Where's Olive?

Go see this movie. If you're reading from MSU... it's not playing in Starkville, but I think it would be worth the drive to Tupelo. Matt and I saw it yesterday, and it looks like Crafty Cait enjoyed it too :)

Go Braves!

We spontaneously decided to travel to the Washington Nationals v. Atlanta Braves game at RFK Stadium Wednesday night. Thanks to the metro (too bad we forgot our reading material), getting there was easy. We chowed down on some hot dogs and beer, thanks to this guy who had invented his own contraption to open beer cans that functioned like a hyper speed can opener. We had fun, dispite the Braves loss :(

XBOX UPDATE

The Xbox 360 media center extender functionality works great now.


For anyone out there getting the following error message:

Session Terminated: Another user or application on the Windows Media Center-based PC has disconnected this device.


This site helped me troubleshoot the problem, mine was the second method.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/911123/en-us

How to be an Adult: Lesson 3

BUY VIDEO GAMES??

I already have a PC running Windows Media Center Edition 2005. It is able to pause and record live television like a DVR (like Tivo). I have been touting the Xbox360’s ability to act as a media extender for the PC for a long while now, so Mal wanted to get one. By act as a media extender I mean that it is SUPPOSED TO connect to your wireless network and stream recorded TV, music, and pictures from your PC to the television in your living room. I didn’t do my homework well enough, and was surprised to learn that to connect wirelessly to the internet, I had to purchase an additional wireless adapter for the Xbox. I also learned that I had to upgrade my wireless router to an A + G router to stream video affectively over the A network. After doing all that, I was ready to get this thing hooked up and ready to go. I spent all weekend opening ports and disabling/enabling my commercial firewall and my router firewall and calling Xbox support (so they can blame it on the router firewall) and Linksys support (so they can blame it on the windows it on my third party firewall). Finally at 6 on Sunday, Xbox technical support tells me, "Oh that error you’ve been getting, that’s a Media Center software problem, and YOU’LL HAVE TO CALL MICROSOFT (which was closed). So our weekend ended with much money and time spent, and nothing to show for media extending, a key feature that sold us on the Xbox 360. Maybe I’ll get a chance to call today or tomorrow while tech support is still open.

Note: Despite the complaints, we have had an awesome time playing Elder Scroll IV: Oblivion, and please… any computer/electronics geek that may stumble across this blog and may want to comment about Microsoft; save it because we already know.

Extra Pics

I found some pics from early summer that I thought were worth posting...

Us at my house in Clarksville preparing for the drive.

We are officially in Virginia... woo hoo! Look at that mountain in the background!

Matt checking out our back porch.

This is for Caitlin. Our feet in Richmond.

The Canal downtown Richmond.

I'm not really sure what I'm doing here.

Matt's so strong ;)

The rocks at Belle Isle.

I wasn't quite as adventurous as that woman in the distance.

We saw "Thank you for Smoking" at the historic Byrd Theatre.

Interior shot.

Lobby shot.

And finally, we ate bbq at Double T's. Richmond is neato.

Look Closely

Friday morning when I arrived at work, Paul (my boss) and Rachel insisted that I needed to go to the bathroom. They are always playing harmless pranks so I try to stay on top of my game. After some coaxing, I agreed to check out the bathroom situation. In addition to the normal clever saying on the toilet lid... I was upset to find this poor guy (later named Stewie). Paul thinks he was prancing around on the seat, slipped, fell in, and drowned :( Rachel sprayed the seat with Lysol, Jordan flushed Stewie down to the sea, and we went on with our day.

"How to be an adult" Lesson 2

FINANCIAL TRAINING

The day I arrived at the new job, my supervisor told me that she had signed me up for “Finnancial Planning for New Hires”. I attended the class on Monday, and I found it to pretty interesting.

The instructor was a mix between that guy on Mad Money and a snake oil salesman. He also struggled with his on the fly math skills which he was never called out on, but his multiple errors definitely did not go unnoticed in the room full of engineers.

Despite all that, he had a lot of good information, and provided a booklet of info for us to take home. Here are a couple of non-civil servant related financial nuggets I learned:

1.) A Roth IRA differs from an ordinary IRA in that all the money comes out when you retire is tax exempt. This includes your principal investment and all your earnings which can come out to quite a lot if you have had the IRA for many years. The catch to this thing is that you can’t contribute if your household earns too much money. If you think you and your spouse will ever be in danger of earning over $160,000 combined ($110,000 if you are single), you should start contributing to this thing early before you’re such a baller. From what I understand, you can stil keep the account when you make too much; you just can’t contribute to it any longer.

2.) You will be exempt from Capital Gains Tax on any profit from selling your house if you have lived there for 2 out of the last five years. If you will be moving to a new house in the same area, you may want to rent out the old house over the next 3 years and then sell. The renters will be paying the mortgage, while your old house has a chance to appreciate in value (depending on the real-estate market). As long as you sell the house before the 3 years is up, you can still rake in the profits tax free.

3.) You can check you credit score at Fico.com for $45.00 or so. You can get a free credit report each year at AnnualCreditReport.com, but this report does not provide you with a credit score. A credit score may be good to know before trying to finance a major

4.) Innactive credit cards are bad for your credit score. Having credit cards that sit in your wallet unused with a zero balance are apparently bad for your credit. Signing up for a department store card to get the 10% off, paying the balance, and then sticking the card in your wallet never to be used again can negatively affect your credit score. Credit reporting agencies like to see some activity on active cards along with on-time bill payments. If you have credit cards that you never use with a zero balance, you should just cancel them.

One I picked up on my own:

5.) There is a hybrid car purchase tax credit. For all those out there that think purchasing a hybrid isn’t worth the money, it definitely is if you purchase a 50 mile- to-the-gallon compact car in 2006. The 06 Honda Civic and Toyota Prius earn tax credits of $2100, and $3150 respectively. This almost makes up the added cost of choosing the hybrid over their standard models in one chunk. Once your factor in the added 20 miles to the gallon over the next 5 to 10 years (and the morality money you’ll earn going easy on the environment), it should make sense for you to go with the hybrid, especially if you have any sort of commute to work or school everyday. This one was really just an excuse to justify my desire to purchase a hybrid civic this year.


*I would advise doing your own research before taking action on any of this information. This is just reporting on some of the things I learned.