Pulp Free

A quick Sunday out provided us a bit of shopping and a chance to get out of the house… Knowing that being out and about usually involves finding a place to eat, the drive up and down Manchester in Ballwin provided us an opportunity to view a large white truck with the words “Gyros” on the side.

Mmmmm… Gyros.

Thankfully I haven’t met an gyro that I haven’t like but upon pulling into the parking stall in front of the restaurant - we got a bit worried… Nobody inside and handmade signs in the windows. But heck - we hardly try anything new and they did have gyros. What the heck… We went inside, but paid with cash! LOL

With minimal expectations on quality eating - I have to say we were both really delighted with our gyros… It’s always nice to be surprised… Now - this isn’t a steak house or anything… But with Philly steak sandwiches, burgers, dogs - and gyros… for a decent price (and decent fries!) - we’ll surely make a trip back when our adventures take us down Manchester…

I used to swim when I was younger… Younger as in grade school & junior high. Lots of really early mornings to swim before school. Then weekends spent going to swim meets all over the region. I have a few medals and ribbons and what-nots. Even some nice heat-winning Coke and Pepsi cans… So you can obviously expect I’ve been really excited that the Olympics are finally here and so much attention being paid to the men and women’s swimming events. (Although I’m traveling this week so I’m really missing out on all that HD coverage!!)

So with the fantastic 4×100 freestyle relay Gold-place finish of the US Men’s team on Sunday night - I thought it would be a fun effort to see just how fast I was compared to the world record time that Jason Lezak laid down on the last leg of that race (I know, I know - it doesn’t count as a world record since he didn’t have the first leg… but it is “still” the fastest!)

Jason swam his 4th leg in 46.06 seconds. That’s 100 meters. Of course, my swimming efforts at the Lodge are in yards. The pool is a bit larger than a wading pool… (It’s also a cool wave pool… ) That makes one trip down the lane at 25 yards. How slow do I float down those lanes? A lap for me down and back is 40 seconds (the first time… it’s slower after each lap!) The makes it roughly 42.12 seconds for 100 yards - for grins cut that in half for 21.06 seconds for 50 yards… In which I swim in 40 seconds… My 100 meter swim would be about 87.49 seconds… or close to 53% slower.

So while I’m barely keeping myself from falling 9 feet to the bottom of the pool - Jason would already be back at the shallow end of the lap. Wow - that’s fast! (And yes - I’m slow… - But I will try and find some of my old times from many years ago and have some fun at my own expense.)

Congrats in any case to the US Olympic swimming teams! And yes - I listed Phelps (because of the picture) even though it’s more about Lezak’s time… Either case - they’re BOTH super fast!

Sometimes that just feels so right. You have to love SpongeBob SquarePants & Patrick Star…

Need your fix of Olympic goodness? Supposedly some 3,500 hours worth are going to be broadcast this year from China and sufficed to say, one person can’t really get 250 hours of coverage in a day just to make average. Thankfully technology has come to the rescue in terms of fulfilling Olympic gold for those of us couch potatoes glued to the TV.

Now that I’ve fulfilled my need for a new HTPC, I’m able to put to good use my Vista Media Center as well. By downloading a cool application from TVTonic, you can down download events and highlights for display right from Media Center. Cool enough is that one of the “channels” available is for HD content. There’s no HD samples to view yet - so I’m going to take a guess that it’ll be 720 instead of 1080… But it’s cool nonetheless. I took a quick spin of the interface this afternoon and I’m pretty impressed. For a free service that’s probably tracking my viewing habits (which is okay for right now) - I’m happy enough to keep it connected for the next few weeks. NBC & Lenovo are both feeding the content and sponsoring the effort, which means embedded commercials… But so far I’m able to fast forward through the commercials and get into the shows pretty quickly.

Next up was the summer release of TiVo’s service update. Probably not really related but it was waiting for me this morning as well. TiVo has a section that will automatically create season passes based on Olympic events… Pretty nice deal as long as I removed the SD channels from the duplicated HD lineups. Being a fan of TiVo since the early days - I’m really looking forward to making room for all of the HD glory of the Olympics by having both HD tuners stuck on Olympic coverage. With the 500 GB extender add-on, I think they’ll be room for some 87 hours of recordings if I let my other shows slide… I know I won’t need that much - but it’s good to be in 1080 this year around… And that it’s on NBC… (Still can’t figure out why Charter and KMOV can’t play nicely for HD rebroadcast rights….) The whole process does wish that everything was in HD… Knowing that in order to get all of that Olympic goodness into our living rooms next week - they’re taking over a few other channels that just happen to only be in SD…

So let the John Williams fanfares begin… 08/08/08 will be here in less than a week!!

I love TopGear. It’s funny, whimsical, British and once in a while has something to do with cars. Originally I was a Fifth Gear fan since it was shown on the local Speed cable channel. But hiding over on the BBC America channel was an even better car show. It wasn’t until I had a few episodes under my belt did I become somewhat obsessed in needing to watch all of the back seasons. (Sorry guys - but season one really stunk… ugh…)

So with seasons 7, 8 9 and 10 finished off (and now starting at the beginning) - I was happy to see the first few episodes of season 11 show up. So much to my astonishment when I get into the first few seconds of episode 3 than what do I see…

If you say “All I see is Jeremy Clarkson” I suppose you should take a look at these show ticket requirements…

We also ask that groups of people coming to the recordings have a 50/50 male/female split. This is so we don’t end up with a bunch of ugly male car geeks ruining everyone’s Sunday night.

So here’s hoping that we get to see even more great cars… and, um… audience members in the future!

(And yes - I did put in a request for tickets… From what I hear there’s a 3-5 year waiting list…)

I mean… C’mon Jeremy - get out of the way! (I do like how the two ladies are just staring at him… almost like a tennis match!)