TV shows

So, ill will suggested watching Prison Break. I wish I could but honestly my DVR is recording so many things right now that I'm not sure if I'll be able to watch it all. I was going to just reply to the comment but it turned out this could be an interesting post, so here it is: Monkey's list of shows currently being DVRed (has this word been accepted yet? It should, in case you are confused, shows being TIVOed, only that I don't have a TIVO I have a DVR from my cable company, did I confuse you more? Good)

-Bones (fox- csi type show, its new, we'll see how it goes)
-My Name is Earl (NBC- comedy, I saw the pilot episode for this and was hooked, I think this show is going to be great)
-How I met your mother (CBS comedy, another new one, starring Doogie Houser, after his role on Harold and Kumar, I'll give him 5 episodes at the very least, he deserves it [as long as he doesn't leave any love stains on my couch, get it?])
-King of Queens (CBS, irreplaceble)
-George Lopez (ABC, not the funniest thing in the world but its latin people in HD, represent!!!)
-Invasion (can't remember, this is a new show also, I'll give it a few episodes, if it sucks then I'll replace with something else)
-CSI:NY(CBS)
-America's Next Top Model(UPN, I know what your thinking but seriously its my wife who watches this one, I swear!!)
-Survivor: Guatemala(CBS)
-Survivor: Africa ("Outdoor Life Network" or "OLN", they are repeating every season of Survivor back to back, 4 episodes per week[Monday-Thursday]. Africa is season 3, we already watched the original[Borneo] and Australia. FYI: we started watching Survivor only like 2-3 years ago so we are loving this since there are so many seasons we haven't watched)
-The Apprentice (NBC, You're fired! is getting old, they'll better be some better challenges or something, otherwise I'm firing The Donald and the chipmunk living on his head)
-The OC (Fox, its been too Soap Operish lately [2 episodes thus far this season], in fact I'm kind of turned off by too many conflicts to start the season, any normal teen would have just killed him/herself and moved on, either that or they would just be in an asylum wearing shower courtains and asking to talk to Michael Jackson. I might replace this show, unless they bring back the lesbian relationship [I will now prepare for my wife's wrath])
-CSI (CBS, the original, for some reason this show never gets old, weird)
-Without a Trace (CBS, another one that doesn't get old)
-Numbers (CBS, this one is excellent too, another crime drama, but in this one the guy is a world class mathematician and uses math and other techniques to help solve FBI crimes, can you tell I'm a nerd?)

Typically, we record more than we can actually watch in a day, fall behind, then catch up on the weekend or after a couple of weekends. It’s a cool way of watching tv, only that if you get too lazy, the hard drive fills up and some shows get deleted (especially with shows in HD, they take up 3 to 4 times the space of regular shows). Its cool to watch 2 or 3 episodes in a row, especially the old Survivor ones, not the new ones because someway somehow a damn fool accidentaly tells you who got voted off (I pity the fool!!!). Keep in mind though that this is a list of the shows we record, there are plenty of other shows that we watch but can't or won't record like Real World/Road Rules (and whatever challenges, infernos, gauntlets, etc, that they come up with), Surreal Life (who would have thought that Bronson Pinchot was a pervert? I've never been more surprised [please note sarcasm here]), Laguna Beach (the real OC, as of right now definetly more entertaining than the fake one, although kind of stupid, no lesbians either…hmm I wonder if…never mind), Hogan Knows Best (or whatever the name is), did you notice these are all reality shows? Oh, Oh, Kill Reality, one of the funniest reality shows I've ever seen, we just watch it when it happens to be on but its always entertaining, House Hunters, Curb Appeal, Landscaper's Challenge (last 3 the wife watches), Whose Line Is It Anyway? pee your pants funny, Mind of Mencia (when I catch it, its very funny most of the time, except the stupid award shows and crap like that, sometime I cringe). Etc, etc. Too much reality, I know, I can't stop though...

What shows are ya'll watching? Hit up the comments section...

Updates! Updates! Updates!

I apologize, I’ve been very busy and not had a chance to post anything since last week. I’ve been accumulating so much info and ideas that this post might be absolutely huge, I’m almost approaching this as a column rather than a post, you have been warned.

Here we go:

– Dogs –
Oh my, where to start. I swear that Lilly came to us by divine intervention basically just to train us for real babies. I’m not even kidding, she wakes up every night somewhere between 2 and 4am. If we don’t take her out, she pees in the living room, incentive enough to wake up. She’ll go to sleep after that…until 6-6:15am when she is ready to have breakfast (she eats twice a day, once in the morning and once in the afternoon). After eating, you have to go to the backyard with her or else… you guessed it! poo poo in the living room. We are hoping that as time goes by she gets used to sleeping through the night (hopefully sometime before it starts snowing).

Lilly loves to play, when we first brought her home she was very mellow and calm, or so we thought. As she has been getting more and more comfortable her hyper activity has gone through the roof. She can fetch for hours, she runs circles around honey (who at this point looks like an 80-year old next to her) , digs holes all over the yard, eats everything she can find (she loves sandals and shoes, she’s broken 4 pairs up to now, and ate my Xbox live headset).

Honey has had a hard time adjusting to Lilly, she is looking to play with him all the time however he is not having any of it, growling and barking more than before. Somehow I thing this is good so that Lilly understands who is the boss however so far it seems like she is not understanding. We’ll see what happens there.

Regardless of all that, I love Lilly to death, if something where to happen to her I would cry like I do every time I see the movie A.I. or Untamed Heart (did I just say that? Don’t ask).

Here is a picture of my to two babies when they are not fighting



– Frugality –
Since my post about frugality, I’ve been consistent in making coffee at home and taking leftovers for lunch. I almost feel like I’m in rehab and need to remind myself how long I’ve been sober otherwise I might relapse. Anyone up for some Wendy’s? Sorry, concentrate, focus, power, Manny San.

Also, I’ve been successful in getting $110 in free money so far. It breaks down like this: *$25 ING Orange Savings Account
*$10 ING referral (thanks to my man Chilly Willy [ill will])
*$75 for opening a BankOne checking account. This was lucky though, it came in the mail along with a credit card offer for my wife. If you get a credit card offer from Chase or Bank One, check it before throwing it out, it might have a flyer in it with a similar offer. Read the fine print if you get it, just to make sure you can meet all the requirements (stuff like direct deposit, opening balance, etc.) If you want more details about the offer I got let me know.

I’m still thinking about trying to open accounts in my wife’s name but I’m still debating if I should or not. Keep an eye out for updates

– Xbox 360 –
Hey, if you didn’t know already, the release date has finally been announced, Nov. 22nd. This is the Tuesday before thanksgiving, which means I’m going to be giving thanks for my Xbox 360 for at least 4 days straight. I’m pumped.

I’m concerned however, because I decided not to pre-order the system, opting to save the money myself instead of giving it to the local GameStop to hold. Typically, stores like Circuit City, Best Buy, Target and Walmart don’t take pre-orders so I figured I would go there on launch day, however there is still the possibility that I might not find one. At this point is probably pretty late to pre-order it but I’ll make some calls to see if there is anything left at the stores around my area. Again will update later.

Well that’s it for now, I did have more stuff I wanted to talk about but frankly I’m tired. Keep an eye out for the following topics: ESPN NFL 2K5, I started a new franchise with the Colts and I’m thinking of posting regular updates on my progress including stats, record and so on (so far I’m 3-1). Movie reports, we just saw the exorsism of Emily rose and I figured I might try to review it. Survivor discussion, the new season looks like its going to be absolutely awesome, I love that show, etc. I’ll do my best to update at least 3 times a week (that’s a 7 day week).

Zingalamadudi….

NBA Katrina Relief / NFL is ON!!!

Quick note on more Katrina stuff. It's cool to see NBA stars come together to help out Katrina's victims. Check this article out on ESPN.com for some in-depth information:http://sports.espn.go.com/nba/columns/story?columnist=bucher_ric&id=2159082

I think in times like these you contribute however you feel necessary, there are certainly 2 schools of thought. I'm definitely more impressed with NBA players working in the trenches than putting on a good show to raise money but to each his own. If I could, I would be down there, I would feel like I was making more of a difference than just sending money or supplies, however that does not mean sending/donating stuff is bad or not needed.

Its been a good opening weekend for the NFL, my 2 favorite teams did pretty good ,Steelers blew out the Titans, the Colts took care of the Ravens in the second half. I must say I was pretty impressed with the Colts defense, they even injured the Ravens quarter back Kyle Boller (hyper-extended toe, ouch!!), with that being said I'm not getting too excited because the Ravens offense isn't exactly what you would call potent (other than their running game but that looked awful last night, it was as if I was there trying to run the football).

Speaking of awful, how ‘bout Bret Favre, yikes!! He used to be one of my favorite players but right now it doesn’t look like he’s any better than any wet-behind-the-ears rookie (*cough* like his backup *cough*). Cheeseheads throughout Wisconsin have to be preparing for some rebuilding in the next few years, at least the rookie QB draft pick makes more sense. Green Bay fans, “El Queso esta viejo y podrido”, look it up… On a somewhat funny/sad/poetic justice kind of note, Favre blasted one of his receivers in training camp, the guy was attepting a TO trying to get more money from the team. Eventually Favre convinced him to stop the holdout and play out his contract…yesterday he tore his ACL, it has to be karma, oh and if you didn’t know the NFL is the only league that doesn’t guarantee contracts, which means the Packers can cut this guy tomorrow if they wanted to saying: “sorry buddy” *pats the guy on the but then kicks his wheelchair to the curb*. Don’t you see the humor in this? OK, I’m a sadist…

Monday night football should be very good tonight, I think Mike Vick is amazing and I absolutely hate TO (don’t get me started) so hopefully ATL can get the win. I’m thinking of firing up last year’s ESPN NFL game to play a couple of seasons, if anyone is interested in doing some Xbox Live during the week let me know.

More coming tomorrow…

Katrina, You Bitch!!!!!!!

I know this subject has been beaten to death everywhere. I just want to say a few things and be done with it. I will start by saying: if you can donate, please do so, visit www.RedCross.org for more info. I’m not one to say this type of stuff but this situation at the absolute least requires that I remind everyone.

About the destruction, frankly, it was as surprising as say Donald Trump suddenly admitting that his hair is fake, seriously, Cat 5 hurricanes don’t come around very often and there is a reason for that, they destroy pretty much everything, so mother nature only unleashes them sparingly. What was surprising was the lack of preparation and the subsequent myriad of brain farts after Katrina was long gone. Its easy to criticize after the fact, so I’ll just say that Louisiana’s governor should seek out the advise of any past Puerto Rico governor, they might be corrupt as hell but they do know how to prepare for situations like these. By no means do I intend to say that PR has ever seen destruction even remotely close to Katrina’s, my point is that proper preparation could have saved many lives. That’s my somewhat subdued rant.

Now on to Kanye West. All of a sudden he is a political activist, I must say I’m impressed even if what he said was somewhat out of place in my opinion. I’m sure MTV would have jumped on the opportunity for a half hour interview (yup, #372) where he could have spoken his mind [although it would not have been on National TV]. Regardless of the appropriateness of the comments, you couldn’t help but laugh (or chuckle at the very least) looking at Mike Myer’s face (see the Sport’s Guy’s blog for more ), unintentional comedy at its best. This even made the daily show on Comedy Central and it was absolutely hilarious.

All for now, flame the comments section if you must.

Frugality

After the investigations I’ve gone through trying to save money for my Xbox 360, I’ve realized that there are lots of things I should be doing (or doing more of) financially for now and the future. Don’t get me wrong, I’m still getting my game machine, however the same way I’m saving for this can be applied to making extra payments on a credit card or actually saving it regularly on one of my high interest savings accounts.

There is a reason for the title for this post, I have decided that frugality is the way to go based on what I’ve been reading. I don’t mean that I’m cutting the cable or going back to dial up (that will never happen!!!). What I do mean is things like:
- Packing a lunch everyday for work instead of buying something from the crap-eteria (some days lunch can go up to $7!!!).
- Making coffee at home every morning (saves $1 a day, which is $5 a week, $20 a month, it adds up…).
- Cutting DVD purchases ( in the last 3 months I’ve bought 6 DVDs which is not huge, but of those six, three of them were impulse buys, those damn $5.50 DVD bins at Wal-Mart, one of the movies I hadn’t even seen before[something I never do, what if I don’t like the movie?]).
- Limiting dining out to once or twice a month, etc.

Those are just a few of the things to get me started. I’m also exploring ideas about taking advantage of 0% balance transfers from credit cards and using them to earn interest income, this is basically free money (not even close to making anyone rich so don’t get too excited). What I’m trying to get to is: by just being a little frugal and exploring different ways of thinking we can save more money for now and the future (like 401k’s or IRA’s).

As I noted on my last post, MyMoneyBlog.com is an excellent resource for ideas, advice, offers, etc. While there Jonathan has links to all sorts of other personal finance blogs which can keep you reading for hours if not days or weeks. There is a wealth of information available and as young as me and all 7 of the readers of this blog are, we should use it to our advantage.

As an update: both my Emigrant Direct and my ING Direct accounts are now open and I got my free $25 from ING for opening the account, yes!! Ironically, I found another blog that has a link where they give you $50 to open the same account (offer good until Dec 31 2005), you know my wife is about to open one of those right ;-) I’ll post a link to that blog later on…

Free 25 Bucks

I have been writing lately about saving $$$ for the Xbox. I opened a savings account that ears 3.5% interest with no minimum balance which is magnificent (EmigrantDirect.com). Now I have found another similar account which you might have heard of: ING Direct, everything is pretty much the same, with the exception that the interest rate is 3.3% and they give you a $25 dollar bonus for just opening the account!! Now, keep in mind there is no minimum balance and no minimum initial deposit (actually there is, its $1). You do have to keep the money in the account for at least 30 days but its earning interest all that time. What better way to take less of a hit once Xbox 360 launch time comes? Needless to say I opened this account as well. One important note: you have to be referred by someone who currently has an account to get the $25 bonus offer (I was referred by Jonathan at http://www.mymoneyblog.com/, which is a very useful blog you should check out if you are interested in anything dealing with financial goals, investing, retirement, etc. In fact, I’ll put a link to it on the links section to your right). Email me or leave a comment if you’d like to be referred, however only if you are 100% sure that you are opening the account since there is a limit on the amount of referrals. You will receive $25 and I’ll get $10 for referring, once you open the account you can refer other people from your account.

I would suggest you research it to see if it will work for you, once all set and ready to go, let me know and I’ll send you the referral. Mymoneyblog.com has a good overview of the account if you want to research it for pros and cons, it also has similar articles for the EmigrantDirect.com account I mentioned previously and a few others you might be interested in. I can also try to answer any questions you might have.

Well, that’s all for now, if you’d like $25 for doing nothing, let me know…

Quick update on World Basketball Championship qualifier:

PR loses against Panama (you think it had something to do with me making fun of the US team for losing to Panama), setting up a do or die game against the US on Friday. Should be fun, now if I could somehow watch it…anybody have ESPN Deportes?

[Edit] : apparently PR has been eliminated, damn. There used to be a time when we kicked everyone’s ass in the region, except the US off course. This absolutely suckssssssss. But honestly, like I said in my previous post, they were playing like poo poo and it seemed they weren’t hungry enough, it was almost poetic justice for being too cool and not respecting teams like Venezuela and Panama who we have traditionally beat. OK, I’ll be in the bathroom crying if you need me…

I must address this outrage

I know I said no more xbox stuff but I added that Larry Brown reference at the end of the post which basically lets me do whatever I want, ha ha. Anyway, this will be short, bronxdialect is pissed at me and her husband for wanting to spend 400 bucks on an Xbox (see comments section, its all in caps too so its safe to assume she might have been screaming at me if we were face to face). Calling us overgrown kids and what not. First off I'd like to say that I'm terrified of her and if for some reason nobody can find me after she reads this post, then you know where to start questioning. Second, what most women don't realize about video games is that our generation (lets say people born from '75 to '85 or so) grew up with video games but more importantly video games grew up with us too. In the late 70s to late 80s games were simple so they appealed more to kids and hence the stigma of them being for kids started. But as the generation kept getting older so did the games (who do you think games like Halo and GTA appeal more to? Males in their 20s and 30s, it’s a fact, never mind I have no proof). Your average adult gamer is not playing Mario unless he has an AK-47 and is yelling out *in Mario's voice* "It’s a me Mario...motherf#ck@r".

So, think of these games more as interactive movies with different genres like children, artsy type stuff (that doesn't make much sense but somehow you like), action (typical summer action blockbuster), horror (survive or die), sports movies, etc. I'd be willing to bet that out of all the stuff I have bought that is in the same price range, I get ten times more for my money from the xbox than any of the other stuff.

Now in my case, I have never bought a console at launch because I never had enough money to do it (actually my parents never had the money) so I always had to wait for the price break to get them. Now that I have a job, I can actually plan on saving $$ for the console and get it when it comes out like I've wanted to all my life. Note: since I started my current job 4 years ago, no new consoles have been released.


Moving ON…

The qualifier for the World Basketball Championships is taking place in the Dominican Republic this week (it started a week ago but it ends this week). Top 4 teams qualify yet there are at least 6 good teams still alive. Puerto Rico is sucking big time ass so far (losing to Venezuela, DR and Argentina), however they pulled off a victory against Brazil last night in double overtime which is a good sign. Other interesting facts:

- The US team is comprised of European, NBDL and And1 Mixtape Street ball stars (ok, I made the last one up), just a bunch of unknowns and they have lost a few games (Panama??? ), the big showdown is Friday, PR vs.US, if we had ESPN Deportes we could actually watch the game but apparently Michigan doesn’t have enough Latinos for Comcast to pickup the damn channel (but they just added a Chinese channel, an Arab channel, and some other crap I'll never watch, meanwhile Univision is the only Spanish station we get and it shares the channel with the public access station[meaning sometimes you want to watch something on Univision and the channel might have a high school basketball game or just random bulletin board style ads], can someone explain this to me please!). Question: If the US does not qualify, will the NBA have a fit thinking that they have the best players and therefore should be in the World Championships anyway? Would they file a grievance with FIBA saying they didn't realize you had to qualify? Is anyone actually going to care?

- PR team does not have Carlos Arroyo playing due to the birth of his first daughter, Danny Santiago (who plays for the Milwaukee Bucks) refused to play saying he had nothing to prove (obviously his 3.4 points per game, 2.1 rebounds per game and 0.39 blocks per game [did I say he is 7'1"?] are good enough for…being a poor man's Greg Ostertag [ at least Ostertag gave one of his kidneys to his sister…I'm delirious right now]). And Piculin (who my friend Felix "Mamamelo" Mendez says looks like a Colombian drug lord), the best player in PR history, is so old that his ankle snapped off (ok, I made that up too, but he has so many injuries that he is doing color commentary for the ESPN Deportes telecast although that might be a disguise for a big cocaine transaction).

- The Dominican Republic is not bad either although some say all referees seem to be Dominican. They are still alive.

More updates on this tomorrow...