Fezmid

Title says it all. Anyone know when it'll be on and what exactly it'll be called? CW

Tickets: http://ev9.evenue.net/cgi-bin/ncommerce3/S...ppList&appCode= Seating chart: http://www.packers.com/lambeau_field/seati...4seatingbig.pdf CW

Yeah, no kidding. Hell, I would've easily gone over $1,000... (especially since it all goes to charity - tax writeoff!) CW

http://www.buffalobills.com/news/news.jsp?news_id=3205 If I would've known about that, I would've paid WAY more than $800... CW

The Twin Cities are divided into two - the east metro (St. Paul and suburbs) and the west metro (Minneapolis and suburbs). Hudson, WI (which is right across the river and is part of the east metro) is very hot right now. That's where we live, and we had our home built three years ago. Sales tax and income tax are lower in WI, but property tax is higher (we paid ~$3,000 on a $200,000 home). There's some other cities around here as well, such as River Falls, Baldwin, etc, which are slightly further out but are really growing. We're literally a mile from Minnesota. Other excellent east metro suburbs are Oakdale, Woodbury, and Stillwater. On the west side, there's a lot more growth as a lot of that has been undevelopeed until now. Rodgers is the big one right now. Eden Praire and Edina are the affluent suburbs. There's also some north/south, such as Farmington, etc. If you like older stuff or living in the heart of the city, Uptown is a great neighborhood (we lived in an apartment there for several years, three blocks from Lake Calhoun; awesome area). Most importantly, there's a large Bills Backers group here, led by TonyP (he posts here occasionally). Here's the website: http://mspbillsbackers.home.att.net/ If you have any questions, feel free to send me a PM. CW

Thanks, Gina! And don't be a stranger! CW

Can I put a ? at the end of the phrase...? CW

I feel like I'm in the minority, as I don't really like the throwbacks at all, nor do I like the white helmet with the standing Buffalo. Maybe it's because I'm younger and we all just like what we first saw (for me, the red/white/blue uniforms of the late 80s). The white helmets are just... Boring. CW

http://www.bugmenot.com

This should probably be in the trading post, but I don't know how many people actually check there so I'll try here first. My wife and I are thinking about trying to visit WNY for the Bills/Packers preseason game (unfortunately we won't be able to make the season opener this year since she starts classes before the previous week. ). I know that preseason tickets are relatively easy to get and was wondering if anyone has some good seats that they'd be willing to part with? Ideally I'd like something in the lower bowl somewhere between the 20s and close to the field, but that's not a requirement. Last year (for the Jags game), we were on the 20 yard line and only 4 rows up and it was awesome. I'd like to be that close again if possible. I obviously don't want to break the bank on the tickets (it IS only preseason afterall), but let me know if you have anything available. I tried checking the Bills site, but their ticket ordering site appears to be down. Cash or DVD trades can be worked out. For those who missed the pictures (or weren't here last year), here's a link to the pictures from the tailgate and game: http://www.fezam.com/gallery/view_album.ph...Name=Bills-Jags Thanks all. CW

Bills@Packers scrimmage. And ironically, we might go see the Packers@Bills preseason game. CW

Because the Bills don't have DirecTV at the practice house, and he does with his buddies. (sorry, couldn't resist ). CW

Smart thinking by TD -- that $34,000 signing bonus could hurt us if we didn't cut it up into three parts! CW

Does feeding the pigeons in the park REALLY constitute work...? Why did you move out of Buffalo? The pollution is terrible (I grew up in Love Canal, and went to elementary school down the street from CECOS; if the wind was going in the right direction, you could smell the chemicals from the factories and had to shut the windows. The college scene didn't do it for me. I went to Fredonia for a year, hated it, and wanted to get out to a real school (their IT "department" was terrible and they lied to me to get me to go there. ) Also, the economy sucks. I knew there weren't any good IT jobs there even if I did graduate with my CS degree. Where did you go? Minneapolis, MN. How does your new home compare to Buffalo? It's awesome. It's a booming area, lots of jobs, there's still four seasons, lots of culture, etc, etc. Love it here. If the econonmy and job market were stable would you move back? Probably not. Even if the economy was good, the polution would still suck, as would the taxation. What suggestions to you have to improve the quality of life here? Blow it up and start over? Here's a great (long) article about my hometown. http://www.iaw.com/~falls/environment.html CW

They don't need to do "prep work" by putting the real stuff live now. They SHOULD have a staging server to test everything out, and then move the files over during the unveiling. This sort of "leaking" is because someone over there got lazy. I dealt with publishing press releases on our company website that had to go out at specific times. You test to make sure everything looks fine on a non-internet connected server, then copy the files over when the time comes. Oh well... CW

You have a digital receiver (ie: cable box) on every TV in your house? CW

With 4 TVs, unless you're doing video modulation, analog cable is definately cheaper than DirecTV because you don't need a receiver for each TV (although the PQ isn't anywhere near as good either, but for extra TVs, it's generally "good enough.") You're not listening to us that your friend's dish isn't setup properly if this rain fade is a frequent occurance. If that's the worst "horror story" you can come up with... Again, in you case analog cable is probably the way to go (multiple TVs, no locals), unless you wanted NFL Network or Sunday Ticket (to catch games other than Buffalo). CW

You havn't answerd my question about the horror stories. Also, his $84/month includes HD -- which is ~$12/month. Cut that out, and you're down to $72. How many TVs do you have? If you only have one, you'd cut another $10-$15/month off of his bill (since he said he has 3 or 4 receivers, don't remember). That cuts it down to $58-$62/month. I can see the locals being a deal killer (alhtough I think your estimate of $12/month for Lifeline cable is off). Just comparing apples to apples. CW

Care to share some of those stories? I'm genuinely interesting, since every time I've had a problem (like the blackout of the first period of the game), they've been more than happy to help me out with free stuff. CW

Chances are they won't be covering his area. The new birds are mainly to provide all the locals in HD. CW

When was the last time you've had a solid-state peice of electronics go bad? If it DID go bad (and I've never had one go bad yet...), I could call DirecTV and convince them to give me a new one for free (heck, they gave me an HD receiver, new dish, installation, and multiswitch for only $99 a year or so ago). However, if (for some strange reason) they didn't give it to me for free, it'd only be $49 to get a new one. The flipside is that I own the box and can do whatever I want to it - for example, you can modify your TiVos to add extra storage. I have 150 hours of recording time on my "main" TiVo and 130 hours on my bedroom TiVo. Can't do that with cable, because you don't own it. I understand that some people don't mind their cable -- I just usually have to chime in when people start spreading the FUD (fear, uncertainty and doubt) about weather affecting DirecTV -- it just doesn't happen. I live in the midwest where we have tornados all the time during summer and snow/wind/ice (like WNY) in the winter. Over those 6 years, I've had maybe 3-4 outages of about 5-10 minutes each. On the flip side, I had to fight with Comcast for roughly 4 hours a day for an entire month (and I'm not exaggerating) in order to get my broadband setup properly (they didn't have their databases setup to let me get out of their network, it wasn't anything I had control over; I even told their techs exactly what they needed to do, but they didn't listen ). Comcast didn't give me ANYTHING for my troubles, whereas DirecTV accidentally blacked out the first period of the Wild/Ducks conference finals and they gave me a $50 credit for my inconvenience. To each their own, but weather is NOT an issue at all. CW

Wouldn't know, have never had to call them for the 6+ years I've had DirecTV. The great thing is that in the VERY rare event that weather does affect the dish, as soon as the weather clears (usually about 3-4 minutes later), you're good to go. Ask Steve about his experience with DirecTV and the Florida hurricanes. (short answer: As soon as he had electricity, he had DirecTV, even though the dish was bent to hell and back, houses were missing, garages were flattened, etc). Dammit, you dragged me in! CW

Where do you live again? DirecTV has locals in almost every market in the country. Curious that he wouldn't have them... CW PS: Notice I'm not the one that turned it into a debate, nor am I even participating in the debate

Otherwise you get shot. Or raped, then shot. Or raped, then burned, then shot. CW

It's really funny how people point to articles (that are just as lame as this one) that state what a good job JPL is doing watching film, or that a certain player or group of players didn't want to play with DB anymore, and start chanting, "See! DB SUCKED! That's why we're going with JPL!!!! He rocks!" Yet if another article says something to the contrary, we hear, "This article is worthless! It doesn't mean anything!!!!!" Umm, both sets of articles are pretty worthless... Why the double standard? CW