And so I am back home, *finally*, after the world's longest week.  The last two days especially were back-to-back-to-back meetings celebrations (including burning cakes) and parties.  Too much fun and so it is good to be back.  We are hosting a wine-tasting party ourselves tomorrow night, and there is much to do; decorating organizing etc., but that will be fun too.

And of course in the meantime it's all happening...

Thursday I registered for next summer's Death Ride, making it my third in row.  That is something I can look forward to!  Dum dum dum...  (just when you think they can't make their logo any more garish, each year, they do :) 

We're getting some early reviews of Avatar, and man are they positive.  Everyone seems to say the same thing: 'my expectations were really high, and it exceeded them'.  Among others, Roger Ebert gave the film four stars.  Could be the film of the decade...  John Cameron seems to have done it again.  Cannot wait to see it! 

John Gruber finds Dragon Dictation for the iPhone to be "faster and more accurate than I imagined possible."  And he is not free with such praise.  Perhaps that's the answer to input to smartphones - voice? 

[ Update: Josh Newman likes it, too.  And so does David Pogue.  It does appear that since the Nuance app can't run in the background, you can't speak directly into other apps, you have to copy-and-paste.  Still I am encouraged by the apparent accuracy and usability, we seem to be moving beyond the dancing bear stage with voice input! ]

Huh, this is interesting: Matt Haughey is selling PVRblog.com on eBay.  Current price $3,900.  A nice blog I am subscribed to, and have been for some time.  I guess this means updates have been interrupted :)  Anyone out there want to continue?  I guess you'd have to be interested in PVRs... 

As we near the end of 2009, we also near the end of the decade of the 2000s, unbelievably, and so we're getting all the "top X lists of Y" that always come out...  but I liked this one: CNet's list of the decade's biggest tech flops.  There is some interesting stuff in there, and I remember it all...  check it out, you'll probably have some "oh yeah I remember that" moments, like I did.  Most forgotten: The Segway.  I know, I know, it's still with us; but man, remember the hype when that thing came out? 

Here's an important study: casual sex is not bad for your emotional health.  Well that's good to know.  An Instapundit reader notes: "Apparently it's pretty good for your golf game, too." :) 

Tim Bray reminds us all about colonoscopy.  Yeah yeah yeah.  He's right. 

Fake Steve takes on AT&T's Randall Stephenson over their desire to reduce iPhone users network usage.  His rant is so funny and so right, you must read it.  C'mon, click the link.  There, wasn't that worth it? 

Chris Anderson's Long Tail goes on hiatus.  Whatever that means.  The only thing less interesting than blogging about blogging is blogging about not blogging.  Of course blogging about someone else blogging about not blogging is worse. 

I'm going to close out the morning with the Horse's Mouth's Wave of the Day:  

beautiful
may your weekend be equally so