stay in the shallow end

A few weeks ago I made the wife swear to me that she would do everything in her power to make sure that under no circumstances that I bought an Xbox 360. I now realize that that my insisting on that was a landmark moment in self awareness.

I can feel the hysteria setting in. I’m drawn to IGN and GameSpot repeatedly throughout the day. I lust over screenshots of Project Gotham Racing 3 and Perfect Dark Zero. I know if I got one, I’d play it like crazy for a few weeks and then it would only be powered up every now and then. Besides, I need to save my money for the revolution.

Despite that, I still spend a good portion of my waking hours trying to figure out a loophole in my agreement that would let me off the hook… I’ve got enough gift certificates to Sears to get one. That wouldn’t be buying it, right? How about if I win one in a contest? Does theft count?

With all the news sites and blogs that I track and all the crazy stuff happening in the world, it’s rare that I come across something that catches me completely off guard. I did a full-on double-take when I read this, though:

Pirates armed with grenade launchers and machine guns tried to hijack a luxury cruise liner off the east African coast Saturday, but the ship outran them, officials said.

Read the full details of their escape at the Washington Post here.

I wonder if they had a parrot.

I was really surprised to see this parked in the middle of the front lobby of Darden (UVA’s business school) when I was going to the Java Users Group meeting:

Happy Diwali!