It's always nice to be noticed, even when you're trying not to be

I mentioned before that if I did my job right on Virtual Earth, you may not notice the difference. Well, it seems that someone did notice the difference, and liked it enough to talk about it. Warms my heart, it does. Nice when folks notice the hard work you do!

Stewii

"Stewii" is the name of our new Wii console, which we got this morning. Despite buying it before 10 a.m., we didn't play it till after 5 p.m., since we spent the entire day doing yardwork (FOUR trips to Home Depot today, and we still haven't finished the front easement yet -- that'll be done on Tuesday, when we have 100 bags of lava rocks being delivered).

Anyway, the Wii is pretty darned fun. I still prefer XBOX360's Guitar Hero II, but the Wii can't be beat for pure innovation. It's fun just to watch the built-in weather channel!

Tigers T-Ball

Tigers T-Ball
Originally uploaded by Seattle Dave.

Coach Dave Hale invited me to photograph the Tigers as they battled the Badgers for T-Ball supremecy. I was the creepy guy hanging around kids without being an actual parent. Still, the photos came out OK!

Gimme some JScript!

My Virtual Earth cohort Stephen Stchur has just uploaded a cool open-source JScript library called "Gimme" -- check it out!

You obviously know nothing about Kurt Vonnegut

But now that he's dead, you can catch up on all of his books. I've already read all of them. Please leave a comment when you're done.

Dave's new toys

Got a couple of new toys this week!

First up is the scala-rider FM bluetooth headset. It works really well -- I was riding around Seattle last night listening to NPR on the FM radio (which only goes in one ear, so you can hear traffic noises and such), when Laurel called. The bluetooth kicked in, auto-answering the phone call, we talked, she hung up, and it switched back to FM radio. Totally hands-free, I was able to concentrate on driving the entire time and didn't have to fiddle with any buttons at all. Nice!

Next, Guitar Hero II for XBOX 360. Man, this game is fun!!! You don't need to know how to play guitar to enjoy it, but you sort of do need to be a fan of "guitar music" ... Laurel likes the game but isn't too thrilled with it because there is "too much Alice in Chains." First of all, you can never have too much Alice in Chains. Period. Second, there is like ONE Alice in Chains song in the game (so far). Sheesh.

I'm sure she'll be happy when "Hair Gelled Pajama in the Daytime Wearing Thinks No One Can Tell He's Gay but Come On Synth Pop Hero" ships.

It's alive!

The latest release of Virtual Earth just came out today! Check it out. If I did my job right, you shouldn't notice anything different (although loading the site should seem generally snappier), but other folks did make some cool visible improvements.