The Subtlety of Grandness

I was using Windows 7 RC for the past month, and unfortunately the trick that I found on the Internet to re-arm it after the 30-day evaluation period doesn’t work, at least not for the release candidate. So I’m back to Vista for the next month or two, depending on when I bite the bullet on Windows 7. Vista’s not as bad as Apple and others make it out to be, but it’s nowhere near as good as 7. The sheer fact that I’ve had to sit and wait 10 minutes for Vista to shut down in order to reboot and install updates makes me remember why 7 rocks so much. It’s just so much better than Vista in every area.

This was on the way back from Dallas a couple of years ago. I think I’m happiest with a window seat and a clear day.

The view from an MD-80 somewhere over the American Southwest.

Ouch, you’re in trouble when the offensive and defensive lines don’t show up. Meanwhile, Locker looked flustered for the first time in years and kept throwing picks, special teams broke down, and the problems just kept cascading. With that said, as bad as the D and the O played, if we don’t throw the pick at the goal line, or fumble on the third down early, it’s a totally different game. Gotta take care of the football.

On the good side, absolutely perfect night for football, and Stanford Stadium is very nice; I like how it feels like it’s in the middle of a forest. Even the parking lots are heavily wooded.

More squirrel photos. The little guys were everywhere when I went through Golden Gate Park this morning.

Am I evil if I can’t help but think of this section from The Joy of Cooking?

On another note, I can’t get Wicked Blood or You’re a Wolf out of my head. Amazing songs.

Comic Sans? Really?

Man, Fox College Sports needs to really put a few dollars into the marketing team, because it has the exclusive on a pretty big Pac 10 game featuring a ranked team and this is the best it could do? Seriously? Seriously?

Thanks to some leftover promotional credit I picked up Sea Wolf’s sophomore album for just under $4 at Amazon’s MP3 store. I heard the first track, Wicked Blood, on the radio this weekend and it hooked me. It also helped that I was listening to my music library on the bus earlier today and realized that I’m in desperate need of new tunes; I haven’t picked up anything new in months and months. My big Metric binge is finally starting to taper off; I still heart Emily Haines and Fantasies remains an awesome album, but there’s only so many times I can listen to Gimme Sympathy. Meanwhile, I was sort of disappointed in Bishop Allen’s Grrrr…

I also heard the new song from Florence and the Machine and it sounds interesting, but haven’t bit the bullet on it quite yet.

A new season of television and nothing really tantalizing out there. Battlestar Galactica is over. House is back (yay), but totally underwhelmed by everything else. ABC is trying too hard with Flash Forward and Modern Family; I now have no real interest in watching them. Plus, in the case of Flash Forward, I’m not enamored of gimmicky premises. That’s one reason I don’t like Lost, but the other is that I think J.J. Abrams is a hack. Never liked Heroes, and from what I understand even its fans aren’t happy with it, either. Grey’s Anatomy was pure joy in the first three seasons, but it went downhill fast (plus, Addison should have never have left; Kate Walsh is a goddess wasted on the lameness that is Private Practice.) NBC’s Mercy debuted tonight and I gave it a try; lead Taylor Schilling is absolutely lovely and a fresh face, but I don’t buy her being an Iraq veteran and it felt just like another hospital procedural. Note to network executives: I really don’t need another police/hospital/legal procedural.

What’s the point of having a gleaming 50-inch plasma and HD service if there’s nothing good to watch? Argh.

Come on HBO, greenlight Game of Thrones already. Let’s show the world that fantasy can be for grown-ups.

Picked up Halo 3: ODST tonight; currently on the Buck portion of the campaign, but thus far I’m totally underwhelmed. I really hope they bring in some vehicles or something, because this feels like a generic shooter. It just doesn’t scream epic or heroic; it’s just stumble around a “city” for a few hours and take down small groups of Covenant at a time. Sort of like Wolfenstein, but not quite as lame.

Maybe I’m just bitter now that Bungie has given everyone Recon Armor in multiplayer. They gave me Recon Armor two years ago, and let me tell you, it was the greatest.thing.ever while it lasted. You have no idea how much I was offered for it over the years. It was awesome because it was so rare. But now, not so much. It’s a bit like when the Army decided to give everyone the black berets of the Rangers, so that every soldier could feel elite. Only problem is that when you give it to everyone it loses all meaning. Sort of like giving everyone an A++ with extra smiley stickers just for showing up. The Rangers naturally flipped out, so the Army gave them a tan beret so they could stand out once more. Never mind that tan is a suckier color than black any day of the week, and twice more on Sundays.

Update: Played a Firefight match with my kid brother and a couple of his buddies and, ugh, I’m not sure how many times I can do that. Our first attempt and it goes for an hour and three minutes and forty-four seconds. And, somehow, our score of 190,000 is still short of “par.” There really is such a thing as too much, and Firefight may be a perfect example of this. It’s not so much a multiplayer mode as it is an endurance test; it’s nonstop with no breaks or timeouts. There are only so many times we’ll be wiling to tackle that. We know we can get through the first hour, but do we really want to play through that again just to take another stab at the second?

I was taking a loop around the island in the middle of Stow Lake this morning and this squirrel just brazenly darts up to me. I got down on a knee and he waited expectantly. Unfortunately, I didn’t have anything, save for my iPhone in camera mode. Note to self: Next time, bring peanuts.

I fears no humanz.

I can haz cheezberger nau?

Too good.