omni Chair, which bears consideration. Because of the limited use for me, I’m still not a beanbag believer like my friend, and thus no A grade, but there’s no comparison to any other beanbag chair I’ve ever tried. Alright, my wife is telling me to get out of “her” chair. That’s still a darned good endorsement in our home. Grade: B+.