The Tech Museum usually has a special exhibit; currently, it’s Game On, which was actually mounted by the Barbican Museum in London. But it’s very appropriate for Silicon Valley, since it’s an interactive history of the video game, both arcade and home versions. I knew I wanted to see it, but hadn’t gotten around to suggesting it until today (partially motivated by realizing that the exhibit closes Monday). So we spent the afternoon at the Tech.

Well, Jeff and I did. Diane got tired of the exhibit pretty quickly and went across the street to the San Jose Museum of Art, while Jeff and I enjoyed the exhibit. Especially playing the old games, like Pong and Spacewar and Space Invaders. I remember losing many quarters to those during college, but here, they were free. And I was able to compete with him moderately well, unlike the case with newer games (they had plenty of those, too, but they all blur together in my mind).

After an hour or so, we’d played all of the interesting games, so we joined Diane at the art museum. We took a quick look at the downstairs exhibition, Visual Politics, and then caught up with her on a small docent-led tour, just as they were starting on the Selections from the Permanent Collection. Touring with a docent was a definite improvement over wandering around independently — she asked us questions and forced us to interact with the works on display, instead of just looking at them (or, worse, reading the descriptions adjacent to the works and not really looking at the art itself, which I’ve been known to do). After the tour, Diane went to the museum shop and Jeff and I visited Sandow Birk’s Divine Comedy, which is a retelling of The Divine Comedy in images set in Los Angeles, San Francisco, and New York. Well worth viewing.

From there, it was a quick walk to Ben and Jerry’s, and then home. Not a bad way to spend what was, effectively, the last day of vacation (we have Monday off, but Jeff doesn’t, so we’ll be getting up at a ridiculous hour to get him to school on time. *sigh*).

Shabbat Shalom!

I had hoped to see several movies during this break. So far, the grand total is zero. We actually tried to go see either King Kong or Harry Potter 4 yesterday, but by the time we got to the theater, the first available showing was a couple of hours away. And, while we did need to be out of the house for a few hours, we didn’t need to be gone quite that long. So we went to Barnes and Noble instead, where I did some research for an upcoming trip to Finland (brrr!) and read a book which I’d seen while we were in England this summer: A Year in the Merde. Time magazine’s review sums it up well. I enjoyed reading it, but I’m glad I didn’t actually buy it.

Today, after working out at the JCC, I’ve spent far too much of the day dealing with financial records and catching up on my Quicken duty.

What I haven’t done today is write a single line of code. I’m waiting for Userland to set up the CNAME so that dss.editthispage.com gets you to this blog. Then I’ll look at the 404 log and see if there’s any traffic worth redirecting programatically; I also plan to create a custom 404 page as suggested by the Sacramento Web Developers SIG, which will point people to the popular places on the site.

But that’s all for tomorrow; for tonight, it’s time to write those last minute tax-deductible checks….