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My God, you’d think the world is coming to an end. I realize he is a living legend. He is one of the greatest football players of my lifetime and in the entire history of the game. He’s set almost every record possible. Of course, “he” is Brett Favre.

I don’t know how I managed to make it through most of the afternoon on Tuesday before I heard that he was retiring because I definitely haven’t heard much of anything else since then. He got at least the first two pages of the paper and has had at least one main story and a sports story in pretty much every local newscast for the past two days. The NFL Network is running a special on him called “Brett Favre 4-Ever” - how clever. Several local networks are doing their own tributes.

Of course he couldn’t just make the announcement and be done. In fact, there’s a good possibility that it’s been in the works for a few days, since the Packers site slipped up last Thursday and put up a breaking news post that he was retiring. The word came out officially on Tuesday, but he waited until today to hold a press conference so everyone would have time to reflect and speculate about what he’d say in his final goodbye. Then everyone got together to have a big cry-fest and talk about how they can’t believe he won’t be leading The Pack next year. C’mon guys - how is an old quarterback making the logical decision to retire after a phenomenal season such a big deal? Why is it that Packers fans and the media are shocked by this? I’ve heard in more than one place that some people actually believe he may have been forced to retire - what?

Let’s be realistic here. Brett Favre had a phenomenal season, even by his standards. How could he ever top that? If he didn’t retire now he would risk becoming that guy who can’t let go until he really is forced out because he can’t hack it any more. The only way he can say he didn’t go out on top is that his last NFL pass was an interception that ended his chance at another Super Bowl ring. As ironic as that may be, the timing was right. Get over it.

I haven’t had the hiccups in a very long time. When I was younger I would have days where they would come and go all day, but more recently I haven’t had a problem. Well, this morning I’m going on 20 minutes straight and it’s killing me. So far I’ve managed to keep them mostly quiet for the sanity of those around me, but it’s only a matter of time before a really loud one slips out. Luckily, they started after I got off the phone with a customer and no one else has called me yet. Although I do have a meeting in about 30 minutes…

Update: They lasted about 35 minutes earlier. It’s now 4:35pm and they’re back again and faster than before. It’s the squeaky kind, too. Ugh.

Amber and I decided a while ago that we didn’t want to renew our current apartment lease when it ran out, nor did we really want to move to another complex. We’d been planning to start seriously looking for a house sometime in April or May and hope the timing would work out well as our lease comes to a close. Then a little over a month ago one of my friends mentioned they were looking into building a house with a local builder. They’re pretty big in the area, so I’d certainly heard of them but just assumed that building a new house was not something we would want to pursue. After hearing him talk about it though, I decided it was probably a good idea for us to at least look into it.

After getting some preliminary info and asking about a million questions, it didn’t take long for us to be more than mildly interested. This builder offers a set number of plans and starts each house with the same basic features, with lots of upgrades availabe. It wasn’t long before we were checking out various models trying to decide if there were any plans that we liked. Within about a week we were pretty sure this was something we were going to do, we just needed to choose a plan and nail down the type of upgrades we’re willing to pay for. After narrowing it down to three plans we liked, we ultimately chose our plan and started working on our upgrade list.

Last weekend we took the first real step toward having a house built not far from where we currently live. We chose a two story plan with 3 bedrooms and 2 1/2 bathrooms. Now that we’ve signed the initial paperwork, we’re getting into the phase of actually making all of our choices for the look and feel of the house. On Monday we picked out our appliances, and on Thursday we made our lighting choices. We have a meeting with a designer scheduled in a few weeks to make the rest of our choices, and then the real work will begin in late March or early April.

This is obviously something we’ve never done before, but we are pretty excited about the whole process. This builder does quite a few things to make the process as easy for us as possible. We’re scheduled to close on August 18 and I’ve already taken that week off for plenty of time to move. The friend who initially got us interested is also going through the process at the same time, so we have plenty to talk about lately. Ironically, there house will be just down the street (and no, it wasn’t planned).

Today is the 50th birthday of the LEGO Brick. Gizmodo has a timeline summarizing it’s lifetime.

I never had one of the really big sets growing up, but you better believe I remember helping my friends put together the LEGOLAND Castle and LEGOLAND Pirates sets. And then there were the guys who had enormous totes full of LEGOs who built all their own stuff.

While I had a few small LEGO kits, I had lots of Construx. Most people don’t really remember these because they were only around for a few years and they weren’t well advertised, but I had several sets and played with them for years. My favorite thing to do was build bases on opposite sides of the basement and create a zipline to send the figures back and forth. I wonder if my old sets would be worth any money today…

This is freakin’ rediculous. I made it to 4% on medium.

I’ve had Super Mario Galaxy for a little less than a week, and so far it’s been pretty much everything I hoped it would be. There are still times that I can’t get used to walking around on the bottom of planets, but that’s a small detail. In almost every respect it has been totally awesome. I’ve picked up about 35 stars so far, so I’m a little bit more than a quarter of the way through everything. Despite her reluctance, I even got Amber to help me a little bit with the co-star mode.

The game is one of the best looking I’ve seen on Wii. The art style is very well done and the game has an unrivaled level of polish. This just goes to show that those other developers releasing games that look like ass aren’t trying very hard. Perhaps they’re working too hard trying to figure out more ways to waggle the controller? It’s kind of sad.

So I haven’t really been paying too much attention to this writers’ strike thing up to this point, but I guess I really should be. For one, a bunch of shows I like to watch are affected. The premiere of 24 has been indefinitely delayed because FOX wants the season to air uninterrupted. Family Guy has one finished episode, and a whole bunch of unfinished ones; since Seth MacFarlane is walking a picket line in LA, there’s a good chance they’ll stay that way for a while. The next season of Lost is only half finished. Jon Stewart announced on last Thursday’s Daily Show that they wouldn’t be on the air this week. I’m sure the list goes on.

Now the second reason I should care. A big part of why the writers are striking has to do with “new media” a.k.a. the internet. With all kinds of content showing up on line (paid and free) there’s some money involved. The writers don’t feel like they’re getting any benefit from this new stuff and they want their share. This is the kind of discussion I find interesting.

The problem is I don’t know which side I come down on. On the one hand, I understand why the writers might want a piece of the new media pie, and I would even say they are probably entitled to their cut. However, I think they may be grossly overestimating how much money studios and producers are actually making, especially with many networks now offering shows online for free with minimal to no commercials. At the same time, NBC was one instance of a network seemingly doing well selling the shows you can watch for free on TV. Then they go get greedy and pull away from what seemed to be a successful partnership with Apple selling shows on iTunes and what are they making now? C’mon people - get it figured out and stop punishing your audience by keeping their favorite shows off the air.

My Chemical Romance - Dead!

This is apparently my newest nickname, bestowed upon me by my sister. Although I guess it could be worse…

I was going to link to her blog, but it’s been over 6 months since her last post. What a bum.

I’m in the mall for lunch and I stopped into the new Apple store to check out the iPod Touch. That’s right I’m posting from one! Now if only I had some extra cash…