Now that I have gotten that out of the way let me get into the games a little bit. I own both games on the Xbox 360. I know for many first person multi-player purists playing on a console is sacrilegious, but honestly I play for fun so deal with it. I got both games for the Xbox 360 because personally I find the multi-player the most enjoyable aspect of first person shooters and Xbox Live has like more players on its network than any of the others. Also, while I have played various first person shooter campaigns in the past, I never find them quite as enjoyable as multi-player. Se lets get to it….

VS 

Which game do I enjoy more? That is a tough one for me, but right now I need to give the edge to Battlefield 3. Whew, now that I got that out of the way let me explain why.

Things I love about Battlefield 3:

Game play is bad ass. Seriously it is a much more strategic and realistic feeling game than MW3. I really enjoy how much you can alter your play style while playing. You can zerg with shotguns, spam with rockets, sit back and snipe, play rogue or play with sophisticated team work.

Your actions determine your success much better in B3 than in MW3 in my opinion. It is much less about zerging to a certain kill streak to unlock some overpowered kill streak feature and more about strategically playing your character.

Things I don’t like about Battlefield 3:

Predictable spawn points suck. This is easily over come by good team work, but some of the predetermined spawning placements are too predictable and has led to some spawn camping.

Mismatches. As I mentioned I am not the best at first person shooters and it pisses me off when some much higher ranked player comes in and almost unfairly cleans up. Something else that pisses me off is when I join a match already partied with them and we are placed on opposite teams. As much as I like shooting my friends from time to time, I usually party up with them with the intend of playing with them, not against them!

The UI leaves much to be desired. The fact that you’re stuck between matches with a very underwhelming interface where you can’t do squat kind of sucks.

Things I like about Modern Warfare 3: (Keep in mind I have only had it for 1 day)

I really like some of the boards I have played so far and the game play is fun and quick paced. This game easily follows suit with the Call of Duty series of games.

I like how quickly one can level. B3 sometimes feels like a MMO watching your experience bar grow ever so slightly between matches. I don’t feel like that at all so far with MW3.

Things I don’t find so hot about Modern Warfare 3:

There only seems so be 2 play styles Zerging and Camping. While team work seems applicable it is more for the sake of overwhelming the enemy rather than truly offering support classes that can help protect, heal, and resupply your team mates.

Kill Streak weapons are over powered. I am not saying that helicopters, planes, missiles and tanks shouldn’t be powerful. I am saying the availability to use them in MW3 is too powerful. It is one of my biggest issues in general with the Call of Duty product line. I hate games that over reward the best skilled players with special perks that make them even more powerful. It’s like handicapping the less skilled players, which just doesn’t make sense. As someone who is not often at the top of the leader boards this frustrates me.

All of this may change as I continue to play both of these games. I give both very high ratings and really enjoy playing both.

Well sure enough I wasn’t the only one who was excited about the Nook Color, because I started getting thousands of hits all going to that same article. To date it actually rates as the most popular thing (in views and draw to the site) I had ever written. The page has been served up tens of thousands of times and accounts for just shy of 15% of all of the traffic I have ever received. I have written other things that I thought were cool, interesting, fun, current, but none has ever compared to that article in terms of Internet popularity.

The web has a strange way of defining popularity and success…

For those living under a rock, Steve Jobs was a co-founder of Apple and was very instrumental in the resurrection of Apple. Now the people who have known me for a long time you will know I am not exactly an Apple Fanboy. In fact for a good amount of time I detested Apple and all Apple products. I used to cling to the idea that Apple products were under powered, over priced, overly simplified, heavily DRM’ed, etc. In many ways much of these issues still persist today with their products, but for some reason my perception has changed. I firmly believe it is due to the persistence of Steve Jobs to focus on User Experience above anything else.

Another reason I admire Steve Jobs is because he did something I have always wanted to do. He successfully ran several businesses; businesses that he loved. He combined passion with success, which can be a hard combination in today’s business world. Since his passing I have watched and intently listened to his Stanford Commencement Speech at least 5 times. If you haven’t watched it yet, I highly recommend it.

Stay Hungry, Stay Foolish, RIP Steve Jobs

A step by step to install the Withings Scale on Linux.

1. Plug your Withings Scale into your computer via USB
2. Go to my.withings.com
3. Login (or register if this is your first install)
4. Go to My Account and then click Install new scale
5. Click configure my scale
6. Download the file (which should be named pairingwizard_Linux_x86_64)
7. Open up Terminal
8. Navigate to the file download location for me it was in Downloads
9. The file is a bin file so you need to chmod +x the file before opening, I typed “chmod +x pairingwizard_Linux_x86_64″
10. Then run the file as root (do so by typing “sudo ./pairingwizard_Linux_x86_64″
11. This should open the GUI install wizard
12. Click next, find your network, Enter your wap/wep key if you have one, click next and you should be finished.

Tenny’s Chicken Broccoli Casserole

Ingredients:
2 cups long grain white rice
3 cups water
1 stick salted butter
1 pound broccoli
4-5 chicken breasts
1 can (10.75 oz) cream of mushroom soup
1 can (10.75 oz) cream of chicken soup
2 tablespoons mayo
1 pound shredded cheddar cheese

Instructions:
- pre-heat oven to 350
- Coat a glass casserole dish/pan (9×13 works great!) with non-stick spray
- Evenly spread 2 cups of rice on the bottom of the pan
- Pour 2 cups of water over the rice
- Cut broccoli into small pieces (we prefer mostly florets) and spread them over – the rice water mix evenly.
In a separate microwaveable bowl do these steps:
- put stick of butter in microwave for 1 min (or until melted)
- then mix in 1 can of cream of mushroom , 1 of can of cream of chicken (if you don’t have cream of chicken use a second can of cream of mushroom or a ½ cup of milk), and 1 cup of warm water to bowl
- Add 2 tablespoons of mayo to the mixing bowl.
- Mix the bowl thoroughly for a min and then evenly dump over the broccoli
- Cut up the 4-5 raw (not frozen) chicken breasts into tiny pieces and spread over the mix.
- Cover with tin foil and put in oven for 60 minutes
- Take out of oven at 60 minutes, generously spread shredded cheddar cheese over the top and put back in oven uncovered for 15-30 more minutes (I like the cheese bubbling and gooey, Marcia likes it with more of a fried cheesy crust.)
- Take out of the oven and let it sit for 5-6 mins (seriously you will burn your mouth if you eat this any sooner)

This should feed 4-6 people. For our family of 4 we eat about 75%-80% of it over dinner with enough left overs for reheating the next day

Hope Solo: http://www.twitter.com/hopesolo

Christie Rampone: http://www.twitter.com/christierampone

Alex Morgan: http://www.twitter.com/alexmorgan13

Alex Krieger: http://www.twitter.com/alexbkrieger

Megan Rapinoe: http://www.twitter.com/mPinoe

Heather O’Reilly:  http://www.twitter.com/Heather_SBFC

Tobin Heath: http://www.twitter.com/TobinHeath

Carli Lloyd: http://www.twitter.com/CarliLloyd

Lauren Cheney: http://www.twitter.com/laurencheney8

Abby Wambach: http://www.twitter.com/awaumbach_dc

Of course your other option is to follow the official hash tage for the US during their World Cup run which is #USWNT

Let me start with a little history, my first Dell came many years ago when the average home PC cost was in the $2500 range. I had heard some great things about the company and to be completely honest they had some of the best prices out there. Even in those early days I remember them trying to do semi-questionable things like forcing unwanted products in the shopping cart of online orders, but that was always easily avoided by calling up to finalize the order. In the last 11 years, between my wife and I, we have had different 4 Dell laptops. Being the “extended family computer support” I have also been the go to person when people are looking for recommendations for a computer to get. Between my Mother, Father, In-laws, and 5 siblings we are talking 20-25 Dell computer referrals since they were always the simplest option while still being reasonably competitive. Those first 5-6 years were relatively trouble free. When there was trouble things were always relatively easy to fix; a broken LCD (which was easily replaced), a keyboard rendered ineffective by spilled soda (easily replaced), and the average end user computer issue. Additionally, Dell used to always send a factory restore CD that allowed a clean install without the crapware, so from the very beginning the end users experience was positive.

This all sounds great doesn’t it? I don’t think I will ever go as far as saying I was a Dell fan boy, but for an OEM they used to be fairly reliable. Then a few years ago it all started going downhill. I don’t remember the exact day or even the exact family member’s issue, but the issues started piling one on top of another. When I am taking issues I am not referring to OS issues either, I am talking about problems with hardware. In the last two years I have seen laptop cases fall apart, mouse pads stop working, soldered components completely fall off, capacitors blown, DVD drives that stop working after minimal use, and laptops that get so hot within 2 minutes of turning on that they have literally burned the skin of the user. In fact every Dell I have worked with that was bought since 2009 has had major heat issues. I used to recommend cooling pads, but when the laptop gets so hot that it automatically powers off after less than 5 minutes of use (even with the cooling pad) enough is enough. I was getting calls almost weekly from family members and it all was due to Dells.

You would think it would be simple enough to just contact Dell and get these issues dealt with, but my time is more valuable to me than wasting hours with terrible support technicians who read scripts verbatim and don’t understand how to troubleshoot. I also do not buy the price gouging maintenance plans because when I buy something I expect it to work. On the off chance I get a lemon I just deal with it then, but when everything you buy is a lemon that becomes a problem.

Dell Sucks! Dell is terrible! They have lost my business and the business of any family member that relies on me for support.

For those just discovering my blog, I say to you; Welcome! There is a good chance you may disagree with me on something (if you do I hope you leave a comment so we can discuss the disagreement). I do this blog because I love to share my opinions and will take any opportunity to share what I have learned. I am a technology nerd whose only qualification to write about food is that I love to eat. Early in life I was not very exposed to a variety of food, but I now love experiencing new foods and new food venues. I like variety and enjoy everything from food carts to down home style venues to upscale dining. I don’t have a favorite food, but really enjoy good quality food that is authentic. I also appreciate when restaurants are able to be innovative, yet still provide an enjoyable experience with a delicious meal. You will find my critiques will mainly be subjective. While food is the motivator for writing, the environment can mean just as much.

When I first moved to Cincinnati I started searching online for the best food and restaurants Cincinnati had to offer. Large scale sites like Yelp didn’t exactly provide what I was looking for, but eventually I stumbled upon a few awesome Cincinnati Food Blogs that I wanted to share with you:

• http://winemedinemecincinnati.com/ – Wine Me Dine Me Cincinnati was the first blog I went to when I was Google searching for “Cincinnati food” and I seem to come back to it again and again. I totally recommend and haven’t been led wrong with a recommendation yet!
• http://ourgoodfoodlife.blogspot.com/ – A series of twitter conversations led me to discovering Jen’s great blog. Plus if you are ever looking for recommendations, just ask her over Twitter @jensgoodlife
• http://www.thefoodhussy.com – I have to be honest, I learned of the Food Hussy on UrbanSpoon. The Food Hussy ranks #1 for Cincinnati Food Blogs for good reason. She has been to tons of great places and her mix of honest opinion, realistic expectations, and enjoyable pictures make her blog a winner!

Before I sign off I also want to say what an incredible help UrbanSpoon can be in all its glory. I had visited the site a few times shortly after it launched when I lived in Madison, WI, but was always underwhelmed since there were so few places on it at that time. I am happy to see that Madison is now well represented on UrbanSpoon, as it has been a great resource here in the greater Cincinnati area. Feel free to friend me on UrbanSpoon!