The World of Joel

There is no doubt that Saturday Night Live has seen better days, it has been a long time since I sat down and watched anything to do with SNL. However I remembered that Steve Carell was going to be on this week so I caught some of the skits on Hulu. If you don’t know Hulu is a great video service that plays full episodes for a lot of the shows on NBC and a few other networks. The three skits are in the following order. The Office in Japan, Obama vs. Clinton, and Graduation Commencement Speech. All three I found to be a real pleasure to watch and some good laughs. I especially love the names in the last video of the Commencement Speech, pretty clever. Enjoy them!
1) The Office in Japan

2) Obama vs. Clinton (NBA Playoffs Style)

3) Graduation Commencement Speech

So I have never been one to study. I am a procrastinator to the fullest extent, especially when it comes to things like studying. As many of you know I am graduating from UC Irvine here in a few weeks, but I have never really done the full blown “study day”. UC Irvine is one of the tougher schools around, but somehow my poor study habits have allowed me to get by with somewhat decent grades. Unfortunately my last quarter is proving to be quite the challenge, and I have had to log some serious hours to get through.

So today I had 8 hours in the library from 10:35am to 7:00pm I was in the Science Library at UC Irvine studying for my midterm exam tomorrow, which if all goes well, will prove to be my last midterm as an undergraduate student. When studying a lot you tend to get hungry/thirsty and so college students tend not to choose the healthiest snacks. Take for example today, granted my lunch was a Subway sandwich, my 3:00pm snack was a good old fashion Snickers Bar and an Energy drink. Sure there may be one or two things that could make a less healthy combo, but I found it hilarious that college students at a top-50 University in the country are not smart enough (myself included) to pick something as unhealthy as this, and yet it tastes great. I have never been a huge fan of energy drinks but today it tasted fantastic, and there is nothing like a good snickers bar. All in all, if there was one thing I missed in the college experience it must have been the great study snacks.

So I started this year’s TV Season with high hopes. I had about 8-10 TV Blogs I was producing, a few returning shows I was excited to get back into. The blogs went really well, I did sell them in hopes of making profit which I did, and things worked out. I am starting some new blogs which I will get into later, but for now as the finale’s begin to roll and we see the effects of the writers strike with the shortened seasons, we look back on what I watched in 2007-2008.

Shows I Watched:
Amazing Race
Bionic Woman
Carpoolers
Chuck
Friday Night Lights
Grey’s Anatomy
Heroes
Jericho
Journeyman
The Big Bang Theory
The Office

Favorite New Show of 2007-2008 Season: The Big Bang Theory on CBS

Most Dissapointed About Cancellation: Journeyman on NBC (followed by a close second in Jericho)

Most Disappointing Series of 2007-2008 Season: Heroes on NBC

Favorite Show Overall: The Office

So I am usually on my own on Tuesdays. I have a study session on Tuesday mornings and usually I head back home to study. However today I have a study session in about an hour for a midterm on Friday and Jenn had to stay around to talk to a professor. Instead of studying which I really should have Jenn and I went house and furniture shopping. We are not looking for an immediate buy but checking out our options none the less.

So first we were off to Ikea in Costa Mesa about 15 mins from UC Irvine. The Ikea was gigantic, its been a long, long time since I have been in an Ikea and I have to say I had fun. There is just so much to look at, it would take two or three go throughs to see everything. Of course I am looking for a great place to put a nice size plasma and my three game consoles and Jenn is looking at throws for a couch and art work.

So there wasn’t much in the way of “technology” but I would say that we did see a few things we liked. We learned we both are a fan of modern, both a fan of dark wood and black frames. We are also a big fan of black and white photography as you can see below in a photo of the Eiffel Tower that we should have bought for like 7.99 or 24.99 including frame. We would have went with a black frame however.

I wasn’t as big of a fan of the art work, but there was this one piece that we both liked and thought it would be good for a dining room. I wonder if Ikea minded me taking pictures in there store. Either way these were all taken with my iPhone, not bad right? Once again dark black frame.

So I didn’t take more pictures of Ikea, I decided to take pictures late in the long maze that is Ikea. However for whatever reason instead of studying, we went to Portola Spring which is one of the nicest new developments I have ever seen. We went through a ton of developments, the place a few years back would have been sold out in weeks, but this new development seems to have been stalled by the economy. Needless to say it is just really quite the community with tons of tennis and basketball courts, and a nice Olympic pool in the middle. The picture below is from the official website.

The one that Jenn liked the best and for me was tied for first with another was a 3 story town house called San Carlos that ran for the mid-400’s, which is a ton for a 3 story town house however in the OC its a lot less then a year or two ago where the same house would have gone for 500,000. Not to mention the fact that we could probably knock it down to the low 4’s or high 3’s which would be much more affordable. Needless to say the townhouse was great. At first three floors seemed intimidating but if you walk this house it really helps make a little over 1,000 square footage feel much larger.

I am going to throw the rest of the pictures from the adventure on Flickr later, so you can see all of my iPhone goodness and our great adventure in Portola springs. If our plans stay the same for a wedding in the next year then that would mean this may be somewhere we look outside of renting an apartment to buy a home. How crazy would that be, to be a homeowner in a years time? I guess we can only pray on it and take things as they come. Whatever the case looking at houses and the future
is always a lot of fun.

UPDATE: I did post the pictures on Flickr. Go here to check out all the model home goodness.

Haven’t there been a ton of natural disasters lately? I got online after class today and I hear that China has a magnitude 7.8-7.9 earthquake. From what I remember from my Geology course things like that are not only rare but extremely intense and highly dangerous. The largest earthquake since 1900 was in Chile at a magnitude 9.5, so your not talking about to far off of that.

With that cyclone in Myanmar (which I can honestly say I had never heard of before this disaster) with over 100,000 dead. That is no small number to be just thrown around. I put it into perspective, I live in Riverside, CA where in 2000 the population they believed to be 255,166. That means that 1/2 of the population is dead from one disaster, that is an insane idea to comprehend. It is just such a hard concept to try to grasp your hand around to understand, and all you can really do is pray for those in these areas.

There are very few videos these days on Youtube that I find interesting. I really don’t surf the site all that often, and so when I come across something interesting I try to post it up for you. I have to admit this video I found on Joystiq.com, and I have to say that I would love to have this coffee table! How fun would this be not only for Mario but all the great NES titles!

I have read now my fair share of audio books, in fact Jenn and I are currently running through another one right now. With our big trip this summer coming up, and school wrapping up I did stop my Audible account at least for now. With that being said the last book I bought with my Audible subscription is Playing for Pizza a book by John Grisham. I read The Broker by Grisham a few months ago and loved it. The Broker was set mostly in Italy, and after reading online it seems as though the country had a big place in the heart of the author as Playing for Pizza also sets itself into this location, this time in Parma, Italy. The book was about an NFL Quarterback who had some pretty bad stints in the league, and was hated so much that they really through him out of the country, and he ended up playing in the Italian NFL.

What was so interesting was that the main character Rick was one of the few paid athletes on the Parma Football team and in fact the majority of the Italian Football players literally played for the fun of the game which is why this book was so entertaining, it was refreshing to hear people playing for the love of the game. The book was a quick read, short and sweet, nothing to deep, nothing to jaw-dropping, just a good story and a good read. If you need a quick book this isn’t a bad choice by any means.

So as many of you know I review video games, I have been doing it for 5+ years and couldn’t find a better thing to do in the world. Days like today are why I love my job. I am obviously still a fan, although I am very critical of games as well, I see them for what they can be often times more then what they are. But today is different, I have been this excited to play a video game since The Legend of Zelda Twilight Princess a few years back. Very few games make me “pumped up” to play, but Grand Theft Auto IV is. So just a word of warning if you are planning on viewing this blog in the next couple of days I may not be posting as frequently because I will be spending as much time as I can soaking up Liberty City. I’ll link you all to my review when it posts! For those who have got it, my XBL Gamertag is The Joelster so hit me up on there! See you in Liberty City.

I am not one that necessarily believes in curses, although sometimes I do find it hard to argue the opposite side of them. The Madden curse however may prove to be broken this year as Brett Farve could have his lowest amount of interceptions yet in a season. I still hold actually that Brett isn’t done playing football, but we do know he will be gracing the cover of the 25th Anniversary of Madden in Madden NFL 09 for every platform known to man. I am a big anti-packer guy, but I have always had an amazing amount of respect for Brett Farve, and I think EA Sports along with Peter Moore hit the nail on the head getting the rights to put Farve on the front. With Farve on the front you can only think of one feature that is going to be added, and that is a new QB Personality, Gun Slinger.

So it will be a year in August that I have had my iPhone, and since purchasing it, I have wanted applications! When Apple announced the SDK a few months back it got my mind racing as to what apps I would want to buy or download to my iPhone. So here are five apps that I want to buy right now for my iPhone.

1) To-Do List: I am big on having schedules, especially for my video game reviews. We have the notepad on our iPhone but I want updates, reminders, and check lists that will help me keep on top of my deadlines.

2) Movie Listings: This should be free, but I can’t tell you how many times I have looked on my iPhone for movie times. I want an app that will not make me search on Safari to find them, and having implemented youtube trailers would be fantastic.

3) Video Poker: More then anything I want games on my iPhone, but I do know that video poker and video blackjack would be great. A whole casino package would be even better. Something to do while sitting in a boring lecture, or in some sort of less then ordinary place.

4) Instant Messaging Software: I know AOL showed off AIM at the SDK conference for Apple, which i think is great. But bring over some of the hacked iPhone software so we can go on AIM, MSN, and GTalk with the same application!

5) VIDEO CAMERA SUPPORT: We all know the iPhone has the capabilities of doing video, and in my opinion (I COULD BE 100% WRONG), but it seems like a software issue that is causing the iPhone not to do video. Especially for those who have 16gb iPhones, its time we got video support.

Some other various things include Simple photo editing, RSS clients, Firefox, and a whole lot more. All I can say is that I am 100% excited for what is to come from iPhone apps.