Apple announced today that, due to NBC Universal's demand that they pay more than double the wholesale cost for NBC content on the iTunes Store (effectively raising the price to $4.99), Apple will not be selling any of their new shows from the upcoming season. All I have to say is good job NBC; I was all set to order season passes for Battlestar Galactica, Heroes, My Name Is Earl, and The Office, but now I don't have to. I'm not going to mess around with other services (whatever you come up with won't likely work with Macs/iPods anyways), so I guess I'll have to find other ways to get the content I want for my AppleTV and iPhone. Smart move NBC, I'm sure I am not the only one...

This weekend marks the beginning of the 2007 college football season, and the UT Rockets are playing host to a Big-10 team from Indiana -- the Purdue Boilermakers. Coming off a hard season last year with a young team, particularly in the quarterback position, the Rockets are looking for another one of their big Glass Bowl wins to start off the season. Quite a few of us will be tailgating Saturday afternoon before heading over to the stadium for the 7:00pm start time.

In related news, ESPN.com has put together one of the better, more comprehensive stories about the alleged gambling scandal that rocked the university earlier this year. You can check it out by clicking here. I really hope nothing comes out of this; it would be a shame for some of the great games from my time in college to be tainted in such a way.

Here's a quick video featuring The Office cast talking about what they've been up to this summer:

The new season starts on September 27th, and it looks to be just as good as the previous ones!

As noted below, this weekend was the 42nd annual German-American Festival in East Toledo, and I must say that it was the perfect way to end a busy Saturday. Cheryl and I left in the morning and stopped by both the Apple Store in Ann Arbor (where I picked up a copy of iWork '08), as well as IKEA in Canton before heading down to the festival. While it was a little rainy in the morning, it was sunny and pleasant by the time we arrived, and I quickly made my way to the Bier Garten located in the middle of the complex. Between the two of us, we sampled seven different German brews; myself enjoying the Munich Hofbrau Bier and Dunkel, a Franziskaner Hefe-Weiss, and a Paulaner Hefe-Weiss while Cheryl critiqued three different Oktoberfest beers by Warsteiner, Paulaner (her favorite), and Ayinger. I even received a free Fransikaner glass for the effort, and purchased a collective beer stein to commemorate the event. The food was great, especially the german bratwurst with sauerkraut and potato cakes with sugar and apple sauce. Between the two of us, we took a lot of pictures -- you can see mine in my iPhoto Gallery, or her Flickr gallery to check them out.

Tomorrow is my first day on the job at Dana; I'll be sure to post my initial impressions sometime later this week. Saturday marks the start of college football, with a lot of friends gathering to tailgate at the UT vs. Purdue game scheduled for Saturday night.

This weekend marks the 42nd anniversary of the German-American Festival held at Oak Shade Grove in Oregon. Starting tomorrow evening and going through Sunday, the area's oldest ethnic festival is a great place to enjoy a number of German food dishes and, of course, German beer. This year the beer and wine selection has been considerably expanded; there will be 24 authentic beers available, up from 4 the previous year. Surprisingly, this will be the first year I have had the chance to attend the festival, and I'm expecting it to be a great time. Much like the Rib-Off a couple weeks ago, I think I'm going to forgo eating lunch on Saturday just to be sure there is enough room for all the German goodness that will be everywhere. I'm sure that either Cheryl or myself will take some pictures, and I'll be sure to put them up here when they're available.

On Sunday, we're planning on a trip to IKEA so Cheryl can buy some stuff for her new office and I can pick up a catalog since they still have not sent me a copy... crazy I know. I'm also going to use this opportunity to stop by the new Apple Store at the mall in Ann Arbor where I hope to pickup a copy of iWork '08. Finally, my last day at AME is tomorrow; starting Monday my office will be about five minutes from my apartment.

HandBrake is an open-source and multiplatform DVD (and now other MPEG2 sources) to MPEG4 converter that I've been using to encode my DVDs into the high-quality H.264 format for playback on my AppleTV and iPhone (using a modified version of the iPod high-quality preset). I've been helping the development team test and troubleshoot issues and new features for awhile now, and have been very impressed with the new features they have been able to implement on an almost daily basis. If you're looking for an easy-to-use yet extremely powerful encoding tool, look no further than HandBrake. Below is a list of just a few of the more than 300 fixes/improvments in this latest release.

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• New interface for the Mac client; complete rewrite of the Windows frontend in C#
  
• Better image scaling, deinterlacing, image filters (denoise, deblocking, inverse telecine)
  
• Speed improvements thanks to updated x264 and ffmpeg libraries
  
• Support for DTS audio sources
  
• Limited support for .vob and .ts files as sources
  
• Matroska file container (MKV) support
  
• Initial support to send finished encodes to MetaX for tagging
  

Here's some great "insight" into what the designers were thinking when they introduced Microsoft Paint to the masses; it's well worth the three minutes or so to watch. Thanks to Fake Steve Jobs for posting it to his blog!

Some sad news this week, Apple has officially announced that its productivity package AppleWorks has reached the end of its life and has been officially discontinued. The suite of applications has been around since the Apple II days, and I can personally attest to spending many hours using it at the YMCA camp my mom works at before they switched over to PCs. This was back in the days when I hated Apple products and I took every opportunity to voice my displeasure. They sure thought it was funny when I brought my Macbook Pro in last year.

In its place, Apple has positioned iWork '08; a bundle of applications including Pages (word processing/page layout), Keynote (presentations), and now Numbers (spreadsheets). All of the programs feature compatibility with all popular formats including those used by Microsoft Office. I purchased but rarely used iWork '07 when I received my Macbook Pro; it just didn't seem like Apple had fully developed the user interface and features for someone wanting an alternative coming from a Microsoft environment. In its defense, Keynote produced amazing quality presentations, but Pages was clearly designed with page layout in mind rather than standard word processing. This has been corrected with the introduction of a word processing mode and I've found it much more enjoyable to use than Office 2004. Numbers also sports a refreshing interface for spreadsheet manipulation. Neither claim to include every feature found in Word and Excel, but for the typical user these applications are great alternatives, especially at the price ($79.99 from Apple). I'm currently using the 30-day demo, but see no reason why I won't run up to the Ann Arbor Apple Store to pickup my copy sometime in the next month.

I happened to be walking through the isles at Joseph's Beverage Center yesterday when I stumbled upon the first cases of Samuel Adams Octoberfest in the coolers. I happily purchased a six-pack and have enjoyed a couple glasses. I'd love to get down to the Hofbrauhaus in Newport for the authentic recipe straight from Munich, but I guess I'll just have to "settle" for the German American Festival here in a couple weeks, starting the same day as my last at my current employer...

We had some nice meaty ribs last night from a placed called Texas Outlaw (I believe they were the 2006 champions) at the rib-off last night. Along with some sweat potato fries and a sweet barbecue sauce, they were pretty darn good. There were a ton of people there, a shortage of places to sit, and only Budwesier products on draft, but the food made up for any inconveniences. As an added bonus, we got to witness Jared trying to get the hang of Wii Sports, although he seemed to be a natural at bowling.

Lots of new happenings here... first and most obvious, I've decided to change the theme of the website to something a little simpler. I really hated having the two sidebars on the previous site, so I found this one on my lunch break and thought it was time for a change. I'm still tweaking some things, but so far I'm pretty happy with the decision. I also made use of a new widget recently released by Apple called My iTunes that allows users to post their most recent purchases, iTunes Store reviews, and iTunes favorites. You'll find it in the sidebar on the right side of the page.

Second, and more importantly, I have accepted a new position with a company this week, ending my three year stint with my current employer. Since finishing my MBA this past semester, I knew it was time to try and find something that would let me better utilize the skills and education that I have gained over the years. I also wanted to find a place that allowed me to grow within the company, and hopefully find myself in a project management position in the future. Starting August 27th, I'll be a Security Analyst at the Dana Corporation data center in Maumee. The office is about five minutes away from my current apartment, which is also a nice bonus.

Tomorrow is the Northwest Ohio Rib-Off at the Lucas County Fairgrounds. I think Kelly and Jared will be joining Cheryl and I and it should be a pretty good time. I'll definitely be saving room to stuff myself on ribs and deep fried goodness for dinner.