Uniden today announced the BC346XT and BCD396XT, both of which appear to contain only minor hardware revisions to their previous models. I’m a little underwhelmed.

To my unenlightened eyes it seems like most of the new changes are software-based and maybe could have just been pushed out in a firmware update to the old models. Maybe. There’s still no support for any digital systems like Provoice, OpenSky, iDEN, etc. Just plain’ ol’ APCO25 and that’s it. And even if you’ve got or been given a key for an encrypted P25 system you still won’t be able to decrypt.

Discriminator output, a band scope, and better support for large multi-site systems are nice to see, though!

Available in early 09, pricing for these two models will be “comparable to the models being replaced”, so about $220 and $500.

Ghostbusters 3 and Bladerunner 2 are in pre-pre-production. Kind of. They may not happen ever. It’s fun to think about, though.

Star Wars raised the bar for annihilating any good feelings you may have had about 80s movie franchises, so they’d really have to try hard to screw either of these up.

If you start to lose your hearing, I hope you’re loaded. A good hearing aid can cost you anywhere from one thousand to five thousand dollars. That’s absolutely crazy.

A company called Songbird has heard the cry of those who can barely hear their own. They’re now selling an adjustable over-the-ear disposable hearing aid for just $80. When the 400 hour battery dies you just throw the whole thing out and buy a new one.

You don’t need to make an appointment to have your hearing tested – you can order them online right now.

My hearing is just fine and I don’t need one of these. And yet, there is somehow a super-spy part of me that really wants one for COVERT OPS.

The logical part of my brain is struggling with disallowing this purchase. Literally, my right hand is pulling my wallet out of my pocket and my left hand is wrapped around my right arm, shoving it back in. They’re locked in a standoff and I’m stuck in the middle!

Wait…it looks like my right hand is winning! It’s broken free! But here comes the left hand and he’s moving fast. Oh snap! Lefty just slapped my wallet out of Righty’s grip and it flew across the room!

Now both of my arms are up in the air and my hands are flailing wildly against each other! I’ve never seen them so mad before! Good thing I’m an adept toe-typer.

~ fin ~

Here’s a genius piece of marketing for Wario Land: Shake It.

McCain or Obama – Who should you vote for? Answer 30 questions and the Internet will solve that little dilemma for you.

I don’t like politics or even talking about them, so my results and who I’m voting for are none of your business! But you and I can still hang out.

You’ll get free admission on your birthday to the California and Florida Disney theme parks in 2009.

Now the real question is…how much do those Macarthur Park fake IDs cost?

Getting a network connection to my TV area has always been tricky. Tearing up drywall to install cat5 all over the place wasn’t an option, so I was pretty much stuck with WiFi.

The distance and number of walls between my wireless router upstairs and TV downstairs make it tough to maintain a good strong signal. Even with the Tomato firmware pushing my wireless transmitter strength to its theoretical maximum, it still just wasn’t that great.

My 360′s Media Center network tester always gave pitiful results like this-

I could still play games and stuff, but if I tried to stream my own music over the 360 while playing an online game at the same time, every now and then the music would skip.

I got fed up a while back and looked into networking over power lines. The HomePlug standard seemed like it had good potential and with a max speed of 14Mbps (or 85Mbps with ‘turbo’ hardware) it still had to be better than what I was getting with my wireless connection. I bought two HomePlug adapters from Netgear.

That was better! But not by much.

Then HomePlug AV came along promising speeds up to 200Mbps. I was skeptical. So when I was invited to take part in a beta for Netgear’s first HomePlug AV adapter, the XAV101, I was not expecting much.

I was amazed and surprised to find that HomePlug AV is incredibly awesome in every way, and it works just like you’d expect it to. Finally!

I didn’t bother to run any real speed tests with a laptop, but that graph’s good enough for me.

The beta ended long ago and you can buy the XAV101 NOW. A pair of them (XAVB101) goes for $120 at Amazon. That’s not exactly cheap, but consider the cost of hiring an electrician to come out and run ethernet cables through your walls, then hiring a painter come to patch the holes the electrician made and paint over them. It’s a no-brainer!

Peggle, I believe, may be the single greatest casual game to be released in the last five years. Maybe ten.

It’s sort of like a cross between pachinko and pinball. If you’ve not played it or at least heard of it, well, there’s probably a lot about 2007 you missed out on.

You owe it to yourself to at least check out the free demo.

I bring this up because Peggle got a sequel this week! Peggle Nights came out Monday.

I played it for about 45 minutes last night, and it’s basically the exact same game with new levels. There’s nothing really fresh or innovative about it – not even the ‘Ode to Joy’ clip has been changed. Luckily the addictiveness is still there.

If you’ve not yet caught Peggle Fever, save your money for the upcoming Xbox Live Arcade version – it’ll be the first Peggle port to support downloadable levels and online multiplayer! source

The fall TV season is nearly upon us.

Here’s a comprehensive list of your favorite shows’ season premiere dates!

It’s about time! My DVR’s been getting clogged up with stale Law & Order reruns for the past few months. It needs freshness!

To get you in the primetime mood, here’s every single “That’s what she said” from The Office seasons 1-4.

(Whoever made this video needs to learn a little something about aspect ratios!)

Congratulations to my pals Dallas and Vida – they just had a baby!