Steve Cullen

Just watched the Blu-Ray release of Push from Netflix. If you’ve read my previous entries on movie reviews, you probably noticed I tend to only do them when they’re less-than-favorable. That is a trend I would like to change, … but unfortunately this isn’t going to be the day that I do.

If you don’t know what Push is about, here it is in a nutshell: Psychic weaponry. A government funded agency of some sort is turning psychics into weapons with the hopes of developing super weapons by using some sort of serum. As per usual, some of the psychic subjects don’t appreciate being government property slash guinea pigs and revolt. The result is an action packed brain fight that culminates in a final confrontation that can best be described as lawlz.
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This isn’t a lead in to an eventual answer, it’s a question. Who in the hell is causing all the fuss about Google Voice and iTunes? And more importantly… Why??

Does Google Voice (henceforth known as GV) offer something unique that no other App in the App Store does? To answer that, I guess we’ll have to cover first what the application does offer:

• One number for all your calls and SMS

  Call screening – Announce and screen callers
  Listen in – Listen before taking a call
  Block calls – Keep unwanted callers at bay
  SMS – Send, receive, and store SMS
  Place calls - Call US numbers for free
  Taking calls – Answer on any of your phones
  Phone routing – Phones ring based on who calls
  Forwarding phones - Add phones and decide which ring
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Last week an acquaintance of mine was complaining that his Chase credit card was closed without warning whatsoever. He had read online that they were closing counts arbitrarily and decided that he would call and check on his account…. Sure enough, CLOSED. When asked why, he was told that a recent report on his credit from Experian returned poorly and they canceled his account based on the information from that report. So, he warned a group of people, of which I happened to be one of, to call and check on their accounts.

Me, being the internet savvy web guru that I am, I decided to simply log in to my account online and check my account status there. As I expected to find, both of my accounts were sitting there looking ever so peaceful with $0 balances and full credit limits that matched my available lines. All is well in the land of Steve’s credit cards. Not good enough, he says. Tells me to call and double-check with a person. Okay fine, I’ll amuse you and call the number on the back of my card.
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I know I’m late to the game here, but I’ve just played through F.E.A.R. 2 on the Xbox 360 which I received it as a gift this past Christmas, and finally got around to playing. F.E.A.R., for those that don’t know, stands for First Encounter Assault Recon. This is the second installment of what so far is a two-part series. F.E.A.R. 2 is a sequel to the first game, but gives us some perspective as to what happens to the games’ (both) main villian: Alma.

I’ll start this off by first saying that the demo is quite misleading. If you downloaded the demo on Xbox Live, you got what was a good representation of the game but had it delivered to you almost like a movie preview. Allow me to explain… The demo takes some of the more exciting moments from the game, and threads them all together like a continuous level. So you get bits from level 2, 5, 8, etc (examples) sewn together and presented to you seamlessly.

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I’ve been using Gmail for my personal email needs for probably 5 years now, which coincidentally has been in BETA for just as long, and have come to rely pretty heavily on it. The way it threads messages, and just in terms of general features, simply blows the other free web-based email solutions right out of the water.

However, with all of its greatness and handy features it is still a BETA product and prone to the occasional “glitch”. The latest issue that is simply driving me crazy is their claim to automatically delete messages in the Trash and Spam folders after 30 days. It’s just not anymore. This has broken on me in the past, but after a few weeks of patience has come back to life. This time, not so much. This has been broken for a couple of months now.

I’ve reached out on their only support offering for this type of issue: their Help Forum. So far, no official word from Google on the subject. Only pleads from other users for help on the issue.

Some say: “Why not just simply delete the folders manually? It’s a simple click of the mouse.” Well, it’s easy really… Because I don’t want to. I want the advertised feature to work. I use the unread spam number to serve as a benchmark for me. It tells me how much spam I’ve received in the past month, which by the way is on the rise. And most importantly, it’s advertised as being there. My suggestion to Google was simple: Let us know you’re working on it, fix it, or remove it as an advertised feature so I don’t expect it to work.

So far no response from them. Meanwhile my Spam folder is at 1131 and counting.

Well, on October 8th I went under the knife again. This time it was for a Direct Inguinal Hernia. I think I can pretty safely say that the recovery involved with this surgery was pretty painful when compared with the Pilonidal removal. I’d say it was a full 4 or 5 days before I could get out of bed or stand up from the couch or a chair without a significant amount of pain. After that, the healing process went quite rapidly and smoothly. Walking without a limp came about 2 weeks after the procedure.

My story begins with me working out like a mad man over the past several months. I’ve been lifting lots of weight, albeit less weight than I had lifted in the past, and feeling some discomfort in my groin. I figured hell, I’m just doing it wrong. So I’d adjust whenever I felt discomfort, and it seemed to be working. Obviously it wasn’t, but for now we’ll go along thinking it was.

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Horrible, waste of a perfectly good DVD. The film is shot almost entirely on a green screen. Why? Good question, because I have no freaking idea. There is not one creepy or scary moment in the entire movie. There is a scene with a cat that had us laughing for a good couple of minutes. Still not worth the rental though.

Cliff notes: OMG WTF LOL!

Been staying really busy with work, health & fitness, etc. Also had another surgical need, and will post about that soon as my previous Pilonidal posting seems to generate the majority of the traffic on my blog.

Sorry for the lack of updates, and I will make up for it soon.

Ed Hochuli is under heavy fire from San Diego fans, the NFL, and armchair quarterbacks across the nation. Mr Hochuli, or Tricep Man as my friends and I like to call him, did something every referee and official has done in the history of sports… He made a mistake! He also did something else that puts him above a lot of the others in my book… He apologized for it. Does that change anything besides a little perspective? Nope, not really. The Chargers still lost on a bad call. But guess what, it’s going to happen again and again and again.

Why? Because referees and officials are human. They’re under extraordinary pressure on a gigantic grass field with 22 – 200lb+ crazed athletes with nothing on their minds but crushing their opponents. Amongst the chaos, they have to actually see minute details like whether a quarterback’s arm was moving in a certain direction when the ball popped out of his hand. If the player who hit the quarterback hit him in the right way or if it was roughing. Where the ball landed. Who has posession at the bottom of a 1000lb mess. All this while thousands of people watch gathered in a circle around them and millions watch from the dozen or so trained cameras on the ground and in the air.

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Not sure how many regular visitors I get since there are very few comments from people I don’t know. But Google says I get at least a few everyday, so I figured I’d throw a quick update out there.

My spare time has been all but disappeared since March. I had what I consider to be a serious health scare at that time (completely unrelated to my Pilonidal procedure) and decided a lifestyle change was needed immediately. My weight had reached a point that was beyond being simply overweight and it was beginning to impact my health, so action was required and not simply desired. Desire was (and has always been) there, but desire alone had never been enough to get me moving. Unfortunately, the extra nudge (more like kick in the face) arrived and prompted me to take swift action.

I asked my fiancee, Jamie – a personal trainer coincidentally, to take the lead and design a plan for me to follow. This plan was to be all-inclusive: diet, workout type/frequency/intensity. She grabbed the horse by the reigns and got me on track right away. Since then I have spent 6-days a week in the gym, only missing time when sick. Not even vacation gets in the way. I eat 6 small meals a day giving my body the metabolic kick in the pants it needs. The rest of my time is spent with my family and resting.

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