Vertically Rising

Someone recently posted on the ASTRO Gaming Forums informing us that he was licking his controller cable before inserting it into his MixAmp for a better connection… It so reminded me of the weird “viral” happenstance of my youth.

It’s the classic example of how my fellow youth of the 80s ruined their Nintendo Entertainment Systems.

Backstory: The NES had some inherit fault with it, where after about 2-3 years of usage, it wouldn’t always read games. Once it powered on, it would produce a black screen and a blinking red light.

Some where, some kid came up with the idea that if he breathed hot air on the metal connection port of his 8Bit NES cartridge game, that it would help the console read it better (I guess water + electricity?). This spread like wildfire (even without the internet) and basically every kid who had a NES that was bad did this. We believed it. It still seldom worked, but we did it anyway. Breathing our hot, stinky, nacho cheese breath over the connectors. I’m sure if those cartridges were still around now they’d be corroded.

The reason? Well the NES was a front-loading cartridge, much like those old VCR’s. When you inserted the cartridge you had to press it down on the spring loaded surface to power the unit on, this actually caused a friction on both the male portion of the cartridge, and the female portion of the console (this is now sounding kinda sexual as I type it, LOL). Over time, and years of using the NES, the prongs that read the cartridge would get bent out of place, and wouldn’t be able to read the game data.

Nintendo all along knew this was the case (as they made their own Japanese Famicon with an upright, vertically inserted cartridge, and also followed up with the next gen Super Famicon and SNES in the same vertical cartridge setup), but still, saw an opportunity for more sales and released a “Nintendo Official Cleaning Kit” which my brother actually bought. It had some padding type material which you would dose with some rubbing alcohol and it would clean off any dirt and debris (probably from our nacho cheese breath) that accumulated on the cartridge pins. They also made repair centers where you could send your NES to be cleaned of dirt and debris for a fee.

It’s nice that after 25 years, Nintendo finally admitted to the public that you actually shouldn’t breath on the cartridges.

And that’s my story.

Here’s an attempt to start up a new regular posting called the “Friday Music Confessional.”

I’ve heard this guy Cee Lo Green’s music for a while. After his song “Forget You” (the non-explict version of his song “F*#($* You”) was performed by Gweneth Paltrow on GLEE, it seemed to blow up everywhere. I don’t think I get through a day without hearing this song on the radio. Now he’s part of that show “The Voice” with some other talented music artists.

So… I have a confession to make. Though I’ve seen a video of Gnarles Barkley’s song “Crazy”, I didn’t realize that they were the same person, and thought “Gnarles Barkley” was a real person. I had no clue it was some duo, and thought, “Heh, Cee-Lo sounds a lot like that “Crazy” singer…“

… Yes, I can be completely oblivious to the obvious.

Check it! My wife and I are on the videos for every TiVo Premiere box being shipped in the country (maybe even the world)!

No, we’re not models or actors like my gaming buddies Rick Malambri or his wife Lisa Malambri, but this opportunity presented itself as more of a happen stance. My wife Joyce has an old high school friend who has been working at TiVo for some time now in the Marketing and QA departments. Being that TiVo is based in the Bay Area, there’s been a couple of times that her friend has been asked to find people to do some in person focus group style sessions. I initially attended one of these after being a long time TiVo subscriber with Direct TV (this was back when Direct TV still had TiVo boxes leased through their company).

A few months later, TiVo was looking for a few real life users in the Bay Area to talk about how they use (and love) their TiVo products for an on camera spot. We signed up for this with sending our cute pictures, had a good word put in, and got scheduled for the shoot a few days later. All of that video work was done with about 5 other families/couples, and was primarily to show the different usages of the TiVo HD box.

Almost a year later, we were contacted again by Shannon from TiVo (the former voice/main spokesperson of TiVo), that they were looking to do another TiVo shoot with the same group that they had earlier. We went in, were shown and told a little bit about their new Premiere Box, and shot some more footage that was used along with the old footage to launch their new product dubbed “The One Box.”

It was quite a funny shoot, as we had watch our old video and find the same clothes we wore in that first shoot (I think my hair was a little longer the first time as well). The video crew couldn’t find the same couch either, but worked with what they had. It was a fun time catching up with the same crew that we worked with last time. As a result from the shoots, they came up with 5 total videos with us featured in several of the final products highlighting all that the TiVo Premiere box can do.

Here’s some of the videos from TiVo’s YouTube account in case you don’t yet own a TiVo Premiere (but you really should!)

Oh, I almost got called back for another video as well. They were filming another session (this time up in Oregon, but without Shannon Carey, as she had left the company by then), and apparently they didn’t have enough people of diverse ethnic backgrounds up there, so they were almost going to fly me up to Portland for 2 days to do a shoot. That would have been a blast, but didn’t pan out. Next time, call me TiVo!

I’m not one normally that into sports, though I do follow most of the NBA and the Lakers (not really a band wagoner, my wife is from LA, so I have a reason to like em. =P). Here’s my prediction for the 2011 NBA Playoffs. We’ll see how accurate I am come June! Here’s to a great NBA Playoffs and to the Lakers 3rd Three-peat attempt!

So I got my Gmail account back in 2004 (6/23/2004) when it was still in the Invite only Beta stages. It’s been close to 7 years with a total of over 100,000 emails in my “All” folder. Google’s been constantly giving more and more room to Gmail users (Starting at 1Gb, jumping to 2Gb, and has still blossomed to the 7.569Gb I have today), yet I’m already using 61% of that space!

I looked back to some older entries where I discussed the amount of space and got these stats:

So it really looks like I only have 2 1/2 years until my Gmail box will be full. Sadness.