The subway car is not your living room.

You don’t need to put your coffee on one seat, your bag on the other, and cross your legs to read your newspaper.

Who do you think you are?

Yes, you can move away from the door.

If you step off the train to let people off, it won’t leave without you.

If you move further into the car to let people in, you’ll still be able to get off at your stop.

Don’t be a jerk and block the door.

…I don’t think upgrade price is worth it for casual users.

Yes, AeroGlass is neat, and the search works well, and the interface has definitely been spruced up. I have the hardware–Athlon 64 X2 4200+ processor, 2GB of RAM and a GeForce 8800 GTX, so Vista is a nice experience for me. I don’t know how well it will work for someone running with less computing power.

I also don’t really see how it makes sense that the operating system can wind up costing more than the processor. There’s just some kind of crazy economics at work there.

Apps like Windows Mail, Windows Calendar and Windows Contacts seem to scream out that Microsoft is afraid of what Google is doing. Again though, why would I switch from using an online application that I can access anywhere to one that limits me to my home PC. Maybe there is some online component coming down the line that will make it compelling to switch, but right now these apps could easily have been left out and I wouldn’t miss them at all.

The new start menu kind of sucks. There’s an appreciable delay when clicking on a folder to when it drops down to open up. I do like it better, but unless I can find some performance tweak I might have to switch back to the XP-style start menu.

I have experienced one nice surprise so far. Many websites have run benchmarks showing that gaming is slightly slower in Vista (perhaps because video card graphics drivers are not up to snuff yet). However I’m getting much higher FPS playing Flight Simulator X in Vista than I was under XP. I’m not sure what to attribute that to, but FSX is definitely running much more smoothly.

Vista offers some welcome improvements over XP, however I don’t know if it will revolutionize the way people use their computers.

So check out this story.

First off, the woman is a jeweler and the best she could manage is a thirty-cent tip on a $10.70 fare.

THEN, the cabbie is honest enough to return THIRTY-ONE diamond rings that she forgot in his cab. Rings probably worth thousands (or tens of thousands) of dollars in total. This woman, so grateful to have them back, offered the cabbie a measly $100 reward.

Hopefully paying out that massive reward didn’t prevent the woman from enjoying an evening of eating caviar out of chinchilla’s buttholes.

Taken at the Museum of Natural History.

I’m a big football fan, but the Super Bowl disgusts me.

Why does it take 45 minutes to play one quarter?
Why do we need a half hour halftime show?
Four hour pre-game? Give me a break.

When was the last year that the Super Bowl was actually about the game being played and not the spectacle of it?

In 2006, Stardock Software published a game called Galactic Civilizations II: Dread Lords. Anyone that has played the PC classic, Master of Orion, knows what’s going on here. Galactic conquest in a turn-based strategy format.

Civilization IV really stole the turn based strategy glory in 2006, and I’m not going to argue that it isn’t a great game, because it is. I just believe that GalCiv II is a better game.

I’m not going to do a full review because the game is so immense and I don’t really have the time. Obviously, if you are not into the outer space theme, that might be a turn off for you. There are many things that GalCiv II has in its corner, however.

Reasons why GalCiv II is a better game:
The game is extremely customizable. Moreso than Civ IV. There are many more options for creating the exact type of game you want to play. You can even do things like create a custom race without having to modify config files or anything like that. The upcoming expansion pack promises even more customization options.

More unpredictable gameplay. In Civ IV, once a game starts it’s a pretty straightforward affair. Research techs, make friends and enemies, go to war, etc. GalCiv II has a much more dynamic game engine which throws in random events and occurances that make each game much more interesting.

You might be lucky enough to discover a “Ranger” class starship early on, giving you a huge advantage in space battles. Your race might discover ancient technology leading to some kind of breakthrough. Any number of events is possible, and the face of the game can be changed in a moment.

Minor races. Minor races add some more dynamic flair to games. Not just a nuisance like Civ IV’s “barbarians”, minor races can turn out to play a major role in any given game. Minor races don’t participate in the galactic council, but they basically play like any major race and have the same diplomatic options available when dealing with them.

Better combat. Combat is “more realistic” than Civ IV. To me that’s still one of the weakest points in the game. It’s still crazy that on the 4th version of the game, it’s still possible for a maceman to defeat an apache helicopter. Just not realistic at all. In Civ IV, superior techs don’t really gain the advantages that they should.

In GalCiv II, there are 3 types of weapons (beam, bullet and missle) and 3 types of defenses (shields, armor and ECM). Each type of defense is suitable towards a specific weapon. For example, if your closest neighbor is developing shields and you want to go to war with them, you don’t want to battle with lasers because they won’t work. You need to really consider your ship types and consider what your opponents are building and if you think they’ll declare war on you.

In Civ IV, you are stuck to watch as your musketman might lose to a pikeman, but in GalCiv II you create your own ships and are completely responsible for your military domination (or failure). The ship editor is pretty fantastic, basically allowing you to create custom, unlimited ship designs to use. You can also use stock designs, but it’s so much fun to build your own (and very intuitive and not very time consuming).

I urge anyone out there who hasn’t played GalCiv II to pick up a copy and give it a spin. Just keep a close eye on the clock, it might be 3AM before you realize you’ve been playing for a few hundred turns!

My quest for a Wii began sometime prior to the Thanksgiving Holiday. I didn’t pre-order a console because Nintendo assured us gamers that there would not be a shortage of consoles—a problem (real or fabricated for press) that has plagued other console manufacturers as they have released their shiny new boxes upon the public.

Christmas came and went and I still did not have a Wii in my possession. Daily calls to Toys ‘R Us and other big box chains proved fruitless. Hourly checking of online technology retailers proved equally futile. My brother-in-law received a Wii for Christmas, his wife (and also my sister) having the foresight to pre-order one for him.

After a night of playing Wii sports and Super Monkey Ball mini-games, my wife and I were hooked. We needed to have one and couldn’t wait until whenever Nintendo reported that stores would have a normal stock of consoles. Still, despite my desire to own a Wii, I did not want to overpay for one on ebay or craigslist.

New Year’s Day came and went and it was back to work. I was sitting at my desk, lamenting my inability to track down a console. As if moved by the hand of God, I decided to call Toys ‘R Us in Middle Village, Queens. The lady on the other end of the call told me “Yes, we got in an unexpected shipment of 30 this morning.” It was like the most beautiful song my ears have ever heard. “Can you hold one for me?” “No I’m sorry, we can’t…but we should still have them by this evening…nobody knows we have them in stock.”

I immediately e-mailed my friend Chadd. Chadd is a HUGE Nintendo fan in need of a Wii even more badly than I. “Can I come with you?” he asked. “Sure you can, but if there’s only one left it goes to me.” “Tough but fair” was his reply.

I left work at 5 and picked him up. We raced from Astoria to Middle Village. We ran from the car and sprinted down the escalator, arriving out of breath at the video game counter. We each left the store with a console. I bought Super Monkey Ball, Trauma Center and Elebits. Chadd bought a “classic controller” which is used to play the downloadable virtual console games. Since that time Chadd has spent $150 dollars on Virtual Console games. A virtual madman, I’d say.
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This is what I made for dinner last Tuesday.

It was delicious!

It’s time for a change of Knicks management.

Isaiah Thomas needs to be fired.