Enjoying New Year's Eve

Well, I made it safely back to California and am preparing on going out ... somewhere tonight to celebrate New Year's Eve. We really don't have a plan. Just playing it by ear, but I have no doubt I will enjoy myself tonight.

Have a lot of pictures to post to Picasa soon from my trip back home. Then I guess I should publish some goals and ideas I have for 2008. But that's for later this week.

If you are wondering about the picture above, it's a background I use for my PC every year around New Year's. I don't know, but I always looked at it as starting off the new year right.

Enjoy yourselves this evening and stay safe!

Note: As always, I claim no ownership of the image above. I downloaded it from Animewallpapers.com some time ago.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

I think I sent out some of the sappiest holiday cards a couple of days ago. I guess my old age is making me sentimental or something, so to those of you who I sent cards out to then I can only hope any comments you make regarding the cards are gentle. And to those who aren't going to receive a card, well, it's mainly because I don't have an address for you.

So, I will be out-of-town for the next week. I will be back in Tampa, Florida, starting tomorrow and I will not return to California until December 29. It will be nice spending Christmas back home, and I'll have a nice, long week to spend time with family and friends. I don't have anything particular planned, but I'll have a camera so hopefully I'll take some nice pictures that I can post to Picasa later. Expect me to make one last post before the end of the year, probably on the subject of my goals and plans for 2008.

To everyone out there, I wish you a very Merry Christmas! And a Happy Holidays to those who don't celebrate this particular event!

I has smarts

While reading through a bunch of my RSS news feeds a couple of days ago, I stumbled upon this article in Wired's blog. It linked to a site where you can get a rating as to your blog's readability. Of course, I had to find out what mine would rate as.



Honestly, I do not know if I can take this test seriously since there is no indication on what criteria is used to determine this rating. But until this test is proven as pure quackery, I will go by it's rating. College Level! Woohoo!

Actually, upon further investigation I am putting little credence into this site. The code used to place the rating on your site includes adding a link to some cash advance site, which if you aren't well-versed in HTML you might miss. A little deceptive in my opinion. As you can see, I've removed that link from the HTML so it doesn't appear.

I'm In Despair!

Well, not really. I'm actually doing pretty good right now. But just thought I'd talk a little bit about getting older. Now, last week (12/05) I turned 30 years old and made some updates to my MySpace and Facebook pages saying that I "felt old". Now, that all was pretty much said in jest as most of my friends know I generally call myself the oldest one in our group even though I'm probably more in the middle of the pack in terms of age amongst us all. This all stems from something I was told years ago, probably around early high school. Someone had mentioned to me that I seemed more mature for my age (I think I was 15 or so) and ever since then I have played off it as if I'm the "old man". Always telling my friends, whether they were really older than me or younger by only a few months, that "when I was their age ..." or "In my day, we had nothing ... and we were thankful!". You know, the stereotypical old man sayings and it's always been in jest and everyone generally gets a good laugh out of it.

Honestly, I don't feel any anxiety about getting older. I've always told people that if anyone made any comments about me getting gray hairs now, I would just say it makes me look "distinguished". I don't know, I just don't feel any differently and care little that I was 29 a little over a week ago and am 30 now. Actually, the only time it bothers me is when one of my roommates complains about being 26 (he's a little bit ... vain I'll say), and I have to yell back "Shut the f@%& up! I'm 30! I'm the one approaching Death's embrace!" But really, I've just never cared. It's not like I'm going to stop playing video games, watching anime/cartoons, going on various trips (Japan next year!), or stop chasing after good-looking women; and instead decide I must get a job I can work at for 10-15 years, get married, settle down and start a family. Some people have told me, "hey, 30 is the new 20" or something like that. And that's not a bad way to look at things. But for me, 30 is just 30, a number. Doesn't mean anything other than I've been alive on this plane of existence for 30 years according to the Gregorian calendar.

I look forward to continuing on this journey we call life. I am going home for Christmas, and expect to have a great time seeing family and friends while I'm in Tampa for an entire week. And next year I am planning on a couple of vacations that I think will end up being pretty exciting. So turning 30 hasn't really meant too much, other than I can now joke about planning my mid-life crisis by dating some 20 year-old(s) (I'd say get a sports car too, but then again I have a BMW so that's already taken care of).

To paraphrase the dub for Street Fighter II: The Movie --
"Eric, what do you see in front of your fist?"
"My destiny."

Congratulations to Superman ... uh ... I mean, Tim Tebow

I would just like to congratulate the 2007 recipient of the Heisman Memorial Trophy, Tim Tebow. Being a UF alumni, I have watched pretty much every game he has played in and believe the award is well-deserved. Darren McFadden, the running back at Arkansas, is an incredible player, able to score touchdowns in any number of ways, but unfortunately I do not feel he had as good a season this year as Tim Tebow did for the Gators. Tim Tebow scored 51 touchdowns this year (29 passing/22 running) and before anyone says anything not everyone of his running touchdowns were 1-yard plunges across the goal line. For example, look at the 15+ touchdown run he had at the beginning of the FSU-UF game. Of course, I think most people would agree winning an award like this tends to put a target on your chest for your opponents. Most people probable think it looks like this:

But I think most of us UF alumni would agree the target looks more like this:

A Day for Great Justice!

I could use this time and space to pimp the fact that it is my birthday. Yup, I was born 30 years ago today. I could post about the fact that I guess I'm "old" now; how I'm at Death's doorstep; that I should move on from some of my less mature pursuits. But I have something of almost equal importance to alert y'all to.

December 5 is Annual Day of the Ninja! I can have no better honor than this, to share my birthday with a celebration of ninjas!