Happy Halloween! I want to pass candy out tonight to all of the little kids, but I’m not sure what the trick-or-treating hours are. Actually I’m not even sure if there will be any kids around our neighborhood. This is the first year that I will actually be living in a house that isn’t my parents. Previously I always lived in an apartment, besides that year I spent living near the University of Cincinnati campus. Trick-or-treating there involved kids asking for beer.

I asked Dominique and Bianca what time trick-or-treating was and they just told me that they went when it was dark out. Thanks to the recent time shift it was dark outside around six last night when I left work. Maybe they are right. Does it start at six? I guess I will find out tonight…

We went to the Chiefs game yesterday with a group from my office. We took the KCATA Chiefs Express for the first time, and although we didn’t have to worry about driving and parking, I’m still not sure I would do it again. We got on the first bus of the day shortly before 9:30, which doesn’t get you into the stadium area until after 10. At that point, the rest of our group was already in the lot for over an hour cooking, eating, etc. They should start running the buses so that the first one gets into the lot shortly after the gates are open.

The game itself was lots of fun, despite being in our normal spot, the last rows of the stadium. Once again my legs are aching today. It’s amazing what a few trips up and down those stairs can do to you. The Chiefs won the game beating an already beat up Seattle Seahawks team by the score of 35-28, thus brining their record to 4-3.

Speaking of 4-3, that’s the same record that the Bengals have now, after a disappointing loss to Atlanta. Since this game was at the same time as the Chiefs, I didn’t get to watch any of it and the little radio I brought to the game wouldn’t pick up 700 WLW either. Therefore I don’t really have much to say about the game. Perhaps some of the Cincinnatians at the game will add their commentary.

Additionally it looks like I am going to lose both of my fantasy football games this week. In one league I need 68 points out of Tom Brady tonight, not taking into account that my opponent still has Corey Dillon. And in the other game I need over 22 points from Chester Taylor. This might be a little more realistic as he did score almost 25 points last week. We’ll see what happens.

As I mentioned over a week ago, we attended a Big Brothers Big Sisters Halloween party with Dominique and Bianca last night. Just like the Holiday Party, it was at the Beaumont Club, which still cracks me up. How can a bar that is nasty as the Beaumont be the hosting facility for these parties? Surely there is some place a little better that could be used. Regardless of the place, the parties still seem to be a good time for both the littles and the bigs.

We all attended the party dressed in costume. Dominique did wear my pimp suit from a year or two ago, and we added some nice gold shoes and a gold cane as well. Bianca bought a cheerleader costume while shopping with her mom and twin sisters that worked out perfectly. Kim bought an old black dress from Goodwill and a witches hat from Walmart. And I borrowed a convict suit from our friend Todd. All in all I think we looked pretty good. What do you think?

Last Friday night I made it out to a high school football game between Rockhurst and Joplin. My friend Mike picked this game because both teams were then ranked in the top 10 teams in Missouri. However, the game was not nearly as entertaining as we had hoped. Rockhurst dominated the whole game and won 37-14, and trust me when I say that it wasn’t even that close.

Truth be told, the game was nowhere near as entertaining as you would find in Ohio. Add that to the list of things I miss about Ohio, good high school football. Take this weekend for example, my alma mater, Moeller will be facing off with St. Xavier tomorrow night in USA Today game of the week. Now I’m sure that is going to be a football game! St. X is ranked number nine in the country, and while Moeller may not be in the top 25, they are 1-1 this season against teams in the top 25. That’s right, they are playing three of the top 25 teams in the country in the same season. Go Big Moe!

Sorry for two tech posts in a row, but according to my tracker over 50% of you (the readers) use Firefox to browse the web and I wanted to let you know that a new version is now available. If you didn’t already know, Firefox 2.0 offers even more tabbed browsing features, a built in spell check, and lots more. I’m a huge fan of the built in spell check, especially since English classes never really were my thing. In the past I ran Firefox plugins and even put my blog entries into Microsoft Word to be sure they were free of spelling errors.

For those who still use Internet Explorer I would highly encourage you to try Firefox out. Once you do you will never go back. I know that I haven’t.

Update: Even the Internet Explorer Team was happy about the release.

Today I stumbled upon a widget for the Yahoo! engine that plays the online Sirius streams. Since I got Sirius last Christmas I have listened to the streams almost every day at work, but I’ve never really be a fan of the official streaming web app. For starters, it doesn’t even display what artist/song you are listening to or playing on other stations. This makes it hard to switch between stations and most of the time I would just leave it set on one station for the entire day.

Now that I’ve installed this widget, I can not only see what’s playing but I can also have preset stations that I can tune to with the press of one button. In addition, the widget has Alerts that can be configured to alert you when a certain artist or song is on any of the stations. The functionality of this is much closer to my Starmate unit and much improved over the standard online player.

Download the widget here to begin using it now. Please note that it does require that the Yahoo! widget engine is installed as well.

For those of you without Sirius, be sure to take advantage of the free online trial, including 48 hours of Howard Stern starting tomorrow.

I almost scored a hat trick last night in my hockey game. I could have had three goals, if another player on my team didn’t knock down my shot and claim the goal for his own. Instead, I finished the game with two goals, which was two goals more than I’ve had all season. Needless to say, I had a pretty good game. And so did my team, we won yet another game to remain undefeated. According to our manager we are on a seventeen game regular season undefeated streak!

If it’s not already obvious, I had one hell of a day at work. I feel like I just got in and now it’s about time to go. Hitting up the driving range during lunch probably didn’t help, but we had to take in some of the good weather. Some of the guys from work were going and invited me to come along. Luckily I had my clubs in the trunk, so I did. While we were there I learned about the “controversial new [golf] swing theory” from one coworker. I guess following the “one plane” technique has really improved his game. All I wanna know is why someone didn’t tell me about this years ago. This technique looks way more similar to a hockey shot. I could have been a golf pro by now!

Is anyone dressing up for Halloween? Or does anyone have any good costume ideas, preferably something that is cheap? We are taking the kids to a BBBS Halloween party next week and we still don’t have costumes. I mentioned to Dominique that I have a pimp suit that I wore a few years ago, and now he wants to wear it. I guess it’s appropriate for him to wear, what do you think? All I know is that we have this weekend to figure out our costumes and I’m pretty clueless still. Someone help me, please!!

Aerosmith and Mötley Crüe were in town last night and I was there. I don’t think I would have went without free tickets from a friend, especially after realizing the cheapest ticket was almost $60 with all the fees. However, lots of others must have paid for the tickets because the show was packed. Last I heard the attendance was estimated at almost 15,000!

Growing up I was a big fan of Mötley Crüe. A friend of mine (who lived next door) listened to a lot of heavy metal and thus it wasn’t long until I was introduced to their music. I can recall many hours spent listening to all of their albums from that moment on. Despite my longtime interest in the band, I had never seen them perform live until last night.

Mötley Crüe opened up the show and played an hour and a half set, almost on the dot. We were a little late getting inside the venue and missed the “Dr. Feelgood” opener. I’m still a little upset by that but I heard the remainder of their set. The vocals left a little to be desired, but the instrumentation was great! It appears that the years may have gotten the best of Vince Neil. Their show comes complete with fireworks, flames, and even a motorcycle for the classic “Girls, Girls, Girls” sing-along. At times it was a little much and the fog became so thick it was almost impossible to see anyone on the stage. Overall it was still nice to finally see them live.

Aerosmith played next after a 30 minute set change. Both acts had quite the stage setup. The opening of their performance consisted of a video projected on the stage curtains highlighting their long career. Once the film was complete the band took the stage playing “Toys In The Attic.” From there the moved through a wide variety of songs which included my personal highlights “Eat the Rich”, “Cryin’,” and “Dream On.” Steven Tyler performed much better than Vince Neil and actually shows very little of his age. And as good as Mötley Crüe musicians were, Joe Perry was amazing on guitar.

With that said, I found it pretty weak that they only played for what some are saying was 75 minutes. I though it was barely over an hour, to be honest, after taking into account the two times they played extended videos. The videos were before they started and in the encore break. For me, the videos just reminded me of all of the songs that they could have played. We did get to hear “Sweet Emotion” and “Walk This Way” toward the end of the show, but I would have loved to hear some of the other big hits.

I’m glad that I didn’t pay for the show because if I had I would feel even more ripped off, especially for the prices that some people were paying. The best seats of the night sold for $200 face value!

Another review: Back To Rockville