It’s Thursday morning, and I’m anxiously awaiting the Mitchell Report, which is due out 2 p.m. E.S.T., or in about 20 minutes. There’s a leaked report making the rounds right now, but I think I’ll just wait for the official report.
Some things I’ll be curious to see:
- names of players(obviously)
- sources and evidence of use
- types of steroid/substance abuse
I do hope this cleans up the game of baseball, but I’m not very happy about the government’s “role” in this. I really think they should stay out of this; you know, stick to doing government things.
Posted in: baseball, sports.
If you’re not familiar with a t.v. show called Aqua Teen Hunger Force, you should be; it’s hilarious. One of my favorite characters is Carl, the neighbor. Here’s a video of his take on the College Football BCS and the New York Giants football team. Thanks Chad for the pointer.
Posted in: athf, humor.
One month is way to long between blog posts. I’ll have to make sure not to wait that long, because then I’m forced to squish way to many things into one or two posts and either throw out or forget a lot of the content.
I’ve been quite busy lately. Besides normal work stuff, I have:
We also got to briefly meet Tom Lehman, pro golfer in the PGA. Very nice guy.
Happy Thanksgiving!
Posted in: Uncategorized.
It’s been an interesting week in the world of high-profile musicians and record labels. In case you haven’t heard, a handful of artists have decided to dump their record label and go it alone. Radiohead was the first, deciding to release their latest album sans third party record label, and offered a digital download directly from their website. The coolest part? You decide how much you want to pay. I paid four pounds(about eight dollars) for mine. I normally wouldn’t voluntarily pay this much for an mp3 download, especially for a relatively low-quality bitrate(160 Kbps), no album art, etc., but I’ve gotta give props to Thom and the crew for taking such a leap.
Other artists have begun to follow suit, including:
- Nine Inch Nails
- Jamiroquai
- Oasis
- Madonna
These artists have yet to report how they plan on distributing their music. I’m definitely anxious to see what unfolds. The only bad thing about the route that Radiohead took is that it will likely overshadow the actual quality of the album, albeit a trivial point considering.
I’ve come to loathe music with DRM – that’s Digital Rights Management; follow the link for more info about what it is, and why it seriously sucks. In short, it’s basically a way to prevent digital media – music in this case – from being copied without the distributor’s consent. It makes it a real pain in the ass for people who simply want to easily transfer music they already own to other devices like mp3 players or other computers in the house. There seems to be more and more action around DRM lately, such as the new Amazon DRM-free mp3 downloads store. I still think 1$ for a song(iTunes) is too much, but if it were DRM-free, I may re-consider.
I’m anxious to see what unfolds ff big artists continue this trend of dropping their record labels. Will Radiohead divulge sales numbers? If they’re successful, would it be simply because they were the first? If this continues, will there be a simple, cheap and scalable platform for future artists who wish to distribute digital music?
Posted in: music.
My wonderful wife Melissa just accepted a new position as Director of Development for the Girls Middle School in Mountain View, CA. She’s really excited about the new opportunity, and I’m really proud of her for such an achievement. She starts officially on October 22nd.
I’m excited to see all the great things she’ll accomplish for the school. Congratulations!
Posted in: Uncategorized.
I’ve been back for just over a week, over jet lag and back in the swing of things. I had a great time during my trip, but I’m glad to be back home. 
A few things I missed:
- My wife
- My iphone – it works in other countries, but the international rates are criminal
- SportsCenter – not the European version.
- Beer – KingFisher and Royal Challenge aren’t my favorites.
- The weather
To name a few.
Posted in: Uncategorized.
Got back from Delhi around 2 pm. My flight leaves tonight at 11:45 pm, so I’ve got a few hours to kill.
Delhi and Agra were cool, and the Taj was awesome. It’s so impressive on so many levels. No point in me regurgitating a bunch of info that’s already been written a thousand times; go read about the Taj Mahal on Wikipedia if you’d like. I will, however, post pictures I took that have no doubt been taken millions of times. The pic shown above, for example.
You’ll probably hear from me once again upon my return to the US.
Posted in: India, travel.
I’m headed to Delhi for the weekend to check out the Taj Mahal – can’t wait. When I return on Sunday, I’ll need to pack up because my flight home departs at 11:45 pm that night. Send some good weather karma my way.
For anyone who hasn’t gone and might go in the future, there’s three options to get there:
- Fly to Agra. It’s a small airport and they don’t have many flights, so you may be out of luck, depending on which airport you’re coming from and how far in advance you book your flight.
- Fly to Delhi and:
- Take a train to Agra – make sure you get your train ticket in advance, it sells out quick;
- Take a taxi to Agra – I’ve heard this will take at least three hours, possibly more depending on traffic. It’s also more expensive than the train.
- Drive to Agra. So, if you’re driving a car yourself, in India, then I hope you’re from India originally which means you know what your doing. If you’re not from India, don’t drive a car here. Please. And depending on where you’re driving from, this could be a loooooong drive.
Looking forward to posting some nice pics upon my return.
Posted in: India, travel.
Feel like killing some time? Great. Read on.
The following games are extremely addictive and will most certainly result in a massive, non-productive black hole once you begin. I’m glad we’ve cleared that up.
All of these games have been around for a while, so there’s a good chance you’ve seen one or two(or three – slackers!). The first one is my favorite; i.e., I’ve spent youdontevenwanttoknowhowmany hours playing.
object of the game: kill the creeps as they run across your desktop by designing the best defense system y0u can.
Go ahead, I dare you. If you decide to check this game out before reading the rest of this post, well then I’ll just plan on not hearing from you for a while. My best score was 7043 on ‘medium’ difficulty, back in version 1.02. Looks like they have new versions out; great.
object of the game: get the block into the hole using the least amount of moves possible.
I think I’ve only got up to about level 14 or so, need to put in some more time. Easy game to pick up. Just use the arrow keys to move the block around. It also has a cool and easy to follow set of instructions at the beginning.
object of the game: shoot the target with the gun.
You have a gun, and a target. The twist here are these gravity pods scattered between you and the target, which will either push or pull your shot, depending on how close your shot comes to the pod. I forget which level I got stuck on.
Posted in: games.
Eating in India has been fun. I’ve never had real Indian food(I’m not counting samosas at work), and I usually enjoy new types of cuisine. We stuck with the places which were recommended to us by previous Googlers, or by the local drivers who take us everywhere we need to go.
Here’s a run-down of the different Indian restaurants I’ve tried so far:
- Our Place – An open air restaurant with great Indian food. We got there a bit before the restaurant opened, which meant we were subjected to the mosquito fumigation fog while being seated. No big deal. The surroundings were really nice, with lots of plants and grass. It was my first Indian meal. I feel like we must have tried half of the menu
- Fusion9 – Features a mix of several different cuisines; everything from Italian to Indian to Chinese to Thai. A nice, up-scale place with great food and full bar. I’ve tried the Thai chicken curry and the chicken tikka masala, both were excellent.
- Angeethi – A themed restaurant; Northern Indian cuisine, and very spicy. This was the spiciest meal I’ve had so far during my trip. It was also very good. One of their specialties which we tried is skewered chicken, among other things. They bring the chicken out on a big sword-shaped skewer, and slide it onto your plate.
- Taj Krishna – One of the fanciest hotels in the city, with a wonderful buffet served on Sundays. We had the buffet, which was very good and very expensive; the most expensive meal so far. It was nice to take a break from the Indian food with other things like broccoli grautin, sauteed mushrooms and artichokes, etc.
- Ginger Court – Your standard Indian cuisine, which we ordered for delivery to the office. I particularly enjoyed their stuffed naan and dal tadka.
Anywhere we go, it’s recommended we try the biryani, which is a type of spiced rice dish. Hyderabad is famous for their biryani. I think it’s good, but I’m more of a bread fan, so naturally I love most of the naan. I think Fusion9 had my favorite so far, but most of them have been great.
Update: the above are all Hyderabad restaurants, as opposed to the entire country of India.
Posted in: India, food, travel.
