A new year. 2006, here we come. Watched The Family Stone and went to dinner at Dublin's last Friday night. Watched it at the Esquire, which isn't a very good theater at all. Food was good, but a little too much. Just seems a little too hip for my tastes. Saturday finally caught up on Lost and worked a bit at the Apple Store before heading over to Piece for New Years. Not bad, but the party definitely started after the champagne came out. Next year we'll have to skip right to that. Sunday more work, and had a New Years Day dinner with my parents at Maggiano's. Way too much food there. Also, my mom was nice enough to provide a boatload of food for friends who came over on Monday to watch Ohio State trounce Notre Dame. Always interesting to watch football with people who have vested interest in the teams playing. Entertaining. Watched Arrested Development after all the folks left, and well, that show really doesn't seem to care anymore. They're sort of leaving it all out on the table now. Pretty much put anything on the show now. Rose Bowl showing on Wednesday, and that's pretty much it for plans.

Long day at work yesterday. Definitely running out of things to write about. Entries getting shorter and shorter. How much more television can I watch or write about? Well, forgot to mention that I've started watching Veronica Mars again, at least, last season. And last night I finally finished up the episodes I caught last season and saw one I hadn't seen. And it's good. Funny stuff. But I'm not recording this season cause RCN doesn't carry UPN in HD so I'll just wait for the eventual season 2 box set. Scrubs started again last night. Haven't watched them yet. Curious as to why they don't do HD. And watching the Rose Bowl at my place tonight in HD. So I guess I can write and watch more TV. How about computer stuff? Macworld coming up. That's next Tuesday. Wonder what Apple's gonna come out with next? CES going on right now I think. Okay, so maybe there is some more boring stuff I can write about. Filler. Fluff. Space.

I've had a secret that I was hoping would pan out and I'd have great news to tell and spring and surpise people with, but it didn't. But at least now I can talk about it. The story begins on 11/29/2005, when I get an email about an Amazon interview session at the W Chicago Lakeshore on 11/30. I couldn't get off work to take part in the whole day affair, but I managed to sneak in a little 1/2 hour before work of what I thought would be an informational session, maybe get some material, they'd get my resume, and that'd be all. But the guy I talked with seemed to like me, wanted me to stick around, but I couldn't, and I figured that was that. Next I hear from them on 12/5 about doing a phone interview. Now it's getting serious. Huh, Amazon might actually be interested? Wow. Gotta give it a shot though. So 12/8 I have a somewhat technical phone interview. About an hour. I don't actually think it went that well. So imagine my surprise when I hear from them on 12/13 that they want me to come out to Seattle for some in-house interviews. Oh, did I forget to mention this was for a Seattle based position? So a week later, I fly out on 12/20, get put up at the W Seattle, interview on 12/21, which doesn't go so hot, and head back in on the red eye. I figured holidays meant they wouldn't get back to me, so I finally got in touch with them yesterday to find out where I was, and the answer's no. But that was fun. It was. And interesting, and kind of like a kick in the pants. How cool would it have been to spring on family and friends that I a) got a job at Amazon and b) would be moving to Seattle? (I would have announced the news in person if it happened to those that count.) But alas, it didn't happen. But gets me thinking. So anyway, since I didn't get it, I figured I could just announce the bad news here. What could have been...

Good game last night. Pretty exciting right there at the end. Kind of annoying to start off watching with a DVR and fast forwarding through commercials until you start watching live, and then it becomes a bit tedious. Thought I was coming down with a cold or something, but it seems to be drifting away, which is good. A little excited about a couple things coming out of CES this year, like the Sony Reader, which I'm actually kind of excited about. Especially if it's backlit. Had some issues with the 135 LaSalle Express. Yesterday it was so hot people were taking off coats. I was pretty much sitting on a furnace, to the point that the keys I have on my backpack where too hot to touch. And then this morning it stopped twice, once on lower Lake Shore before turning onto Wacker and then again at LaSalle and Lake. Odd. But the heat thing annoys me. Wonder how that's controlled. Anyway, in what I guess is one of my New Year's resolutions, I want to try keeping better track of my finances, which means using iBank and downloading data for my bank and credit card accounts. We'll see if I can actually keep up with that. Too bad I can't automate that one.

Weekend. Good. Finally. Watched more Veronica Mars last night. Good stuff. Knowing who did it last season, well, I'm looking for clues while watching, and well, I'm not finding much. But still great fun. I forgot to mention yesterday I think I found a new breakfast place finally, Specialty's Bakery & Cafe, up on Lake and Wacker. Nice freshly made pastries and stuff, and they had a nice selection of yogurt fruit parfaits (I went with strawberry-kiwi). Finished off the Maggiano's leftovers for dinner. Headed out to see Tracy tonight, going to see Fun with Dick and Jane at Hollywood Boulevard. Work at the Apple Store this weekend, hang out with Russell Saturday morning. Karl's back in town, so I need to get in touch with him to catch up. And this whole CES isn't providing too many new things to drool over, but plenty to think about, with all the new content distribution announcements and stuff. I forgot to mention that I installed Alias Sketchbook Pro on Hydrogen. It's awesome. Doodling on a computer screen? Awesome.

Pretty lazy weekend. Went and saw Fun with Dick and Jane Friday night with dinner at Chili's afterwards. Good movie. Funny. But hits a little too close to home, maybe. Worked Saturday and Sunday, watched some TV, had some White Castle for dinner Sunday night. Got lunch with Russell at Silver Cloud on Saturday, watched Wedding Crashers. That's a pretty long movie. Watched some more Veronica Mars. Lately I have been multitasking, or at least trying to multitask as much as that show is. Lots of stuff going on, needing to get done, and little bits getting done here and there. Would be nice to clean the plate off eventually. Finally got around to watching Hostage last night. Not a bad movie. Macworld kicks off with a Steve Jobs' Keynote. Kind of excited to find out what is up Apple's sleeve.

So Macworld keynote is over. And Apple did it. This year is gonna be long. I'm really interested to see what happens over the course of the year now. Apple's jumped on the whole blog podcasting thing. Don't know if that's gonna pan out for them. But it might make the most sense for family members to keep in touch. At least, that's what I see. And the big announcement with an Intel iMac, and then the MacBook Pro. What happened to Powerbook, can't believe they're retiring that name. What happened to the sizes? And will anyone buy any of their other computers, the mac mini, the iBook, the Powermac? Definitely expecting some good things round April Fools day though. Gotta put my order in for iLife '06 and iWork '06, although I don't really need the latter. Oh well. Watched a bunch of Veronica Mars episodes last night. I've got like 2 eps left, which I really really want to finish off. Not much else going on.

Best thing for me personally that happened yesterday? Finding out the new version of iTunes 6.0.2 can stream music to multiple Airport Expresses and the computer at the same time and synchronized. Seriously. That's awesome. Totally easy whole house audio. Really really impressed. And I've started reading Crypto: How the Code Rebels Beat the Government Saving Privacy in the Digital Age again, so I'm on the privacy and crypto kick, so I went ahead and got PGP or GPG up and running on Aluminum. Now that I do, I can promptly forget about it and move on. Did my backups as well. Did the software update on Argon, Nitrogen and Aluminum. Would have been much easier if I had gotten Argon's Software Update service working. Headed over to Carnivale tonight for dinner with Tracy.

Dinner at Carnivale was good, if a little salty. Drinks were good though. Thoroughly enjoyed the Cava and a Mojito. Very tasty. Watched some Scrubs and updated Tracy's iPod when we got home. Otherwise, not much going on, well, I guess work related New Year's resolutions and stuff. Which will probably mean a shift in posting times. Gave my 2 week notice at the Apple Store. Enough seasonal work for me, and back to only a 5 day work week soon enough. I forgot to mention that my Chicago Card Plus has stopped working reliably, and so I've had to order a replacement and actually pay for my rides when it doesn't work. Very annoying. Perils of RFID, or whatever the tech is that's being used.

Posting on a Sunday. Missed posting on a Friday. Weird. Anyway, Thursday made some meatloaf, since I had a craving. Watched some TV or some recorded movies or something. I forget. Which is why I keep this, so I don't have to remember. Anyway, Friday went out with the boys watching Munich and getting food at Darwin's. Management is changing there, so it won't be quite the same anymore. According to the wait staff, who were told that day there's a week left before it changes, some guys from Kincaid's are buying it and letting all the staff go. Not good. Darwin's was awesome. But like all good things, it gets swallowed up by the majority. Maybe it'll be like Neo and inject all the bugfixes back to the source. Anyway, did some laundry on Saturday before work, and then headed out with Lisa and Ryan and Tracy for Ryan's birthday. Scouted out Spot 6 which wasn't what he was looking for, tried going to SmartBar which was closed, and ended up at Trace drinking and sitting at a table. After that, ended up getting some food at Pick Me Up Cafe, which was really good. Sunday made some pancakes and bacon before Piece carry-out pizza and a growler brought over by the Russells for the Bears game. We'll see what I manage in terms of updating going forward.

Off and on. Here and back. Not quite so daily anymore? Too bad. Just trying to upset my audience. Monday night headed out to Tracy's, was going to check out some driving range action, something new to do, but ended up watching 50 Cutest Child Starts All Grown Up instead before heading out to dinner at Seamus McGhee's in Lemont. Cute little town, under the overpass next to the train tracks. Sets quite a scene. Got some more yogurt for the breakfast parfaits that I like, except I didn't have any this morning. Going to start keeping better track of my activities through emails from my cell phone to myself. Mostly because I completely forgot about which movies I watched last week. But The Pacifier is on cable this week, so I'm recording that and should get a viewing in sometime soon.

Lunch time updates work for me I think. Anyway, headed back out to Tracy's last night. Nice and quiet nights at home. Relaxing. Watched some TV, as usual. Had some lumpia and hung out in the kitchen for a bit with the family. Good stuff. Some other odds and ends I've had to take care of recently, needed to WAP bookmarks back on my cell phone, so I had to dig up the t68i since T-Zones still isn't officially supported on the K750i, but then I realized that they were already saved to my SIM card, but I added some new ones anyway. Basically, I like the interface for checking movie times. Found out Aluminum is roughly 2 years, 4 months old. Battery has about 58% capacity now. Lasts about 1 1/2 hours. I'm tempted to get a new battery to replace it, but then again, how often am I not at an outlet? Oh, other things I'm remembering due to my email log: I gave my 2 week notice at the Apple Store; Love Monkey is my new must watch show.

Upgraded iLife to the '06 version. Most exciting update? iPhoto. I'll definitely be looking into creating my own calendar and birthday cards. Definitely. Otherwise, got a 2 GB Memory Stick Duo that was backordered from last fall or so. Means I need to start looking into converting some movies or TV shows so I can watch on my phone, and get a proper headphone adapter for the phone. Made dinner at home with Tracy last night, an old standby, Orange Glazed Chicken, and I just realized I should do some sort of marinating to get some flavor into the chicken breasts. We watched Wedding Crashers, since she hadn't seen it yet. Also managed to polish off a bottle of wine between the two of us, which is an impressive feat. A pretty good malbec, I'll have to record it when I get home. Russell's coming over to watch The Pacifier tonight, and the parents are coming in this weekend.

Got that pesky website for my dad to finish up by Sunday. More like Saturday night. But I finally worked out a design, pretty simple. Got a database design as well. Not sure if I want to write my own backend or try and use Joomla again. That is if I figure out how to write my own template for it. Anyway, got a pretty full fridge, which is a little weird. Some of the stuff in there has got to be old. Except I'm not sure how old it might be. Getting my hair cut today. Makes for a good practical date with Tracy. Not much planned for the weekend yet anyway. Just really need to start sleeping better and more.

I finally finished up, well, a 1.0 version of fvfacm.org, a web site for my dad's religious group. Still needs some work, and a whole lot of content, but the framework and design is there. Mostly. And Joomla is really cool. Anyway, to recap the weekend: mostly indoors, and mostly on the couch. Friday night stayed in due to inclement weather, munched on leftovers. Might have watched Mallrats, a first for Tracy. Saturday we actually went outside to get my hair cut at Milios Hair Salon down on Belmont. The place was way too hip for me, but Angel gave me a decent cut. Also, the scalp massage during the pre-cut shampoo was amazing. Went looking for Iron City but didn't find any at Binny's Beverage Depot. There is some at Jewel though. Watched Drumline, another first for Tracy. Did some grocery shopping at Treasure Island, Tracy made sesame green beans and crabcakes and I made beef in puff pastry. I finally fried up my mom's lumpia which was sitting in my freezer for years. Sunday, more couch time, this time watching football, NFC and AFC Championship games. Plowed through the Denver-Pittsburgh game in 90 minutes thanks to the DVR. Took a food break before the Seattle-Carolina game to let the DVR stock up. Made some Keilbasa over onions in beer. Akira and the Russells came over to watch as well, with the Russells leaving at the first game. Finished up the night with some Lost. Finally went running for the first time in a long time this morning. Definitely hard to get the body moving again.

How I Met Your Mother is an amazing show. It's really funny, but last night I realized that I'm emotionally invested in the show. I'm now really rooting for Ted to find the mother of his children. It's amazing. So between that and Love Monkey, I'm actually watching CBS. Go figure. I caught up on the TV watching last night, plowing through sitcoms and stuff. Hard work. Also tried to do some iChat multiperson video conferencing with Al and Mom but no such luck. For some reason, the iMac G5 at home was having issues. Not sure what the deal is there, but almost makes me want to go home and check it out. It was odd because the connection is plenty fast enough, it's a 1.8 Ghz G5, so that's not a problem, and the kicker? It worked before. Just not now. Ugh. And in order to push back any other personal projects of mine, I've started converting some of my movies for watching on my K750i. Why? Not sure. I finished up Crypto and before moving on to something else, I figured, hey, why not try the whole video thing on the go? Only problem? No bookmarks. And fast-forwarding is pretty slow.

Going to see Brokeback Mountain tonight. With Tracy. Watched more TV last night, but missed recording Love Monkey because I forgot to set it up as a series recording. Thunderbirds is not a good movie. Ate/Cleaned up some stuff out of the fridge, which is good. Finished ripping some more of my DVDs to disk for future conversion through Handbrake for watching on my K750. Went running again this morning. Exercise is always good. Otherwise, not much to report. Seems to be the case around this time of the year, just not much going on. Probably means I should start working on some of my ToDos or Projects.

Feels like the flu is coming on. About that time of the year for it. And of course it would start coming on when I start exercising again. Love the negative reinforcement there. We'll see if it sticks though. Brokeback Mountain is a very good movie. Been a while since I've seen a true dramatic love story at a movie theater. It's been a stable diet of blockbusters, romantic comedies, action movies, with the occasional Landmark's Century Centre Cinema thanks to Russell.

So I ended up leaving work early last Thursday and calling in sick on Friday. Got the sleep on, drank the tea, the orange juice and Sprite combo. Lots of heating water in a mug and inhaling the steam. That felt good. Some use of a heating pad on the forehead and face to reduce the sinus headaches. Not an enjoyable sick day, but spent pretty much on the couch. Actually, didn't leave the building from Thursday evening to Monday morning. Tracy joined me for the weekend though. That was nice. She had a craving for Salisbury Steak, so had some of that and some potatoes au gratin, and a pretty nice green pea cold salad with Bacos. She also brought over some chicken soup too. Saturday night we had chicken and dumplings. Sunday we got some Mediterranean from Sinbad's through GrubHub.com. Spent most of the time watching TV, napping. Although we did get fed up enough that we started up a 1000pc jigsaw puzzle I had. It's really hard. Managed to get an iChat in with my family Sunday night, which was pretty cool. Feeling much better, still got a little bit of a residual cough and hacking, but it should be going away, as long as I get my sleep.

Eleven more to go. Early night last night, wanting to get my sleep in. Watched Hackers for the upteenth time. Apparently I'm ready to start watching my DVDs again, cause I'm all over it. I'm using the 400 DVD changer more as well, and I should work on getting the Roku Photobridge back up to get more video on demand going. I forgot to mention that while Tracy and I were working on the jigsaw puzzle we were listing to iTunes over multiple speakers. That still rocks. Tried out some hot lemon and honey water, something besides tea or plain hot water, for the head. A little too sour. So 31 days into 2006. Not bad. Lots of weddings to go to this year. I count 3 so far, through July, 2 in May. Crazy. Really crazy.