Going Mobile

Work is still well underway on Ichiban. I've run into some snags lately in the development of one of the more important features, but I have a plan and hopefully things will go more smoothly with it from here on out. Hell, I might even get it working today. Once I get this one big feature finished, I'm hoping that things will start moving more quickly and I can start implementing some more of the cool and fun ideas that have been sitting on my to-do list for weeks.

I recently took a trip to Ocean City, MD, which is easily my favorite beach destination. They have a great boardwalk and good places to eat. One of the arcades on the boardwalk, called Marty's Playland, has a bunch of pinball machines. I love pinball (even though I pretty much suck at it) and Marty's is one of the few places I know of that still has any pinball machines. They did however have a lot more machines a few years ago than they do now, so I really hope this downward trend doesn't continue. Somehow, I managed to avoid getting severely sunburned on the beach despite my pale computer-geekness. All around, an excellent vacation.

Football season is slowly starting up, beginning with my usual mixed feelings about the preseason games. They're almost always incredibly boring and I know this very well, however I still watch them because I'm such a degenerate football-starved addict. The Eagles have looked pretty decent in their two games so far, but we all know that preseason means pretty much nothing as far as the regular season goes. All you can really do is hope for no injuries and look forward to the start of the regular season.

One of the bigger stories in the NFL lately has been the very public, very bitter, very emo-kiddish breakup between the Green Bay Packers and Brett Favre. Personally, I think that the Packers have done pretty much everything right in this situation. They stood by Aaron Rodgers, their promising young quarterback, and stood up to the indecisive and aging Favre. He put the team in a tough position by retiring in March but then expecting the Packers to throw out all their plans and welcome him back as their starting quarterback on a moment's notice. If the Packers had done that, it would likely have destroyed their relationship with Aaron Rodgers and put them in a very bad position not just for next year, but likely for many years to come. The Packers took this bad situation and basically ended up in the same place they were before Favre started all the drama, but with the addition of a draft pick that they otherwise wouldn't have had. Meanwhile, Favre dragged his reputation through the mud, damaged his legacy in the eyes of many people, and ended up on the awful New York Jets.

It's amusing to see the reaction from some Jets fans who think that adding a soon-to-be 39-year-old QB to their awful team somehow means automatic Super Bowl win. It's also fun to see which Packers fans are actually Packers fans, and which were actually just Brett Favre fans who thought that the team should have blindly indulged his every whim even if it meant ruining the team's carefully-planned future in the process.

Some of those who call (or called) themselves Packers fans have no appreciation of the good job that the team's management has been doing over the past few years at rebuilding what was an aging team and preparing for the future. Aaron Rodgers looks like he'll be a pretty good player, and they have an all-around solid team with some young talent and some true potential stars like Greg Jennings and James Jones. I wish the Packers the best this year, particularly Rodgers who I hope has an excellent season to shut up all the haters. Unless, of course, they're playing against the Eagles in which case I hope the Packers have the most miserable game in their history. :)