It's raining in Los Angeles, and we're proving once again that we have no idea how to drive in any kind of wheather other than sunny.



Maybe on this afternoon's drive home, I'll finish all 9 of those CD's I talked about in today's earlier post. Yee-haw.

I recently moved to a very nice home in a very nice area. At the same time, I inherited a commute to work that some have commented as “insane.” The bastards; they’re right.

After listening to talk radio for the past 3 months, I can tell you that I have heard more about politics than any person should consume. I’m also convinced that both presidential candidates are complete dolts. Worse than the candidates are the talk shows that I tuned into to get away from the shows about politics only to find hosts wax on about their own politics. Ugh. The only politician I’m convinced is actually working for the people is Schwarzenegger, who regularly breaks from his own party's view to vote his concious. Who knew?

In an effort to find something else to listen to during the drive, I found two excellent resources: ITConversations.com and Audible.com.

ITConversations is a really great site that releases various recordings on a variety of technology topics. The best part is that the site is absolutely free, and judging by the first 3 recordings I’ve listened to, the content is outstanding. If you’re interested in sampling one of these recordings, I’d recommend the interview with Joel Spolsky if you’re a programmer type, and Wil Wheaton if you’re just a geek type. By the way, Wheaton’s audio tape doesn’t get that interesting until 20 minutes or so into it; your patience will be rewarded.

Audible.com allows you to download audio books and burn them to CD. For $19.95 a month, you can download 2 full books each month. That didn’t sound like a lot of content initially since I really have never listened to audio books. I can tell you that the first book I downloaded and burned is fully 9 CD’s. That’s a lot of driving I can now look forward to. As a bonus, you can get a sweet little mp3 player for free for signing up. I received mine yesterday, but haven’t had a chance to play with it, but I love the form factor.

In the end, I’m finally looking forward to the drive rather than dreading it!

To believe the lunacy of both presidential campaigns currently being fought, you might think that everyone is completely focused on becoming as politically correct as possible. Thankfully, Mr. Matt Ouimet, President of Disneyland, has made some command decisions to move away from his predecessors focus on not offending anyone.

The change I’m most excited about is the return of the pistols to the Jungle Cruise (free registration required). Yes, the Jungle Cruise is campy, and yes, I can see the point about why they removed the guns in the first place, even though I don’t agree with the decision. However, to my 5 year old, the Jungle Cruise is complete fantasy, and the illusion that we’re in danger of the hippos attacking may not be entirely real to her, but it definitely is exciting.

Thanks Mr. Ouimet for making these changes, and for allowing my kids to see Disneyland the way that I saw it at their age.

Angels vs. Red Sox

Last night, I had the opportunity to take in Game 2 of the American League Division Series between the Anaheim Angels and the Boston Red Sox. I went with my colleague, John, and we headed down to the ballpark a bit early to avoid the heavy traffic that was prevalent at Game 1.

While we sat in our seats and enjoyed a few drinks, the Red Sox were taking batting practice. Apparently, they liked zipping baseballs in my direction, because I was able to snag two balls! I gave one to John and kept the other one.

Free Souvenirs!

After an hour or so the game festivities began. There were quite a few Red Sox fans in the stands. While they were very intense, 99% of them were very well mannered. We even had one Boston fan wish us luck before the game. Needless to say, I was pretty impressed with these folks. More fans should be like this. It really allows everyone to enjoy the game that much more. That’s not to say there weren’t some incidents in the stands, but the majority of fans were cordial to each other.

Bart

Bartolo Colon started for our Angels, and threw a pretty good game. In the end, the Angels bullpen let them down, but quite frankly, the Red Sox are a very good team and assuming they get past the Angles in this series, I fully expect them to win a ring. It would be well deserved. It was a long game; almost 4 hours.

As I left the stadium thinking that was the last baseball game we’ll see in person until April 2005. A very sour thought.

I'm in the market for a home office chair, now that I've furnished my home office with a sweet setup from workspaces.com. Of course, I have to at least consider an Areon chair, but they're just so damn expensive (e.g. $600). While poking around on the web, I found this site that points out the pitfalls of the Areon chair. You need to take a look at the movies though. They're classic!

I have been eagerly awaiting this November since I spent some time at e3 this year. If you’ve ever been to this amazing conference, you’ll find at least 10 different games that are coming the future that will have you salivating. Well, it happens that most of those games that I am eagerly awaiting are all coming out in November. What are they?

Rollercoaster Tycoon 3

Rollercoaster Tycoon 3—I’m embarrassed at the amount of time I’ve spent playing the predecessors. If you didn’t know, you can download the demo for this right now! I’m very impressed with what I’ve seen so far. The fireworks shows are really cool!

Half-Life 2—A sequel to one of the best First Person Shooters ever made, and it looks like it will be a worthy sequel at that. Hopefully released before Christmas.

Pirates!

Pirates!—A remake of another game I sunk untold amounts of time into on the Commodore 64. At the time that this game made its debut, I had several friends that owned a Commodore 64. All of us, without exception, love the original game. The update has kept much of the core game play and added quite a bit as well. The demonstration at e3 was striking. The real appeal of this game is the open ended play, and the fact that it is never the same game twice.

Halo 2—The definitive FPS for the Xbox. While the PC has been shining for years in the FPS arena, Halo was the first FPS that really demonstrated the high quality that PC users have enjoyed. Halo 2 introduces a lot of new game play aspects and is heavily concentrated on multiplayer play over Xbox Live. Fragalistic.

World of Warcraft—This is it. I’m swearing off MMORPG’s for good if this game doesn’t capture my attention. The developers have to find a way to make a game that appeals to people like me who like to play for a few hours at a time and feel like we’ve accomplished something. If that doesn’t happen, then I refer them to the above list because I’ll be spending my time in other games.

If I had to pick one of these games to be the highest on my anticipated list, it would absolutely be Pirates. Hands down. I plan on disappearing from the planet for many days when that game is released.

With the above in mind, I’ve been trying my best to get the important things in life done in October before this crop of games arrives. I cannot remember a time where I have been more excited about this many releases at once. It’s going to be a great Winter!

Oh, and the Angels need to find a way to win tonight! That last game was embarrassing. Go Halos!

This article is a must read for anyone in the software development world. My favorite quote: "If there is a Michael Jordan of hacking, no one knows, including him."