Dude: ‘Oh, Eragon, that is that dragon movie. Have you seen it?’
Woman: (must have shaken her head ‘no’, as I didn’t hear anything)
Dude: ‘Oh, I think it comes out on Friday. Yeah, it has a dragon in it. Kinda like Dragonheart, but this dragon doesn’t talk.’
Woman: chuckles

I keep catching bits of their conversation and at one point the woman points out, in a very motherly way, ‘well, it is your money’. And the guy giggles back ‘Yeah, it is.’

So I have to check these two out and it turns out to be a mom and her son, where the son looks way too old to be in this game store with his mother having this conversation.

However, this doesn’t top the time a kid was bringing back a game, claiming he had no idea it was an ‘adventure’ game. He thought it was a ‘fighting’ game. He didn’t know it was an ‘adventure’ game, otherwise he wouldn’t have bought it. This went on for a good five to ten minutes and plenty loud enough for the whole store to hear. It also prompted my friend Greg and I to proclaim things like..

“I thought this was a fighting ball of yarn, but it turns out it is just an adventure ball of yarn. What a let down.”

Anyway, you have to admire that sort of confidence. He knows what he likes and he doesn’t care who hears about it. He’ll broadcast it to the moon if he has to. He does not, by any means, like adventure games. That is all there is to it. Period!

I have to put this all in perspective though. I was the 33 year old guy huntched over the DS Lite station playing Elite Beat Agents and getting pretty psyched about it. So I guess I don’t have too much room to talk here. At least I didn’t bring my mother.

For starters, the Wii-mote fits very naturally into your hand with your thumb directly over the ‘A’ button and your finger comfortably on the underside trigger. Controlling the on-screen cursor felt intuitive and made navigating around the system very easy. I have been a little concerned with reports of inaccurate pointing of the controller, but I found that once you located the cursor on the screen, it was pretty simple to move it where you needed it to go. Whether or not this will translate well when shooting arrows in Zelda remains to be seen. Figuring out the controls of Excite Truck took a couple minutes. Once I had the controller properly tilted and got a feel for the sensitivity of the turns, using the Wii-mote like a steering wheel felt pretty comfortable.

I have to admit that I have had a twinge of skepticism about the Wii and the ‘next-generation’ controls. I have been trying to calm myself with thoughts of the DS and how silly I thought that large second touch screen would be and just how brilliant it turned out. Trust Nintendo, I tell myself, remember to trust Nintendo.

By all this I mean to say, I cannot wait until November 19th!

That is right, as soon as they were available, I was in line to buy a new iPod shuffle. I couldn’t help myself, so small and metallic and that clip..brilliant! I really think that the clip is the selling point to this little device. Without the clip, it’s likely to get lost in your pocket or end up in your bowl full of loose change, only to be found years later when you are rummaging around for a quarter. Anyway, how about my impressions so far.

My initial reaction is that it is super small. So small that whenever I show it to someone their first reaction is a comment about it’s size (or lack thereof). It is hard to believe that this is a 1 gigabyte music player. The aluminum shell is very smooth and it feels very solid, in the lightest way possible. The audio quality is great and it is easy to navigate the controls with a single hand.

I bought this mainly for walking the dog while listening to podcasts. I used it on a walk this evening and it performed beautifully. I easily adjusted the volume as we approached busy streets, fast-forwarded through commercials and could pause the audio when I needed to speak to someone along the way. It’s like have a remote control for an iPod without the bulk of the actual iPod.

As I said before, the clip is the most brilliant aspect of this device. The original shuffle was cool, but what are you going to do with it? Put it in your pocket? Wear it like a necklace? With this thing, you just clip it on your pocket and you’re off.

My only disappointment with it is the way iTunes syncs music. For some reason, it will not autofill podcasts, only music. This means manually dragging the podcasts I want on the player each time I head out. Not a deal-breaker, but not the most convenient.

All in all, I am very happy with my purchase and look forward to many walks with the dog with the sounds of twit.tv pod..er..netcasts filling my ears.

Update: I have found that you can autofill podcasts. What you have to do is uncheck the ‘Skip When Shuffling’ option for the podcasts. Unfortunately, all the podcasts that you download from iTunes have this option already checked, so you would have to uncheck it for each new podcast. I will probably stick to the manual transfer method.

Highlights included:

• Jason and Kori joining them on stage near the end of their set
• Ben playing small drum set and dualing it out with the band’s drummer
• Watching people hold up their illuminated cell phones during ballads
• The security guard making the stoners, in front of us, put out their joint
• Looking around and realizing just how much mainstream success this band has achieved

The bad part of the show was missing all of the Mates set except for the last two songs. When they say the show starts at 7pm, the show starts at 7pm. Not to worry though, we will catch them the next time they are through.

After the show we were tired and hungry and found a nice coffee/sandwich shop that was open until 1am and served veggie burgers and fries. The perfect end to the evening.

Anyway, rumor is that Andrew fired Amanda for wanting to take the show west, but Andrew’s story is that Amanda quit. Confused yet? Well, the whole blogoshpere is talking. The word is that Andrew has a new host and there will be a new show on Monday, July 10th.

Time for my prediction, I am thinking this is all staged. They now have so much publicity that even ‘old media‘ news outlets are picking up the story. Andrew has held firm that there will be a show on July 10th, so, of course, they will probably have one of their highest viewership ever on that day. I am thinking that Amanda will be on the show, maybe by crashing in on the new host, and the whole thing turns out to be related to a brand-new sponsor. Oh yeah, they have been making some good money off advertising lately.

There you have it. That is my predicition. Come back on Monday afternoon to either tell me how wrong I was or how right.

Update: Well, after a few days of stalling, it looks like Rocketboom is back and it looks like I was wrong. I have to say that I think that Joanne did a great job and I loved the opening bits with the tomatoes and Andrew catatonic on the floor. Good form. I look forward to seeing more from the crew at RB!

We have had almost non-stop rain in the Santa Rosa area for the past few weeks and it is starting to get old. I think I have heard all the ‘time to build an arc’-type jokes I can stomach for one year. You can tell that everyone was getting a little stir crazy because there are so many people bustling around today. And, apparently, people with loud motorcycles have more post-rain frustration saved up than the rest of us.

Could this be the beginning of spring? I sure hope so. It is nice to wear short sleeves again.

Anyway, the dentist poked and prodded and, once again, gave me a clean bill of health. So now I leave the dentist thinking how I will change my dental hygiene and floss everyday.. no, twice a day. Ok, who am I kidding, once a day. I will maintain this healthy mouth and never have a cavity again. It is like I have a new lease on life. I’m cavity-free!

Then, three months down the road I will fall into my old, lazy flossing habits and the cycle with spin around once again. So, the next time you see me, remind me to floss.

Well, my friends, you are in the right place and I am changing up this site … again. This seems to happen every few months. I revise my blog, let it stagnate, test out a new CMS (wordpress, this time) and relaunch. However, this time I am going to do it a little differently. I am starting off with this here, default template and will evolve the site. First of all, I will try to post more than once every three months. Then, I will add a structure to the information with XHTML. Finally, it will be time for the CSS and all the goodness that goes with it.

I see the two of you, um, three of you saying ‘Just throw in the towel, a blog is obviously not for you.’ And that is where you might be right, but I simply have this urge to build a site and maintain it. So, I am not giving up. Especially when I have some great blog designs to keep me motivated.

Anyway, if I didn’t have this nagging desire to create a nice-looking blog, what else would I spend my time not doing?