Tammy was in Seattle last week, so after work Friday night I drove out to my parents’ house and spent the night.

I really enjoy spending time with my parents now, maybe even more than I did when I was younger and living with them. When you’re an adult you really start to appreciate everything they did for you and how much fun they can be to hang out with. It’s like you start to love them on an entirely different level.

Even if all we do is sit around and drink and watch TV and catch up, it’s good vibes all around. At least that’s how it feels for me. I think I’m pretty fortunate to have such a great relationship with my parents. A lot of my adult friends have moms and dads out there that are emotionally abusive or distant or just jerks in general, so sometimes I feel like I won a lottery somewhere.

Saturday morning I went to check out my brother and his fiancee’s new apartment in Redondo Beach. It’s on Broadway – just two blocks from the beach. It’s big, spacious, a little old maybe, but the location is awesome. I’m jealous.

Driving through PV is excruciating sometimes. I miss living there so much. The clean air, the incredible views, the unending greenery, and the gigantic eucalyptuses make it one of the nicest places to live in LA county. And also one of the most expensive, so I don’t see myself going back anytime soon. If money was no object, I’d move back in a heartbeat.

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Desktop Earth is a Windows wallpaper application that “updates your wallpaper with an accurate representation of the Earth as it would be seen from space at that precise moment.”

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Happy Saturday! The Xbox360 firmware has been hacked.

Supposedly.

The team that did it isn’t releasing the code because they “don’t want to encourage piracy”…or provide proof of their claim!

They did release a sketchy video that shows a 360 booting and running a DVD-R of PGR3, but what they don’t show you are the video inputs on the back of the TV.

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NASA’s predicting that the biggest solar storm to hit the earth since 1958 may hit us near the end of this year and will grow in intensity until it peaks in 2011.

In 1958 we didn’t have wireless gizmos up the butt like we do now, so it’ll be interesting to see just how this impacts…well…everything!

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Check out the Snakes on a Plane teaser trailer.

There’s snakes.

And they’re on a plane!

Hey, I’ve got another great idea for a movie! SHIT! In a TOILET!

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So far I haven’t seen a whole lot of games on the Xbox360 that interest me. Developers usually take the easy route and wind up making FPSs, racing games, or sports games, and I can’t stand any of those.

The first screens of Viva Pinata were released today, and I have to say it looks pretty durn slick.

It’s nice to see next-gen hardware being used to create environments that don’t mimic real life for a change. I guess it all ties in to the Blue Sky movement. Colorful fantasy worlds almost always look cooler than real-life approximations.

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If you’ve got an old Xbox running Media Center but you really prefer the look and feel of the Xbox360′s blade interface, some people are working on it.

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Tivo! You guys are idiots! Eliminating the lifetime payment option pretty much ensures I’ll never buy a standalone Tivo ever again.

Seriously! What the hell! Who cares if you’re giving away your boxes now! They’re cheap anyway!

I am angry!

CAPITAL LETTERS!

EXCLAMATION POINTS!!!!!

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If you find yourself on the receiving end of a large sum of money and decide to pay off a large chunk of your credit card debit, you may find yourself the subject of a homeland security investigation.

I’m pretty sure that just because this blog post has the phrase “homeland security” in it my name is being put on a list somewhere.

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