All things other than the weather considered it’s good to be back in Tempe, on my own computer again with my anime collection and epic internet pipes and digital cable.

But DANG it gets hot here. Seriously, holy frick.

In any case, vacation was fun. Lots of driving on Monday (yes, we drove from Tucson to LA, in the daytime); stayed at the Residence Inn by Marriott in Los Alamitos. Tuesday, Disneyland; we had a reservation at the Blue Bayou Restaurant there, which was well-timed with the earthquake happening not long before. We didn’t feel anything, but all the rides were closed for inspection for a couple hours. We didn’t go on too many rides anyway; this was the third time in just over four years (second time with my family) that we’d been to Disneyland, so I think it was all still old news right then. Another year or two’s wait might have been better.

Wednesday, California Adventure; pretty good, it was my first time going. Muppets 3D was definitely the highlight of the day; the Animation Workshop was interesting too, and the Monsters, Inc. and Soaring Over California rides were pretty good. Then ESPNZone in Downtown Disney that night for dinner. There are televisions at eye-level above the urinals there. Best restaurant of the trip.

Thursday, a bunch of different things: Aquarium of the Pacific in the morning; Seal Beach in the afternoon; and Dodger Stadium, believe it or not my first Major League Baseball regular-season game outside of Phoenix, in the evening. We were in the vast minority of people not wearing any Dodger Blue, and I didn’t see anyone wearing anything Diamondbacks (even though the D-backs won, 2-1). I did have a Dodger Dog though…you have not tasted an excellent hot dog until you’ve had a Dodger Dog with the works.

Friday, Universal Studios. Much smaller than Disneyland actually, which I wasn’t expecting but much to the delight of my legs. The tour is really the highlight of the park; it’s half real sightseeing, half totally contrived (but passingly fun) theme park fun-tram ride, but fun nonetheless. We opted to pass on The Mummy Returns and Jurassic Park rides; the Shrek 4D show was amusing, the special effects demonstrations were enlightening despite being punctuated by really dry attempts at humor, and the Simpsons Ride was totally worth the 45-minute wait spent watching an about as long Simpsons “Best of Krustyland” video loop.

Saturday, more driving. All in all I took a good several hundred photos, which I still have to get into iPhoto and sort out the good ones before uploading them, but I’ll probably get working on that after I (finally) get some furniture and clean my room.

Oh yes, and it was much—MUCH—cooler in Los Angeles.

My family is taking a vacation to the Los Angeles area next week; so for the time being I’m back in the Old Pueblo. The two things I remembered right away:

1. how little traffic there is, but how much it doesn’t seem like it because of how poorly managed it is; and
2. how little there is to do here.

It is kinda nice to get away from the condo for a while though and be back with my family; it was starting to get old, sitting around all day with nothing to do. Preferrable to summer school, but all the same, calling something an improvement over summer school isn’t saying much.

The one downside to our vacation is that we’ll actually be driving from Tucson to Los Angeles. Not as bad a drive as the one to San Diego—we pass through real civilization, Phoenix and Blythe instead of Yuma and El Centro—but still not optimal. I guess I see where my parents are coming from, with flying being much more expensive and really not saving too much more time over driving, but that doesn’t change the fact that being in a car for seven or eight hours is no fun. I will be taking pictures and will post them once I am back in Tempe at my own computer.

In the meantime, my laptop is now (or will be later this afternoon, anyway) dual-booting again, so that I can at least have EVE Online and World of Warcraft with me at home and on other travels. If it weren’t for the fact that certain games require me to use Microsoft products, I would be more than happy to never have to acknowledge their existence.

Now I just need to finalize my decision between openSUSE and Ubuntu for a Linux distribution to dual-boot. Ubuntu I have much more experience working with, and I prefer its package manager; but openSUSE looks better, and works better with docking and undocking, but it’s been harder for me to configure. I am open to opinions and recommendations, so feel free to leave a comment.