Things I’m looking forward to in 2009:
- Buying my first house
- Seeing my daughter turn 1
- An Obama presidency/Bush leaving office
- Final half-season of Battlestar Galactica
In 2009, I resolve to:
- Make better use of my time, money and other resources
- Procrastinate less (see above)
- Read more fiction
- Be more helpful around the house
- Re-do my professional Web site
- Finish my technical writing certification
- Grow more adept at Flash
1) Heroes. My theory on why the show started going downhill in season two: The writers abused time travel. Now, no one stays dead, so nothing has any consequence or finality. Lame.
2) Smallville. This used to be my favorite show, but has become downright unwatchable this season. No Lex Luthor, no Lana Lang. No Smallville even.
With a TV budget and skimpy one-dimensional character motivation, I assumed Terminator was going to be cheesy and repetitive. The first few shows seemed to bear out this assumption, but it is developing into a fairly complex story with unexpected depth and insight. As long as they don’t abuse time travel -- don’t get me started – I’ll keep watching.
Star Wars is a cartoon, and I’m glad I didn’t pay $10 to see the pilot episode in theaters. But if you’re a Star Wars geek, you’ll appreciate the abundance of Star Wars technology (you get to really see inside many of the ships in the movies!). Jar Jar was in last week’s episode, which I’m ashamed to say got my wife to watch it with me. But other than that, so far, so good.
I was flipping through TV channels (procrastinating on my Argentine Tango user manual for my technical writing class) and came across this on Fox. I've never been a racecar fan and am particularly wary of NASCAR because of the whole redneck thing.
But I have to admit, Fox makes it pretty entertaining. They have a very high-tech setup, with cameras on the ground, on the hood of each car and even inside the cars to see what the drivers are doing. A ticker near the top of the screen shows where each driver stands, and real-time labels make it easy to identify each car. And at the bottom of the screen they'll show a car's throttle and brake readings. Very cool.
I didn't really like the first couple of episodes of this series about a San Francisco journalist/time traveler, but kept recording it for some reason. With a dearth of new programming on due to the writers strike, I finally got around to watching the shows piling up on my Windows Media Center. And you know what? Journeyman really grows on you.
Now I'm all caught up on the first half of the season and can't wait for the second half to begin. I hope it doesn't get canceled. It's one of the more sophisticated sci-fi shows I've seen on TV (one of the strengths of Battlestar Galactica) in a while -- and has been far better than season 2 of Heroes so far.
Or maybe I'm just a sucker for sci-fi stories centered around journalists.
Update: Oops. Too late.
My Xbox 360 gave me the dreaded "Red Ring of Death" last night, the flashing red signal indicating a general hardware failure. I've heard estimates of fatal defects in up to a third of all Xbox's. From the anecdotal evidence I've run across, though, I wouldn't be surprised to learn the total was closer to two-thirds.
Anyway, my machine just fell out of its original warranty, but thanks to the warranty extension Microsoft announced last spring, I'll still get a free repair.
Unfortunately, this process will take about a month. This wouldn't be so bad if my Xbox didn't also serve as a media extender; in addition to no Halo 3, it also means no recorded Heroes, Smallville, ER, 30 Rock, Bionic Woman, etc. So what am I supposed to do in the meantime -- read or something?
Update: In related news, GameStop is reportedly scrapping its Xbox replacement plan.
Posting will be a little lighter than usual over the next couple of weeks due o a confluence of events this week.
More news on the baby front: the chromosome tests came back today, and it's definitely a girl. Andrea, as you can probably imagine, is thrilled.
