The Cramer Family

We had a good time on Saturday at Wheeler Farm. We were able to walk around a pumpkin patch and the boys found two good pumpkins. Then we made some scarecrows and went on the ever popular hay ride (sans hay).

The sky opened up right as we were leaving, so it was a perfectly timed event. The boys had a great time and we have some pumpkins to carve.

• “You touch that poop you eat it”
• “Don’t eat that book!”
• “Did you know your bench is dripping?

Last time we were in California Rickee was playing some Katamari or something game. Basically all he did was roll this large ball around collecting various objects. While the overall concept seemed very simplistic and easy, it was mesmorizing to watch and evidently very addicting to play. Now I can’t say that I got in to it that much, but I did think this picture was very clever

The photo comes from Kirsten Bole and can be found at this web site.

Tivo has announced that they are opening up their SDK for Active Download and development. It will be really cool to see the kind of applications that will be put out there. From the look at the Gallery there are going to be a lot of options for the Tivo.

The one that I am the most excited for is the ability to watch video from the internet or from your own computer. That means that I may be able to stream tv shows that I’ve downloaded through BitTorrent onto the home television! Now all I need to get it to do is play Xbox games and I’m almost as cool as my friend who has a media hub for his xbox.

I checked my email today to find this

So I logged into my freeipod account page

So I checked the UPS site

WAAAAHOOOOOOOO!!!!!

I spent the weekend helping my friend mod his xbox. I say help, but all I really did was sit there and ooh and ahh as he showed me each piece that he’d downloaded. It was really cool to see him streaming movies, audio and pictures off of the hard drive of his main computer. The program would automatically query IMDB based on the name of the video found. Obviously this would only work on videos that are found in the database. But for family or personal videos you can get some very interesting results. Our favorite was Wisconsin Death Trip found from his video “Wisconsin Trip”. Pretty good.

I really think that the merger of pc’s and tv’s is going to be the next big thing. People would much rather sit around on comfortable seats to be entertained. So with more and more people getting digital still cameras and digital video cameras I see people wanting to be able to view there media on the big screen from comfy couches. We use the Home Media Option on our TIVO to see pictures and MP3’s from the main computer. It’s a pretty cool toy, but if we could play XBOX, SNES and watch movies. That would be the coolest.

I’ve done two of the “free” product websites. And I’ve had a 50/50 success rate with my adventures in getting free stuff. The first try was through the free green xbox web site. I completed three of the offers and got the certificate of completion, but I got nothing. My friend did the same offers but sent his paper in a week earlier, and received a check in the mail yesterday for the price of a limited edition xbox. I’m not expecting anything from this offer because I must have done something wrong to displease the free xbox gods.

Now the other offer that I’m feeling more confident about is freeipods.com. I’ve actually gone through the process of referring 5 people to complete offers and I’ve gotten the following screen up.

Doesn’t that seem like a good sign? It turns out that the new 4th Generation is backordered at eCost (the company who supplies Gratis). People who placed orders on 8/2 have had theirs shipped. I’m in the 8/6 group and it’s anyone’s guess when that will go out, but it does seem legit. There was even an article on Wired.com that confirms the site is really shipping out the merchandise.

So…we shall see. Rest assured I will be posting information here if the iPod ever gets shipped. The #1 reason I want to get it though is so I can convince people to sign up for…

FREE FLAT SCREENS BUWHAHAHAHAHA!!

It’s over. The votes have been tallied up and there is a new last comic. I got caught up in the show when a friend of mine, Duane Day, mentioned that he’d been watching the first season and thought that it was really funny. So when I saw the previews for this new season I interested. I’m a big fan of standup in general and it was good to see a bunch of people compete to get the title.

The whole reality TV thing is such a guilty plesure. Putting people in artifical environments and situations and then analyze how they react through the beauty of confessional booths, inhouse mafiosa and the occasional crazy pyscho flip out. Well this reality show didn’t disappoint. There were all the bad things we love to watch but in the end of the show that’s not what made a winner. It was more like a hybrid of Survivor with the plotting and schemeing and other underhanded stuff crossed with American Idol with the performers coming together to compete purely based on talent and their ability to overcome apathy in the American People. Sure they had the gimicky voting off stuff, but when it came down to 6 it was all about who was funnier.

Now all they need to do is to get George Bush and John Kerry to square off in a battle of comedic proportions. And I’m not just talking about a singing contest, I mean a full on battle of the wits to see who can be “THE LAST POLITICIAN STANDING!!”.

In the end I still believe that American’s can collectively choose what’s best for the country. I believe that we will continue to be great as long as we continue to cherish that which is good. And last night, we cherished the goodness of John Heffron’s comedy. And you know what? It’s pretty great.

I want an iPod. The fact that I could walk around with 20-40 Gigs of stuff while looking uber cool to boot sounds so very neat. I could listen to all the scriptures all the time, as well as keep appointments, phone numbers and files at my fingertips. Not to mention lots and lots of great music.

So, being that I have lots of throw away addresses I’m going to go for it. There is a site called freeiPods.com that will send you one of the brand new 20 GB Apple iPods if you get 5 people to go to the site and sign up for one offer. The types of offers vary from time to time, but the majority of them come with a free trial which allows you to quit once you have been credit for the sign up. The trick is get 5 other people to sign up for one offer as well. So in a request to the 3-4 people who read this site, help me get an iPod. Here’s how you can do it.

1. Visit http://www.freeiPods.com/default.aspx?referer=7291692 to get counted as one of my referrals.
2. Give you name and email address to get started. I would recomend a throw away address because you will probably get hit by a ton of spam on this one.
3. Fill in your mailing address and info
4. You can answer “no” to all of the survey questions
5. Click on one of the offers and fill out your information. You can cancel the AOL membership anytime within the first 45 days, although you may not want to cancel until freeiPod has confirmed that you have completed the offer
6. Get 5 people to do the same thing and you are good to go!

Now I’ll be the first to say that I’m overall very skeptical about these types of offers or deals, but with an unlimited number of email addresses and a burning desire to get something for nothing I’m going to give it a shot. The worst that can happen is that the email address freeipod@dtob.net gets filled with spam and I am forced to delete it. Not a single one of my business cards will need to be changed.

So visit http://www.freeiPods.com/default.aspx?referer=7291692 and help me out!