Guitar Hero 3

I am no expert at Guitar Hero.  I can play a few songs on hard and 1 on expert.  But, I am in love with this game.  Guitar playing has always been one of my life goals and this is a good quick fix to years of lessons plus its entertaining.

Now I really did not play to but Guitar Hero 3 for a few months but my brother pre-ordered it from the local EB Games.  Since he is in Florida right now, I took it upon myself to make sure his game worked.  Here are my thoughts about GH3.

LOVE the songs, HATE the battles.  Playing in career mode on medium (cause that is my easy mode), I was burning thru the songs for level 1 and level 2.  At the end of level 1 I got my encore song but at the end of level 2, before I could get my encore song I had to battle.  These battles are tough.  If they used real music for these battles it would be much easier but they created new "crap" to battle with.  I battled Tom on medium at least 10 times and no matter what I tried I just could not get him to fail.

The only reason I like Guitar Hero is playing the songs, not to get the best score etc like some of you folks out there.  All songs are locked beyond level 2 until you beat them in career mode and you can not do that unless you win battles.  So I tucked my tail between my legs and switched my career over to easy mode.  This meant I had to start over on all songs.  No problem except that playing the songs put me to sleep on easy.   I get to the battle again with Tom and its so freaken easy.  The level of difficulty between easy and medium battles is like a grand canyon.  I'm going to complete the game on easy just so I can go into quickplay and play all the songs I want whenever I want.

Guitar Hero 3 is a great game.  They changed a few things in this version that at first make you go WTF then go awesome.  The new guitar is sub par though.  While I am sure that some people may break there guitar down in two pieces, most will not.  I found myself using my wired guitar to get maximum effect on whammy bar usage.  In fact, I am going to ebay me another wired guitar.  Wireless just is not cutting it.  Out of 5 stars, I give it a 4.  It looses 1/2 a star for forced overly difficult battles and 1/2 a star for the guitar.

-SJ

Technorati Tags: guitar hero 3

Originally posted on SilentJoe's Playground

Heating

Ok I will admit it.  I have been spoiled since I have had my own place(s) with either an electric heater or "city fed" propane heat.  Recently I moved back to my old town.  I have a fuel oil / kerosene burner now with a 250 gallon tank on the outside.

Before I get into the whole reason for the post, let me just tell everyone out there that it seems to me that Kerosene and Fuel Oil are one in the same.  Only difference is the K number.  Fuel oil has multiple K numbers and is usually 2 while Kerosene is K1.  This equates to basically $0.20/gal difference in price.  I purchased K1 not knowing the difference.  I come to find out that K1 burns much cleaner so I don't feel so taken advantage of as much as I did when I first found out.

When I moved in, the fuel tank was bone dry.  The fuel gauge on the tank was below empty.  Now to all you folks out there, I do not have perfect credit (I have some judgements against me that are a few years old) so I was not qualified for a budget plan.  This kind of defeats a budget plan if you ask me.  They were created for people who can not afford a $700 fuel bill at once.  So I ended up being a pre-pay customer with a minimum delivery of 100 gallons.  Luckily I bought this before oil went above $85/barrel so I got it at a "discount" of $2.89/gal.  For those not smart at math, my 100 gallon fill up cost $289.

I have no idea how long 100 gallons will last me.  Nobody here talks about fuel usage etc.  I figured that 100 gallons would last me a month at minimum especially considering the nice spring like days we are having right now in Hagerstown.

After several cold cold cold mornings (just like camping lol), the fuel was finally delivered on this past Friday.  Being the careful person I am, I tried to fire up the furnace.  No luck.  It came on for 5 seconds and shut off.  Wee.  So I remembered reading something about bleeding the lines when I signed my lease.  They wanted to charge me $50 to come out and bleed the fuel lines because "I allowed the fuel tank to get below 20 gallons".  Well no amount of explaining the fact I just moved in settled the argument so I said forget it I'll just freeze.

This morning I decided to "Man Up" after waking to another cold morning.  I figured if I can write computer software, I could bleed the fuel lines myself.  After some googling I found This HOW-To.  It explained it in simple terms even a non-programmer can understand, cause that is the point of wikiHow right?  Anyways, I rumaged thru my toolbox trying to find the right size wrench.  Yup, all out of wrenchs, apparently they were "lost" in my move last month.  So I broke out my ratchet set.  The ratchet BARELY covered the hex nut to open the bleeder valve.  I bled the line according to directions on the wiki and saw a flame come on.   At this point I was feeling quite proud so I tightened the bleeder and took the pan of oil I now had to the bathroom off the floor so the kitties would not think it was water.   Before I even made it to the bathroom, the furnace shut off.  Somewhere in my mind I could hear someone laughing.. or so it seemed that way.  So I swallowed the pride I had a few seconds ago and went back.  I reset the system and it did not fire.   At this point I was thinking "crap I got the wrong oil"...

After thinking about my potential screw up, I decided to bleed the line again.  Figured if it worked once, it surely has to work again.  So I put my little pan down and loosened the bleeder valve.  Reset the furnace and it started spitting foamy oil (like it still had air in the line).  So I just sat there with my ratchet waiting for the fuel to stop being foamy.  My pan was getting close to fuel then all of a sudden, the fuel changed from yellow to pink.  It dawned on me at that point that the previous tennants had fuel oil and I had kerosene.  The fire from the electric fired pilot kicked in and I had a solid stream of pink.  I closed the bleeder valve and the furnace is still running as I type this.  :)

I guess I can add fuel oil furnace bleeder to my resume.

-SJ

Originally posted on My Homepage

mod_internetradio - 0.0.14 RC1 Released

For those that follow the mod I created for Joomla/Mambo, I released version 0.0.14 RC1 last week.

The reason for this release was to allow overrides of playlists and bypass the playlist generator.  This comes in handy when you are using a service such as Loudcity or Live365 to host your playlists.

You can download the new version from the mod page.

If you find any problems with this version, please post in my forums.

-SJ

Originally posted on My Homepage

Centerpointe - Holosync

About a year ago I purchased a music set from Centerpointe that basically helps take you into a deep mind state and helps you get into a meditation state of mind.  I have actually been using the music to fall into a deeper sleep at night and to take naps in the middle of the day.  The music tracks are the perfect length (30 mins each). 

They published a newsletter by email and if you could get over the "upgrade now" messages, the newsletters actually contained some useful information.  Yeah I know the whole point of having a newsletter is to upsell so I just overlooked that part.

The reason I post this article is to let everyone know that has doubts about the music that they discontinued there newsletter and finally moved into the digital age with a blog.  You can read the innagural post on there new blog.  Another bonus and reason for posting here is to give them a little kick from a PR4 blog.  Dont ask how I got PR4 but I figured I'd help.  :)

If I may crique them (yes Bill has only published two articles so far), he is, in my personal opinion, making the articles too long for a blog.   Most people who read blogs do not have time to read such long posts and some (me included) lose interest about halfway thru long posts.  Now I am not saying post "uber kewl" and long content, just try not to post a whole newsletter with each post.  :)

Oh, did I mention Bill Harris is featured in "The Secret".  I bought the music from Centerpointe before I saw "The Secret" and was glad I was on the right path to personal growth.

-SJ

Originally posted on My Homepage