I'm watching a travel program on Prague on PBS right now - it's narrated by Rudy Maxa, who also appears on NPR's Savvy Traveller show - which is where I heard about the Prague travel deal. Watching the shots of the Mala Strana makes me...homesick isn't the right term, obviously, but still, I'd love to go back. And stay there - I recognize almost all these shots from wandering around with Arwen back in March. Prague is such a great city - go there. Go there now. Trust me on this one.

Kerry came across better than I expected, quite frankly - he's not a great speaker, but he did pretty damned well tonight. And I loved the post-speech song choice - "Beautiful Day" is a perfect campaign song. I know, it's by an Irish band, but U2 are about as American as you can get.

No, seriously! Ron Reagan is an atheist! Obviously, this isn't revolutionary, but it's not insignificant - one of the most prominent speakers at the Democratic Convention has publicly said that he doesn't believe in God. Considering the discrimination against secular humanists, agnostics, and atheists in the political world, this is definitely noteworthy.

I'm watching C-SPAN - they're showing Dean from yesterday, addressing a session on "Progressive Politics & the Democratic Party". He's great. No, seriously - he's great. He's talking about running against every Republican candidate, running for every school board seat, getting local activists to run for office, seizing our own media (i.e., the blog approach), going after seats even in ultra-right states like Utah, Mississippi, etc, etc...nothing that's shocking, but he sounds extremely dedicated to this. I really believe that Howard Dean has a major role to play in reshaping the Democratic Party nationwide. He and Simon Rosenberg over at the New Democrat Network are peope to watch in this regard.

...Barack Obama is the f'n man. Ron Reagan's pretty good so far too, but Obama - damn. He's the MAN. If you missed his speech, you should track it down somewhere - I'm betting the Democratic Party will put it online.

EDIT - the speech should be online sometime tomorrow - you can probably find it here, on the convention web page.

I need to find some better software, but I'm already having too much fun with the video conferencing camera they gave me here at the office. We're live-testing all the new gadgets and systems for Cisco's messaging products - Call Manager (IP Phone backend), Unity (voicemail), Outlook integration (in theory, it'll send your voicemails to you as email with attachments, but that required using Exchange Server, which, well, screwed up my setup pretty badly), video conferencing, etc... So now I need decent software, so that I can snoop on everyone walking by my cube. Fun! If I can find Linux drivers, I'll hook it up with my new box (on its way as we speak) and try some motion-detection stuff, a la Cryptonomicon. I am such the geek.

My car got here yesterday, nearly a week early...that's a good sign, hopefully, for my apartment stuff. I spent a couple hours sitting at the new apartment yesterday, waiting for the car to show up, and I mapped out some ideas for the apartment layout...wish I'd brought a tape measure, though. I'm still falling asleep early at night, and strangely sleeping late each morning, but hey, I can deal with these last vestiges of time-zone shifts.

This guy is great - he should run for President...

Two completely unrelated subjects, I know. I saw King Arthur a couple nights ago, and, well, it not surprisingly sucked. My favorite aspect of it is how the opening title said that this was the true story of Arthur...and, I guess, in the sense that it's not Camelot and all, it's closer to the truth...but it's still really freakin' far from it. I could go for a rant about it, but it'd just be annoying, so I won't. =)

As to blogging - this whole blogging and the convention thing is just weird. CNN's doing coverage from blogs, Hardball's got a blog...seriously, why? Nothing actually interesting is going to happen at the convention. The reason that bloggers are getting passes is just to build up some good publicity for the Dems, not because they're going to break major stories...oy.

That reminds me - I need to remember to set the VCR to tape Obama's speech. Just my luck that I'm without my Tivo this week...

Actually, I rather like my boots, but I hate how they abuse shoelaces. Seriously - they tear them apart in days. Yes, just days - the most recent lace ripped in under a week. Arrrrrgh.

I'm a little in shock right now - it's 5:15pm PDT, I'm still in the office, and I'm thinking lucidly. This is a new one for me. I fell asleep pretty early last night (before 10pm), but woke up at 2am (something I ate was causing problems - I was up 'til 3 or so) and then woke up for good at 7:30am or so. And I'm not jetlagged. Wow indeed.

But now I'm encountering one of the real problems with this move - it's 8:15pm back in Massachusetts and I'm still in the office here. I actually feel quite productive (most of my office stuff arrived yesterday and today, so I've unpacked nearly everything, and I've arranged my cube properly) so I'd like to get some more work done...but I've got to call Arwen before it gets too late for her. And I've got to do something about dinner at a reasonable hour...it's going to take some work to get used to all this. I have a feeling I'll end up calling Arwen from the office (or the train, once I've moved into the permanent place) and then doing more work, probably cooking dinner for the next day after eating earlier food. I dunno. Adjustment time, I guess.

Today's date will live on in history forever. On this date, a man went where he'd never gone before, made a giant leap into the unknown...

...no, I'm not talking about no Neil Armstrong - I'm in California now. I've moved. Tada. And stuff. Well, no stuff - that's all still en route, and I'm in a weird temporary apartment for three weeks. I don't get HBO here - no THE WIRE every Sunday night! (note to self - remember to pre-order THE WIRE season 1 on DVD - comes out in December, if I remember correctly.) (note to everyone else - watch THE WIRE. Best show on TV these days, says I. Great, great show.) Ok, lack of HBO isn't weird - I'm just sad. The *weird* aspect of the TV situation is that this is the only cable setup I've EVER seen with A/B cable. Yeah, that's right. There's a little box on the floor that I have to whack to get half the channels. Oh, and there's a parking garage in the basement. I wanna move into my apartment!

Ah well - time to go get food and such. More laterish.

Or more accurately, I have little stuff, except for that ton of stuff that already left. Oy. I'm amazed - they emptied the place out completely in well under six hours. Now I need to clean (my vacuum cleaner just busted its belt while I was using it - of course, now, just before I throw the damned thing away, it gives up the ghost) and reassemble the carry-on/to-be-mailed stuff. And eat something. I'm actually on someone else's wireless network right now - signal strength is for shit, but there's something just fun about finding three networks that I could, in theory, piggyback on. Anyway, time to have some ice cream - I borrowed a spoon (along with a temporary vacuum) from the building manager...

Every time I move, I come to a life-changing decision - I'm never, ever going to move again. I *hate* moving. It's not going to a new place that throws me off so much - it's the transition. I'm lousy at it. This time, I just can't figure out what I should be packing, what I shouldn't be packing, etc...yes, this is going to be about 18,000 times easier than it would be without professional movers doing all the heavy lifting, but I'm still totally off my game. The fact that I haven't heard from the movers in weeks only makes it worse - what if they never show up? Urk.

So, besides just getting the place suitable for movers (and I'm hoping I'm pretty close to that already, but hey, who knows...), I've got to get the car cleaned out, since it's getting shipped, I've got to cancel all my utilities, I've got to clean the apartment after everything leaves it, I've got to make sure I've got everything I need for the next three weeks either packed with me in suitcases or in a box I'm mailing myself, etc... Yeah, yeah, it doesn't sound all that overwhelming, and I suppose for someone with the ability to plan ahead worth a damn, it probably wouldn't be overwhelming. But this is *me*, so, of course, I screwed up planning badly. I really do wish I wasn't an idiot sometimes. Ah well.

I'm leaving the cable modem on until I leave late today - I just don't see the point in disconnecting it. I need *some* entertaiment/refuge/etc while my stuff goes merriliy out the door (into sporadic rain and constant mist, I might add). So this may not be the last post of the day. We'll see. Regardless, there WILL be an increase in posting rate over the next couple weeks - what else am I gonna do with my time?

I'm moving. In just a couple days. eeeeeeek. I'm packing my cube right now, and it's, well, going slowly - I keep getting interrupted by people coming to say goodbye. It's time-consuming, having friends! Anyway, I'm terrified now. It's finally sunken in that I'm MOVING to the other side of the CONTINENT. IN THREE DAYS. EEEEEEP. Like I said, raw terror. I need to pack here, figure out what exactly I'm doing back at the apartment - the movers are doing the packing, so what exactly do I need to do? Clean, I guess, and organize. I'll be in a temporary apartment for three weeks, so I don't need to worry about getting utilities/TV/'net access all up and running right away, which should be a help. But still...I'm freakin' out a bit. More later. =)

There've been discussions around the blogosphere lately about comments and whether they should be on or off. I don't get enough comments for it to be that significant - except for on this one post, where a bona-fide community of girls and women obsessing over Rip Hamilton has developed. I find it strangely fascinating.

Sorry 'bout the lack of posting - I hit the road a week from today, so there'll be an increase in activity once I'm out in California. Eep. I move in a week - that's a little frightening.

...sounds like the veep is Edwards. Thank *god*. I was worried that it really was going to be Gephardt - Edwards is the best choice available to Kerry. Of course, the right-wing shills on the TV news are being bleh about Edwards. Losers.

Josh Ritter, whom I went to college with, sucks. I say this because I am insanely jealous of him. He's a rock star. Well, a folk-rock star, but he's legitimately a star - he's massive in Ireland (his newest album went to #2 on the Irish charts - seriously!) and he headlined one night of a festival at Dublin Castle that featured Morrissey, The Streets, and Iggy Pop on the other nights. Oh, and he's co-headlining the first day of Newport Folk this year. But it gets worse - he's playing on the same stage as Primal Scream at the V Festival in the UK this August. Gaaaaah. Not fair. NOT FAIR! Basement Jaxx, Massive Attack, the Pixies, and many, MANY other bands are playing the festival as well. Augh! Why did I have to have no musical talent of any kind?

In all seriousness - Josh is pretty great. Go buy his albums. He's good people and he makes good music. I just wanna see Primal Scream. Well, at least I still have Pixies tickets. =)

Saw it yesterday - regardless of the spin that Moore throws around (and in the first half, there's plenty of that), it just made me angry. Really, really angry. And it made me feel ineffectual. Pretty depressing, really.

So yeah - the move is in two weeks and a day. I found out last week that my stuff is going to take three weeks to get to Palo Alto from here - which seems a little excessive to me, but hey, what am I gonna do? I'll be living out of a temporary apartment for those three weeks, so there'll probably be an increase in posting. What else am I gonna do without Tivo and Arwen? =)