Yes, you heard right. Just as I had resigned myself to waiting until after Christmas to get my mitts on a Wii, one of the three most coveted toys this holiday season (along with the PS3 and, of course, Tickle-me-Elmo EXTREME). I thought about preordering it, but decided I wasn’t that hardcore, then wistfully watched as reports of the launch yesterday came in, with happy new Wii owners from coast to coast exultant.

Then I got to our usual Sunday dinner yesterday, and after the excellent home-cooked German fare, Doug laid a pleasantly heavy and large box in my lap, with a tag inscribed “Briian.” I totally missed the joke, but soon I didn’t care as I cradled in my arms my very own Wii (every sentence with that word just begs to be made into a joke…). It turns out that Doug had mobilized the troops, returned early from his excursion to Monterrey, and gotten people in three distinct lines at three distinct stores, rising at 5am to make it there for openings. In the end, it went off without a hitch (as most things researched by Doug tend to), and they landed three distinct Wiis (why not? plenty of other people in the friend group wanted one…), but most importantly I got mine. It was a joint present from Doug, Phil, George, Ali (way out in MI), and Jeff.

We got some great pics of people playing, best of all though is this movie of George boxing virtually. Also included with my Wii is the new Zelda game, which has arrived to universal acclaim. This is good because I just got done beating Final Fantasy XII (yup, they lied again about the last one being final… I don’t trust them this time either). I’ll let you know how it goes.

One other key feature of the Wii is the ability to build little models of yourself and your friends, so you can play sports and whatnot with an accurate virtual likeness. They’re called (wait for it) Miis. Even though Ali couldn’t be there with us, we brought him in virtually:

Isn’t that a spitting image? I think so. Click the above link and check out the nearby pics for more hot Wii action. I don’t think I’ll ever get tired of getting toys for my birthday. I think there is some requirement that when writing about the Wii, you must make some sort of pun in the headline. So I went with an old favorite, in case you were wondering.

I’ve been in a swimming class at Berkeley all semester. It has been awesome overall: great exercise in a group with an enforced schedule in a beautiful solid-marble pool overlooking campus. It has a few drawbacks, though. Because the pool is outdoor, it has a huge amount of chlorine in it, which gives me the aroma of chlorine for about 2 days afterward, no matter how hard I scrub, and has also destroyed my hair:

My initial plan was to shave it all off. I mean, what’s the point of getting a fancy haircut if it’s just going to turn into muppet fuzz anyway? So, I ordered a set of clippers off Amazon with the full intent of finding out what shape my head really is. Things took an unexpected turn, however, when Leslie turned out to be a very competent stylist and managed to recreate a decent haircut on the floor of our living room. The master at work:

So, now not only do I still have some hair, but I just discovered that I’m marrying someone who can do a decent job of cutting my hair. Woo! Free haircuts for life. That is all.

I spent this past weekend with Doug, his dad and friends on a sailboat in the Gulf of Mexico. Example scene:

I’ve posted my pictures in the usual place. There are some pictures still missing from Doug’s camera, but you can get the story pretty well figured out from what’s up there now.

This weekend I set my self the task of finally, conclusively merging my music collection with Leslie’s. All told we’ve got about 11,500 tracks unique tracks, though it did take me most of the day to determine what parts of collections overlapped and which didn’t.

The ways we have come by our music differ drastically. I actually started with my collection of CDs (remember them?). I owned about 250 of them when I got to college and heard about MP3s. I spent my first winter break carefully ripping them all, with nice, uniform tags and metadata. I started to accumulate more music through swapping, mostly with people as careful as myself. Years went by, and I had my beautifully cared for collection, complete to a fault (why not have the complete Scorpions discography? I liked “Rock You Like a Hurricane”).

Then there was Leslie. In the free music orgy that was the honors dorm, she cherry picked the very best songs her friends and napster (and, later, limewire) had to offer. Unfortunately these little orphans didn’t come meticulously packaged like my music–sometimes the tracks weren’t tagged at all! So, I’m currently going through the merged collection, trying to repair all the songs with partial information. This must be done, for archival purposes, you see. Never let us forget that Sir Mix-a-lot’s classic “Baby Got Back” was issued on his 1992 masterpieceMac Daddy.

I have to share with you one song I found. The file name of the song is (all spelling lovingly preserved):

Dave Mathews Band, Phish, Guster, John Popper, Bela Fleck, Vic Wooten, Santana, Peter Greisar, Butch Taylor, Rusted Root, and Ben Harper - Two Step (live, rare).mp3

Sounds pretty amazing, huh? The song, when played, is the original version of the “Who’s the Boss?” theme.

The fall semester is now in full swing. I’ve managed to stick with two of three of my intended academic classes (Machine Learning! Computational Geometry!). Problem sets have not hit yet; I predict they will begin to deal their damage in the middle of next week.

I upgraded my self one level of hardcore-ness in swimming to a class that is also earlier in the morning. The dull ache throughout my upper body serves as a reminder of labors past. The setting for the class really couldn’t be better, though: it’s at Hearst pool, an open air, second-story pool with a solid marble deck that looks out directly over rolling green hills of campus toward the bell tower. This has the pleasant effect of making me feel like I’m in some movie from the 1950s about social challenges facing kids today set against the backdrop of the swimming team that brings them all together. Come on, you can hear the voiceover.

Yesterday Les and I went for some retail therapy at IKEA. Our main intent was to replace the rug in our living room which, while rug-like and on the floor, satisfied virtually no other requirements as far as cleanliness, tastefulness, etc. We failed mostly in this endeavor, mostly because of our stinginess, but generated many incidental purchases that brought them that classic American feeling of comfort that can only come from consumer goods. I got a little shaving mirror attached to one of those scissor-arms, and we got several random things for around the kitchen that we simply can’t wait for our wedding guests to buy for us.