It's the most wonderful time of the year...

I got five hours of sleep last night, despite drinking five beers from 9:00 at night till nearly 2:00 in the morning. And yet I feel great this morning, because the reason for both is that I was watching the NFL season opener. I love football, and I love gambling on football--I'm in four fantasy leagues this year, one of which had an entry fee, as well as a pick 'em pool with some rather nice prizes--5th place gets their money back, and it goes up from there. The only bummer (for me) is that the Giants opener isn't going to be on TV in my area--they're showing the Cowboys-Chargers at 4:00. Oh well--I guess there's always the sports bar.

I've also picked up the PC version of Madden 06, and I'm fairly unimpressed. It's not a bad game, but the whole "vision" thing (you need to direct your QB's eyes to the receiver you're trying to hit before passing the ball) takes a lot of getting used to (fortunately, you can turn this "feature" off), and the new "Superstar" mode (create an NFL rookie and guide him through his career) adds very little excitement to the game for me. It feels like an attempt to put a stripped-down version of The Sims into the Madden series, and it just doesn't work, as far as I'm concerned. Other than that, Madden 06 features the same great graphics, gameplay, and useability (it runs terrific on my Athlon 2700 with all the details maxed out) as previous games in the series, and features the least repetitive commentary in any sports game from Al Michaels and the big guy himself. Recommended for purchase if you don't have last year's version--otherwise, save your money and go find yourself a user-created roster for this season. You won't be missing much.