Greetings from Philadelphia

Driving my rental car on I-76W late last night after arriving in Philadelphia, I found a retro rock radio station that I really liked, WYSP. "The Rock You Grew Up With" was their catch phrase, and they played some great stuff. Unfortunately, even with the stereo at max volume, I could barely hear it. Cheap rental car stereo? Actually not. It was raining SO HARD that the rain pounding on the car was deafening. Not to digress, but to introduce the pic on the right (a random photo of some really nice homes in a Philly neighborhood - I love the Fall colors in the surrounding hills), you can see that the weather cleared up nicely today. But last night's storm was WICKED!!! It caused my connecting departure from Denver airport to be delayed, and I got in too late for a industry VIP party I was supposed to attend last night.

At the PHL airport, though, as you so often see in many cities in the U.S., there is a big welcome sign (pictured at left) from the city mayor. I had previously not known the name of the Philadelphia mayor. Michael Nutter. Man oh man... especially if I went in to politics, I think I would change my name. My guess is that this guy is a real nutter!!! :-)

Today I spent that day at the GameX trade show here in Philadelphia. A very nice little local show, featuring some talented local developers, as well as some of the larger players in the industry, as well. There were the usual characters dressed up in, say, Star Wars garb playing with light sabers (video here on YouTube), but one of the more entertaining parts of the show was a performance by Buffalo, NY based metal band "ArmCannon" (their MySpace page here). They have done a bunch of stuff for videogames, and they were pretty good. Check out the video below, though. The guitarist in the middle, particularly toward the end of the video, gets in to some serious head-banging. With his long hair, he's quite entertaining to watch. But man... I would have a SERIOUS dizzying headache after this!!!



So anyway... tomorrow I drive about 90 miles to my first meeting in New Jersey, and then about 200 miles to the Maryland destination of my Tuesday morning meeting. 300 miles of east coast driving tomorrow. It's a beautiful time of year here, and I look forward to the drive. Hopefully the weather will hold. Then flying up to Boston Tuesday afternoon.

I've posted more photos on Facebook (click here), and I'm still uploading photos and more videos to Flickr (click here).