Holy crap, has it been 7 days already?

Boy, lose your laptop and all hell breaks loose.

Things I've done since my hard drive died:

1. Played more X-box. Seriously, Bioshock 2 is the greatest fucking game of the year (so far). I'm seriously in love with that game, the return to Rapture is astonishing. But more important, Battlefield: Bad Company 2 came out. This is a perfect example of short-term and long-term gaming. I'll play Bioshock for the next month non-stop. I'll beat it to death. Then I'll send it back to Gamefly. Battlefield? I'll still be playing Battlefield next fall. I currently have 109 hours into Battlefield: Bad Company, and if the first hours of this game are any indication, I'll easily outpace that time. On a side note. 109 hours of Battlefield may sound like a lot, but if you consider the PC game, I'm afraid that's child's play. I've got almost 300 hours into the PC version of the game. So if you only count those two, I've got over 400 hours of Battlefield play under my belt... and we haven't even discussed Battlefield: MC for Xbox.

2. Read more. I'm currently hip deep into "The Passionate Programmer" and I love it. This is a fantastic book. It's all about finding happiness and fulfillment as a programmer. In fact, the full title of the book is, "The Passionate Programmer: Creating a Remarkable Career in Software Development". The mantra of the book is "Be Remarkable". Who wouldn't love that? I've also picked back up my Fantagraphics Popeye Collections and started back where I left off last winter. When we last visited our squintyy-eyed sailor, he was searching for Dooma, "a lost city of gold in an unknown sea". Constantly thwarted by Merlock Jones and his insidious disguises, the story culminates with the introduction of Popeye's greatest nemesis, Bluto (in his only appearance in Segar's strip). Between "The Passionate Programmer" and "Popeye" I'm almost tempted to let the Macbook sit for another couple of weeks.

Almost.

3. Ride my bike. Finally! After weeks of discomfort, I'm finally on a perfectly fitting bike. I will blog EXTENSIVELY about that, but suffice to say, if you ride a bike, please, by all means go and get a professional fitting! I spent three and a half hours with the guys from Trek and I'll never get on another bike again without having it precisely fit to my body. To think that I rode 4,600 miles last year on my bike the way it was set up. It's enough to make a grown man cry.

Anyway, so no laptop for about a week now, but damn if it hasn't been the best week in recent memory! I should destroy hard drives more often!