Oh man you guys! I wrote this four thousand word blog post in between this one and the one from last night, and you will never read it! And before you go on some high horsed tirade, let me remind you I still have eight days to write as poorly as I like!

My synesthesia has been acting up more than normal. I've been tasting things that don't have tastes. It's a little weird. You've probably experienced a little bit yourself. You know how sometimes things taste like they smell? This is like that except that this song tastes like it sounds. It doesn't happen with every sound or even every song. Pandora has played a lot of Sixpence None the Richer songs, though, and something about her voice just tastes very strong, and very good. I'm getting addicted, and bought their Christmas album. You should too.

Ordinarily I don't like when people sing a classic differently, but I kind of like how they tweaked the lyrics of Angels We Have Heard On High. Their rendition of O Come, O Come Emmanuel is the best thing I've listened to since before Jars of Clay's Good Monsters album. She (Leigh Nash) does an interesting thing and plays with the end of the chorus the first time she sings it, then sings it normal the second time. I like that she doesn't "act" like this is how everyone should sing it. She just feels like singing it differently, but also likes the original. My approval says a lot as she's tinkering with my favorite Christmas song, and I think my record as a traditionalist is rather clear.

When did I become a music critic? Soon I'll have to write a webcomic, get some bird tattoos, and stay up past 5am each morning twittering that I'm sorry the comic's so late, as if I owe it to you. Imagine if I had to write a blog post every night for a living. The post-quality would drop dramatically I think. I'm not sure I could garner thirty-six events a day anyway.

I've been waking up exhausted lately, too. I don't know if I just have unrealistic expectations for sleep, or if it's not normal to always be this tired. I know I used to always be this way. But without me noticing when it began and when it stopped, for a brief period, I had energy. Maybe it's seasonal? Maybe I have more energy when the sun is out. I know I love just taking the sun in when I can. For some reason I don't do it every chance I get, and will in fact, spend a lot of free summer days indoors, slaving over a blog post. Or watching The West Wing. Whichever.

It could just be my dreams. They're becoming more intense, lately. I wonder if that's connected to the synesthesia. Maybe my brain is just getting more warped all around. I took a nap today, and dreamt that Conan O'Brian hired Salvatore Maroni (the mobster whose legs are broken when Batman interrogates him about the Joker) to extort us for the firewood stacked at my mom's house. We gave him the wood, but then rebelled, and in the process, one of my coworkers was shot. Then a friend of mine helped carry him into the Batmobile and we "drove" to the hospital with little care for what carnage we caused to surrounding traffic. I woke up stressed because we weren't sure he was going to make it. He lost a lot of blood at the scene.

So now I've covered my tastes in music, odd brain conditions the majority of people can't relate to, and dreams. What other pearls of great writing do I have for you? Read on, my friend.

Movies! My dad saw the Matrix a couple years after it came out, and of course it had amazing reviews. So when he saw it, he had impossible expectations, and didn't really enjoy it. To be fair, I'm not sure it was really his kind of movie in the first place. Something similar happened with Donnie Darko for me. Everyone said I would love this movie. It was okay. The dialog wasn't anything special. The plot was fine, and there really weren't any time-travel issues. It was almost completely well thought-out. Does everyone else realize that his sister dies? He saves his mom, but his teacher and sister still board that plane that loses its engine to go back in time and kill Donnie.

On the flight home, the movie shown was The Time Traveler's Wife. I enjoyed it, but despite it's time traveling, it wasn't really my kind of movie. I like happy endings, I guess. I can appreciate tragedies (this one was mixed comedy and tragedy), but I don't necessarily like to watch them. There were a couple time related plot holes I noticed. He has the most gray hair at his wedding day, more gray than he has when he dies. The second one is even more minor. When he first talks to his daughter, she's ten and says it's been five years since she last saw him, but in the last scene, she's nine and he visits. It's obvious the writer meant that it's been five years since he died but I'm a nitpicker. I pick at nits.

SQL Azure had a successful release at PDC '09 in November, alongside the rest of the Windows Azure Platform. It's still crazy to me that we made a very stable V1 quality product in such a short time. Microsoft truly does employ some of the best minds on earth. My group's project is largely finished. There's always maintenance, but the majority of the work is shifting down toward SQL Server functionality rather than work in allowing users to connect (clearly they can already do that quite well). This means pulling out the C++ hammer after two years of it collecting dust. C# might just be the best language ever written. Certainly SQL Server has to be more performant than managed code allows, but for most of your average programs, C# is more than fast enough, and the ease of programming more than makes up for the small bit of performance gain you'd probably never use were you to use C++. C++ is indeed a powerful language, but it gets so complex if you want it to be as performant as SQL Server or any other operating system like software. Just what little I've seen since I've been moved to that code base has been crazy brilliant code. There are brilliant things I never would have considered doing that are difficult to read, but can't be refactored because they're so much faster, and "simpler" to a computer. I wish I could explain a couple, but of course I'm NDA'd. Also, I suppose you wouldn't care much anyway, seeing as how you're probably a banker.

The biggest time suck for me lately has been Dragon Age: Origins. That is a great game. I don't think I like it more than KotOR, but it's certainly close. KotOR is a little more light-hearted and it's Star Wars. Dragon Age takes about 50 or 60 hours to beat. I started three games before I finally actually went about beating it. The first two I made mistakes in choosing abilities, and got stuck trying to beat enemies on easy. I, I don't like to talk about it. But, I did get a good feel for the game and earned myself a little foresight to make precognitive decisions. I don't care that some people would call this cheating. Cheating is using the console to add abilities and health and kill everyone on the screen. Mage is by far the most power class, especially on easy when there's no friendly fire. That was the class I chose for the third game. The ending is tricky. They give you an option that is inherently evil with no evil consequences. It makes you think, I suppose. My justice sense is just falling flat on its face, and that bothers me a bit.

Within those three games, I completed both the female romances. I didn't go for the elf, no matter what Penny Arcade says. So, when I finished the game, I wanted to play again, this time on normal difficulty and as a different class. I figured there was no new story line to gain from being male again and started a female character. You can tell the game was written by guys, because there are few options you can choose that I don't think many women would think to say.

Well, night two ends here. I still have a few more topics on which to write, but they will have to wait, as it's 3am now.