About halfway through it I was thinking that a lot of the story seemed sort of real and then looked it up and found out that it’s based on a real expedition that was sort of a big deal in the 1800s. I didn’t want to spoil it for myself so I stopped reading things online about it. But after I finished I consumed a bunch of book reviews and then browsed some historical articles. Anyway, I stumbled upon a forum of apparently sophisticated people (think: the exact opposite of YouTube commenters) sharing actual coherent thoughts online. And none of them shared the experience of not knowing it was based on a true story. I’m basically that guy that was surprised by the ending of The Perfect Storm. Never going back to that message board.

But as I said, I bought the book a couple years ago and never read more than a paragraph of it until a couple of months ago if I remember correctly. My brother Dan said it was one of the best books he’s read and I remember him staying up pretty late to finish it months ago. And he’s right, it’s really really good. It’s only based on a true story, so like Steven Conrad taking The Pursuit of Happyness and making the slight change of Chris Gardner’s son from a toddler to a five-year-old, Dan Simmons took similar liberty and threw in a hyperintelligent monster polar bear.

And it all works. Eventually you realize the terror isn’t any one thing, it’s everything involved in the expedition that’s trying to kill the sailors: bears, cold, starvation, Eskimos, scurvy, etc. And the most interesting parts are the descriptions of day to day life. Dreary. And cold. For instance, don’t take your gloves off and touch your gun barrel or it’s goodbye skin and chunks of flesh.

My favorite thing about the four Dan Simmons novels I read previously was that he was able to create intricate worlds and tie timelines and different perspectives together. It really blew my mind that one person could think of it all and make anything cohesive out of it. This book has the multiple timelines and character perspectives. But the difference, as mentioned earlier, is that it’s set on Earth and based on reality. You can literally take any sailor’s name out of the book and find it on a real list from the actual expedition, with things matching like age and rank. And the major characters bring up a whole lot of results on Google. Even better, you can do a Google image search and find images of some of their mummified bodies. Dan Simmons weaves it all together and fills the seams in creatively. Great read.

Crazy to see Favre out there and realize that he got farther in the playoffs more than a decade later. Also, if you thought T.O. was acting during the “That’s my quarterback.” thing, then watch him cry for real after the catch.

Update: I posted this before I watched it all. But if you check it out, make sure to skip to 53:00 and prepare for your mind to be blown. If I saw this in person at a club or something, I’d cheer and high five my friends for approximately an hour afterward. Actually, I’ll just embed it here.

From basically the end of summer.

I pretty much liked all the teams that played today, probably in this order: Colts, Vikings, Saints, Jets. I’m happy with the Super Bowl matchup. I’ll be rooting for the Colts but I definitely wouldn’t mind seeing New Orleans the city celebrating a Super Bowl win. I’m such a fence sitter—don’t worry, it sickens me too.

Dan is in Japan

My brother is working in Japan for a couple months. I haven’t had a chance to talk to him much, so I have no idea where the hell he took this picture, but it cracks me up. Mostly because it’s ridiculous, but also because it reminds me of one of the best Arrested Development episodes.

Bob reminds Michael to make sure that his family do not deceive the Japanese investors, or else they can all end up in prison. But Michael does not get there in time. G.O.B. has already lined up the investors and opens the curtains to reveal his “tiny town”. Surprisingly, it looks pretty good, and the investors are pleased. Michael wants Gob to close the curtains and not accept any money from the investors. But before G.O.B. can, Tobias, dressed in a mole costume, walks over the hill and begins smashing the tiny houses. Within seconds, George Michael, strapped into the jet pack, swoops out of the sky and knocks Tobias over.

Hardest I can remember laughing watching a show by myself.

I love this dunk

I love this video

Done by the same guy that did the great ‘Home’ video.

Not sure if this is real or fake and I’m still deciding if it’s awesome or awful

Bill Simmons often says it’s amazing that these days you can watch Piper smash a coconut over Jimmy Snuka’s head at your leisure. Anyway, it blows my mind that the above video even exists. Update: I’m leaning towards ‘awful’.

We were playing MW2 today…

and Jason said he had to leave to go to sleep and the rest of us of course gave him the usual “come on just one more” and “you can’t be that tired”. Usually this gets one more game out of whoever, but his response this time was “I ran a marathon today”. Jason, congratulations on your second marathon.

Dan dropped me and Jason off at the airport. But before the airport, we dropped by Elliot’s for happy hour. $0.50 per oyster starting at 3PM and going up $0.25 every half hour. “Dropped by” is accurate, because we left when we saw the line. Apparently their happy hour isn’t a secret. So we went to the Met. Fantastic fantastic happy hour. (I’ve been to Elliot’s and actually ate and their happy hour is great too.) We got our oyster fix. I’m sure oysters in the shooters came from a jar, but it hit the spot. The steak sandwiches were good for $3, even though they were allegedly free before. But the burger was the star. I didn’t order one. Huge mistake. I had some of Jason’s and it was the best I’ve had since Lunchbox Laboratory. Great patty.

Here’s me and Jason waiting to board. Google provided free WiFi at a bunch of airports during the holidays. Very thankful for this. Me and Jason were able to play Scrabble on Facebook on our laptops. We were waiting for 90 minutes and barely finished one game. Jason takes forever on each move. It’s painful.

Here’s where I try to take a picture of a cute girl. Then I showed my friends and they said she looks cute as in way too young. That’s when I started justifying it in my head with thoughts like, “Oh, you know, you can’t tell these days.”

My first breakfast! I did in fact visit friends in San Diego and not an elementary school cafeteria. This is what I wanted to eat though. I love oatmeal (sugary instant packets even better) and I love Flaming Hot Cheetos.

I went with Curt’s fiance Dyane to pick some things up at her classroom. She teaches troubled youth—lots of gang members.

Here’s me in front of the whiteboard where I wrote “Mr. Cortez” and thought it’d be hilarious for some reason.

Here’s the In-N-Out picture obligatory for trips to California that feels more and more like an obligation—it’s less exciting every time. Having a Double-Double for the first time in five years tastes a lot better than for the first time in five months. Maybe I was still thinking of the burger from the Met.

I waited for Jason to come home before heading to Medieval Times. Here he is, ready to hide in a pixelated ocean. You can’t shoot what you can’t see.

Medieval Times was really fun. Jason loves the place and has been frustrated on my past visits when we weren’t able to make the trip. I wish I had a bigger appetite. Chicken and the ribs were good. Tomato soup to start, not so much. There are six knights and they’re each assigned to sections of the crowd. You get really attached to your knight and ours made it to the final two. Then he died and the rest of the show died with him.

Disneyland fireworks go off every night as far as I know. It was kind of cool to drive by them outside of the park.

Sometimes Wally just likes to come to the Disneyland McDonald’s and think.

The day of New Year’s Eve we went to a driving range. There were these baskets probably 60-80 yards out. We had a contest to be the first one to get it into one. I thought speed was the key. Hit at a rapid pace and one of them will go in. Makes sense—unless your short game sucks dick. I went 0-for-a lot and ran out of balls . Wally got one in and ruined 2009 for me. Good thing a new year was only a few hours away.

We ate at a Mexican place by Jason, Curt, and Dyane’s apartment. Didn’t end in -berto’s but it hit the spot. Dan would be frustrated that I didn’t hit eat at a Mexican joint multiple times a day. Actually, I kind of regret not going to at least one other Mexican place during the trip.

Me and Wally, looking tight!

Me and Wally, looking tight!

We met up with two other couples that are friends with Curt and Dyane for a pre-function at a hotel. Really nice room. Really nice people. They made a bunch of surprisingly great food. Surprising because when you think hotel before amateur night, things like instant oatmeal and Flaming Hot Cheetos come to mind instead of lumpia and baked salmon.

And I say “really nice” because they really didn’t mind Curt bringing five other dudes who beasted on the food.

We went to Onyx for New Year’s Eve. Cool place. A lotta dudes. For whatever reason, we set up about six feet from the main speakers on the main floor and destroyed our ears. They played “Sandstorm” before the countdown and did what every other Jersey Shore fan did that night—beat that beat. First song I heard in 2010 was “I Got A Feeling”. Probably the first time I really enjoyed the song.

Sometime after that we realized it was really hot in the place and tried to get water. They were charging for water so we left to find some. We stopped by Hooters for water. Seems kind of weird writing it but it was actually one of the only options because we couldn’t find a convenience store and even the small bars we tried to go to were at capacity. On our walk to Hooters we got VIP passes to Deja Vu: “It’s only ten minutes away!” Would anyone really go there on New Year’s Eve?*

We went to Wally’s house the next day for dinner. Pop quiz: Is the following picture A.) Wally’s nightstand or B.) The Dork section at Barnes and Noble?

Me and Wally, looking tight!

We went to the gym the next day to pump up at the gym Wally described as small. If this gym is small, I want to see what he thinks is a big gym. Chargers practice facility? Olympic training campus?

We ate at Lucille’s BBQ. It was good. For a BBQ place attached to a mall, it was great. Biscuits are the table bread and they give some kind of sweet apple cinnamon butter to spread. Not that there’s a lot of competition (Claim Jumper comes to mind), but it’s the best butter for spreading that I’ve had.

Then we went to LA to hang out with a friend and her friend. We ate at Kuishimbo, which has 4.5 stars on Yelp. And I assumed LA was third to New York and San Francisco for food snobs so 4.5 seemed really good. It was good enough but nobody would notice if you dropped it in the middle of Seattle. Maybe I’m hating. Here’s Wally expressing our feelings about hanging out with girls instead of, you know, enough dudes to run small pick up games of various sports.

Here’s a picture I took for Jason to see if he’d remember something. Seeing as how I took this picture and stared at it for a good minute to try and remember what it was, I doubt he’d remember what that something was. Anyway, I was trying to see if he remembered this strip mall, because Roscoe’s Chicken and Waffles is around the corner, where we ate the last time we were in LA.

On my last night, we watched Avatar and ate curry. Pork katsu and beef curry. That was really good. I’m sure there’s somewhere in Seattle to get a similar meal, and I’m gonna try and find it. Also, Avatar was really good.

Before bed that night we all watched a chicken wing episode of Throwdown with Bobby Flay. So before my flight I wanted to get wings. I asked Wally what he thought of Wings and Things. “It’s pretty generic.” It was one of those times where I shouldn’t have even asked because it was our only option and my mind was already set to go. They only serve three sauces: mild, medium, and hot. If you essentially only do wings, you should have more options than that. Basically, it’s pretty generic.

The trip was pretty fun and writing a few sentences about a few pictures took a lot longer than I expected.

—————————————-

*YEEEEEUP

Carroll gave up fear long ago. He gave it up the way people give up carbs. Fear now has no part in his daily life. Fear is like an old, distant friend. They know each other well, talk once in a while, but they’re not close like they used to be.

In meetings, practices, pregame talks, fear is Carroll’s theme. “That’s what we’re all about,” he says, lying back on the leather sofa in his office one night. “Our entire approach is to come to the point where we have the knowing that we’re going to win. There’s nothing to stop us but ourselves. To do that is to operate in the absence of fear.”

Let’s hope this theme works on millionaires the same way it worked for college kids.

“Seattle likes to talk about local foods, about ridiculous things like fiddlehead coulis,” Mr. Berger said. “Seattle yuppies love the idea of going to some obscure Chinese place for dim sum but won’t dare tell you that they eat chicken teriyaki. Those places are so much a part of the streetscape that we can’t even see them.”

New York Times article about teriyaki in Seattle. Most people notice that there are a ton of teriyaki places in Seattle. But I always thought that other cities were similar.

January

We went to Ibiza’s for New Year’s Eve. Jay set us up with VIP at Ibiza’s. (THANKS!) Then I threw up everywhere. (SORRY.) Amateur night.

February

I remember very little about February. So I checked my calendar to see what I did. Last summer I recorded mundane things I did during the day since it takes less than a minute to enter everything in Google Calendar. So there are a lot of “Starcraft with Jason” entries. Anyway, it’s totally worth doing because it’s the stupid things like where you ate for lunch and who you ate with that help you remember what that time was like day-to-day. Plus you can record things like when you hung out with so and so and what you did that ruined your life for a few weeks.

But I stopped doing that after the summer ended. However, I have a ‘Tentative’ label for important upcoming events. And obviously I don’t go back and delete those events after they’re over, so they’re still there marking the things I deemed important in my life. And February only has one: Street Fighter IV. I’ve mentioned how excited I was for Modern Warfare 2, but I was also pretty excited for SFIV. Those first two weeks were great. I guess the most memorable thing about the game is when I beat Dan a few dozen times in a row then he smashed the controller on the floor. After that I always told him I won’t play if he’s gonna get mad like that. February was awesome.

March

March really isn’t ringing any bells. Probably because my capstone project for Electrical Engineering consumed the entire month. I’ll try not to exaggerate but we put in 8 hour days at least three days a week in the lab and 4 hours for the other days. For some reason people take that class and basically get reamed for the entire quarter but then they look back on it fondly. Myself included. That project to me is like the P90X Ab Ripper X video to Tony Horton—I hate it… but I love it.

April

We went to Vegas for Harvey’s bachelor party. I get the sense that the trip caused me to peak early for the following things: Vegas, bachelor parties, and nightlife. Meaning it was a great trip. I wouldn’t want to be the guy trying to top that bachelor party. Luckily, I’m halfway to a decade without a girlfriend so I won’t be that guy! Phew. Probably the funnest weekend of the year and maybe of the last few years for me.

I remember reading some story from some guy that spent his summer giving tours of the Grand Canyon and sleeping under the stars with nature and how he felt sick when he went to Vegas and saw all the superficial people and extreme materialism. What a loser.

May

This was my last full month of college. I’d say I checked out in my final quarter, but I don’t know if I ever actually checked back in after my internship. Most of my friends had graduated already, I felt old, and I only had graduation requirements which meant zero flexibility choosing classes. Throughout college, whenever something seemed overwhelming I would just ask if it would matter in five years. Basically nothing did. Looking back less than a year out, no single assignment really meant anything. I have a pretty good grasp of the idea that it’s the cumulative success that counts, but I’m just glad I kept a cool head through my projects even with graduation looming. A few members of teams I was on were on the verge of tears and I remember thinking at the time, and even now, whoa calm down.

This was also the month when my classmate said he was thinking of applying to MIT for grad school and asked me if it was private or public. So I said I think it’s private then I looked it up on Wikipedia and said Wikipedia says it’s private. And then he says, wow Wikipedia also says aliens are real, it’s probably public.

Don’t ask me a question if you really don’t care about my answer, especially if it’s a question that can be answered with facts and not opinions. And if you really think Wikipedia is the wild west and anyone can change anything and that it would be incorrect about whether MIT, one of the most famous colleges in the world, is private or public, you’re dumb. And I say that because chances are you use Wikipedia all the time but whenever someone mentions it you denounce it to seem smarter.

June

Graduation was hot. A lot of people say it’s worth it since it might be long but it’s just a day. If I finished in four years and graduated with the people I started with I think it would’ve meant a lot more to me. I definitely enjoyed the departmental graduations though. My advice: do it for your parents.

We also went to Canada for a weekend in June. Potentially really fun, but kind of a bust. Mostly because we went out to try and check out clubs, but we left too late and didn’t get in. And it looked like people were having an awesome time inside. It was an eye opener, though. Vancouver B.C. is about the same trip-length as Oregon and it’s one of the nicest cities I’ve been to. It’s also weird that it’s right there and it seems less like a different country and more like some kind of pseudo world. Driving around seems the same but what the hell does the flashing green light mean? This resembles SportsCenter but there’s so much hockey and NBA Playoffs are covered for two minutes every hour. There’s still a 7- 11, but it’s filled with candy bars I haven’t heard of and ketchup Lays.

[Update: I guess Canada was in May. I really don't remember it being before graduation.]

July

My birthday was ridiculously hot. Like literally the hottest day ever in Seattle hot. (Now that we’re starting to get a grasp of the subtleties of the usage of the word ‘irony’—basically, nothing I think is ironic actually is—can we move on to ‘literally’?) Uncomfortable. I was glad everyone made it to happy hour that night. But what I’ll remember is how hard it was to sleep that night. I soaked some towels that day in water and froze them in one of those giant ziplocs that fishermen use to store whole fish. At the time, I was picturing all-cold-side-of-the-pillow-everything, but they just froze together in a big block. So I put the block next to my head hoping it’d work like an air conditioner. It did next to nothing. And I stayed awake long enough for the block to melt enough to peel a towel off. And I just put it on my forehead and slept for an hour, then tossed it back in the ziploc and peeled another towel off, and repeated that. It was a mess. But at least it wasn’t a hot mess!

August

I went to San Francisco with a few friends—my first time back in the bay area since my San Jose internship last year. Lots of eating and lots of homeless people. And a couple of crazy taxi drivers stick out. One drove us to the club from our hotel and floored it through Chinatown. And the only time I remember really stopping is when the driver said “It ain’t that hot.” when he saw a guy walking wearing a black wife beater. I call the second crazy taxi driver The Transporter, because he showed zero emotion as he sped and cut through multiple lanes at odd angles.

September

Camping sticks out the most for me in September. Actually, preparing for camping might be the most memorable part of it. Me, Jerry, and Russ bought 80 pounds of meat for the weekend. I’ll always remember asking for 17 two-pound rib-eyes. We really didn’t do anything except eat meat and sleep.

October

Jay-Z came to Seattle for the first time in something like a decade. Favorite concert ever for me. He puts on a good show and it was a great crowd that was probably happy to pack Key Arena again. I was singing lyrics I didn’t realize I knew and yelling made up lyrics for the rest. The only downside was missing J. Cole because he came out at 7:40 for a concert scheduled for 8:00. A rap concert. But he came out to do his verse for A Star is Born, which helped make up for it.

That week also included the annual live fantasy basketball draft. We did it bigger this year and got a place with a projector that we couldn’t hook anything up to.

After booking the Jay-Z tickets, me and some friends were calling this The Greatest Week Ever. But Jay-Z and the draft took second place behind a trip to Hawaii. I wrote about part of the trip and never finished. One of the funnest trips of my life. It’s hard for me to choose between the Vegas trip and the Hawaii trip. I asked myself if I could only go on one which would it be, and I decided it’d be the Vegas trip mostly because of the bigger group. But it’s hard to beat relaxing in the water under the Hawaiian sun knowing it was pouring rain in Seattle. I’m glad I was lucky enough to go to both.

November

Modern Warfare 2 came out this month and so did the BlackBerry 9700. I love Modern Warfare 2. For a few weeks before it came out, a few of us played Modern Warfare 1. Here’s the thing, I never played MW1 before and it was basically awesome. They could have released MW1 labeled as MW2 and I would’ve been happy. It was all new to me. Then it made me think of the two years that I could’ve been playing it. Last year I could have been playing it in San Jose instead of whatever the hell I was doing. Luckily they released MW2 as MW2 and it was even better. My friend Paul always says he’s jealous of people that haven’t seen Friends since they can still watch them and it’s new to them. Well, I still haven’t beat the single player campaign for MW2 so I’m lucky in the same way.

December

Will 2009’s biggest news story be Michael Jackson’s death or Tiger’s fall from grace? Who cares, this post is about me! According to my calendar, December so far consists of MW2 during the week and going out on the weekends. Pretty fun month so far and there’s still a lot to look forward to: pre-Christmas party, Secret Santa lunch at a brazilian BBQ, Christmas-eve party, Christmas, and then a trip to San Diego to end the month. December is also the month I made an awful analogy about Friends and MW2’s single player campaign.

After reminiscing about the year and thinking about all the great times in each month and all the friends I spent time and bonded with, I realized something: I need to hang out with girls.

See you in 2010!

My favorite moment so far took place on the first AC-130 mission. I was in the plane and Wally just needed to survive and reach a checkpoint to complete the mission. After a bunch of trial and error, we get a pretty good routine going to get through most of the stage. So on this try we get near completion. I hear him say, “I can see the end from here.” He’s about 60 yards away and I can see the path he’s planning to take. Except it’s lined by red squares indicating enemies. I know what he’s thinking, and I get a flashback of Harry Connick Jr. telling Will Smith he’s gonna try something. Right on cue, Wally says, “I’m going for it,” and starts booking it. And a few blinks later Will Smith and I both yell “Noooooooooo” as our wingman gets lit up.

These moments happen often. Then we yell at each other, restart, and do it all over again. So much fun.

Woke up at 6:30AM and wasn’t even close to being the first one up. Junior was up already and Dan had enough time to blog more than he has in all of 2009. Around 7:00AM we decided to pump up for the day in the fitness center. We showered, lathered up, and pulled the board shorts on. At 9:00AM I took a phone interview.

Zippy’s

Not too much to say about Zippy’s. If you’ve eaten there, you know what it’s like. If you haven’t, it’s a fast food version of some of Hawaii’s local fare. When you’re on vacation, you tend to pay less attention to how much food costs from meal to meal. I like Zippy’s, but it’s actually kind of expensive for the portions.

Foodland

It’s a supermarket. But it’s in Hawaii. You can grab spam masubi at the ready-made hot food section. And we did. Sort of the go-to food choice between meals. The reallly great thing is the ready-made cold food they have. All kinds of poke, and I’m sure locals take it for granted the same way I took dungeness crab for granted in Oak Harbor. RJ got the octopus poke the first day and I was hooked. Eight bucks a pound and a pound is a lot of raw seafood.

Hanauma Bay

If I could only keep one memory of Hawaii it’d be snorkeling at Hanauma Bay. But before you can go in you’re required to watch an introduction to snorkeling video less about your safety and more about not destroying the reef or grabbing the turtles. When more than one of my friends jokingly said the video was making them horny I started to wonder about the “jokingly” part.

We SPF’d our bods and lathered each other up. We finally got into the water for the first time on the trip and it was glorious. After splashing each other for a while we got around to renting gear and strapping up. That was my first time snorkeling, and it’s ridiculously fun. Basically I would swim around for a while, point a fish out to someone, stand up, rip my mouthpiece off, wait for them to stand up, ask them if they saw the fish I pointed at, put my mouthpiece back on, and do it over and over.

One type of fish—black and white stripes—kept showing up. I compare it to those 3-lb fish in Ocarina of Time that you get mad when you catch. I was tired of seeing those things. Me and Jon saw a flounder and were getting excited to tell the other guys but when we caught up to them they were doing various endzone celebrations (read: vigorously high fiviing) because they saw some sea turtles. Missing the turtles bummed me out.

We were there for four hours and spent $7.50 to enter and $11 for gear. By far the most fun I’ve had for under $20.

Big Kahuna, Banzai, Oceans, The Living Room

Big Kahuna—I really enjoyed the pork loco moco. Banzai—Cool bar, probably better if more people were there. Oceans—Cool club, definitely better if more people were there. The Living Room—Probably the least safe I felt during the trip. So dark in there. So hood. Then a local rapper performed upstairs. So we went downstairs.

Really though, it’s a shame that there’s no serious ninja movie with a great story and great characters. It doesn’t seem out of the question, considering how interesting the culture is with different clans and whatnot. The action would be somewhere between the realism of the ninja invasion scene in The Last Samurai and the supernatural abilities of the ninjas in Ninja Assassin.

Anyway, I guess I should say something about Ninja Assassin since this is my review. It’s violent. (Think Alien vs. Predator 2. Oh wait nobody else watched that. Think new Rambo.). The story’s not great. The fight sequences are awesome. And you probably should’ve expected all of that coming in. More workout scenes would be welcome! They’re actually pretty cool and they could show Raizo training with more weapons. I guess I should call them adult ninja training scenes to sound less suspect.

On another note, I just went to IMDB to see how to spell “Raizo” and scrolled down to the message board posts (always a bad idea). Someone is disappointed that they took Rain (huge in Asia) and put him in a stereotypical role as a martial artist instead of a serious role. He’s not exactly gonna pass as Billy Costigan. Not to mention he wasn’t held at gunpoint and forced into months of filming. Man do I hate those message boards.

Back on track. If you liked the new Rambo and you like ninjas you’ll love Ninja Assassin. I still can’t get over the post-release commercials saying, “Some critics have called Ninjas Assassin… ‘Exciting’.” Sold.

These are my thoughts on the 9700 written on a BlackBerry 9700. (I needed something to practice typing on the keyboard so this is what I chose.) I was gonna start this by saying that I’ve never been so excited for a phone before. But that’s just me rating more recent things higher. I was way more excited for the G1, back when it had a chance to stand toe to toe with the iPhone. (Even then, it was only a chance and not really likely. But I didn’t realize that Lloyd Christmas had a better chance with Lynn Swanson.)

The screen is fantastic. I always felt like text was always too big on the G1, even when set as small as possible. On the Bold I’ve got it set pretty small and can read it comfortably. I’m glad to be on a full keyboard again. My G1 broke. Loved that keyboard. Didn’t love sliding it out every time, but I didn’t mind as much as some people did. Switched to my brother’s old BlackBerry Pearl. I actually really like the keyboard and the SureType system. The biggest problem is that I updated the OS and the first-generation Pearl really can’t handle the newest version, so typing with any sort of speed meant a meeting with the hourglass and then probably a ruined sentence to delete. Also, the trackball couldn’t scroll left so I learned to navigate without getting to places where a left would be necessary. The trackpad is really nice. It sort of feels like having a touchscreen, which might be hard to believe without trying it. Obviously it can’t compete with the multitouch experience, but coming from the G1, I really don’t miss the touchscreen.

But I do miss the browser. The biggest flaw of the 9700 is the biggest flaw of any BlackBerry—the browser is garbage. This is well documented and RIM has a WebKit browser in the works. Yes, I tried Opera. No, I haven’t tried Bolt yet. But for now the experience leaves a bad taste in my mouth. I read 9700 reviews and thought. “Well, how bad could web browsing?” Bad, so bad, Jackey Vinson. Having that kind of software on flagship hardware is like having all those retro NES games on the Wii except it feels ancient instead of nostalgic.

Another thing I miss is Android’s universal menu bar. Some BlackBerry applications still allow you to see alerts at the top of the screen; some don’t. I’m writing this review in Memopad and I have no visual evidence on screen of whether or not new messages have come in. The LED could probably be set, but that only notifies me that something new came in, not what kind of new thing came in. When the G1 UI demos came out last year, I thought it was odd that they would highlight something mundane like the menu bar. Now that I don’t have it, I understand why it was so important.

The messaging experience is the system seller and it’s the reason I know I won’t have any buyer’s remorse. About a month ago a majority of my friends that I hang out with regularly started using the BlackBerry Messenger group chat feature. And within a couple of weeks it became the main form of communication between us. Texts stopped and mass MMS stopped. Some of the same friends used to frequent a forum we had in high school, and it reminds me of that in some ways. Is this going to be a dealbreaker for most people? Probably not. But for me it was. I miss having a decent browsing exerience (hopefully the WebKit browser fixes that in the future). But I would really really miss the group chat if I couldn’t have it.

Email is great. I installed the Gmail application and I’m satisfied with it. SMS messages are threaded by user now, which I’m really happy about. I hate going back to see what I said last (we stopped using ICQ for a number of reasons but that was one of the main ones) and didn’t ever fully understand how the Pearl decided to mini-thread some convos and not others.

Music and video are good from what I’ve seen so far. Video plays without a hitch as long as its not too high a resolution. Music is pretty basic but that’s all I want really. Even with my iPods I rarely used more than a couple playlists on a daily basis. And the BB Desktop Manager lets me sync with iTunes playlists. I’ll probably try leaving my Nano at home the rest of this week and see how that goes.

And I guess it’s also a phone. The calls I’ve taken have been clear consistently. Honestly I’ve never complained about call quality on any of my previous phones so take my opinion with a grain of salt (read: disregard it completely).

The 9700 hardware is great and the software is good. Browsing might be a dealbreaker but if you’ve used a BlackBerry before you know what you’re in for. And if you haven’t, do some research and make sure you know what you’re in for.

4. In the year 2050, a movie is being made of your life. Please tell us the name of your movie and briefly summarize the story line. (NYU, 2009)

College admissions officers like to throw in “fun” questions like this to relieve a bit of the stress high school seniors face while applying to college. I don’t think it’s working.

Movies based on true stories are usually very loosely based on true stories. Read a Wikipedia article about pretty much any sports movie made in the last decade that was inspired by a true story. Ignorance is bliss and knowing what actually happened usually takes away from these movies. Not so great—but if you flip it around it’s awesome: mundane things that happened in my life become chill scenes: out in the first round of the regional spelling bee becomes third place in the nationals; 12th man on a PBL team becomes at least Division 1-AA; six months in San Jose as a technical writer becomes eight months in Santa Barbara as a sponsored boogie boarder. Jeremy Efron-Hudgens has a number of scenes in classrooms and at corporate desks looking clueless while Jessica Alba’s daughter gets to struggle through lines like “I have a boyfriend.” Then I get a cameo at the end like the end of Pursuit of Happyness and even I don’t show up to the premiere of this awful movie.

Thursday we flew out in the afternoon. Nothing special about that. Took a taxi with Dan, Junior, and Paul from Paul’s apartment and met up with Jon at Seatac. And the hours at the airport were typical. Security then the food court. Then getting on the plane. Jackpot.

I sat next to, from what I could gather, Mariah Carey’s biggest fan. Or one of her assistants. The first thing I noticed is that he had a picture of her at some kind of pre-show event as his iPhone background image. Not a huge deal, I’m sure plenty of people have her as a wallpaper. But then he brought out a MacBook Air. Mariah Carey as the desktop background. That makes two things that aren’t really all that odd. Then he started watching Mariah Carey music videos. Ok he’s a fan. But after the music videos, he started watching Mariah Carey acceptance speeches. Then I got a better look at his iPhone background and realized he’s in the picture with her. In the meantime, I was watching highlights of Independence Day. Can’t blame the guy, you gotta get your fix on the airplane. Oh yeah he also bought a snack pack on the flight and from what I gathered he was a vegetarian. He gave me his hard salami. Cool dude.

I underestimated the flight and had my mind prepared for a 3-hour flight instead of a nearly 6-hour flight. And I thought I slept for at least an hour when it turns out I dozed off for about fifteen minutes. It’s the third flight I’ve brought Atlas Shrugged on and at this point I don’t know if I’m ever going to finish the last two hundred pages. Me, Junior, Paul, and Jon drew comic book characters. You know what, I’m just going to skip to Hawaii.

It was hot, but it’s really the humidity that hits you when you step off the plane. But nothing’s better than stepping off a plane and seeing palm trees. I basically associate this with Hawaii and San Diego. I feel like I’m rewriting Dan’s Friday entry. It wasn’t the most eventful night. We rented the car, checked in, claimed our beds, and went to L&L and met up with RJ at The Shack for $2 beers. I also ran into a few people I graduated with in High School. I spent $2 + tip. Too full, too bloated, too tired.

I guess the only thing I can add is a thought about the room. We had three beds and having everybody in the same room probably doubles the fun of time spent in the room. If you want to gather everybody before heading out, you have a huge room. You know when people are awake in the morning and you can talk until the wee hours of the morning at night. The only negative is the single bathroom. Getting as many beds in a room as possible is highly recommended. But I guess that only really applies to groups of all guys or all girls. Couples would want to have their own room. That’s just speculation, since I’m so far away from knowing first hand. I’ll finish the other days this week hopefully. I’m gonna go slam the balcony’s sliding door on my head right now.

Anyway, my friends have been excited for November for a while. Last month had one of the greatest weeks ever: Jay-Z concert to start it and a trip to Hawaii to end it. Which I still need to write about, though I should’ve written about it on the airplane when the memories were still fresh. But I digress. November has been circled on the calendar basically for MW2, but then a couple of other things came up. Pun intended. Along with that DVD release (do we say “DVD/Blu-Ray release” now and eventually just “Blu-Ray release”?), there’s 2012 and then Ninja Assassin. Plus basketball is back. We get to see how all those NBA summer moves pan out and UW gets to see how good Abdul Gaddy actually is. I really liked last year’s squad. When announcers say “would you want to go to the trenches with so and so”, most of the roster fits that description. It should be good. And on the other side of things, UW will get a chance to avenge last year’s awful Apple Cup loss. And of course there’s Thanksgiving. One of the holidays that gets better as you get older. Maybe the only one, though I’m sure I’m missing something. Halloween depends on how you rank slutty costumes vs. fun-size candy. So that makes two holidays that get better as you get older.

This Thanksgiving has the added bonus of doubling as the first long weekend with MW2. It’s hard to describe how exciting this is. But since only a couple dozen people read this, half of you know exactly how exciting this is.

I almost forgot. The Blackberry 9700 comes out this month also. I loved my G1 for messaging and browsing and really loved it for Google Maps with GPS. Everything was great about it except the time that it stopped turning on. So I went to Dan’s old Blackberry Pearl. I’ve read comments that the only killer app on the Blackberry is Blackberry Messenger. And that’s become the main form of communication between a majority of my close friends so it’s definitely a major pro in deciding whether I want to get a 9700 or not. I’m pretty sure I’ll miss browsing on the G1, but I was usually just on Twitter, Facebook, and Google Reader so it’s probably not as huge a loss as I’m thinking. (Plus if I really want access to those, their respective Blackberry apps seem really good.) I’ll also miss having Gmail in my pocket, specifically how well it handles threaded emails. But other than that I’m looking forward to having a Blackberry that doesn’t give me the finger (read: hourglass icon) every time I want to do something other than make a call.

Amazing picture, but he ended up landing on his head with a concussion. No spinal injuries though. It was his second concussion in eight days. A guest on Dave Dameshek’s podcast, on the subject of toughness of players and fan perception, suggested we start calling concussions bruised brains.

Fake bet $250 bet: Chiefs win (+230)

Fake $250 bet: $125 on Adrian Peterson 1st half touchdown (-125) and $125 on “Steve Smith 1.0″ touchdown (+130).

It’s important for me to stay in shape. If I start looking really, really bad, folks will start to worry, and they won’t enjoy the show. Plus, I want to have sex! So that motivates me.

(Thanks, Chris)

The long-time host of America’s top-rated Late Show admitted his dalliances to his studio audience last night after giving testimony to a grand jury in New York about the alleged extortion.

Letterman, 62, said he was sent a letter by a man who threatened to reveal “terrible things” about his life in a film screenplay and book he was writing, unless the star paid up.

“What was all this creepy stuff?” said Letterman, who is married with a five-year-old son. “It was that I have had sex with women who work for me on this show. My response to that is yes, I have had sex with women on my show.

“Would it be embarrassing if it were made public? Perhaps it would, especially for the women.”

It’s the most lighthearted admission of a sexual affair ever. And in hindsight, here’s the most lighthearted denial of a sexual affair ever.

In a statement released Thursday morning, Nike said it has “agreed to supply product to Michael Vick as we do a number of athletes who are not under contract with Nike.”

It’s a standalone title and people seem mad�� that it isn’t just downloadable content. Capcom, I’m not mad at you. First, it’s expected, costume packs already cost $4. And those add very little to the gameplay. They’re not just letting opponents pick the same character or adding four bosses. Eight new characters is basically an additional third of the original set of characters. It’s Tiger to Leopard not Leopard to Snow Leopard. And there’s bound to be a bunch of character tweaks for balance. SSFIV won’t be sold at full price, and I’d much rather pay, say, $40 and get a new disc than $25 to basically lock the game to my console.

More importantly, that trailer… the first word that comes to mind is flaccid. It’s a continuation of the Ken and Ryu ink-blot fight. Only the closing Super Street Fighter IV logo kept me from double checking to make sure I didn’t just re-watch a video from last year.

• Titans +1 over Jets
• Eagles -7.5 over Chiefs
• Ravens -13.5 over Browns
• Giants -6.5 over Buccaneers
• Jaguars +4 over Texans
• 49ers +7 over Vikings
• Falcons +4.5 over Patriots
• Lions +6.5 over Redskins
• Packers -6.5 over Rams
• Bears -2.5 over Seahawks
• Saints -6 over Bills
• Dolphins +5.5 over Chargers
• Bengals +3.5 over Steelers
• Broncos -2 over Raiders
• Colts +2.5 over Cardinals
• Panthers +8.5 over Cowboys

Fake $250 bet:�� $125 on “Frank Gore will score a touchdown in the 1st half” at +140, and $125 on “Adrian Peterson will score a touchdown in the 1st half” at -115.

Current fake $250 bet total: $500