The World of Joel

Jenn is officially packed. I cannot believe that she managed to fit all that she managed to fit but she did it. Jenn is bringing a rather small suitcase, especially for this legnth of trip, however she is packed and ready to go as you can see below us.

I on the other hand just got my packing rolled, and now awaiting Jenn’s approval. I am not one to dress myself, I have 0 style, and really 0 desire to figure out what matches, which is why I have Jenn who does a much better job on that end then I could ever do.

Can you believe it is only 2 days away from departure at LAX? This time in two days we will be at LAX eating dinner awaiting our flight. Ten hours later in London. How crazy is that? Check back tomorrow for a deeper look into the packing and preparation for our big Europe 2008 Trip.

As many of you know next Wednesday, July 2nd I am leaving for London. So many of you may be wondering what sort of updates you can expect from next week and for the three weeks I am gone. Well my goal is to at least do posts every other day and then post at all the At Sea days on the cruise. That is of course just a goal and could change quite quickly depending on how the trip goes and how much it is costing to get online. Next week I will be showing some of the things that Jenn and I have done to get prepared for this trip, and boy has it been plentiful. By the way I should mention that this coming Sunday, Jenn and I along with my brother Jake and sister Amy are going to Raging Waters. I have never been before, so I am actually really looking forward to it. Anyways not much else to post on yet, next week begins a very big 3-4 weeks!

I have always been a big fan of DirecTV, I have an HD unit which I am very happy with the quality it shoots out on my 37″ Toshiba LCD. But if there was anything I had to love about DirecTV it is during Wimbledon and the US Open where they open up about 6-7 channels and allow you to watch literally every court that is playing. This is great because a lot of times ESPN will just show the Williams sisters, or whatever is on center court and this can be the least enjoyable matches to watch. So today I got to sit back and watch some really great tennis including this final match of the day with Chris Eaton from the UK who is ranked 661 in the world but maybe it through qualifiers and took the match in 3 sets. The crowd was so for him, and he looked like he was having the time of his life, it was quite a match to watch. I also got to watch a great Andy Murray match and saw James Blake pull off a great match as well.

So as I said yesterday I was having problems staying focused, watching Wimbledon is one of those “distractions” that I don’t mind putting in front of work, there is nothing better then watching Tennis at the All England Club. And just think in a week I will be only a short distance away from the action when I leave for London. Ah I love this time of year!

So with me not having a full time job yet and having nothing really to do until my trip in a little over a week I have had plenty of time to watch TV/Movies from online sources. I have been using Hulu.com for quite sometime now but I never really got into there Movie selection so I jumped in it today and did some searching, but didn’t find anything worth watching. So then it hit me, I am less productive when I have less to do. So I sat here thinking about how that could be, and my only reasoning is that with less to do I have less urgrency to get these done and thus I find a greater chance of procrastinating.

So I am not sure how to cure this, I have tried doing to-do lists but I never seem to even get a few done. I have tried doing as much as I can before lunch and taking the rest of the day off. I have even taken complete days off and tried working the next day, and I just feel like with each day I am getting lazier. So here is to am more productive tomorrow!

So I took the week off, I didn’t necessarily have that planned but I decided each day that I would take that day off to rest and get back ready to go. So a week went by and I figured that is about enough time to sit around and be lazy and so now I am back ready to go here at The World of Joel. So the graduation went well, it wasn’t all that red hot of a commencement ceremony but then again when are they? Jenn and I got to do it together, so that was the real winning ticket and made the entire experience worthwhile.

So now what? Well I can’t say I have been going ahead full steam looking for a new job, I have looked, but I am putting that off until after my upcoming 3 week trip. Speaking of the trip, beginning next Monday, so Monday the 30th of June I will be doing daily updates on the trip. Jenn wants me to do daily updates on the trip so not only you the countless loyal readers can see what we are up to but so five years down the road Jenn and I can remember details that if not written down we would have never remembered. I am going to set up a Flickr stream with all the latest photos and for at least the first half of the trip do daily updates on the trip. When we get to the cruise part it will be a bit more sporatic due to the crazy prices of using internet on a cruise ship.

Outside of that I have been crazy busy with my latest project, I am not calling it my last project, but I will say its by far the biggest I have undertaken. I will be unveiling it to you all when I get back. So that’s all from now, expect daily updates again starting tomorrow!

So as you all have been reading in the past few weeks I am graduating from UC Irvine with a major in Sociology today at 1pm. Can you believe how time flies? I sure can’t. It feels like just yesterday I made the big switch from Cal State San Bernardino to UC Irvine and what a transition that was. But now I type this message only hours before I leave to go to my graduation which I am a bit nervous about. I have to say that these kind of things aren’t my cup of tea, I would been just as happy getting my diploma in the mail and moving on, but I know that this is something I should and must attend, so that’s that.

Anyways I appreciate you all bearing with me through the up’s and downs of college life, its a stressful time, it can be fun, but its also a lot of work and I for one and so glad to officially be done. By the way graduating with me is the love of my life Jenn who managed to get done with school in just 3 1/2 years finishing up this fall. How amazing is that? Talk about working hard, she spent so much time and effort getting through school that I just say back and watched as she plowed through some extremely difficult classes. I am so proud of her, I cannot begin to describe the amazing work she has done, and what an honor it is to graduate with her. That is all for today I will be back tomorrow with a recap on the big day!

There are very few times that I have been truly captivated by a story, but A Prisoner of Birth by Jefferey Archer was one of the best novels I have ever read (or I should say listened to). A Prisoner of Birth was my latest book I purchased from Audible.com. I will get to the novel in one moment but first let me just say that my hat goes off to Roger Allam who did the narration for this book. Roger Allam a somewhat known British Actor couldn’t have done a better job bringing this story to life. After listening to the 16+ hour book you could see his acting shine through with so many different accents and personalities that really made this book a privilege to listen to.

The book itself tells the story of Danny Cartwright a simple down to earth man who goes out to celebrate his engagement to the love of his life with his best friend. The bad timing among other things finds Danny in jail and from there the story is something out of the pages of The Count of Monte Cristo. In fact Jefferey Archer who does an interview at the end of the audio book tells of this comparison and tells of how he thinks his story is better, which having read both, I 100% agree.

I listened to this novel with Jenn and we would get giddy before sitting down to read. This was the first audio book that Jenn has asked me if I wanted to listen to it, it was that good. The story has such a good soul that if your wanting to try an audio book this is the book that truly shows how great of a medium audio books really are. If you have a commute into work, time to spare, or just wanting to give an audio book a chance then A Prisoner of Birth would be the best choice I could ever think of. Its truly one of the best and most engaging novels I have ever had the privilege of listening to.

Favorite Quote: “Think like Danny, act like Nick” (When you read the book you will 100% understand it)

I was really looking forward to today, among being one of my last days of school (1 final today and my last on Wednesday) I was more interested in finding out what Steve Jobs had to say at WWDC. Most of the conference that I heard on Twitlive.tv was rather slow and unlike many other Steve Jobs conferences I have watched. I have said that I would look forward to apps on my iPhone and I truly am. However what stole the show was the already given fact that the iPhone 3G was announced. Some of the new features is a nice new black or white coat of paint on the back, the Me service which is hopefully going to do much better then .Mac and GPS.

Do I want to upgrade to the 3G version of the iPhone? I actually am very content with my current iPhone, besides a nice crack in the screen that I happened to cause last week. I just don’t want to be locked in to another 2 years of AT&T which has given me spotty service since August of last year when I first switched to them. More over it seems like they are going to be doing yearly updates (at least in my opinion) of the iPhone and although the GPS and 3G sounds fantastic I am not sure its worth putting another two years on my plan. Whatever the case its always excited when Steve Jobs gets up to talk, and it makes me very excited and hopeful that we will see a new Macbook and Macbook Pro this holiday season.

As many of you know I am in the video game industry press. 2K Sports has begun doing developer calls for there games. I participated in one a few weeks back for Top Spin 3, and this morning I had one with 2K Sports for there upcoming Boxing title Prizefighter. What was neat about this developer call was that Don King and Larry Holmes was on the call with us. I have heard Don King before, this isn’t the first time, but man can this guy talk. On this conference call he went through 3 questions in 30 minutes or so. His long winded answers to questions were ridiculous, the man didn’t answer one question, for some reason he seems to just grab words from the dictionary and throw them in the air and hope some of them apply.

Larry Holmes on the other hand was interesting. The question was asked if he could fight anyone who would it be, he said George Foreman. Can you say bad blood? The conference calls are usually pretty informative, but Don King just talks to talk, I cannot believe this man, I have no idea what he was ever talking about. He goes from talking about the Bible to boxing, to the video game, to ancient philosophers.

The game itself looks amazing, the career mode being the center piece I feel like its a great idea. Fight Night from EA has always had there easy ride to the top, so I am hoping 2K Sports delivers. I wish I would have recorded this interview because if you could have heard some of Don King’s responses I have a feeling you would have scratched your head just like I was.

I love this video, Jenn a big fan of the Entertainment channel had already seen this video. But I of course saw it on Digg.com, and I can’t help but post it. I love The Price is Right, maybe not with Drew Carrey, but this lady is classic. I guess she was just nervous, but nervous twice, there probably isn’t any excuse.