Early November Update:
So let's see, a fair amount has happened since the last time I posted. I think there was some kind of election, but I've blocked it all out to keep from screaming and going mad.

So, what else? Well, I saw the Incredibles today with my lovely wife, and my take on it, some 10 hours later, is that it is probably my favorite Pixar movie and is certainly the best superhero film ever created. It's got its funny moments, as with all Pixar films, but it also has tremendous heart, fantastic action, a true understanding of superheroes from both a story and a visual side and a '60s Silver Age superhero/cool Bond espionage vibe that is unbeatable. Not that any of this is surprising, really. Pixar has never let me down, Brad Bird (writer/director of this and The Iron Giant) is awesome and Michael Giacchino (composer for this, Alias and Lost) is both exceptionally talented and perfect for the material. Great work by the voice cast as well, especially Holly Hunter, Craig T. Nelson and Brad Bird, all of whom just brought so much life to their characters.

TV season is rolling along surprisingly well, given that most of the new offerings this season looked awful. But while much of the TV landscape is a wasteland of reality shows and scripted TV so dumb it might violate the Geneva convention, the bright spots do shine all the more brightly. Veronica Mars has turned out to be great, a little overly cutesy and impressed with itself at times but just on the right side of quirky, with exceptional writing and some great casting. Lost hooked me after about three episodes, and though I'm still not prepared to say it's better than Alias, it might just be as good. Bravo, meanwhile, has a cool new show called Long Way Round about Ewan McGregor and his buddy Charley Boorman going from England to New York by way of Asia on BMW motorcycles, which I'm really enjoying so far. Arrested Development has started up again, which is great news for those of us who enjoy intelligent comedy. And Drawn Together on Comedy Central, on the opposite end of the spectrum, is crude in imaginative ways, not quite up to South Park's level of outrageous humor but definitely entertaining in an "I can't believe I'm watching this" kind of way.

My faith in mankind has been shaken a little this last month or so (don't worry, I'm still not going to talk about the election), and part of that is that somebody broke the passenger window of my car and stole my radio while I was parked in front of my house! $750 and a great deal of hassle later, the upside is that I have a new, cheaper car insurance policy with better coverage and a new, cool in-dash radio/CD player for the car. It has two features I've wanted for a while, the ability to play MP3 CDs (I now have over 800 songs across 5 CDs that comprises most of the music I want to listen to in the car) and an audio in-jack for my next big tech purchase, an iPod.

I'm waiting on Christmas money to see if I can afford one. My original plan was to buy the 40GB deal, maybe even spring the extra $50 for the cool black and red U2 limited edition, but then I went over to Apple's site and saw this. Now I can carry around all the baby pictures I want along with my music. I can't wait to pick this up, and very much hope finances allow me to do so in January.