Andy McDandy Vent Page

Tonight is the 27th annual Survivor Series and here are my speculations on who will win each match.

Kickoff Match Kofi Kingston vs The Miz = Not exactly sure why these two are fighting each other but I am going to go with my favorite Kofi for the win.

Champ Randy Orton vs Big Show = When it comes to matches involving large wrestlers like Big Show going against someone smaller, logic says the bigger guy should win hands down but WWE has a tendancy to always go with the smaller wrestler. With that said, I must reluctantly go with Orton as the winner.

Champ John Cena vs Alberto Del Rio = My bet is on John Cena, not because I am a fan of his but because the WWE has this fetish of making John the winner 99% of the time.

CM Punk & Daniel Bryon vs Erick Rowan & Luke Harper = Rowan & Harper will have Wyatt at ring side so there is two possible outcomes, Punk & Bryan lose or they will win by disqualification from Wyatt interfering in the match.

Tag Champs Cody Rhodes, Goldust, Usos & Rey Mysterio vs Shield & Real Americans = With this being Mysterio first PPV since an injury a year ago, I can see Mysterio team winning with Mysterio being one of the surviving wrestlers in the match.

Natalya, Bellas, Funkadactyls, Jojo & Eva Marie vs Diva Champ AJ, Tamina, Kaitlyn, Rosa Mendes, Summer Rae, Aksana & Alicia Fox = My pick is on the Bellas team winning with most likely the Bellas being sole survivor just because of how popular the show Total Divas is right now on E!.

Champ Big E. Langston vs Curtis Axel = Unless Axel receives help, I have to go with Langston as the winner.

For almost a year now I have been using the Motorola HDPVR 630 with my service provider Shaw Direct. In that time I have discovered both positivies and negatives with this satellite receiver.

Motorola has always put their name on fairly good products but they seem to have lacked in quality control with the HDPVR 630.

The 630 is a nice small recording device unfortunately mine came with a fairly unreliable brand of 2.5″ hard drive, Seagate. Although Seagate was a great brand years ago, their quality has gone down hill since being acquired by Maxtor some years ago. When dealing with a device that requires a hard drive which will be running 24/7, you need something reliable like the Western Digital Red 2.5″ drive or a SSD drive. Last month I upgraded my drive to a 750GB Western Digital Red.

The reason for the need to use a drive that is meant for 24/7 use is noth just lower heat generation but also better stability, reducing the chances of file corruption.

Cheaply made hard drives like Maxtor and Seagate are bad for suffering from file corruption. When this happens with the HDPVR 630, it will cause the unit to auto reboot at random. Many recordings I have done in the past year before changing the hard drive resulted in missing segments because the unit rebooted itself.

One month late since the upgrade, the only time it reboots is when you try to do too much like setting up multiple shows for recording of new episodes before the device has completed the setup of the previous requested show. Although the wait time is low when you only have a few programs setup, once you get up to my number of shows, currently around 75, that wait time can feel like an eternity to complete.

With the reboots happening when trying to do too much at once, it is obvious the HDPVR 630 could use a major improvement so the device will no longer panic and reboot itself. Maybe a faster processor could help setup the recording schedule fast even with a large number of shows.

The on screen guide is extremely well done in my opinion. I have seen both the Bell and Rogers PVR on screen guide and I have to squint to read the text. With the Motorola 600 and HDPVR 630, the font is a great size, able to read everything, even in the program description.

HDPVR 630 guide also has a nice colour code sho you know which items are cartoons, movies, sports, and so on but it does lack in the guide settings area.

Currently there are many stations that are duplicates and right now the only way to weed out the non-HD stations is to setup your own channel list but with 900 channels to go through, this can take quite a bit of time out of ones day. There is an option to hide unsubscribe channels which is nice however it would be even better if there were setting to also hide non-HD channels, sports channels, only show channels in the language you want, and so on. Adding more guide options will give back the end user the hours that they would have normally wasted setting up their own favourites list.

Another feature I would like to see added is being able to record more than two shows without the need of extra cable runs from the satellite dish. I can not understand why a single cable can not be run to the receiver then have the device split that signal so many programs can be recorded at once. Cable PVR’s can somehow do this with just one coaxial cable so why can’t the same work for satellite?

Well thats my review on the Motorola HDPVR 630.

Less than an hour away is WWE Hell In A Cell and here are my predictions.

Orton vs Bryan = I hope Bryan wins and this time the belt doesn’t get taken away because of a fast count or interference from another person like we have seen over the past couple of Pay Per Views.

Los Matadores vs The Real Americans = Don’t care who wins. To me this is nothing but a filler match. However given the push Matadores have been getting, it won’t surprise me if they win.

CM Punk vs Ryback & Paul Heyman = I hope Punk kicks Heyman’s ass, that’s all I care about. With that said it is two against one so I’m sure Punk will probably lose.

Tag Champs Rhodes and Goldust vs The Shield = I am hoping Rhodes and Goldust continue their winning streak.

Diva Champ AJ vs Brie Bella = As much as I would love to see Brie win, I’m sure something will occur allowing AJ to remain champion.

World Champ Del Rio vs John Cena = This is pretty much a no brainer. Cena ALWAYS gets the push and thus wins pretty much every time the title is up for grabs so my prediction is of course Cena.

Who do you think will be win the above matches?

Hello and welcome to my second set of 5 app reviews for Android.

I would first like to start by addressing the problem I mentioned in the last review for app ICSSync.  For some reason one of the five calendars I had setup was becoming corrupted whenever I would add, remove or edit an event.  Although the reason behind this corruption is still unknown, I was able to solve it by turning on a feature inside the Vueminder desktop calendar for Windows to only publish my calendar to the server with events from the last 365 days rather than every event over the past 3 or so years.  Now I can add, remove and edit events without any problems what so ever.

Now on to my next 5 reviews.

McDonald’s – If you love McDonald’s like I do then your Android phone just isn’t complete without the McDonald’s app to help you find the closest location when that craving hits.  The app is extremely user friendly and offers different search criteria like only listing locations with a drive thru or locations with a play zone.

Movie Collection & Inventory – If you have a lot of movies then I would suggest trying out this app.  The app may not have a nice cover art list like other movie inventory apps but I can say that out of all the movies I have added using the barcode scanner, close to 75% have been found.  I have tried other apps and their barcode scanning barely found any of my movies.

My Fitness Pal – If you are trying to lose weight then you can not go wrong with setting up a free account at myfitnesspal.com and using their app.  With their app, you can track your food intake, exercise and much more.

Ok Cupid – If you are looking for that special someone then get yourself a free account at okcupid.com then download the app.  Ok Cupid is a great dating app.  Everything in this app is just as, if not, easier to use than the actual website.

PayPal – No smartphone is complete with the PayPal app.  This app not only allows you to keep track of your PayPal account, but also send money to others and even help calculate the split on a dinner out including calculating how much to tip based on a percentage you set.

Well there you go, another five Android apps reviewed and more to come in the near future.

The other day I wrote about my new phone, the Motorola RAZR XT910.  Now I am going to give my opinion of 5 different apps on my phone.  This will be the first of probably 2 or 3 reviews I will be doing.

Comodo Mobile Security – For those that don’t know, Comodo currently makes the best antivirus product in the world and now that protection has been ported over to the Android operating system.  This app has many great features, the best feature is the Anti Theft.  Once the Anti Theft is setup, you can then do various things to your Android phone if it is ever misplace, lost or stolen.  You simply send a text message to your phone with one of about 5 different keywords.  For example, if you wish to know where your phone is, you would simply text the word locate along with the password you setup and Comodo will text back of it’s GPS location.  If phone stolen, then text the word wipe to have all your personal stuff erased.  Comodo will even text a mobile number of your choice when it detects that the SIM card has been tampered with.

Endomondo – Looking for an app to keep track of your work outs, including running, walking or cycling, then you can not go wrong with Endomondo.  I have been using this app for awhile on my old BlackBerry and I always enjoyed seeing my cycling route after I have finished my workout and submitted my stats.  It provides details like distance, burned calories and average speed.  Very good app and worth buying the Pro version which has a battery saver feature.

Game Free – If you have a lot of video games, either for console or computer and you want to keep track of them all in a database then give this app a try.  It has a great built-in barcode scanner so all you have to do is scan in the barcode off your game box and as long as the barcode is in their database, all the details including box art will automatically be imported for you to save down.

GO Mobile – If you live in or around an area with GO Transit and you are someone who may require using that transit system then I strongly take a look at this app.  It was created in collaboration with Ryerson College and it really is a very nice, easy to use app for finding GO Transit information, both for train and bus routes.

ICSSync – This app is a paid app but does allow you to try it out for so many days.  What it does is it will connect to any server hosted calendar and can even allow you to make changes.  I am currently using it to import 4 different calendars, 2 of which are editable but unfortunately this app doesn’t seem to upload changes in a stable manner.  When I tried it earlier, it rendered my calendar file on my server inaccessible.  Luckily I have several computers using the same calendar and keeping a copy on the local machine for re-syncing in these types of situations.  I wrote a letter to the creator of this app informing him/her of the problem.  I hope to hear back soon.  If I do, I will post an update on the outcome.

Well, that is my first 5 app reviews that I enjoy having on my Android phone.  The next 5 will come in a couple of days so come back then to check it out.

I recently got back from my local Cineplex after watching Wrestlemania XXVIII (that’s 28 for those who do not know their roman numerals) and it was a blast.  The crowd in the theatre were quite vocal in their cheers of their favourite wrestlers, it really made the experience much more enjoyable.

The first match of the night was the World Heavyweight Championship match, an unusual way to start a pay per view but needless to say it was a shocking match.  How was it shocking, well it broke a record for the quickest match ever at a Wrestlemania event.  Sheamus had Daniel Bryan knocked out and pinned in…get this…18 seconds…yes you read that right, 18 seconds is all it took for Bryan to lose his title.

Big Show vs Cody Rhodes was a fairly good match.  It looked as if Cody was going to win and retain his belt by the way Cody was taking it to Big Show but Big Show came back hard and took out Cody with a right hand punch to the Cody face, knocking him out cold resulting in Big Show becoming an Intercontinental Champion.

Team Teddy vs Team Johnny.  I was rooting for Team Teddy to win and it looked like that was going to happen BUT that damn Eve, who came to ringside with Zack Ryder, got involved causing Team Teddy to lose the match.

Undertaker vs Triple H.  This match was a fairly vicious match with Triple H giving Undertaker multiple chair shots to the back over and over and over to the point where the special ref, HBK, was stepping in trying to convince Triple H to stop the chair shots.  Undertaker is not a young guy and you can see that by how much he is huffing and puffing after just a few minutes in to a match but I do have to give him credit for the amount of punishment he is able to absorb and still get back up, albeit slowly.  In the end it was Undertaker who won the match for the second time over Triple H.  I was really rooting for Triple H to win in hopes that would mean the end of Undertaker for good.  I don’t like wrestlers hanging around when they are struggling to keep up with the younger guys.

Rock vs Cena.  When trying to decide who the winner would be for this match, I could not confidently pick one because both of these wrestlers are great wrestlers, whether you like them or not plus given the huge popularity of both just makes it even harder to think who the WWE is going to make as the winner.  My initial thought was that the match would end in some kind of double disqualification, either by count out or them both going to far with beating each other up.  There was a victor however and that would end up being The Rock.  It will be interesting to see now if the Cena/Rock feud continues or whether the Rock disappears for another 7+ years.

Well, it’s late so I am ending my review here.  There were one or two other matches but they were not that memorable so I am not going to waste my time mentioning them.  If you want to know the results, go to http://wwe.com yourself.  While you are there, you can also check out the contest the WWE is running until May.  It is 1 of 100 prize packs to go see Wrestlemania XXIX (29) in New York, NJ.

Well, after roughly 6 1/2 months of using the BlackBerry Curve 9300 and getting fed-up with the constant low memory issues, I went over to my local Fido kiosk Friday night and purchased the Motorola RAZR XT910 using some of my accumulated Fido Dollars.

I am not going to run down comparisons between the BlackBerry and the XT910 like I did a bit when I replaced my broken iPhone 3G with the BlackBerry device.  The reason for this is simple, BlackBerry would get crushed by all the amazing features the XT910 has.

The XT910 from Fido comes with the Android operating system plus 42 pre-loaded applications.  Some applications appear to be duplicates, just made by a different company.  For instance there are 3 map apps, why anyone would want three is beyond me but I guess Motorola probably already had 1 or 2 installed when Fido added their own stuff.

Since Friday, I have probably added another 30+ apps.  I will review some of them in another post because this post is all about the phone.

The XT910 is a very thin phone, even thinner than the iPhone with exception in the area of the HD camera.  That area is about the same thickness at an iPhone.

Speed…OMG…This thing is pretty fast, even when app downloads and updates are going on in the background.  The dual core 1.2GHz processor really makes this phone fly.  Friday night, I was like a little kid, I received very little sleep because all my mind wanted to do was use the phone and check out all the greatness this phone has to offer.

The display on this baby is beautiful and it is nice to be back on a phone with a large screen.

One nice app that came pre-installed is the MotoPrint.  It allows you to print from the phone to a network printer.  Now not all printers are supported.  There are a total of 3 printers at my location but I can only setup 1 of them until I get the MotoPrint software installed on the computer hosting the other 2 printers.  I was also able to add my “Print to Adobe PDF” printer so if I create or edit an existing document using the pre-installed office app, I can save it to my main system in PDF format.

Another great feature is the MotoCast.  This allows you to access files on any Windows or Mac (sorry Linux, I guess Motorola hates you which is sad since Linux IS the better operation system) computer that has the MotoCast software installed.  What this means is no more constantly having to connect your phone to the computer just to sync up a song or photo.  It can now be done all through a wireless network.  Might even work through your carrier connection but I won’t be trying that, not with current cost of data plans.

Weather – It is always nice to be able to check the weather on a mobile device and the pre-loaded weather app on the XT910 is gorgeous compared to the Weather Eye app from The Weather Network.  When you tap the forecast on the home screen, the weather app opens up and you have this beautiful animated graphic indicating the weather outside underneath your weather details.  It allows both an auto follow setting or if you wish, you can also setup several saved locations.  Myself, I have added Niagara Falls to my saved location list so I can keep track of the weather closer to when friends and I will be heading there for 2nd annual bike ride.

Calendar – This pre-loaded app was a bit of a disappointment to me.  It comes off very blah and boring.  I would like to have seen a little more colour or flare in this.  The app itself has no option to add a network calendar so you need to use an app like ICSSync (review coming in a future post) to access and edit your network calendar.

Well I think that is it.  The only thing I do kind of miss from the BlackBerry is the physical keyboard.  Much easier to screw up your typing using a touch screen keyboard when your fingers are larger than a child.

Last post was my review on the dating site Match.com, today I will provide my personal opinion on another dating site called OKCupid.

Unlike Match.com, OKCupid is 100% free but unlike other dating sites, there is no forum which is fine with me since I am not much in to chatting in forums.

The colour scheme for OKCupid is very nice on the eyes and the layout is also pleasant.

There is a lot of questions to answer to help you narrow down your correct match.  Take note that when I say a lot of questions I do mean a lot, I am currently at 1100 questions answered.  There are duplicate questions because many people do not know how to read and thus are submitting duplicate questions.

Now if you are wondering if anyone has contacted me yet, the answer is yes but two days later her profile was deleted.  Not sure if she deleted it or the site administrators deleted it but either way it was a little depressing for me.

On top of the enormous amount of questions you can answer, there is also a fun section with many different fun tests you can participate in like “The Nerd? Geek? or Dork? Test”, “The Personality Defect Test” and “The Why Are You Single Test” plus many, many more.

Overall I give OKCupid two thumbs up and highly recommend it to anyone looking for an alternative dating site to what they are using now.

So last night I decided to see if there were other dating sites besides Plenty of Fish since most women on POF appear to be somewhat stuck-up, caring more on looks than what a person is like on the inside.

Thinking back to an episode of “The Big Bang Theory” where match.com was mentioned, I thought I would try there first.

The site is very easy to follow and the colour scheme is nice on the eyes.  Setting up a new profile is fairly simple but the moderators who decide if your personal description is approved or not must be on drugs for mine was approved then disapproved.  The exact reason is unknown the the disapprove notice e-mail I received listed a bunch of things that is not allowed.  The only thing that I could think of was mentioning that I grew up in Pickering and now reside in Oshawa.  Not sure why this would qualify a description as disapprove since you are forced to input your city during the account setup and anyone who views your profile will see the city name.

Match.com does have a Blackberry app which is also very simple to use.  I wish POF would hurry up and make one.

The downside to Match.com though is it’s subscription fees and the fact they do not provide any trial period to see if it will be worth the high cost they charge.  Their monthly fee is $35/month or you can save some money on a 3 month or 6 month contract BUT the catch is you must pay for all months up front so either way, if you are classified under the poverty line, you are basically not welcomed.  Without that subscription you can not do anything that would help you find that special someone.  For this low income earner, $10/month is a reasonable subscription fee, especially since there is no guarantee that you will actually find someone.

I will be closing my Match.com account since right now without being able to purchase their high subscription fees, my account is useless, wasted space basically.  To Match.com, think about everybody and not just how many cars and houses you can buy from your high subscription fees.

Hello everyone, yesterday with my Christmas money I decided to check out ebgames and purchased 4 previously played Wii games.  Those games are: Mortal Kombat Armageddon, Fling Smash, Ferrari Challenge and Active Life Outdoor Challenge.

Mortal Kombat: Armageddon

This game graphics is well done and can be used with 1 of 3 different types of controller.  I only have the single Wiimote and Nunchuk so I used this to play the game.  The game play seems very smooth and the controls appears to be quite simple, the hard part for me will of course keeping the buttons straight.  I have only done two arcade style matches, won the first one but was creamed in the second…very embarrassing. Webpage

FlingSmash

This game is really fun and probably one of the easiest games to play, all you have to do is swing the Wiimote to make your character move across the scrolling screen to wipe out the blocks in your path while avoiding the monster coming up behind you.  The game does require that you have either the Wii MotionPlus or the all-in-one WiimotePlus.  I believe this is a great game that everyone would enjoy playing.  Webpage

Active Life: Outdoor Challenge

If you read my last Wii Games Review about the game Active Life Explorer, you know just how much I loved that game because it makes exercising fun…well Outdoor Challenge is also a fun game to play for those wishing to lose weight and stay fit.  Just like Explorer, the game controller mat is required to play this game.  If you have kids who are putting on weight, get this or the Explorer game, it will help to get them in shape while still having fun. Webpage

Ferrari Challenge

Racing games have never been a big interest of mine because I usually suck at them and Ferrari Challenge is no different, good thing no real money is required to repair the damages I did to the car. Hehehe.  Maybe I will do better once I get myself a Wii steering wheel which I believe my local Dollarama sells.  Webpage