What's to like about Glee? Matthew Morrison, who plays the vocal teacher, is a handsome guy. There's a point in the show where his wife accuses him of not being the golden boy anymore. With his face, I'd have to disagree. Another cutie is the jock Finn, played by Cory Monteith, who looks like a young Jamie Bamber. Though the best part by far was a rival show choir's performance of Rehab. There's nothing as entertaining as a lot of handsome guys singing and being acrobatic. And the girls were pretty too.

Vocal music enthusiasts of past and present will find a lot of material to relate to, like the journey to stardom and the uphill battle that glee club may not be the coolest thing to do in high school. (Preposterous!) The soundtrack for the show seems to consist predominantly of a cappella covers, which I think is a first for television. The vocal music community will find them refreshing and fun to sing along to while regular viewers will simply enjoy their novelty and apropos.

The writing and direction swing back and forth. The gym teacher (played by Jane Lynch) and the former choir director were really funny (as was Jane's performance in 40 Year-Old Virgin). But everything else was awkward or boring, especially the female lead. I get it, she's supposed to portray someone who's neurotic and insecure. It's a bit much at times, and the height difference between her and Finn is jarring.

Are the show's technical background and handsome actors enough to keep an otherwise ho-hum plot afloat? We won't know for sure until Glee resumes in the fall. Although I'm not in love with the show, I will probably watch to support a cappella music in the mainstream.

I'm quitting to join Homo Explosion.

I do have to give it up to some of the Knighthawks though, particularly #22, Gary Gait. Now, if you've ever seen Titans Captain Casey Powell play, you know how he's a fan of the behind-the-back pass, and he seems to be the only one to use it. Some games he looks like a douche and the move is completely unnecessary, but other times it seems to go well with the juke. Gary Gait however, and maybe one or two other Knighthawks, are in command of not only the behind-the-back pass, but a full on behind-the-back shot. This isn't some weeny trick toss. It's a full-fledged, surprisingly fast shot that went past Vinc once or twice. Like the guy sitting next to me was saying, it is incredible that anyone could shoot a ball over their shoulder like that so fast and so accurately. Even though Titans won, Gait's behind-the-back shot was one of the game's highlights.

Ed: I guess it's more over-the-shoulder than behind-the-back...

The place is pretty nice. We stayed in the balcony up top, so it was nicely removed from the crowd below. But it was kind of hot and I was melting. Pretty embarrassing, actually.

What has been your experience with toric, colored lenses? Such is the price of vanity, friends.

Big ups to branch manager DJ for helping me resolve everything. Initially, I was a bit worried because initially he'd never heard of any such identity verification process.

When I was in high school, I was sort of all over place, mentally. Trying to fit in, figure myself out, etc. Very Breakfast Club. But there was this one teacher that would offer me sanctuary whenever I asked. And I really appreciated how he gave me the room I needed to breathe. One summer, he asked me for a favor, aware that I work with computers. He wondered if I could work a video camera for sports. I said no at first, but I eventually relented. Two and a half seasons later, look at me now! I have the varsity letters to prove that I'm so cool. The sports I was asked to film were football and lacrosse. I don't think my footage was particularly good, but it seemed some footage was better than none at all. And like the rest of my school, we took a special liking to lacrosse, and I've kept that with me to this day.

So the Titans are back, and so am I for my third season. This time, their games are held at both the Prudential Center and Madison Square Garden. I have mixed feelings about traveling back to Newark. But I guess my ability to dodge bullets is getting rusty, so I'm due for practice.

Stir in one cup of soy sauce and 3/4 cup vinegar. Add black pepper and bay leaves. Toss in three packages (each < 1 lbs) of pork chunks (the one with the fat). Heat to a rolling boil, and then let simmer for 5 hours or more until the meat is tender. Usually it will "fight back" like rubber if it isn't done yet. When it is done, it will just collapse to a poke and be very soft. Stir occasionally. Best eaten next day, stored in a refrigerator (marinating, I guess).

Untested suggestions: at least one glove of garlic per pack of pork. Boil with vinegar only and then stir in soy sauce when tender.

Alternatively, be sure to mix the liquids thoroughly first, then add in the meat (regarding the first method).

I prefer food to be easy to eat, and Indian food seems to be just that. It's usually very ugly and sloppy looking, but it doesn't detract from the experience at all since it's so tasty. Give me a bowl of rice, meat, and some sauce, and I'm a very happy boy.

As I recount my culinary-cum-religious experience to my roommates, I remember how I was just inhaling the food like I was a little kid. Eating is very serious business. And it was at that moment I transcended the dish and attained the state of 'nom nom nom'.

These are the kinds of things you think about when you're bored in class, day two of SQL Server training.

It's always good to see a few familiar faces. I was a member of the Big Apple Chorus for a hot sec, but I could never shake that certain parts didn't mesh well with what I was looking for. Regardless, it was a night full of passion and talent, and I was really happy to see that New York City has such an active vocal scene.

I briefly considered joining, but I'd want to train up to it first instead of walking into it cold.

There were two red flags, even before we ordered. One, there weren't any Asian customers. I've learned from my parents that a good test of any ethnic cuisine is the presence of people of that ethnicity, aka "the ethnic test". Two, our waiter didn't speak much English. His accent was very fobby and abrasive, which soured our good mood. The only saving grace was the cool looking albeit fake jellyfish in tanks of water overhead.

The sushi was not worth the $80 we spent between us. I'm not a connoisseur of sushi, but I do know what I like. My latest fixation is with duality. Soft and crunchy, or hot and cold if you're lucky. The parts I liked a lot: the spider roll, smoked eel, and spicy salmon. The parts I didn't like: the Boston roll and sea urchin. Sea urchin is a favorite of my coworker's, but he agreed this particular one wasn't as good as he's had. That's probably the most uncool thing he's ever done, recommend me sea urchin. It was mostly bland and had a slight aftertaste. Bleh.

To top it off, the staff was really aggressive in turning tables, which made it difficult to unwind and spend some quality time with awesome coworker.

My review of Haru? Not worth the price, and a severe lack of Asian folk.

The one criticism I have of Yeah Shanghai is the serving size of the soup dumplings; although delicious, they were significantly smaller than the soup dumplings I've come across prior. For a decent meal with soup dumplings, I also recommend Grand Sichuan, a spot favored by two of my previous employers.

On OS X, it used an installer, instead of a traditional drag-and-droppable application folder. So strike one. Strike two, the branding has changed. In previous versions, even though the application was branded as Vuze, I could still keep the name Azureus. Here, the installer removed the old copy of Azureus and put in a new copy of Vuze named Vuze. And, the funky blue frog design has changed to a similarly blue square with a white silhouette of the frog. The brand change really hurts, since I associated Azureus so heavily with the blue frog.

Thirdly, the user interface has changed. The initial Vuze changes weren't as jarring because you could always go back to classic mode. Here, I think they've realized that the majority of users use classic mode, and they've decided to make that more prominent in their design. However, the interface is cluttered with things I don't need. I can tell they're really trying to push their content delivery network, with the user accounts and friends features, but I don't care for any of that stuff. And the biggest offender, it looks ugly. It doesn't use OS neutral colors or the same traditional shades of blue.

It's pretty jarring, and I guess I'll be shopping around for better torrent clients, or I guess I'll just try to not look at it (since Azureus does seem to remain champion in torrent clients, in terms of features. But I haven't really shopped around).

Edit: Okay, wow, I have no idea how this works, but their built-in video player is absolutely spanking VLC in terms of skipping ahead. Some video formats VLC has a hard time skipping ahead in. You jump to a place ahead of your current place in the video and it takes a noticeable amount of time for the system to catch up. Vuze, however, seems to have this built-in player and it jumps around various parts of the video instantaneously. That's a huge win.