Normally I would be annoyed that something I bought failed so soon after I bought it, but I like the headset so much that I felt more relief than anger when I got my replacement.

The sponsors and advertisers were interesting — apart from Land Rover and Jaguar (to be expected), there was also a Botox tent giving away free promotional items. That, I think, tells you all you need to know about the fanbase at golf tournaments…

At any rate, inside the corporate hospitality box were a couple of kids, probably between 10 and 13 years old. They were golf fans, which I guess is acceptable if you grow up in that upper-crust type of environment. However, they weren’t simply golf fans — they knew players on the Champions Tour and were rooting them on quite vigorously.

I don’t know about you, but when I think of “youth sporting idols,” the PGA Champions Tour is just about the last thing that comes to mind. I may not have been the coolest cat on the block growing up, but at least I was hipper than that…

I found the plane to be quite difficult to control (for no good reason), and the “action camera” mode is extremely disorienting. You are forced to use the “action camera” for part of the tutorial, and it’s quite maddening — for a tutorial mission, I found it to be pretty hard!

Flight action game developers seem to love using the Ace Combat control scheme, where your plane’s rudder is mapped to shoulder buttons on the controller. Unfortunately, I feel that this setup makes it very difficult to actually control your plane — it is really hard to yaw and do something else with the triggers at the same time. I much prefer having the rudder control on the second analog stick, as we did in Secret Weapons Over Normandy. The control scheme in SWON maximizes the number of flight controls you have access to at once. In HAWX, the camera control is mapped to the right analog stick. This seldom-used feature effectively wastes one of the main control mechanisms.

While I’m on the subject, SWON (like HAWX) had a “simplified” flight mode. The SWON simplified mode auto-rolled your plane — you essentially flew with the left stick only. The concept behind it was that beginners could “steer the reticle” and concentrate more on shooting stuff (the fun part!) rather than flying. Unfortunately, in HAWX, the “simplified” mode doesn’t seem to be much different from the regular one! The plane is still quite hard to fly.

Like many jet combat games, the combat feels pretty impersonal because of the distances and speeds at which engagements take place. HAWX ups the ante, however, by including targeting/evasion assist modes where you press a button to enter the special mode, at which time you slalom through a bunch of “gates” that appear in front of your plane. When you have passed through enough gates, you will have a good missile lock, or evade an incoming missile, depending on how you entered the mode. The implementation is technically solid, but it really abstracts away the idea of fighter combat — you’re just flying through gates much of the time. There’s no feeling that you’re fighting against another pilot just like you in the other plane.

Overall, I was pretty disappointed. The game looks quite good, but the gameplay seems lacking.

The whole experience had a very strong Glengarry Glen Ross vibe to it – I wonder if there was something similar going on, or if it was just that all of the salespeople were highly motivated to keep their jobs (or earn a commission) in these lean times.

After shopping around a bit, I realized that prices in local stores (like Fry’s) were jacked up, to take advantage of the rush to comply with the law. No headsets were on sale, period, and I was thinking about just getting a basic model to avoid laying out a bunch of cash on something I wasn’t sure I’d use often. Fortunately, I decided to check on Amazon, where I discovered that the prices were much more reasonable. I noticed that the Plantronics Discovery 925 was extremely cheap on Amazon – about half off list price, and half off what I had seen it for locally – and it had great reviews, to boot. (Strangely, the other colors are now cheaper still – the gold-colored one is about $15 cheaper than the black one I have!) I ordered one for me, and another for Sandy – about $75 apiece.

After a few months’ usage, I have to say that I’m really happy with it. The sound quality is great, and it doesn’t have a ear-loop that would interfere with my glasses. It’s comfortable, light, and remains in place securely even if I’m moving around or being jostled. The charger case is small, and contains its own battery so you can recharge the earpiece from the case on-the-go. I can also use the voice dialing feature with my phone, making most of my phone calls a truly hands-free experience. It’s convenient enough that I actually use it when I’m at home, too, if someone calls me on my cell phone. I can talk to someone and still do other things like chores at the same time, which simply wasn’t possible when I had to hold the phone to my ear.

Overall, I would say it’s money well spent, and I can definitely recommend it to anyone looking for a Bluetooth headset.

I immediately thought of the Curtains Down level in Hitman: Blood Money, where you can take care of one of your targets by swapping out a prop pistol for a real one. (The target is normally shot in the head with a prop pistol, as part of the opera.)

Fortunately, the actor in the article recovered, and the incident appears to have been the result of incompetence rather than malice.

Now I feel a bit mean for cracking wise about his “asymptotic” condition.

The source said Mobley would see a heart specialist on Tuesday. Normally players have 48 hours to report to their new teams and take a physical examination, followed by another 24 hours for all the test results to come in. Because this trade was completed after business hours on Friday, the teams agreed to an additional 24-hour period, which ends at 6:30 p.m. ET Tuesday.

When asked about ESPN.com’s report by reporters after the Clippers game on Monday, coach Mike Dunleavy said: "From the standpoint of Cuttino’s concern, there’s nothing they have or don’t have that hasn’t been known to us or hasn’t been approved by us and all the other teams he’s played for. Neither one of those guys has had any issues with any of the things that are even being talked about.

"All I know is that if Cuttino has anything, he’s been asymptotic," Dunleavy said. "He’s never had any issue with us. There’s never been one time that he missed a practice or missed a game or had any issues in any physical of any kind for us. I mean, I’ve been told by our doctors that the things that are under concern is not something that we haven’t known about or have had any issues with. So hopefully, it won’t be an issue."

That’s right – when the opportunity to make a math joke pops up in the world of basketball, I’m going to grasp it with both hands.