mahalo.

There are some things nice about being up early in the morning.

Although, for the most part, I think sleep wins over them all.

For a couple of reasons:

1. The NHL regular season starts in the US (LA and Anaheim have already played a series overseas in London).

Top scorer in 2007, Sidney Crosby

#2. San Jose’s own Joe Thornton


2. Microsoft has refreshed the Zune to a point where I want to buy it. I really liked the Zune from the beginning, especially for it’s big mother screen and FM tuner (handy in the gym if you want to run while watching TV), but it was always so BIG and UGLY. Now, they’ve thinned it up a bit, made the screen even bigger (3.2″, compared to 2.5″ on the iPod classic and 3.5″ on the iPod touch/iPhone) and also added wireless synching with your computer.
   
   The 80GB model also comes with cool “premium” cloth cabled, noise cancelling earbuds



3. I’ve decided that I’m buying an xbox 360. NHL 2008 just looks too good. The dual analog control scheme (check out the “Playbook” tab) seems like something that just makes a whole lot of sense and all the reviews I’ve read have pretty much said that this is the best hockey game ever made. Halo 3 is pretty damn fun. It’s a lot of money, esp with the Zune, but dammit, I got thoroughly sucked in by the Halo 3 launch.

Here’s some xkcd for you.

Pre-season has started. Fantasy is underway. ESPN has put up a pretty good highlight reel of 2006-2007 goals.

Earlier this week I was also in Redmond. Halo 3 is actually kind of a big deal right now.

Apparently I wasn’t supposed to take pictures of Redmond Town Center, where I stayed, but I managed to get a few pictures before I was scolded.

No Microsoft didn’t kill me. Waking up from slumber. I should use this space considering that I’m paying for it.

As some may have seen in the news, Tellme was acquired by Microsoft.

This article is a different take than what the other usual reports have been saying.
Behind Redmond’s Tellme Deal (cnet)

From the hometown newspaper. And I will point out that we already have an Xbox 360 in the game room. Dammit that sensationalist Mercury News. Twisting the facts for the story. =)
San Jose Mercury News article

This product that Tellme has been working on is now public beta. And for the most part to mostly positive feedback.

Download the application for your Java-enabled phone here.

It will be Tuesday before I play on them, but they do look pretty. Most notable are the full-height (plexi)glass boards on the spectator side.

The new facility is at Silver Creek Sports Complex. A big mother new sports facility in deep south San Jose.

aka Strelitzia Nicolai - here’s the one I bought from Osh (whose plants look much healthier than Home Depot’s I might add… although their CSRs… not as good).

To keep some symmetry, I also got another nicolai from Costco. Let’s see which one ends up being healthier in the long(er) run.

After making a Costco run and seeing that they sold houseplants, I had a kick in the head towards the end of last week and decided that i wanted to some nice houseplants to put by the window. Since the window in the living room goes pretty much from six inches off of the floor up to a foot from the ceiling, I figured that nice, tall plants framing the window would give a nice touch to the interior decor.

The first idea was to get Birds of Paradise, however, at this point, I’m still not sure if Birds can be grown as indoor plants. If my current venture fails, I’ll have to take a look at it.

As it is, I chose to go with these pretty looking fern-y things that already stood about 5′ high. I bought them at $20 each from Costco (my reasoning, however flawed, was that if they can survive a non-nursery environment, then they can probably survive under some real/well-intented care) and brought them home, feeling pretty good about everything.

After settling them in, I ran over to Home Depot to buy new pots (the ones they came in were cracking), pot bases and a watering can, and while at Home Depot I also noticed that the exact plant that I bought was sold there as well, this time with a label. Turns out my new plants are Majesty(ic) Palms (Ravenea rivularis).

Along with a Home Depot associate mentioning that the majesties are “fickle”, a number of internet articles out there make it sound like I chose just about the most difficult houseplant to care for ever.

I thought that plant care primarily involved two things (1) light and (2) water. Turns out there is also (3) Defend your plants against evil critters - such as the crazy spider mites, which, if you’re not observant, can bring down a plant before you even know it.

Despite the unfortunate circumstances, I don’t intend to allow this endeavor to fail. I already have ironite and pest spray, along with one of them cool pressurized plant sprayers. I’ve already soaped down the leaves in an attempt to kill off any spider mites that may have been present. I’ve even sprayed them after the soaping in an attempt to create a more humid environment for these floridian implants.

I’ll look at the challenge as any good parent would deal with a difficult child. They may drive you crazy, and you’ll have to spend a lot of time dealing with their particular issues, but you don’t abandon them until they become covered or infested by killer insects.

And like anything precious that you might lose, I’ll put off naming them until they make it past that treacherous first month in a new habitat.

The leaves are a little droopy now, but if they wake up in the morning, I’ll post some pictures of how they look and their comfortable setting at home.

Update: Looking at them again in the morning, I think the plants were hosed before they even got here. It looks like there’s fairly rampant fungi/bacterial blight on these plants already. I can try cutting them off at the stem (it’s basically on every leaf), but I’m not sure if that will be enough.

It’s possible that this may just be a result of over-watering, so I’ll wait it out, but otherwise reading more about the White Bird of Paradise makes it look promising as a second attempt.

Here’s a random picture from my place during an evening with an interesting looking cloud formation.

Sticking my head out of the sand just to say “Happy Holidays” and to mix in a little support for Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip as well.

I’ve taken a recent liking to the Christmas classic, “O Holy Night”, and coincidentally, Studio 60 used part of their Christmas episode to recognize displaced musicians from New Orleans.

The result…

The short and simple backstory is that Studio 60’s (fictional) executive producers discover that displaced musicians from New Orleans are in the area during the holidays looking for extra work - trying to pick up some additional income so they can buy presents for their families. Upon hearing this, the Studio rounds up the ones that they can find and schedules in an impromptu musical performance…

The mushy stuff inbetween is of little significance to those not already watching the show.

The full mp3 of the performance without the tv stuff is available at NBC’s Studio 60 website