Batched
New job, all the attendant new job ramp-up stuff; total wild west; nutshell: way busy.
Randomly noted:
- Watched Hero the other night: better than Crouching Tiger. Thirteen is like a watered-down LA version of Kids; would have been an awesome afterschool special, but with more crying and hugging.
- The Audiovox SMT5600 is all that. I ported my Verizon number over to AT&T last week even the VZW is nearly unrivaled for signal/voice quality in Manhattan. Until they figure out the data and phone part of the mobility equation, I'll give my money to AT&T/Cingular.
- Mack Brown needs a good cry. Cal and Auburn got jobbed. I hope Utah destroys Pitt and I've added a reminder to watch whatever the bowl game Louisville plays Boise St. Like 911 in your town, the BCS is a joke--I make this statement without even considering the ridiculous upside a playoff would bring (no, no, it's not workable, those folks in Divisions IAA, II and III aren't really having meaningful playoff brackets every postseason and still managing to graduate their athletes...)
- Speaking of Division II, I hereby proclaim that my brother, Jeff, is the best punter in all of the D2 land (not just his conference). Sure I'm biased. There's one guy with a higher gross average, but Jeff put 17 of 40 punts inside the opponents 20 this year with only two touchbacks. The difference in gross average between the #1 and #2 guys is negligible once you factor out how many punts the other other guy blew out the back of the endzone and the three he had blocked. So, I take the guy who's more accurate and has a 10% higher *net* average (on an inferior team)--but hey, who wouldn't take their little brother over some other guy? :)
- The Seaport Food Court (SFC) is my gold standard for Manhattan third places. Starbucks is a solid option if it's a bigger unit with some decent seating options, but I personally love SFC. It helps that it's a five-minute walk. Free wireless, great views. Lots of foreign language white noise.
- Autolux. So good. New Luda. Ehhh.
- Lost got added to Replay a couple weeks ago. It's not truly good TV imo, but the plotting is pretty good for TV. I took a lot of heat for adding House too (after the usual gratuitous Fox midseason promo barrage), but I wanted to see what Bryan Singer's involvement meant. It's pretty decent. Maybe I just have low expecations for broadcast programming.
- The Wire is the show I most look forward to showing up in Replay.
- Dell widescreen flat-panel, 2005FPW: very happy. I had plenty of screen real estate with 3 monitors at 1280 x 1024. Widescreen makes a difference, particularly if you spend enough of your day in things like Visual Studio, Visio, Enterprise Architect, etc. It didn't take long for me to decide to add another 2005FPW and drop down to two monitors at 1680 x 1050. Less aggregate pixels, more productive configuration. (I ultimately end up using monitors 2 and 3 for secondary tasks and parking. I figure I just need one secondary monitor for doing so, particularly if I can park stack multiple windows side x side onscreen). The 2005FPW can be had for less than $600 if you find the right Dell promo or coupon code. It's brighter and sharper than the 2 ViewSonic VG191b's I already had, although I still think those are great monitors in their own right.
- I can't decide between CodeRush and Resharper. I tend to switch back and forth. CR seems like it will approximate most of the refactoring behavior with their add-on product, but R# still does this better and has better secondary functions. That said, the CR intellisense and templates keep me coming back over and over.
- Virtual Server 2005: way of the future. I've been using it for various build, staging and test servers over the course of the last two months and it's been solid. I think I'm headed towards a model where one monolithic piece of hardware is going to run 90% of the local infrastructure. At HP, I was amazed at how many enterprises were putting their datacenter eggs in the virtualization basket, but it's starting to make more practical sense as I find my own uses for it. Still having some SuSE networking issues though.