I went in Starbucks the other day to grab a pre-work grande white mocha and was a bit amused to hear the tender croon of Bauhaus's "All We Ever Wanted Was Everything" coming across the speakers. I whiled away the time while the barista prepared my coffee trying to figure out which employee was the goth.

I could write a whole post on the retarded majesty of All My Children. I can't stand this show, yet when V puts it on while we're falling asleep i can't nod off. I find myself cursing the stupidity of the idiotic Carey family, or the new-agey philosophical rantings of the transgender Zoe/Zarf. Ditto Dirt.

New 46" LCD HDTV is on the way. Maybe even arriving on my doorstep tomorrow. That'd be a nice way to begin the weekend.

I've been getting the dreaded "disc unreadable" message on my Xbox 360 with increasing frequency lately. It hasn't prevented the system from booting up or loading games, but recently i've been unwilling to begin games of Winning Eleven for fear that, as previously, once i score a couple of crackers and build up a lead the game will crash. It doesn't happen all the time, but enough that it's freakin' annoying. It's happened with Rainbow Six Vegas too, which has me worried it's a console issue. Luckily the system is still under warranty, but i'm not all that enthused to deal with Microsoft customer support.

Trying to do sit-ups every day to begin the lengthy process of losing my gut. Tomorrow will make day number 3. Gotta start somewhere.

I've been programming a lot lately. Fixed a bunch of faulty display features in my 3D image analysis program, so i can make pretty color volume renderings of medical image datasets. My iTunes Log program has reached a sort of steady state, although it was thrown a curve by the recent iTunes update. I've just started coding something i call "Portable Backup" that creates indices of directories for use in syncing folders across machines. The nice thing about it is that by keeping indices, you can compare and sync directories without having complete copies of source and target at hand. It's not ready for prime time yet, but it's showing promise.

Downtown RC has surprisingly become one happening place. Either that or my definition of happening has gone downhill. All kidding aside, the downtown promenade has got a handful of great restaurants, a brand new movie theater, and a beautifully renovated city hall and square. And somehow the vanilla custard cream puffs at the local Beard Papa franchise are the best anywhere around the bay.

Man, they just keep on showing the special editions of the first three Star Wars movies on HBO. It's the 30th anniversary of the original this year, i guess that explains it.

I don't go to too many shows anymore, but my apathy is being challenged by the visit of the Arcade Fire in June. V has bought us tix to both the Nor- and So-Cal appearances of faceless French electronica gurus Daft Punk in a few months. Hopefully that will live up to their climactic performance at Coachella last year.

Earlier this evening V momentarily convinced me that Hüsker Dü had reunited and were touring. That would be a shock. Of course, if Kim Deal and Frank Black could agree that they love money more than they hate each other, then perhaps Bob Mould and Grant Hart could as well. Then we can see if the festival of loathing among the former Smiths can be quelled in the interest of greed. Although to be honest, there's little that interest me less these days than Morrissey and his neverending mining of teenage angst.

I maintain that Princess Leia was one sweet hottie (particularly in Empire), but man ... those were some crazy white boots she was sporting in 1977.

I spent another morning at the Starbucks in Newark last Thursday as i waited for my Jetta to be serviced down the street. In addition to the routine maintenance, the mechanics

There's that scene again where one of the stormtroopers bringing up the rear of a procession smacks his helmet on a low door. Always good for a giggle. I'm amazed that Lucas didn't edit that out in his craptacular special edition.

We're looking at refrigerators tomorrow. Does it mean i'm old if that thought gets me just a little excited?

Can Chelsea win the league? Or the FA Cup? Or god forbid the Champions League? Who knows. They could bow out of all three by the middle of April and i would not be surprised in the least. Or we could suddenly find that invulnerability and resilience of the past two years and win the quadruple. I have no idea how to read this team anymore. One thing i do know is that i can't stand Cristiano Ronaldo. The notorious diver recently commented on the controversy that continually follows him by saying "Maybe some people don't like me. Maybe i'm too good". Ho ho. Oh yeah, that's it. Pretty lousy schoolyard taunts coming from someone who worked the word "polemic" into the same interview.