9:30 on a Tuesday night

Actually, it's 12:20 on a Thursday morning, but I had BNL running through my head as I was walking home.

I just got home from work – I haven't had to work this late for a while but the CIO is doing a presentation next week and there's some stuff that absolutely has to get pushed to production by Friday. Yay 15-hour day. I had coffee around 7 and I don't feel like sleeping yet so you get *bullet points galore!*

• Speaking of work, there's a quote from Microserfs (a book that you should read, by the way, especially if you're a programmer) that has stuck in my head since I first read it years ago – "There's an endemic inability in the software industry to estimate the amount of time required for a software project." I don't know if it's necessarily true (though I think it probably is) but I do know that I have an awfully hard time reliably estimating how long it will take to complete programming tasks. I always have and I don't know why. I need to do something about this.
• Andrew was also working late tonight and I could hear bits and pieces of his music. He had a bunch of different artists on shuffle, while I was listening to complete albums. This struck me for some reason and I mentioned it to him – he said he doesn't usually listen to complete albums because the songs all end up sounding the same to him. I find that songs on an album are like chapters in a book – I can enjoy a chapter by itself but I appreciate the chapters more as a cohesive whole.
• Andrew and I talked a lot today, actually. We got into a fairly animated discussion about the NHL lockout at lunch. It went on for half an hour or so. My feeling, at least right now, is that the players should be able to make whatever they can on the free market and that the owners are using the players as a scapegoat so they don't have to blame their own poor management. There's an interesting and entertaining book by Michael Lewis called Moneyball about how the Oakland Athletics have been able to win so many games with a very low payroll. I guess I'm lumping hockey owners in with baseball owners – and baseball owners have been crying poor for years, holding cities hostage for publicly-funded stadiums, not spending revenue-sharing payments on player salaries, that kind of thing. People wouldn't be so eager to own sports teams if the teams weren't a good investment or the people didn't have massive egos and a desire to be in the public eye. Maybe it just boils down to me rather having the money go to the players than to the owners, because I don't like the owners. Heh.
• The Shaye/Symphony Nova Scotia show on Friday was incredible – I'll leave it at that for now. I've been meaning to post a full review but just haven't gotten around to it.
• I bought my parents a new computer for Christmas. I still have a Pentium 166/MMX at home. What's wrong with this picture?
• My ankles are still sore from tennis and I haven't played in a week. I wonder what I did there. I'm still not walking, both because I haven't been getting up early enough, and because my ankles are sore. I really need to get back in that routine. Soon.
• Almost everyone in the baseball media has been making such a big deal about Boston versus New York in the American League Championship Series. I'd rather have a team in there that it wouldn't kill me (figuratively) to root for. I watched a bit of last night's game. Mike Mussina was pitching a perfect game through 6 innings and the Yankees were up 8-0. If I'm Joe Torre, there's no way I send him back out for the 7th, despite the perfect game – I take him out to rest him in case I need to ride him hard later in the series. Ah, the joys of playing armchair manager. In this case, Mussina gave up four runs in the 7th and the Sox came back to 8-7, so maybe I don't know what the hell I'm talking about. :)
• I'm totally hooked on J. J. Abrams' new show Lost – it's a ridiculous premise but incredibly compelling.
• Sue Johanson is on Letterman – WTF?
• Anyone want a Gmail invite? My Mom has Gmail now – I think that's cool for some reason.

It's now 1:10 on a Thursday morning. I think I've rambled enough for one night. Zzz...