Our family recently played Wii Fit together and it said I lost 6 pounds in 65 days. I guess that's good since we just went through the holidays. The sad part is… the last time I played was 65 days ago. J My wife challenged me to perform The Tree yoga position after I said I could do it... Big mouth! I guess I got what I deserved, but I did it successfully. After playing the Wii for a few minutes, I always get sucked in… so I tried a Ski Jumping balance game. That was a lot of fun especially when you FAIL! Wii Fit is like a collection of mini-games that you play for a few minutes each to help build strength, balance, focus, and endurance. It gives you a little workout and it’s loads of fun.

Wii

We receive Error: 32002 every time we attempt to update the Wii to the current version. My kids can play games using the Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection without any problems. We can access the Everybody Votes Channel & the Check Mii Out Channel. What I don't understand is why I even need to tell the system to download the update. The stupid Wii Connect 24 should just download it for me and then ask me if I want to install it. Then I wouldn't need to take the Wii somewhere with a faster Internet connection. For as cool as I think the Wii is... this is the only thing that really bothers me.

Since I am such a whiner about Nintendo's stupid broken crap, I will list the things we love about the Wii.

•  We can send messages (even audio messages with Wii Speak) to other people we know who also have a Nintendo Wii and it shows our Mii character as the sender.
• We can download/purchase classic games we played years ago for NES, SNES, N64, Sega Genesis, Turbo Grafx 16, and NEO GEO through the Virtual Console.
• We can also play our Nintendo GameCube games in the Nintendo Wii. Just slip the media into the Wii and Blammo!
• Gadgets... OMG the Gadgets!! (Wii Wheel, Wii Zapper, Wii Speak, Wii Remote, and coming soon: Wii MotionPlus)
• They keep adding new features (Wi-Fi Enabled Games, Wii Channels, WiiWare, and the Wii is now a DS Download Station for the Nintendo DS). Some of the games even come with their own channel, which means you don’t need the media every time you want to play the game. Mario Kart for Wii also shows you where in the world you care playing against… very cool.
• The Wii Remote is certainly something unique. I have never seen anything quite like it. The delayed reactions of the Wii Remote controller really bugged me at first. Now that I have got used to it, they are releasing the Wii MotionPlus add-on with Wii Sports Resort. The add-on will remove the delayed reactions... very exciting!

What I think they should add or change (not whining):

• The ability to earn Wii Points or Coins by using the features they keep adding and/or when you register games you have purchased.
• Integrate Wii MotionPlus into the latest generation Wii Remotes.
• Supply standard AA rechargeable batteries with the Wii Remotes & some kind of base station for charging them. (These things just gobble up the juice!)
• Put more Wii Consoles in the marketplace. A person still cannot purchase a Wii without feeling lucky (Either it’s really this popular or Nintendo sucks at producing these things... maybe they like it this way...keeps it mysterious). An employee at Walmart in Bellingham, WA told me that they received 249 Wii Consoles at Noon on December 23^rd, 2008 and by 6:00PM the same day, all but one were gone!

DS

Our oldest just told me that her new game called Animal Crossing: Wild World can connect to the Internet and talk to her friends. Each person must know an identifying number to access each other over the Internet. Then I discovered that the Nintendo DS only supports WEP only wireless encryption. Lame! Evidently there is a new version called the Nintendo DSi that will support WPA & WPA2, however... it appears to be limited to new services.

Club Nintendo

Recently, Nintendo changed the “My Nintendo” portion of their website to “Club Nintendo”. You can now receive coins for registering your purchased products and completing a survey. Then you can acquire Nintendo products with your coins. Some of the products are exclusive to Club Nintendo like the item we ordered. We ordered the Nintendo Game & Watch Collection for DS, which is a DS recreation of some ancient handhelds. I played the ancient recreation and found it as annoying today as it was back then… must practice!

***Update to the Update***

As I was updating my blog, I was asked by my daughter if she could update the Wii and I said sure.... knowing that the update will fail with the previously mentioned error. This must be the 17^th time we attempted to update the Wii. It worked!!! We updated the Nintendo Channel and started trying the DS Download Play demos until about 1:00AM.

 

Looks like we will be in a winter wonderland through Christmas. The wife & kids are officially on "Winter Break" now. I convinced (paid $10) the youngest to go outside on the deck and create a Snow Angel while I recorded video. She was wearing a t-shirt, light pants, and she was barefoot. She made a pretty good Snow Angel. Later this evening we all went for a walk in the snow. Right now we have about 8-9" of snow and it's still coming down! Since our TV died after a power outage and everyone is couped up in the house, we have decided to re-arrange the entertainment area. We have a smaller TV we will use until we can afford a new one, but it only has an RF (Coax) connector. All the video game systems, DVD player, VHS to DVD recorder, and the satellite decoder box all go through the one receiver so it's going to be a challenge to reconnect everything. That's tonight's mission. Tomorrow, I will attempt to go to work in the snow. YUK!

Barely anything in the refrigerator can make some interesting dinners.

I looked online for Smoked Sausage & Corn Chowder and found a few recipies I thought would help concoct something worth eating.  I based my recipe soley on what I had in the refrigerator and cupboard that needed to be used. Everything I used was cooked prior to placement in the pot. The only thing that I cooked was the onion, garlic, and corn.

1lb Smoked Sausage chopped in ¼" Cubes
1 Medium Onion Chopped (Saute this with the butter before adding it)
2 Cloves Garlic Minced (Saute this with the butter before adding it)
4 Tbsp Butter
4 Cups Chicken Stock
2 Ears Corn-on-the-Cob (Cut the corn from the cob after cooking it for three minutes wrapped in plastic in the microwave)
1½ Cups Milk (I used 2%)
1lb Diced Potatoes (Seasoned French Fries worked for me)
½ tsp Fresh Ground Black Pepper
Salt to taste (I used about a tbsp of fresh ground Sea Salt)
Pinch of Cayenne Pepper

The Corn-on-the-Cob part of this recipe is important for texture. I might try adding celery next time. 

This was a super easy and fast. Basically, just warm up the stuff for a few minutes and chow down! The kids and wife loved it.

After hours of research and analysis, we came to the conclusion that the apparent problem was likely fixable. We found the meaning of "Limit Switch is Open" on the Internet. Now if I could only find it! I looked everywhere in the electronics section of the furnace for something that looks like this. Then, my brother & his wife show up at 10:00PM and he looks over the wiring schematic for a couple of minutes. Then, he follows some wires around the inside of the unit. He follows one wire down to the lower furnace area. The lower area houses the FIRE BAD! FIRE BAD! The yellow wire went to a thing that looked like this. So... he proceeded to push the little red button and POP! I then flipped the switch for the furnace to ON and within 5 seconds I knew it was working! We knew what it was and what it looked like, but it took the Super Genius of Uncle Poo Poo to find it! I would like to take this moment to thank my Dad and Brother for their most excellent assitance. I would also like to thank Arnold Service for their excellent site for Troubleshooting Heating Problems. By the way, the only reason this happened is because I am a Jack Ass and did not clean out the filter all summer long. I left the fan going 24 hours a day during the summer, to even out the temperature of the house. If you haven't replaced your filter in a while... Now is a good time to do it!

My wife called me yesterday to inform me that we had no heat in the house. Once I got home (7:00AM), I checked everything and sure enough... it doesn't work! So my Rheem Classic 90 Plus furnace is malfunctioning ... what to do. The LEDs inside the furnace indicate that the "Limit Switch is Open"... whatever that means. I looked up the problem on the Al Gore invented Internet after I woke up (3:30PM) and sure enough.... something is wrong with it. :) If I can't figure this out tomorrow, then I guess I will need to call the heating and air people for service. On the bright side, at least I won't be using up our precious propane. It also makes me feel great to know that we are no longer destroying the Al Gore protected environment with my pesky CO² gas.