Ok, you have been warned .. this is NSFW (Not Safe for Work for those that do not know the anacrom) and not for the faint of heart :-) ... Killswitch Engage and Lamb of God are teaming up for a tour this winter, with Devildriver and Soilwork. Now, I have said it before, Killswitch Engage is one of my new favorite bands. Lamb of God is a great live band. But this radio commerical is one of the funniest tour commericals I have ever heard! If you click the link, I warned you.

So, it seems taht someone at Roadrunner Records has let loose some killer info. Dream Theater will be returning to the US to tour in April and May of 2008, with Opeth opening. Damn!

Today marks the release of what will be the best selling game for this holiday season ... even if the game was released well before Thanksgiving. Halo 3, the third and 'final' chapter of the struggle of Master Chief vs. the Covenant, hit stores today. With over 1 million pre orders, expect everyone to be playing this. There is so much press today on Halo 3 over at IGN and Shacknews, so I am gonna give my initial review. First off, this might be the most polished FPS I have ever played. Not the most innovative, or the hardest, or the prettiest, or the longest. But damn is everything there. The story is great, the graphics look killer on a HDTV, and one of the best soundtracks ever make Halo 3 a great experience. Add in 4 player co-op thru the single player campaign, and that just gets it a bonus point. The multi-player game feels great ... finally a native Xbox 360 version of the best multi-player FPS on a console. The matchmaking lounge might be the best in the industry today. They do

Here is what's coming out today ... Movies 3:10 To Yuma: SE Alone In The Dark: Unrated Director's Cut As You Like It (2006) Babel: Special Collector's Edition Black Book (#31 in the DVDPS Top 40) Bliss: Season #3 Bug: SE Catherine Tate Show: Season #1 Cujo: 25th Anniversary Edition Drawn Together: Season #2 Eat My Dust: Supercharged Edition Engineering An Empire: The Complete Series Grounded For Life: Season #5 Intruder, The: SE King Of Queens, The: Season #9 Knocked Up (Unrated) (2-Disc SE) (#2 in the DVDPS Top 40) Knocked Up (Unrated) (Widescreen) (#14 in the DVDPS Top 40) Mickey Rooney & Judy Garland Collection, The Moment In Peking: Complete Series My Name Is Earl: Season #2 Night Of The Demons 2 Ranma 1/2: Season #3 (Hard Battle 2007 Edition) Streets Of San Francisco, The: Season #1 Tekkon Kinkreet Unit, The: Season #2 Untouchables, The: Season #1 Urban Gothic: Season #2 Victory at Sea: The Complete Series What About Brian: The Complete Series HD-DVD Movies Next [HD

I wanted to expand on my thoughts, and those of Nathan Freeman , on the IBM announcement and release of Lotus Symphony. First, I pretty much agree with all of the reasons Nathan outlined. They are all valid and make sense. I wanted to add 3 more reasons why Lotus Symphony will have major impact. 1. The weight of IBM behind the OpenOffice.org organization. If anyone wants to see how IBM can get behind an open source initiative, look at Eclipse.org. If you are building a development tool, and you are not doing an addin to Visual Studio.NET, you are building it on top of Eclipse.org. There are so many tools out there. IBM has been the big driver behind making Eclipse.org the success it is today. Imagine what IBM can do for the OpenOffice.org community. Yes, OpenOffice.org has some supporters. Yes, they have had some successes. But the weight and power of IBM will drive the organization forward. We will see major and massive movement in the open source OOO world in the next couple of year

Here is what's coming out today ... Movies Ballykissangel: Series #6 Ballykissangel: The Complete Collection Beyond The Gates (Unrated) Bloodrayne 2 (Unrated) Boston Legal: Season #3 Brothers & Sisters: Season #1 Commando: Director's Cut Condemned, The (Widescreen) Cruising: Deluxe Edition Death Proof (Widescreen) (#1 in the DVDPS Top 40) Deliverance, The: 35th Anniversary Deluxe Edition Dog's Breakfast, A Dragon Ball Z: Season #3 Everybody Loves Raymond: Season #9 Family Guy #5 (#7 in the DVDPS Top 40) Flashdance: Collector's Edition Flying Scotsman, The Ghost Whisperer: Season #2 Josie & The Pussycats: The Complete Series Married With Children: Season #7 Martha Graham: Dance On Film: Criterion Collection Robinson Crusoe On Mars: Criterion Collection (#18 in the DVDPS Top 40) Saturday Night Fever: 30th Anniversary Special Collector's Edition Selena: 10th Anniversary SE Smallville: Season #6 (#3 in the DVDPS Top 40) Spooktacular New Adventures Of Casper, The: Volume One Sta

Well, it had to be the day before a business trip ... talk about offering crack to an addict and then telling him he has to leave for a few days. Yes, if you pre purchase The Orange Box on Steam today, you can immediately download Team Fortress 2. OMG ... TF2 is so fun. It is different than TF1 or TFC, but different is not bad. I love it! The polish of the game is out of this world. And the on-line play is super fast. Having played an earlier beta before, this feels more like a release candidate than beta. Nathan, do not even come near this. You will self combust within 60 seconds of playing the spy.

Symphony.So today we are seeing IBM go back to playing head to head with Microsoft in the desk top suite wars. Those face IBM Productivity Editors, called Lotus Documents/Spreadsheets/Presentations in Notes 8, are now officially IBM Lotus Symphony. IBM is releasing them for free. I also hear we will see updates to the editors that include the OpenOffice.org 2.x code fairly 'soon' ... but not this year. Check out Ed's for more info today. Wow ... now we just need 8.0.1 to update the names of our new Microsoft dethrone applications :-) update: folks, the title wasn't a slight at IBM ... just my thoughts on the use of the name again ... down boys

As part of the Lotus Collaboration Summit On-line site, you can now visit the Lotus Demo Diner Flash demos of Notes 8, Sametime 7.5.1, Lotus Quickr, Lotus Connections, and Websphere Portal 6 are all located from the Diner page.

Louis,I wanted to wish my good friends Megan and Benson congratulations! They were married this past Saturday in St. Louis, MO. It was a beautiful wedding and I was honored to be one of the 6 best men (the entire wedding party was a Maid/Matron of Honor or Best Man). Benson is one of my game developer friends ... he is out in L.A. working on things for Sony and the PS3. Megan does PR in the gaming world as well. I love Benson like a brother so it was great to bring Megan officially into the 'family.' As we said this weekend, we are all "special" :-). Couple of thoughts from the weekend I wanted to share: 1. I hate rented clothing. Yuck. I wore my own tux shirt that I had made from the Shirt Store. If you ever wanted a custom made dress shirt, this is the place to go. Since all they do is shirts, the tailoring and fit is impeccable. The cost can go from normal ($100) to top of the line ($300+). That being said, my custom made shirts last way longer than anything I ever bought

Wow, this is sad news ... James Oliver Rigney Jr, author of the long-running fantasy series The Wheel of Time and better known to millions of fans by the pen name Robert Jordan, died on 16 Sept 2007 from cardiac amyloidosis. Jordan announced he had been diagnosed with the disease in March 2006 and vowed to beat the odds, but determination and gumption sometimes just aren't enough in the face of a disease with a median survival time of just over two years. Jordan was in the process of writing the twelfth and final book in the Wheel of Time series, A Memory of Light, but the book was not slated for release until 2009 and is still incomplete. While there is hope that the book will still be finished from Jordan's notes, this is devastating news to all of us who have been reading the series since 1990. Sad news ... talk about being left hanging :-(

Curt Stone sent this to me and I thought I would share ... Cool that they are really taking the WoW mod scene seriously .. I have seen mods done in WoW that allow you to do all sorts of cool things, such as organize a raid and play chess. Very cool stuff. Curt, hope you get back your mac :-)

Here are the slides and demo database for my presentation at Collaboration University 2007 on Notes 8 here in Kansas City entitled "Notes 8 Productivity Editors - User and Programability" (I updated the demo database ... bad John)

Here is what's coming out today ... Movies Addams Family, The: Volume #3 Bodog Fight: Season #1 Bones: Season #2 Boondock Saints, The: Unrated SE Charmed: The Complete Series Pack Charmed: The Final Season Face/Off: Special Collector's Edition Fantastic Four: World's Greatest Heroes 2 Fly Classic Collection, The Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends: Season #2 Fraggle Rock: Season #3 From Beyond: SE (#35 in the DVDPS Top 40) Graduate, The: 40th Anniversary Collector's Edition (#34 in the DVDPS Top 40) Grey's Anatomy: Season #3 (Seriously Extended) (#3 in the DVDPS Top 40) I Dream Of Jeannie: Season #4 Jean Luc Godard Box Set Las Vegas: Season #4 McHale's Navy: Season #2 Noel Coward Collection Omen IV: The Awakening Return Of The Living Dead, The: SE Simon Wiesenthal Box Set Smallville: Season #6 (#20 in the DVDPS Top 40) Tom And Jerry Spotlight Collection: Volume 3 Two And A Half Men: Season #1 Urban Gothic: Season #1 Urban Gothic: Season #2 Vincent Price Gift Set: Volume 1 HD-DVD Mo

Best presentation opening ever! ... (with the Star Wars opening theme by John Williams going in the background) "A long time ago in a town 1,440 miles away" (text crawl just like the opening of the Star Wars movies) "Notes ... Release 8: A New Hope. It is a period of angst and frustration. The Notes USER EXPERIENCE does not delight users, making the struggle against the nefarious REDMOND-based EMPIRE that much harder. A bold decision is made. A release known only as HANNOVER will “deliver a world class user experience in mail, calendar and contact management, and new capabilities such as activity management and composite applications.” Only one question remains: How? Notes 8" The Mission: Improve Mail, Calendar, and Contacts ... Introduce composite applications ... integration the IBM productivity tools Had to understand the Notes users ... sites visits. Different Industries and countries (not just US) Interviewed Users to Create Personas ... "Knowledge worke

Lotus Notes and Domino - A history, a future ... Ed Brill 17 Years, 130 million users, 46,000 organizations Notes 8 will have end user advertising, but do not expect big budget TV ads First Notes release in a long time that users are pestering IT for a upgrade IBM joins OpenOffice.org Community Roadmap continued user oriented innovation calendaring ... i cal updated to-do and journal UI Lotus Quickr Integration SAP Integration Mac Beta in 8.0.1 ... Eclipse 3.4 required and not ready yet 8.0.1 ... Domino Web Access "Next" Dynamic interactive web client modern user experience, web 2.0 update DWA "Lite" Notes 8.0.1 planned for "around Lotusphere" Lotus Domino "Next" Plans Reduce complexity of managing Lotus Notes identities not require Notes password auth

I am here in Kansas City, MO this morning as Collaboration University is getting ready to start. I got here last night on the same flight as Ed. Rob Novak picked us up and took us to the Intercontinental, the hotel for the conference. Some great BBQ and discussion amoungst the speakers ended the evening. I will do some blogging of Ed Brill and his keynote and Mary Beth Raven and her discussion about the Notes 8 process and user interface. Check back for more later today ... and what might be the best presentation opening ever!

One of the concerts I always wanted to go to as a kid, as my love of hard rock and heavy metal was starting to form, was the Iron Maiden "PowerSlave" Tour. The Egypt landscape, Eddie coming out as a mummy thru the Eddie scarcofagus ... and the great songs on the album like "2 Mintues to Midnight" and "Rhime of the Ancient Mariner" ... I was hooked. I was way to young back then to go on my own, and the parents were not big Maiden fans. Fast forward to today ... reading my Blabbermouth RSS feed IRON MAIDEN have announced their most ambitious and extraordinary touring plans ever — and are very pleased to announce that this will include Australia for the first time in 15 years! The Somewhere Back In Time World Tour 2008 will be in three sections, starting in February and March 2008 with the first leg encompassing major concerts in 20 selected cities on five continents in seven weeks including India, Japan, North America, Central and South America, and, of course, Australia, opening

PSC is featured in the new Lotus Notes 8 Customer and Partner Testimonial Video. Andrew Lauter, President, and myself both talk about the impact of Lotus Notes 8. check it out below

Here is what's coming out today ... Movies 30 Rock: Season #1 Alvin And The Chipmunks: Scare-riffic Double Feature Black Donnellys, The: The Complete Series Bosom Buddies: Season #2 Bosom Buddies: The Complete Series Chill Out Scooby-Doo! Delta Farce (Widescreen) Desperate Housewives: Season #3 (The Dirty Laundry Edition) Diamonds Are Forever Dr. No Falcon Beach: Season #1 Garfield: Dreams & Schemes Georgia Rule (Widescreen) Haunting, A: Seasons #1-#2 I Dream Of Jeannie: Season #4 It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia: Seasons #1-#2 Live And Let Die Night On Earth: Criterion Collection Nip/Tuck: Season #4 Octopussy Office, The: Season #3 (#6 in the DVDPS Top 40) Prison Break: Season #2 R.L. Stine's The Haunting Hour: Don't Think About It (Widescreen) Real Housewives Of Orange County, The: Season #1 Robot Chicken: Season #2 Rules Of Engagement: Season #1 She-Ra: Princess Of Power: Season #2 Sparkle (1976) Stranger Than Paradise: Criterion Collection Tomorrow Never Dies Up In Smoke:

Since today is a holiday for many in the US, it makes sense that there is quite a bit of computer gaming going on today. Be it on a computer, a console, a PDA or cell phone ... people are enjoying the time away from work. As a lifetime gamer and a person connected to many developers of games, I tend to ignore most of the anti-gaming stuff that happens. There are always people for and against anything. For every person that says computer game violence is bad, there are those that will say it is not and claim free speech. For every person who says gaming can help in the workforce, there are counterparts who say it is a waste of time. It is an interesting debate no matter what the specific issue, but computer games seems to polarize people ... I do not talk with very few people who are in the grey space in between. Since the popularization of on-line gaming, and the explosion of games like Everquest a.k.a Evercrack, and World of Warcraft, I have seen more backlash. Not by players .. but

It is not a big secret, but today was a very special day in our community. I just wanted to say congratulations and I was blessed to be part of it. May you have many happy years together! Oh, and next time around, no impromptu guests with lawn chairs :-)