After finishing my latest audiobook, I was trying to think about other ways I could avoid the radio during my commute, so I decided to start listening to my iPod again. Now, I have somewhat of a...problem with acquiring a lot of music, so much so that I often hear songs come up on my iPod that I completely don't recognize.

Now, I'm probably the last person in the world to hear about this feature, but in iTunes (and on your iPod), you can create Smart Playlists, where you can write rules about what kinds of songs should be included in the playlist. So I just created a smart playlist on my iPod that includes only songs with Play Counts of 0. And...it's over 3000 items. In my defense, I don't sync my iPod with my computer, so a good chunk of the songs I've listened to before, just not on my iPod. But that's still pretty bad. I'm also taking the opportunity to delete all the crappy songs that I don't like anymore, and rate the ones I do.

Edit: In completely unrelated news, I just checked, and I will be maxed-out on PTO (again) in two weeks. Sigh.

Finale spoilers, ho! You have been warned.

I was really rooting for Carla, but in the end she screwed up. She lost confidence in herself and allowed herself to get pushed into doing things that she wasn't comfortable with. I feel like even the judges were rooting for her to win, so I'm sure it was hard for them to have to admit she wasn't even in the running to win. It broke my heart to see how disappointed in herself she was, but it was a sweet moment to see Stefan comforting her. A rare bit of humanity and compassion the editors let slip through. In the end, I think this will be great exposure for her, and I definitely think she'll win fan favorite, which should lessen the sting. I sort of feel like Hosea won by default, which is a little disappointing in a finale. He certainly cooked great food this meal, but I don't think he was the Top Chef of the season. Oh well.

Can you hear this sound? I can, which surprised me, as I believe I have pretty poor hearing.

In other news, work is going to be absolutely horrible this week and weekend, so I'm probably going dark for a few days. See you on the other side.

For those of you who didn't see this when I posted on Facebook, watch it now. Beautiful.

...to...Eureka Valley? Signed a lease for a new apartment last night. It's smaller, but MUCH nicer than the current apartment, and for everyone who's asked, yes, Virginia, there will be a housewarming party. And you're all invited! Except you. No, to the left. Yeah, you. Sorry.

To prep for the move, there has been an explosion of cleaning in the house, and I briefly (okay, it wasn't very brief) panicked when I found a HUGE spider in my file box that I thought might be a black widow. I managed to catch it in one of Sha Sha Chu's patented Magical Spider Catchers (i.e. a plastic salsa container), and after some googling, found out it was a triangulate cobweb spider, or 'false widow'. After snapping a few pics of it, we released it into the backyard, probably to have it return tomorrow and lay thousands of eggs in my eyeballs.

This made me feel less stupid.

This morning, I was listening on the radio about how, despite an all-night session, the California Senate has still not come up with a new budget. They spoke to one of the Senate Republicans, who is apparently one of many who signed a "No New Taxes" pledge, which he said means he will not raise taxes except in "an extreme emergency." So...a $40B budget gap doesn't qualify as an emergency? The fact that state workers are being forced to take unpaid days off? That an estimated 10,000 state employees will be laid off next week if the budget gap isn't closed? I'm not sure I want to see his definition of "emergency." That said, I'm sure that there are Democrats just as unwilling to deviate from party lines, but at this point, they are apparently only one Republican vote shy of passing the budget, so come on, people. Get with the program.

Life has been good, lately. I'm starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel for work, so here's to hoping it's not because I'm about to be mowed down by a freight train.

Finally, last night I had a dream that I had to sight read a quartet while in a moving car. I'm not sure what that's supposed to mean.

As most of you already know, I've been looking at condos around SF for a while now. Last weekend I found a condo I really like, the parents approved of it, so I put in an offer on Tuesday. Later that afternoon, the sellers countered and gave us until noon on Wednesday to accept or reject it (or counter again.) I talked it over on Tuesday night, and my parents (who are already helping me financially in a big way) said they could probably help me a little bit more to come up with the difference. I went to sleep feeling excited about moving into a new house.

Wednesday morning when I woke up, though, I lay in bed and started adding up numbers in my head. And those numbers got real big. When I got up, I even started looking around my apartment at what I could sell to get extra money. Do I need my Game Cube still? Maybe I can sell my speakers? My new bike? I was nervous, but I figured my parents knew what they were doing.

Just as I walked into work, I got a call from my dad, and after about 20-30 minutes of talking, we decided not to take the counter. Rather than feeling the extreme disappointment that my parents expected, I actually felt relieved. Very relieved. And this is how I knew it was the right decision. After talking it over with my dad, I think even our initial offer would have been very tight, so in a way, it's good that the seller countered and snapped us out of our excitement over the property. It was a pretty sobering experience, and I have to admit I was a little spooked by the experience, because I think my parents and I very nearly made an extremely financially irresponsible decision. And now, more than ever, you can't afford (literally) to do that.

Otherwise, things are going pretty well. Working until 9pm (or later) has started to feel 'normal', which is a little disturbing. I haven't taken a photo in weeks, which sucks, but I'm not feeling as stressed as I was earlier, so I can deal.

I'm happy.

EA released its dismal 3rd-quarter results today to the tune of a $641M loss. It is always sad to have your company do poorly, but it is especially disappointing because I feel like it will make our company even more risk averse, and more likely to stick with surefire hits, instead of investing more in new and interesting games.

Of course, I (well, maybe not me personally, since I have no decision-making power) am actually partly to blame, because a non-insignificant contributor of these dismal results is the new ship date for The Sims 3, which is, as the astute will notice, not in FY09.

That all said, our stock price somehow went up, which apparently was because our revised earnings plan for FY10 was not as bad as everyone feared. I guess I'll take what I can get.