I've seen the first couple episodes of Entourage this season. Seems a definite improvement over last season. The first couple seasons were hilarious, but it had started to drift and the actors seemed like they were just reading their lines last season. Johnny Drama is always funny and E is cool. Turtle kind of annoys me and I don't really get the Vince character. And Ari Gold is really, really funny. Which is good cause every time I've seen an interview Jeremy Piven he seems like a total tool.

So I first noticed her in Heroes and I liked the show and her superpowered cheerleader bit. So all was fine until I saw that she was attacking some poor Japanese fishermen. Some middle class Japanese guy is trying to feed his family and here's some multi-millionaire Hollywood celebrity trying to disrupt the man's livelihood. Real classy, Hayden. Personally I can't stand celebrity activists of any stripe. Sure, they have a right to say what they want. But don't expect me to support you with my dollars (unless your tv or movie are really, really good!) I know I won't pay money to see a George Clooney movie, for example. You can only insult me and my family and my country so many times before I say enough. And Matt Damon is venturing into nutjob land recently, too. Both are undeniably good actors, but I'm not gonna pay somebody to insult me. In Panettiere's case I give her a break cause she's young and, more importantly, cute. Of course, when she's old and wrinkly nobody will pay attention when she tries to ruin some poor Japanese fisherman's livelihood.

So far I like the new Heroes season. I really liked Season 1 and I semi-hated Season 2. Season 2 just got so boring and Hiro was stuck in Japan which was lame. One thing that isn't working so far is the Hiro-Ando discord. I understand what they are trying to do, but it doesn't make sense. The writers are in a tough spot. What makes Hiro an interesting character is his child-like naivete. In Season 1 he was like a kid with powers. And Ando was his responsible older brother type. The writers are clearly trying to tell the story of Hiro becoming darker and more serious and losing his innocence and all that. But it's not really working yet.

Thought I'd take a moment to praise what is probably the single most played computer or video game in the history of the world. MS Windows Solitaire.

It's been standard on every PC since at least Windows 3.1, I think. How many hundreds of millions of bored office workers killed a little time playing that game?

The game was simple, but solid. And you got that bouncing cards reward if you actually won. And everybody could play. Solitaire was the ultimate casual game.

The internet is increasingly filled with browser-based games. Many of these are horrible, of course. How many tetris clones does the world need?

But some are quite good. My favorite so far has been Desktop Tower Defense. A surprisingly fun and addictive game. It's pretty basic in concept, but requires real thought and planning.

I look forward to the continued advancement of these types of games. They are nice breaks from the workday.

The Space Quest series was one of my favorites as a kid. It was very funny with lots of inside scifi jokes. I remember really liking that you'd get points every time you got a further in the quest. There'd be like 300 quest points in the game and everytime you did something right a little music would play and you'd get a couple points.

The early versions required you to type out your commands -- use rock, fire gun, kick ball, etc -- but the later versions became point and click. And the SQ games taught a major life lesson -- steal everything that isn't nailed down, you might need it later.

It's football season here in America. Football dominates sports coverage here in the way baseball used to. Saturdays are college football and on Sundays it's the pros. I'm a casual fan. And the college I went to was more academic, so it's not much of a football. Although football was still a big deal. My little bro is a college football nut though. To the extant that I won't even call him on Saturdays if his team loses. I give him a day to cool off College football is okay, imo, but I think the players are getting a raw deal. They make millions of dollars for the school and don't get much back. That money goes to paying the scholarships for all the other sports that nobody cares about.

I'm not a huge golf fan and rarely golf myself, but I do enjoy watching the Majors. I guess I'm a casual fan. My interest definitely spikes when Tiger is in contention. It's fun to watch history being made. A beautiful rich green fairway or green also has a certain calming, hypnotic effect. Napping on the couch on a lazy sunday with golf on can be pleasant. The Masters is the most enjoyable for me. What a beautiful course. Just majestic. I'm also a fan of some of the more exotic courses like Pebble Beach.

One classic I loved was X-Com: UFO Defense.

The game had an awesome B-movie scifi flavor to it. Aliens were invading earth and you were running some UN agency to fight them off. It was like playing several games at once. At the highest level it was a resource optimization game like Civilization where you had bases and had to research new tech, yada, yada, yada.

But when the aliens would attack you'd send in some elite fighting unit and it would become a turn by turn tactical battle game. And here it had RPG elements since your soldiers gained experience and abilities if they won (and survived) battles.

The battles were very exciting and tense. Each man had like 20 action points per turn, and you had to plan out the moves. So he'd move for 15 points, kneel for 3 and shoot for 2 or something like that. It had a fog of war system so you couldn't see what they aliens were up to if they weren't in your line of sight.

Real time strategy games and first person shooters have dominated the market since then, but X-Com was a fun game - a turn-by-turn tactical squad shooter meets strategy game. The artwork was great for it's time as well.

One of my favorite all time series of games is Civilization by Sid Miers. I've played almost every version of the series. The Civ variants, Colonization, Alpha Centauri.

I lost many nights to these games. The earlier versions required much more micro-managing to succeed. The end stage used to take forever as you were hand-controlling all your little road-bulders and farmers and had dozens of cities.

The latest Civ 4, has streamlined most of that. So now you can set an AI city manager that will govern each city. If you turn on all the helps the game almost runs itself -- especially if you are pursuing a peaceful tech strategy. If you decide to wage war then that's all in your control.

I appreciate the streamlining, since now each game takes much less time to play. Since I'm an adult now I can't do marathon game sessions. Still, some of the magic is lost when I leave the decisions to the AI to make for me.