BIG NEWS - I'm a Poppa!

Here is my son, little Asher Lloyd, ladies and gentlemen! Isn't he marvelous? Weighing in at 6lbs 1oz. and 19.5 inches long, he's a good sized bundle for coming on the scene a month early. Asher surprised both the Lady and I with by arriving this Monday, March 27th at 8:37PM. I would've blogged this sooner, but I was unexpectedly busy this week (HA, that's an understatement!). Both mom and child are doing very well. Lady is recovering nicely all things considered, she's ready to leave the hospital that's for sure. Both of them will be released tomorrow morning from the looks of it.

This next month is going to involve a lot of scrambling to catch up with Asher's timeline, since he is well ahead of us evidently. I'll give more details in another entry. I just wanted to get this event on the record this week!

Wooohoooo!

New Bigfoot Video - Ely, Minnesota

This is video from January of this year taken by Richard Sade. You can find more information at the Cryptomundo website.

Good News for M$: Sony Delays PS3 until November

If M$ can get their Xbox 360 supply issues together they have plenty of time to reach their market share goals before November, even with Playstation 3 coming out as the new system for the 2006 holiday season, I still see Microsoft's Xbox 360 still being the hot item for the holidays again this year. They'll have a year to bring more "must" have games, and establish more of a foothold with gamers, basically putting Sony in the position M$ was in back when they released the original Xbox in a field dominated over a couple years earlier by the PS2.

The Xbox 360 is really a great looking product. From what little I've played on it in stores everything about the machine is very well thought out and well designed. Somewhere down the road I see that probably being my next game machine. Since I don't have HD televisions or any real high end sound system for my entertainment area. I won't reap the most benefit from the console, I'm not in a big rush to get one. The PS2 and Xbox do fine by me still.

Aside from timing, Sony's current track record with their electronic entertainment devices might work to the benefit of M$. Sony has really fumbled with the PSP. It's a beautiful device and I playing games on mine. But I have a long wish list for the device. Top of that being, I wish there were more must have games or exclusive games. Every month I'm shocked by the waves of great and often exclusive games for my Nintendo DS, which often cost 10-15 dollars less then new PSP games. I'm also completely dumbfounded by the prices for UMD movies.

For some brief background on me, I have a graduate degree in marketing and a good portion of my career has been spent in corporate marketing departments...so I have some grasp on the processes and reasoning behind pricing and judging perceived value of a product by prospective customers. What were they smoking in the Sony boardroom when they came up with the pricing scheme for UMD movies? I was in the Electronic Boutique with my Dad this weekend, we couldn't believe the prices on these UMDs, $19.99 thru $29.99 for a movie will display at a lower quality then a DVD and is playable on only one device. I mean I can't even watch these movies on a TV if I wanted to since the PSP doesn't have video-out. I've just decided to rip movies and tv shows from my own discs and watch them on my iPod if I wish to carry entertainment with me. Basically because its easier to get content on the iPod and the thing has more memory than a 1GB SD card, which is a real shame since the PSP screen is beautiful and I love watching the few used UMD movies I have on it.

I could go on for a long while ranting against Sony. But I won't. I'll just cut this here.

Baby Class

This Saturday Lady and I went the first part of a two part child care class offered up by Holy Cross hospital. Basically the RN teaching the class gives us all the basics we need to know in regards to caring for our babies.

I must be doing a lot more prep and reading then some of these other Dads, I felt like a lot of this stuff was just a review of what I knew already. I did learn a few new things and a review is always good. But some of the questions asked my a couple of the dads just had me floored. One guy took the cake when he actually needed the word "swaddle" defined for him. He wasn't familiar with the term evidently. How does this dude get through the Christmas season in this country without hearing the word swaddle at least once??

After the class and lunch, the Lady and I went in seperate directions. She went off to a bridal shower for a friend of ours getting married this summer and I hung out with the folks at their place. It'd been awhile since I'd dropped by and I needed to pick up the baby seat for the car.

Its getting closer and closer to the baby's arrival, its quite a mix of feelings... I'm really excited about being a Dad, no doubt. But at the same time those feelings are tempered with concern about just getting our little family through the delivery process. We've got a great doctor and Holy Cross is an excellent facility, I keep that in mind so I try to not worry too much. But there are days when its a little tough to let the facts squelch unreasoning emotion.

It's ALIVE

General Electric P807A
Originally uploaded by lloydpier1.

I was up last night fiddling around with my old General Electric P807A transistor radio. The thing is over 40 years old, and hasn't worked in ages. But since I'd taken it down to throw out or donate, I decided to crack it open and see if it could be fixed. Sure enough, a half hour later and a fresh battery the thing is pulling down AM signals like a champ! The speaker still sounds great as well.

This used to be "my" radio when I was a kid. Dad gave me the thing when I was just a little guy. I've always been a radio fan and this was my first radio.

It's not the most styling piece of electronics, I mean it is a GE product. But the performance is solid, once again.

Slightly Delayed - Weekend roundup

Friday I actually finished up work a little before 7pm, which is a nice change of pace. Lately I haven't been leaving until 8 or later on Fridays.

After having a dinner at home watching the Family Guy Stewie movie DVD, it was a relatively quiet evening. The Lady is having some back pains because of the kid, she's almost 8 1/2 months pregnant so she's getting considerably less comfortable.

Saturday was a big buying day for baby. The folks joined us at Great Beginnings in Gaithersburg where we ordered his nursery furniture. Also as a nice bonus we found an excellent stroller for him on sale. More and more baby stuff is making it's way into the house. I've actually started ripping some CD's for him onto my iPod.

I'm coming down with some sort of bug, I basically slept for the rest of Saturday after we came home. Then I powered through Sunday getting a lot of stuff done around the house, but over doing it at the same time resulting in me calling in sick on Monday. Monday involved more sleeping and finally feeling a little better. Well enough to visit the open house of the pediatrician we'll be using for the kid.

Today I still feel like crap warmed over, but at least I made it into the office.

They're keeping me later then I want to be here, yet again tonight.

"Real Life" Simpsons

I found this via Cnet's news.com blogs this morning. A video of the Simpons opening redone with live actors. Pretty well done.

Are You Normal

These are my results:

Your Normalcy Quotient is: 53 out of 100.

Your quiz results make you a Wonderful Eccentric

You've earned the title of wonderful eccentric, and while you're not a wild, gun slinging maverick, you certainly like to follow your own way. Of course, you probably don't think of yourself as eccentric. As Einstein might say, "It's all relative."

Take this free personality test by Clicking Here>> or going to www.chatterbean.com/runormal/

So..um...when's the "FUN" start, Steve?

Wow, am I glad I used my lunch break to drop of dry cleaning and grab a burger instead of watching the live blogging on the Apple Event yesterday. The event was billed as a limited, invitation only announcement on the Apple campus to introduce some fun new products. When I got back to my desk munching on my Five Guys burger & fries (small size on both mind you), I read through what was launched yesterday and I had to stifle a yawn.

The Mac Mini is alright, I'm glad they updated another of their consumer desktop line to the new platform. It's missing a few key things that'll make it a GREAT media center instead of a just an okay one. I haven't had much experience with the Front Row software, so I can't really vouch for how great an interface it is for a media center.

The other two offerings introduced yesterday are barely worth mentioning. The Apple Hi-Fi, isn't anything we haven't seen from other third-party peripheral vendors. Honestly the third-party guys have this solution answered pretty well and with more style then the Apple solution. I don't really see Apple moving too many of these things, but what do I know. Surely Steve Jobs has some incite that I don't... yeah... I'll believe it when I see it. The new iPod leather sleeves just have me stupdified. I'd love to see the research that went into deciding the $99 price point for a rather unsophisticated iPod case. This is another market that has long been satisfied by third-party companies. There are sleeves and cases of all varieties, colors and styles already available out there and most come under the $99 price. Hell, even the Kate Spade designer case retails for just $85.

It just seems very late in the game for Apple to be getting into the iPod perpheral business. The iPod has been around so long now that, third-party companies have established names for themselves in this industry. There just doesn't seem to be any advantage for Apple to start into this market now, their attention would be better spent elsewhere. Their initial offerings don't look that special to me, especially for the price they're asking. Despite the time Jobs says was put into designing both, I don't see it reflected in the final products.