If you look at my wishlist on the right of this page, you might notice that the Archos 604 portable media player has been scratched off.  Scott got me this early Christmas present and it finally arrived while we were out of town for Thanksgiving.  I absolutely LOVE it!!! 

After a lot of research I finally decided on this media player over the Zen Vision M or the Toshiba Gigabeat S.  The screen is a whopping 4.3″ and the player is thin enough to sit perfectly on the ledge of the treadmill a the gym.  I always loved the setup in my parent’s basement where they have a treadmill and an elliptical with a tv/dvd station in front and now I can have the same thing at the gym!  This is important since my gym gets all of 3 channels. 

This Archos PMP is so well designed.  No crappy software to go through (though it is compatible in MTP mode to use the behemoth that is Windows Media Player) . .I simply drag and drop my files into the video, music, data etc. folders and I get quick and easy transfer through the proper menus on the player.   I can even play file formats on this thing that it isn’t guaranteed to support.  

I won’t go into the specs as you can read about it on their website.  For those of you who aren’t interested in being forever chained to the content that iTunes can provide at the price at which they provide it, I suggest this extremely impressive alternative.  Did I mention that you can purchase an accessory to kick it into DVR mode?  I can directly record any tv show or movie to my player and watch on the go.  Now that is the type of media freedom I’m looking for!

For those of you who are wondering how Brian Urlacher is doing after his toe sprain last Sunday, he is still questionable for the big Sunday night game against the New York Giants.  He did not practice Wednesday or Thursday, which are not good signs, but we just have to keep an eye on him to see if he practices tomorrow and gets upgraded to “probable.” 

Also keep in mind that Giant’s pro bowl defensive end Michael Strahan will be out this next game with a foot injury. 

I’m starting to realize that blogging exposes your most annoying characteristics. 

While I’m a huge proponent and think it’s a great way to stay in the lives of people you don’t get to see or speak to frequently, I’m noticing that the number of blogs I read are getting pruned down to a very few. . .the ones that don’t remind me why I speak to these people so infrequently.  It’s also true, however, that reading some of these blogs has made me wonder why I don’t have more interaction with some of my more distant acquaintances, but more often than not, it’s the other way around.  Please no one take offense. . I’m not talking about you .. I promise.  It’s just a general observation though that giving people this faceless method of communication lets them run amok in a way that they probably would hesitate to do otherwise.  We all do it.

Hmm. .I almost deleted this post .. it’s probably not a good idea to alienate the 3 people that read your blog.  I think it’s time to stop exposing my most annoying characteristics.