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  Moxie’s Coffee Break

September 15, 2006

Primed for TV!

Greetings Coffee Breakers! I hope these chilly rainy days are treating you well. Yes, the days are getting shorter and the leaves are beginning to litter the ground (well here anyways) but we do have some things to look forward to! Football (Go Seahawks!), the holidays, and a slew of great movies and television shows. It seems like my fall is gonna be uber-busy and then there's all the gaming I need to fit in!

Unlike some people I actually love Mondays. One reason is because I love my job and another is because I know a week full of new television shows is coming my way. Reality shows are a guilty pleasure that I sometimes indulge in (Michael for the "Project Runway" win!) but I'm definitely addicted to those hour long suspenseful dramas. They really suck you in and make your brain go into overdrive. How is Jack Bauer gonna get out of this predicament? Why is there a polar bear on a tropical island? If I had to make a dress out of flowers how would I do it? Okay, they don't make you think deep thoughts…but they definitely get your mind working. Once the hour ends I usually groan after the cliffhanger and start spewing theories about what the preview for next week means.

I'm looking forward to the return of my favorite shows this fall and I'm hoping some of the new ones will be pretty cool too. I'm a big fan of "Lost" (The Others are up to no good), "The Gilmore Girls (chatty over-caffeinated ladies - how could I not love them?) and "The Amazing Race" (look for Seattle in the season premiere!). As for new shows, I’m hoping "Heroes" will live up my high expectations. Who doesn't want to suddenly discover they have super powers? I think I would like to have the ability to control time…or flight…or telepathy. Oh, I can't decide!

Another great thing about television these days is that more and more television shows are using the Internet as an outlet. There are blogs by characters, web sites for fictional companies and webisodes that engage you in a whole different way. It's pretty smart and definitely entertaining for the fans. Do you think any people working at "The Office" play games in their spare time? I'm thinking they do. They had to prepare for that casino night somehow!

Pop Rocks

Due to my obsession with TV and all things pop culture I tend to visit our Pop Culture games quite often. I love our celebrity trivia (Prime Time TV trivia? Got em all right!), JEOPARDY! OutSmart and our newest edition to the MSN Games roster – Pop 5 Live by Cranium!

Cranium is a pretty cool company. I've been playing their games since they started popping up in a certain coffee chain I frequent. My family and I usually bust out their games during our get-togethers (we're all competitive pop culture junkies) and my niece and nephew make me play Hulaboo until I'm at the point of exhaustion. MSN Games teamed up with Cranium to bring you a game that won't require as much physical activity. Pop 5 Live incorporates a bunch of fun games like Pictionary and charades and puts a cool twist on it. Watch the videos of people drawing, sculpting, humming and acting and try to guess what pop culture entity they're trying to describe. Some of them are pretty tough but I must say I am becoming a master of Pop 5 Live! As of now, my top score is 291 and although that's not a mastery level 10 score I'm certainly shooting for those high honors! 

I encourage you to submit your own Pop 5 Live video! And let me know if they get accepted, I would love to see my readers get their 60 seconds of fame. Also, I've heard rumors that the MSN Games folk will be submitting videos of their own. I'm totally up for that! So if you play Pop 5 enough, you might just catch a glimpse of Moxie in the future.

And on that note, I would just like to address the post in the forums where someone claimed that I "resigned." I'm still here and I'm gaming and writing 'til my little fingers can't take it no more. I have neglected my blog and I'm definitely gonna start blabbing on there more so you'll have a more frequent gaming report.  

M-O-X-I-E = Major Points

Check out what I just got in my inbox!



How great is that? My co-worker spelled out Moxie in her game of Scrabble Blast and she scored a whopping 68 points!  That probably helped a bunch in her quest to win the Spelling Bee badge!

Tech Time

Attention Ladies and Gentlemen, we have an issue and we're addressing it. Here's a question from MSN Games player Abi:

When I sign in for playing bridge online I get the following message. "You have reached this page due to errors in your authentication." I already tried all the possibilities of troubleshooting. What can I do to fix this problem?

Okay, so we have no easy fix for this at the moment. We are investigating the issue and we hope to have a solution soon. In the meantime, if you receive this error please email us at zmaster@microsoft.com and we'll supply some directions to help you out.


See you next time!