Long couple of weeks ...

I just finished my first major project in my "Creative and Innovative Management" class, and I'm not terribly thrilled with how things have gone. My team is not to blame (for the most part), since personal and family issues have kept things from going as smoothly as I'd have liked. I have to take some of the blame, however ... since we picked my company to work on, I didn't delegate responsibility for specific items (and hold people responsible for said tasks), and I should have. It's far easier to just pick up the slack and get it done than to confront the issue and risk things not coming together. I think we ended up doing well, but we'll see what happens when the grades come. We have the second half of this project due quarter-end, and I'll be taking more of a backseat and advising my team, which all things considered, I don't think they'll have a problem with.

Annie and I had our first "date night" in quite some time this past weekend. Dinner at the Outback Steakhouse (which is usually a reliable meal both quality- and service-wise), then to the Varsity Theater in Seattle to see Neil Gaiman's Mirrormask. It's sort of like Labyrinth meets Alice in Wonderland meets ... well, Neil Gaiman. I'm not sure if Annie enjoyed it (since she didn't really know what she was getting into), but upon reflection, I liked it a great deal. It's certainly wierd and a little darker than you'd expect, but this is thesame guy behind Sandman. The female leads of Stephanie Leonidas (Helena) and Gina McKee (Joanne) were both fantastic, but the biggest stars are the visuals, as Helena's artwork comes to life in her dream. The music is absolutely wonderful, almost becoming a character in and of itself.

Casey the Beagle was very clingy this morning. It's hard to remember when I'm so busy how much your family misses you, but this morning, Casey made it very clear that he didn't want Daddy to leave, wrapping himself around my legs and staying pressed against me as I tried to gather up my stuff. Luckily, there is some break time coming up soon with the Holidays approaching, so we'll probably spend some time at the Cabin for Thanksgiving, and I'll be taking a week off between Christmas and New Year's to recharge my batteries before Winter Quarter. A slight adjustment to my class schedule has me home a little earlier a couple days a week, which should help.

Xbox 360 launches this month. Rumor has it that there will be a shortage, as Microsoft is trying to drum up demand. There's also talk of some pushing of retailers to sell out their stock, sell additional games with the system, and other things that have almost come to be expected with a new console launch. The days of spending just a couple hundred bucks and getting the machine are over ... it's easily a $500 proposition just to get started. Cheaper than a new gaming computer, but still fairly steep. Add another $1500 if you want to get the full HD experience that Microsoft has been talking about, and suddenly, that computer is looking like a steal (not to mention technically capable of HD already).

Perhaps Nintendo's idea of a lower-cost machine for families isn't that far off ...