Arcade Fire

I've been taking Caltrain to San Francisco this week for JavaOne. I picked up the new Arcade Fire CD, Neon Bible this weekend and listened to it on the train. If you look at its reviews on MetaCritic, it has had a lot of praise heaped upon it. I never form an opinion on a CD on the first listen. If I would have done that, then I would have hated Achtung Baby. My first impression of Neon Bible was that it was good, but nothing really jumped out. Again, a second listen is at least warranted.

The most pleasing thing about listening to it on the Caltrain was I got to really appreciate my Bose noise-canceling headphones. I know these are made to work well on airplanes, so I guess it should come as no surprise that they completely wipe out noise on a train. They had worked pretty well for me at my noisy office at Ludi Labs, but the train was definitely their element.

JavaOne This Week

Tomorrow I will be at JavaOne. Tuesday is the official start of JavaOne, but tomorrow is Java University. I'm going to it and to JavaOne on Wednesday. It should be a lot of fun.
I'm taking Caltrain to San Francisco. Actually I'm taking the VTA Light Rail and then taking Caltrain. The VTA is within walking distance of my house. Still, it's going to be between 75-90 minutes each way, depending on if I take a baby bullet.
I went to Borders today with the intent of buying a book to read on the train this week. Actually I had a book in mind: Moneyball. Then I remembered why I always buy books online. It is such a pain to find a book at a bookstore. I searched all through the "Baseball" section at Borders and had no luck. I searched the general sports section for good measure, but no luck. I probably should have used one of the lookup computers, but at that point I was annoyed and just left. Maybe I'll buy the book on iTunes.
I thought about using my laptop on the train, but that will drain a lot of my battery power, and I don't know how likely I am to find AC juice at JavaOne. Oh well, I guess I can just listen to Year Zero and Neon Bible.