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Got a Wii. It’s a pretty funny story; you’ll have to ask me about it sometime.

Anyway, I didn’t really want one. I guess I think I don’t have any time or something. Whenever I don’t think I have any time (for Wii, or exercise, or dog walking…) all I need to do is cut out a little TV time and I’m good. Not that I watch an insane amount of TV, but I certainly get my fair share.

So, we got one and it is frickin’ awesome. The remote and the nunchuck, the sensor bar… We don’t have any other games but for the Wii Sports one that comes with the unit, and now Barb and I are on our way to professional rank, playing doubles tennis. We try not to yell at each other when we miss a shot, and we totally celebrate when we make a great return.

It is virtually impossible to not get into the game, because you’re so physically involved. I heard this saying once, that if you want to find the fastest, easiest way to finish a task, get the laziest person you know to do it. They will find a way to accomplish it without breaking a sweat.

Well, there might be someone out there who can play the Wii sitting down, but not me. I have to be standing up. I’m full on swinging: backhands, lobs, overhead slams. In the boxing game, there is no other option but to actually look like your fighting for your life. By the end of a fight, I am literally sweating.

Other comments:

• The remotes are awesome. You use them to throw darts, pitch baseballs, swing at pitches, hit tennis balls, bowl balls. I’m really amazed at the response I get with this. Throwing sidearm in baseball. Throwing upper cuts in boxing. Awesome.
• Somebody on the packaging team went to the Apple University of packaging. Both the product and the package are clean, white, and shiny. This extends to the packaging for other accessories like extra controllers and games. There is no denying the (positive) impact of Apple on retail packaging.
• I’m looking forward to the upcoming yoga ‘game’ set for release Q1 of next year.
• My friend Joe is going to a Wii party this weekend. I totally have to get into that.
• You get to create a Mii (pronounced ‘me’) that becomes the digital version of you for Wii games. If you take you remote over to a friend’s house to geek out, your Mii automatically follows. The Mii can look like you or not. You can even make it look like a cat or a martian. And if you create multiple Miis, they start showing up in the background of other games. They might be bowling in the lane next to you, sitting in the stands at the tennis match.
• It has Internet connectivity, but I think it by way of a USB plugin that connects to the wireless network in my house. I don’t know a whole lot about this, yet, but I will get this going, so Simon and I can play Madden from our respective living rooms.

I didn’t know I wanted a Wii, but I am psyched that I have it. I only wish I had a way to publish my Mii.

This is the coolest story I’ve heard in a while.

I typically dig the songs from iPod commercials. Except for maybe that Eminem one. And I thought the new iPod Touch commercial followed along nicely with picking something catchy and safe. So, I clicked over to Google to see who the song was by.

What I found surprised me.

Sometime in September, an 18-year-old kid named Nick Haley put together his own iPod Touch commercial using video footage from Apple.com. He found a song he thought was perfect (it is), from Cansei de Ser Sexy named Music is my Hot, Hot Sex. He posted his project on YouTube.

Rather than send this kid a cease and desist letter, Apple emailed him to say they wanted it for their own. They re-cut it, got permission from the band and now you are seeing it five times a day.

His original cut commercial is a little rougher and doesn’t include the Foo Fighters. Check out the final cut.

Here’s what I love about this. This student has an awesome story that will get him laid for a couple of years. But also, this little known Brazilian band, CSS, now has their song featured on national TV, and is currently number 30 on the iTunes top 100 list. I think it is great that an English student has the power to help break an obscure band.

This is all, of course, hinging on whether or not this story is real. I hate being so cynical.

We’d been waiting a relatively long time to go HD. Almost two years ago, we bought a 37-inch Vizio LCD TV. Love, Love, Love it. But I couldn’t help but recognize we weren’t taking full advantage of its HDTV’s readiness.

We subscribe to Dish Network. We’ve had a PVR for a couple of years. And the thing I was waiting for was an affordable upgrade that would allow us to get a PVR with HD. The time came: the PVR-622 The deal was essentially for a free upgrade; of course after an understandably complex rebate involving multiple forms, copies of bills and a strange 60-day process.

The unit is great. We can record two things at once or watch one thing and record another. As much as we are huge PVR fans, this is a first in our PVR experience. It’s awesome to have this capability.

And we are finally taking advantage of the Vizio in all of its HD glory. We got it just in time for the start of the football season, and the picture is so incredible. My primary question is why the heck is FOX not broadcasting their games in HD? It is great. I don’t think I could watch Grey’s Anatomy in SD again!

But! Here’s the catch: the HD service itself.

The HD service is sketchy at best. Really, really sketchy. There are a dozen or so HD channels offered from Dish Network. These are things like Monster, HDNET and HDNMV. And then there are HD versions for channels like A&E, TNT and TBS. The consistency of reception of these channels is crap! I mean like total crap. It is out, like, 50 percent of the time. I try to record or watch the Sopranos on A&E and it’s no dice. When reception goes out, you see a screen that tells you the system is trying to acquire satellite signal, then another screen telling you service is unavailable.

Fortunately, we have really good reception for the local affiliate channels of NBC et al. I’m not sure what I would have done if I had lost reception during a tense fantasy football battle. I’m not sure if my neighbor watches football, but I would have certainly found out.

So, when it is working it is sweet. The only thing that is keeping me from throwing the Dish receiver out the window is it is a sweet unit (it’s not the PVR’s fault…) and because we’re not really paying for the HD service yet. The rebates take care of that. But after a six-month period I will see a 33 percent increase to my bill.

I call to complain and the friendly customer service people schedule a service call. The service guy comes out to my house and tells me I am getting the expected reception, and then I hear some bunk about Dish trying to get by with one satellite for all of the US, and the West coast is on the very edge of the range. I call to complain again, and the friendly customer service people schedule a service call.

I’ve not reached the point where the sketchy service on the special HD channels outweighs how totally awesome it is to watch HD Football and The Office on the HD PVR. We’ll see how this develops over the next couple of months.

So, I’m prepping for a couple of half marathons (Bellingham Bay and Seattle). I was going to do the Bellingham full marathon, but, man, I just wasn’t mentally there. So I pulled back a couple of weeks ago and feel much better about doing the half-marathon instead.

Anyway, that’s not what I want to talk about. I started using the Nike+ iPod Nano system during the Spring this year and it is totally and completely AWESOME. I’m tracking my mileage, my pace. Figuring out the songs I run the best to. It is great.

If you don’t know, the system works like this. You need:

• iPod Nano
• Computer with iTunes installed
• Nike+ kit - Includes a transmitter that goes in your shoe and a receiver that plugs into your iPod
• Compatible Running Shoes - Nikes let you stick the transmitter in the shoe, while some company is making a little case that’ll attach to any shoe.

Plug everything in and use your iPod to plan your run. Go for time, distance, calories, whatever. When you finish, go take a shower, then plug your Nano into your computer. A sweet new tab will show up in the iTunes iPod window. As if this isn’t magical enough, here’s where it really gets good. You can automatically have your run data uploaded to Nikeplus.com to keep track of your runs. Name them. Look at your pace from mile to mile. It even has some kind of strange social angles you can take advantage of.

But the thing I discovered today is this great feature of being able to post my five most recent runs on this very blog! Go check out my About page. It is really sweet.

Now there are a ton more features to this whole system that I’m skipping, because I want your experience to be as surprising and fulfilling as mine. It’s fun, it’s easy and it makes me want to run more. Nice.

Yeah, I called it. Now I know it’s not that special, but now I’m thinking about buying into satellite radio… maybe.

Variety is reporting that XM and Sirius have agreed to merge. This makes total sense for the reasons I pointed out early last Summer.

>> But the thing holding up satellite radio is the “format” battle.
>> Do you want XM or Sirius. Sirius has Howard Stern and
>> Martha Stewart. XM has Opie & Anthony and Oprah. It
>> may sound like deciding between satellite-TV providers,
>> but it’s not. The difference is Dish Network, DirecTV and
>> Cable all show the same channels (Food Network, Bravo,
>> FX, local affiliates…); subscribers are paying for the content
>> delivery. Satellite radio is both different content and delivery.
>> At some point XM and Sirius are going to get together. One’s
>> going to buy the other, or there’ll be some crazy merger or
>> synergistic alliance where subscribers to either can listen to
>> content from both. Then it’ll work just like the cable TV and
>> we won’t think about it.
– Why Radio will never go away from Fej July 28, 2006.

Now all they have to do is figure out how to get local stations incorporated and we’re cruisin‘.