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I’m really starting to get excited about politics again. There’s a presidential election this year. Yay!!! I really haven’t been into politics much since the 2004 election. I guess I’m just ready for new leadership.   I’m glad that you’re moving on, Mr. President.

One good thing about Bush is that he may have made it possible for a woman or a black man to become President. Clinton and Obama don’t look so unappealing after him, do they? I think it would be cool to have our first woman or black president. I guess I like rooting for the underdog, but would either of them be an underdog against John McCain? I’m having a hard time choosing between those two as the Democratic nominee. I really hate to see either one lose and I doubt that either one would want to be Vice President. I could support either one of them as a presidential candidate.

I finally managed to finish another book. I don’t know why that seems so hard to do lately. This time it was Timeline by Michael Crichton. I’ve never read one of his books before, but I vaguely remember hearing about this one when it came out.

Timeline book is about time travel, which can be an interesting but headache–inducing topic in science fiction. There are some academics involved in an archaeological dig. One member of the team gets trapped in the past and sends a message for help. It’s up to the remaining members of the team to go back and help him. I enjoyed the first part of this book more than the rest. Once they went back in time was when I started to not like it as much. It seems like that should have been the most enjoyable part of the book for me. There were times where I didn’t realize what I had just read and didn’t care enough to go back and re-read it. What I do remember was good. I think I’ll watch the movie too.

The book list has changed a little.

• Timeline, Michael Crichton
• Finding Serenity, Jane Espenson
• Serenity Found, Jane Espenson
• On Bullshit, Harry G. Frankfurt
• On Truth, Harry G. Frankfurt
• Playing for Pizza, John Grisham
• The Appeal, John Grisham
• Night Watch, Sergey Lukyanenko
• Day Watch, Sergey Lukyanenko
• Twilight Watch, Sergey Lukyanenko
• Final Watch, Sergey Lukyanenko
• The Taking, Dean Koontz
• His Majesty’s Dragon, Naomi Novik
• Throne of Jade, Naomi Novik
• Black Powder War, Naomi Novik
• Empire of Ivory, Naomi Novik
• Titus Andronicus, William Shakespeare

Some time over the past couple of weeks we finished Blue Dragon, which is a JRPG on the Xbox 360. I got it as a Christmas present and it was a lot of fun. It’s a single-player game, so we took turns playing it. It has some gameplay features that are really cool. The graphics look really good on a standard def TV. I guess another play through is called for now that I have an HDTV to play on. Besides, I want to get some of those achievements we missed the first time around. The guide for this game is great. It’s one of the best that I’ve used recently. I just wish they had included maps of the Overworld areas.

One thing that will stand out is the boss fight song. They play the same song during every boss fight. And it’s kind of a short song, so they loop it over and over again. I did some digging around and I found out that the name of the song is “Eternity” and it is sung by Ian Gillan. Ian Gillan is the lead singer of Deep Purple. Remember that song “Smoke on the Water”? That’s Deep Purple. “Eternity” is more amusing than anything else, but it does start to get on your nerves after a while.

Last week I got my first HDTV.  I had been thinking about it every since I got an Xbox 360.  It wasn’t a big deal for me if movies and TV weren’t in HD, but I wanted to see what games looked like.  I got a 42-inch Vizio.  I had originally planned on getting the 32-inch Vizio, but I changed my mind.  This TV is replacing a 27-inch CRT, so it’s a major step up.  It’s almost too big for the space it’s in.  The TV is fine so far and it looks great when I’m playing video games.  However, my the DirecTV is standard def and sometimes it doesn’t look great.  A few DVDs I’ve tried don’t look so good either.  It looks like it may be time to upgrade more equipment.  I’m still very happy with the TV though.

Lately we’ve been watching season 1 of Dexter. Oh wow! What an incredible show this is! Dexter is about a forensics blood splatter analyst who lives a secret life as a serial killer. The twist is that he only kills bad people. I guess I really get into the dark shows these days. So far we’ve always been eating when watching it, which is weird considering some of the stuff seen onscreen. Dexter is such an interesting character. Almost everyone on that show is at least a little crazy. Looks like I might be ordering Showtime before the next season starts.

I guess Movable Type pissed me off one too many times, so I just decided to try something different.  I had been working some on trying to finalize those design changes I started on a while back.  Yesterday I tried to upgrade to Movable Type 4.1 and things got screwed up.  I wasn’t in a mood to try to figure out how to get things right again, so I decided to switch to something else.  It gave me a chance to redesign the site and switch to a new platform. I decided on WordPress.  I’m sure I’ll have issues with WordPress, but for now I’m happy.  I even decided to pick out a theme from their website instead of spending a lot of time coming up with one on my own.  One of the reasons I wasn’t blogging as much is that I wasn’t happy with the look of the site.  Now I won’t be worrying about that.  I’ll get the other pages up sooner or later.

I haven’t had the best string of luck lately. I watched Surface, which is another canceled series. It was pretty good, but I can see why it was canceled. The storyline seemed to move fairly slowly in the beginning, but it got better at the end. So some weird things are happening in the oceans and a new species is discovered. You find out some interesting secrets as you go along. It wouldn’t mind knowing what was going to happen now or finding out all the secrets, but I’m not beaten up over it.

Over Christmas break I started watching season 1 of Sleeper Cell, which was a series that aired on Showtime. I finally got around to finishing it yesterday. It’s about a Muslim FBI agent whose task is to infiltrate a sleeper cell planning an attack in America. The box said that it’s better than 24, but I don’t think so. It’s ok, but some of the episodes did seem to drag on a little bit. I don’t if I’ll bother watching season 2. It won’t be anytime soon if I do.

Season 1 of Robot Chicken was hilarious. Each episode is about 10 minutes long and the sketches are mostly short. It’s the perfect kind of show for the ADD crowd. I plan to rent season 2 and then probably download season 3 from iTunes.

My first book of the New Year is Playing for Pizza, which is a short novel by John Grisham. This is his third short novel and the second one in a row that is football-related. I like these short novels because they are SHORT and they are a break from his legal thrillers. PfP is about a third-string NFL quarterback who blows a big playoff game and afterwards nobody in the NFL wants him. He ends up playing for the Parma Panthers in the Italian version of the NFL. Most of the Italian players don’t get salaries, but instead get pizza and beer after the games. I guess I’m just not as big of a football fan as I used to be, so I don’t think I enjoyed this as much as I would have 3 or 4 years ago. The football/team bonding scenes were okay…nothing mindblowing. The love story part of the book was a little boring and I glossed over some of it. Grisham spends a lot of time making me hungry talking about wine and food and it’s obvious that he has spent some time in Italy (he confirms it in the back of the book). Yes, there is a real Parma Panthers team. Did you know that Parmesan cheese gets its name from that place? Since I’m a Grisham fan, I’m glad that I read it, but it’s not my favorite Grisham book.

• Timeline, Michael Crichton
• On Bullshit, Harry G. Frankfurt
• On Truth, Harry G. Frankfurt
• Playing for Pizza, John Grisham
• Night Watch, Sergey Lukyanenko
• Day Watch, Sergey Lukyanenko
• Twilight Watch, Sergey Lukyanenko
• Final Watch, Sergey Lukyanenko
• The Taking, Dean Koontz
• Watchmen, Alan Moore
• His Majesty’s Dragon, Naomi Novik
• Throne of Jade, Naomi Novik
• Black Powder War, Naomi Novik
• Empire of Ivory, Naomi Novik
• Titus Andronicus, William Shakespeare

I have had a nice, relaxing Christmas Break. I spent more time in Jackson than I have in a long time. What did I get?

• Blue Dragon
• Blue Dragon strategy guide
• Serenity Found: More Unauthorized Essays on Joss Whedon’s Firefly Universe
• Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End
• a bottle of cologne is coming (I think I asked for Prada for Men)

The Pearl Jam fan club Christmas single came in the mail today. We usually don’t get them until January or February, but the fan club people did say they were trying to get the singles out ealier this year. Once again, I won’t be able to listen to it right away because I don’t own a record player.

Tonight I’m finishing up my annual viewing of The Lord of the Rings with The Return of the King. I’m not in the mood to go out and party. This will be a lot of fun.