March Madness to include Villanova?

VillanovaIt has been an up and down year for my Villanova Wildcats.  They started the season strong against an admittedly weak schedule and suffered through a rough streak where they lost to St. Joe’s, Rutgers, and DePaul.  They have played well lately but couldn’t get a much needed win over Louisville (a stretch) or Marquette (they should have stayed in the zone against MU).  Their NCAA tournament hopes pretty much come down to how they do in the Big East Tournament.  They play Syracuse on Wednesday – if they win they have a chance to get in, lose and they are out.

Finished Rock Band Guitar Solo Tour on Easy!

Rock BandI have been playing Rock Band here an there for a couple of months since I split the purchase of it with my son.  We have an Xbox 360 in our house but until we got Rock Band, I didn’t play it much other than some of the Xbox Live Arcade games (Pinball FX being my current favorite).

I don’t have the time or the interest to invest in many of these big video games (e.g. Halo) so the XBLA games which are short and don’t have a long involved story to follow have been more to my liking.  Rock Band has been different though.  My son had purchased Guitar Hero II and I played it a couple of times but even that didn’t do much for me but one day when my son and I were in Best Buy, we played Rock Band together and  had a blast.  So when he asked a few weeks later if he could buy it (one of his friends had received it for Christmas), I offered to split it with him instead of trading in a whole bunch of games for which he would get nominal credit.

Since we got it, he and I have played together here and there, usually not more than 2-3 songs at a time so we are progressing through the World Tour slowly.  After starting on Easy and playing Bass, I now usually play on Medium but I am still the Bass player when I play with him.  I fully expected him to be the drummer since he plays the drums at school but he prefers to play the guitar in Rock Band.

I was interested in playing all of the songs so decided to try go back and work through them on the Solo Tour on Guitar on the Easy level.  Since I don’t have much time to do this, it has taken a while.  This weekend my son was away at a Church Youth Group retreat so the Xbox was available so I finished the last 5-6 songs of the 43available on the Easy level.

Now on to Medium where with the addition of the 4th button and the faster speed of the notes presented, it will take me a while to complete this.  Although I’d like to play at Hard or Expert, I am somewhat realistic in my expectations – I can’t move my old fingers that fast nor do I have the time to invest in getting that good.  As longs as I can hold my own on Medium I am content.  I suspect I’ll do the Bass tour on Medium or the Drums on Easy (I find the drums really hard) before I do Guitar on Hard.

180 degrees out of phase with Leo Laporte

I enjoy listening to the TWIT podcast but I have come to the conclusion that I am 180 degrees out of phase with Leo Laporte when it comes to technology.  I don’t have a Mac but I wouldn’t mind having one – I have an HP running Vista and I am reasonably happy with it.  I love WindowsMobile and wouldn’t think of getting a phone that doesn’t have it, and I have an Xbox 360 (actually two of them) and although I haven’t heard him say it directly, but in several episodes the way he has referenced the PS3 platform certainly implies that he thinks it is better than the Xbox 360.  Am I worried about this?  Nope – just find it interesting that in several key areas, I am 180 degrees out of phase with the guy who leads a podcast I enjoy listening to.