And so, three or four days became a month between posts...

Well, it was a busy month. My birthday was August 5, then mine and Renee's second anniversary was the 14th, and we met up with a ton of visitors for the rest of the month.

Our anniversary was great, we went to The Dining Room at Jack's La Jolla, easily the nicest restaurant I've ever been to (you're served bottled water, Fiji or Peligrino, your choice). We decided to do a five course tasting menu, where you try several different special dishes. Our menu was:

Cubes of Bluefin Tuna
Aromatic Vegetable Vinaigrette

Sauteed Sonoma Foie Gras
Huckleberries, Orange Crumble

Alaskan Halibut
Summer Truffles, Corn, Marcona Almond, Chanterelles

Colorado Lamb Loin
Sour Cherries, Endive, Shiso, Cardamom

Chocolate Caramel Custard
Chocolate Meringues, Chocolate Sorbet

It was an adventurous meal for me, I had never had foie gras or real truffles before. Both were good, but the last three courses were literally each the best thing I had ever eaten until the next course. When I ate the halibut, I thought "Well, they should stop because they can't beat this". Then the lamb was absolutely the best entree I have ever eaten, good enough that I could have done without desert. Then the desert came and was amazing. It was the most chocolatey thing I've ever eaten, but with different textures and levels of sweetness. It was a great experience, but the price definitely makes it for a special occasion.

Anyway, beyond that work has been busy and we're getting ready to go on our Peru trip. We leave September 10, just after Compton's wedding. It's just one work week away and we'll be off. It's going to be an adventure, and I look forward to posting about it later.

Great Start

Well, maybe I meant "every three or four days or whenever I feel like it" when I said I'd try to start writing every day. The pathetic part is that I'm not even busy. I've been "on call" at work for two weeks now. I'm getting paid like normal but I've been at home. Basically, the project I'm on is so messed up that the management had to stop it and figure out how to get it back on track. So in the mean time I get a summer vacation.

I've been trying to do fun stuff while I'm off. I've gone kayaking twice, went to the Wild Animal Park with my mom, went to Balboa Park, got out my bass guitar that I haven't played in like two years, and started working on my game again.

I'm writing a role playing game engine in Java just to have something to play with. It's pretty fun, and I love working in Java, but I don't spend enough time on it. When I get it working I'll put it up on my website or something, but that's going to be a little ways off still. It's a surprising amount of work to get it to a point where it will do anything, let alone behave like a real game. My goal is to get the game to feel like a classic SNES RPG, like Chrono Trigger or Earthbound. It'll probably be more like Earthbound since that game is very simple. Anyway, it's a fun project. I keep having trouble getting going on it though because I get sucked into real video games when I'm just sitting at home. I have a lot of the designe worked out in my head or on paper, but there's a ton that I have no idea how I'm going to do.

Writing Pledge

I've been thinking lately that I need to write more. My favorite English teacher in high school gave us 10 minutes to write at the beginning of every class because she thought it was an important way to get your mind moving. I eventually agreed with her then, and I agree with her now. So I'm going to try to write something every day. It may not always be interesting or very long, but it's something.

Zeitgeist: Part 2

So now that it's been a couple of weeks, I thought I'd write what I think about Zeitgeist. Honestly, I listened to it probably twice and haven't gone back to it since. It's a weird album to listen to because the music style is so old. Unless you've been listening to Smashing Pumpkins or Nirvana lately, it's definitely nostalgic to hear the heavy distortion and feedback that was so big in early 90's grunge. The part that made it hard for me to get next to was that the general sound feels like an old Smashing Pumpkins album, but its a new song so it's not familiar.

Compared to other Smashing Pumpkins albums, I'd say Zeitgeist is closest to Siamese Dream in music style. The guitar style is similar, but I just don't like it as much. I'd say this album is better than Machina and Adore, but not as good as either Siamese Dream or Melon Collie.

Part of my problem with this album is that I hoped it would be something new from one of my favorite old bands. Unfortunately, I felt like it sounded like the same old thing. It just didn't seem like there was any growth in the past 7 years. Siamese Dream came out around the same time as Blood Sugar Sex Magic. However, if you listen to RHCP's latest album Stadium Arcadium it's miles apart from their classic album (in a good way), while Smashing Pumpkins' new stuff is only distinguishable from their old in that the guitar isn't quite as good anymore.

Overall, I kind of feel like the band dialed this album in. Billy Corgan is smart enough to know that all of us in high school when they were big have money now and will buy any new CD with Smashing Pumpkins written on the front of it. I think Zeitgeist sort of took advantage of that.
It has a couple of catchy songs, but as an album it's just ok.

Zeitgeist

The new Smashing Pumpkins album comes out today! I'll probably pick it up on the way home from work. There are certain bands that I just respect enough to go buy a physical CD when they put out a new album. Recently it's been Tool, Nine Inch Nails, Red Hot Chili Peppers, and now Smashing Pumpkins.

Smashing Pumpkins is one of those nostalgic bands for me. I was very into them in high school, and so were most of my friends. In fact, we all missed their final San Diego concert when we went to our Senior Prom.

I'm a little worried since the band only has two of its original members. But then again, the band broke up because Billy Corgan was such a control freak with the music. So it probably doesn't matter who's playing bass and guitar, I'm sure Billy told them all what to play anyway.

Time for a new blog

I'd been thinking that I need a place to write every once in a while, then I got an email from Auggie and wandered onto his blog. When Blogger automatically signed me in with my google account, I was sold.

I'll be back soon.