Megapost!

Here's a condensed megapost of all (some? a few?) of the things I've meant to blog over the last weeks but didn't because of either server problems or just being busy.

No love for Blogger
I've pretty much had it with blogger. It's barfed out on me a couple of times now when I was trying to post. There are other bugs too, like the front page not updating properly after new material gets posted. Anyway, does anyone (AG?) have any better suggestions? I fear I may need to find a "real" host, so if your suggestion is in the form of server software, I'm happy to hear it.

Bedlam is dreaming of rain
It's a downpour outside right now, and I got to walk to work too! I did catch my first ever glimpse of the Rose Bowl Parade. When I stepped off of my front porch, looking towards Colorado Blvd I could distinctly see two undulating layers of ponchos. The first was more or less stationary, and the second had a group velocity that was decidedly east. Some parade!

Pasadena's lack of drainage has become painful obvious once again. Many cars parked on the street have their undersides partially submerged, and there's a long stretch on the south side of PCC that spells DOOM for pedestrians. There's only the sidewalk, a high wall and the street, and enough of the street is submerged that, well, if a car comes by you're gonna get soaked. I had to stop and wait for cars to go by, kicking up massive amounts of water in the process. KASPLOOSH! You know what? My toes are cold.

Gaming goodness
I always say that the single most important thing about a piece of gaming hardware has nothing to do with it's technical capabilities (even if, say, the Dreamcast was dead sexy in that regard). At the end of the day, the only thing that matters is the software.

On that note, I sold my PSP and bought a DS. Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow and Advance Wars: Dual Strike have already made the purchase worthwhile, and there are still a lot of great games I haven't had a chance to play. Whee! Go go gadget gamer's thumb!

Altamont in black
I'm not sure why, but Altamont Pass (like Tejon Pass, or the Grapevine, but at the other end of the trip) is really pretty when it's dark. Between the cloud cover and getting on the road well before sunrise, it was the darkest I've ever seen it. Row after row of rolling curves cutting black patches out of the sky... I couldn't really see the hills, but I'm so familiar with that stretch of the drive that, in a way, I almost could. Mmmm.

Much later on the drive, the clouds slowly started to open up just in time with sunrise. I saw the first crack of lit sky far to the south just as I was passing through Santa Nella. The arrangement of the solitary hole in the clouds far on the horizon made it almost look like a single, lit cloud in an otherwise black sky. Again, pretty! From there, the sky continued to entertain me for the entire boring stretch on I-5. Luckily, the coolest looking mix of sunrise and clouds was almost always right in front of me, so I could manage a reasonable approximation of "eyes on the road."