Last Friday I was accepted into Microsoft's "New Xbox Experience Preview" program, which entitled my console to receive the latest big software update a week ahead of everyone else (it gets released to the world Wednesday, November 19). This is a huge upgrade for the Xbox 360 Dashboard, and overall I'm pretty impressed with it. The new update completely removes the slide design and instead replaces it with a coverflow-like menu system which is a lot more appealing. It's easy to see who is online, and the design has improved significantly for checking out new videos, demos, and even your achievements.

The dashboard now supports streaming of Netflix movies if you're a Netflix subscriber and Xbox LIVE Gold member. I would have tested this out, but we're on the lowest Netflix plan (2 movies a month) and apparently every Netflix plan except el cheapo supports the streaming. I think we might have to seriously consider upgrading our Netflix to take advantage of this!

Another neat feature is the Party system. One of the most annoying things about playing games online with friends is that if you want to switch games, you temporarily lose each other and have to manually reconnect in the new game. Now you can set your party in the Dashboard and keep talking to each other as you're swapping out games. Nice!

Each person is also allowed to create a Mii2 (okay, a full-bodied avatar). You get to choose all the basic avatar settings, from what type of hair and color, to your eyes, nose, mouth, shirt, pants, and even your shoes. My avatar is even wearing a wedding ring. However, the one thing that bothered both my wife and I is that after 20-minutes of setting up our avatar, it still doesn't really look like us. I think the problem is in the variety of choices for each body part. About 1/3rd of the choices are off-the-wall and the other 2/3rds are good but not quite enough. They didn't have my hair style nor my style of glasses, for instance. Supposedly they are going to come out with more choices every two weeks, so let's hope that means more than just a new shirt every now and then. You can change your gamer picture to be a picture of your avatar, which I did since I didn't have any strong allegiance to any particular gamer picture before. I'm sure some people will want to keep their existing gamer picture as their icon though.

The Xbox button on the controller lets you do more now than ever before, giving you access to many of the features you had to go all the way to the dashboard to get to before.

You can download entire games to your console's hard drive so you don't need the CD to play them (except during startup for its piracy check). I have almost no room on my hard drive though, so I probably won't be doing that anytime soon.

So everyone gets the new dashboard tomorrow. I'm looking forward to hearing what the rest of the blogosphere thinks of it, and if anyone's avatars look better than the ones we made. :) Overall, very nice job, Microsoft!

Steve
(Gamertag Halestorm27)

One of my favorite things to DVR are the plethora of daytime game shows. I watch most of them in a fast-forward format, catching the best moments of the show but fast-forwarding through the fluff. This season there are some new shows and some rule changes to others, so here's my review of the five I watch:

Who Wants to Be a Millionaire:
Meredith is back for probably her last season, but they have some big rule changes this season. The biggest change is that now they have a time clock, which is 15 seconds for the first five (easy) questions, 30 seconds for the next five, 45 seconds for the next four, then 45 seconds + all time banked from the first 14 questions for the million dollar question. I'm not too crazy about this addition, since a part of the charm of the show was the banter between Meredith and the contestant, and now they are rushed to read the question and give the answer. There are also new lifelines, familiar to those who watched Super Millionaire when Regis hosted that in primetime a few years ago. They are Ask the Expert and Double Dip. Both are very good lifelines, with the experts ranging from former contestants to media personalities. The Double Dip replaces the "random" 50/50. For the Phone a Friend, they now show photos of the 2-3 people they have to choose from, which is a good addition to help us visualize the person at the other end.

Deal or No Deal:
The 5-days-a-week version of DoND is fairly similar to the prime time version, but there are 22 cases instead of 26 and only three 6-digit cases with the highest amount being $500,000. The game is a little more fast-paced with less banker antics, and you have potential future contestants holding the cases instead of the models (there are two on the sides but they only are there to help choose that day's contestant via a ball dropping into a spinner, and to occasionally laugh at Howie's jokes). The banker is more stingy in this version compared to prime-time, and even late in the game gives fairly low offers compared to what a similar late-game board would look like in the prime time version. So far only a couple contestants have taken 6-figures home, with the biggest winner taking home almost $280K after taking a deal with $100K and $500K left on the board (she had the $500K case).

Wheel of Fortune:
The only real big addition this year is the million-dollar wedge, which gives a contestant a very slim chance at winning a million bucks on the show. To get a shot at the million, they have to land on the one space on the wheel with the million dollar 1/3 wedge (the other 2/3 of the wedge have bankrupts), guess a letter in the puzzle, solve that puzzle, then never hit another bankrupt for the rest of the game. At that point, if they are lucky enough to win the most money in the game and make it to the bonus round, the previous 100,000 wedge on the bonus wheel becomes a million-dollar wedge, and they have a 1-in-24 chance of landing on it for the bonus round. If they land on it, they have to solve the bonus puzzle to win the mil. I didn't think it would happen for a year or two, since only 3-4 people a year win the $100,000, and those would have needed to have completed all the other previous steps to turn that to a million. But wouldn't you know it, a lady pulled it off in Tuesday night's episode, which was extremely exciting. Good for her!

Jeopardy!:
Not really many changes this year, outside of an updated set and updated music (same theme, different instruments and tempo). They did have a week where prior Kids' Week contestants returned to the show as young adults, which was kind of neat. Soon it may be time to double the money amounts on the board, like they did about 10-15 years ago, but a five-day champ usually still nets over $100,000 so maybe they don't need to do that quite yet.

The Price is Right:
I don't DVR this show each day, but I've seen a few episodes and I generally like Drew Carey as host. He looked a little nervous in his first few episodes but he has gotten used to his role now that it's in season two and shows more confidence as host. His commentary during the games are usually fairly amusing. I expect to see more prime-time versions, since last year's versions did well in the ratings and they ended up giving away three million dollar wins with their new two-chance format.

Good Sunday evening!

Would You Rather Results

Players: 21 (two people only played one set of games)
Set #1:

Game #1:
Topic: Pain/Fear/Discomfort
Would You Rather...
A. Be lost late at night with no streetlights (11) - 1 point
B. Be lost late at night with no street signs (9)

Game #2:
Topic: Ethics/Intellect
Would You Rather...
A. Go back in time and give your younger self advice that will change your life (13) - 1 point
B. Go into the future and find out what you will encounter in years to come (7)

Game #3:
Topic: Random
Would You Rather...
A. Have to always eat out of dirty dishes (7)
B. Have to always wear filthy clothes (13) - 1 point

----------------

Set #2:

Game #1:
Topic: Random
Would You Rather...
A. Have one million dollars handed to you today (13) - 1 point
B. Have ten million dollars handed to you in ten years (7)

Game #2:
Topic: Appearance/Embarrassment
Would You Rather...
A. Be an underachiever relative to your very successful family (8)
B. Be the only successful person in a family of losers and screw-ups (12) - 1 point

Game #3:
Topic: Random
Would You Rather...
A. Have x-ray vision (0)
B. Have the ability to read people's minds when you want to (20) - 1 point


Summer 2008 Final (Unofficial) Playoff Point Standings
Congratulations to Dan and Lin from near Las Vegas, Nevada, who have once again taken first place in both the regular season and the playoff week! Your weather radio has been well earned, my friends!
If I made any mathematical errors in your score, please let me know and I'll correct the online version of this game blog entry. I hope you all had fun playing!

Total Bonus Day 1 Day 2 Day 3 Tie-Breaker Name City

56	27	8	13	8	82	Perfect Score
39	16	6	11	6	65	$$$$$Dan/Lin,	Henderson, NV:
35	13	6	13	3	56	Bethany:
34	12	8	10	4	56	Edie,	Omro, WI:
34	10	8	12	4	52	Patty:
32	11	6	10	5	53	$Karl,	Appleton, WI:
31	12	5	12	2	50	Missy:
30	13	6	5	6	60	Katie/Bart,	Eagle, WI:
30	12	7	9	2	55	Steve H.,	Appleton, WI:
30	8	4	12	6	41	Sally:
29	13	3	9	4	59	Diane Sm.:	Greenville, WI:
29	13	6	4	6	55	John E.,	St. Paul, MN:
28	10	-	12	6	46	$$$Nia,	Appleton, WI:
27	10	7	6	4	49	Steve L.:
26	7	4	12	3	37	$$Greg,	Madison, WI:
26	7	6	5	8	33	$Brian,	Madison, WI:
25	9	-	11	5	44	Mom:
22	12	6	-	4	51	Ashley:
22	11	5	-	6	46	Rhonda:
22	6	4	10	2	31	Jessica:
18	10	3	0	5	51	Lisa,	Appleton, WI:
14	8	6	-	-	41	Dan H.:	Appleton, WI:
13	8	-	-	5	43	Sharon,	Kaukauna, WI:
9	7	2	-	-	36	Sheila,	Appleton, WI:
1	1	-	-	-	6	Al,	Germantown, WI:

Champions List
Here is the list of all previous winners of my games! Four weather radios, four Atomic Clocks and/or thermometers, and a rain gauge have been given away as part of my games blog. Dan and Lin have won five of the last seven championships, but before that, it was mostly Lisa's family taking home the prize.

2004: Ruth E.
Winter/Spring 2005: Nia
Summer 2005: Nia
Autumn 2005: Tammy
Winter 2006: Brian B.
Spring 2006: Karl
Summer 2006: Nia
Autumn 2006: Greg
Winter 2007: Dan/Lin
Spring 2007: Brian F.
Summer 2007: Dan/Lin
Autumn 2007: Greg
Winter 2008: Dan/Lin
Spring 2008: Dan/Lin
Summer 2008: Dan/Lin


Epilogue
I would like to take this opportunity to thank all of you for reading and playing these games. It has been a lot of fun bringing family, friends and coworkers together for biweekly games for over the last four years. I've enjoyed the friendly competition, laughed at many of your answers, and have had a lot of fun playing these games with you over the last four years, and I hope you've had fun with them as well. One of the main reasons I started writing my Weather Update blog in 2000 was to keep everyone in the loop with what was going on with our lives, with the games being a just-for-fun addition I started in 2004. With the social networking landscape really booming over the last several years, I've felt that there are better ways to keep in touch with people. My personal favorites are Facebook and Twitter, but below are other ways I've embraced social networking, and if you've done the same, I hope you will add me to your friends list!
http://www.new.facebook.com/people/Steve_Hale/718391393
http://twitter.com/sbhale

Lisa still plans on writing personal updates every now and then, although not necessarily on any set schedule. She is going to post them on her Myspace blog, which you need to register and be confirmed as friends before you're allowed to view them. She has offered to also email people who would like to receive these personal blog updates who don't want to join Myspace. If you would like her to email you when she posts a new personal blog update, send her or I a note and she'll be happy to do that for you. Lisa also has a public Twitter account for quick microblogging (under 140 characters per post).
http://www.myspace.com/lisabryce
http://twitter.com/lnhale

As for my blogs, they are not going away. The Weather Update blog is going to stay intact as it has been, with updates every Monday, Wednesday and Friday morning. Weather is one of my passions and I plan on keeping that blog going for a long time. I have given thought to making it a Monday + Thursday + Impromptu blog, writing forecasts twice a week and then adding additional informal entries whenever the weather gets interesting, but for now it will still be M/W/F.
http://www.wisconsinweatherupdate.com

As for this Games and Personal blog, it will be changing but not entirely going away. Keeping both a weather and a games blog has been eating up too much of my personal time lately, so I'm opting to cut back a little bit and get into more of an informal blogging schedule. I am going to keep this blog open online, and write about whatever topics are interesting to me at that time, whenever I am compelled to write something (that will take more than 140 characters to type out.) :) So while I won't be emailing this blog anymore, you can occasionally check my blog online for entries that will range from television, sports, video games, or maybe just something silly that Bryce did the other day. You can also subscribe to most of these blogs via RSS feed and add it to your My Yahoo, iGoogle, etc. I've found that this makes it really easy to quickly tell at a glance when blogs of my family, friends, and other news sites out there have been updated.
http://blog.360.yahoo.com/sbhale

In addition, I am keeping our Flickr photo site updated with new pictures every few weeks. You can check it out here.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/hail27

I also will continue to tag news articles which I find interesting. If you've enjoyed my "Articles of Interest" area, you can continue to see these on my Delicious and Digg profile sites.
http://del.icio.us/hail27
http://digg.com/users/hail27/news/dugg

If all this is way too much, I have registered with three sites which aggregate all of my social networking feeds into one site. You can get this on Jaiku, Friendfeed, and on my Facebook profile page.
http://sbhale.jaiku.com/
http://friendfeed.com/sbhale
http://www.new.facebook.com/people/Steve_Hale/718391393

If I ever decide to retire a la Brett Favre and throw six touchdown passes in one game start up the games again, I'll send another note out to this same email list, but for now, I think it's in my best interest to cut back and focus on just one regular blog, my Weather Update. I believe this is still one of the more unique blogs out there on the World Wide interwebs, and was started back in 2000 before blogging even became a popular thing to do! But for one last time in this blog, I want to thank each and every one of you for reading and playing, and I hope you've had as much fun playing as I have writing and hosting these games. Keep in touch and Go Brewers!!!



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