Just went to try to pick up a Nintendo Wii for a little cousin. Her mom is kicking herself for not pre-ordering from Amazon, but who knew to expect this artificially-induced Wii insanity, inanity. I drove by several local retail stores, and you can imagine what the scene was like: gamer upon gamer in camp chairs and tents. Gamers were camped outside Target and playing baseball in the parking lot outside Best Buy. The guys at Fry's actually looked a bit like the evil undead; Fry's had the shortest line, but I assume this was because of some sort of Darwinian struggle in which the weakest were quite possibly eaten. Or perhaps sacrificed to dark gods, uncertain. Even Amazon is sold out, and disgruntled and frustrated people are writing negative reviews of the Wii to blow off steam after several hours of refreshing their browsers to see if Amazon miraculously had more Wii in stock. I wasn't interested in waiting in line, but it was intriguing to see the frenzy in action. I'm curious to see how much Nintendo is going to try to manipulate the market and how long before they ship additional units. The La Mesa Walmart had only 20, which seems a small number for a major retail outlet. Someone was reselling a Wii on Amazon for $800 and it's already been purchased. Sheer madness.

Some days, it seems that my inbox fills itself...

Have been doing some hiking and walking, quite often with Gosia, we went to law school together. Today, we went to Mission trails, and I took a photo of the Mission Dam:



The Mission dam is California historical landmark #52, see http://ohp.parks.ca.gov/default.asp?page_id=21478 for details.

Found some Halloween merchandise on sale today. Ended up getting a foam pumpkin, so that I could finally use a pumpkin carving design I found last year. I'm pleased with the result, although it needs some smoothing work on the edges (the foam crumbles a bit).