The promised storm *finally* materialized.  It rained pretty hard for a long time, but it was not - yet - unusual by historical standards (only by recent ones, in that it rained at all).  Stay tuned for more...

Did you see ZZTop at halftime of the FedEx Orange Bowl?  Pretty cool.  Those guys must be 100 years old, but they still rock.  Good to see they haven't become a cover band, doing old ZZTop tunes :)

The game itself was pretty good, too.  Although I must say watching college bowl games on January 4th does not feel right.  Yes, I'm a dinosaur.

Speaking of old bands who are still great, all the reports of Led Zeppelin's one night reunion were overwhelmingly positive.  A true event, I wish I could have been there.  If I were forced to pick one band as my favorite (e.g. "if you could only bring one band's music to a desert island") it would be Zep.  The bootleg clips surfacing on YouTube are excellent, Plant and Page still have it.  BTW their drummer was Jason Bonham, John Bonham's son, how cool is that.  Will they tour?  I doubt it.  Too bad.

How's this for a segue: Tesla changes CEOs, reports The Song Remains the Same.  As longtime readers know, Elon Musk is my hero, but he may have busted his pick on this one.  Then again, I thought that about SpaceX, too, which keeps on ticking...

Looks like maybe Blu-ray is going to defeat HD-DVD (albeit temporarily, before the 'net defeats both :); Engadget reports HD-DVD group cancels CES press conference.  So be it.  And rumor has it that Apple will include Blu-ray in future Macs.

Meanwhile, Business Week reports Sony BMG plans to drop DRM.  Excellent.  Looks like music DRM is dead, but video DRM is alive and well - for now.  We'll see what effect Apple's anticipated announcement at Macworld has...  rumor says they're going to announce a movie rental service, which (because of the limited time nature) implies DRM.

BW also has a little 'Intel' on Apple's next move.  At this point, if Apple doesn't announce a subnotebook, it will be a huge surprise.  More clues about Apple's future plans in this Engadget post: Maximus-like keyboard, iMac Macbook dock.

Marc Andreessen has an interesting take on Rebuilding Hollywood in Silicon Valley's image.  [ via Tim Oren ]  The writer's strike has affected me little, as I don't watch TV (except "unscripted" events like football games :), but if the ultimate effect is to change the way movies are made, that would be good.

Some Microsoft bashing; Tim Bray's 2008 prediction: Windows looks Bad.  Mark Pilgrim wrote Windows off years ago, but now thinks 2008 is the year of Linux on the desktop (at least at his parent's house).  And Bill Burnham thinks Microsoft should buy Plaxo.  I do agree with Bill that 1) Outlook is my most-used application, and 2) Microsoft hasn't enhanced it significantly since 1997.  Still, I am not [yet] motivated to switch to Thunderbird, despite being an avid Firefox user...