I started this blog back in July, and I really appreciate all of the people who have kept coming back to read it. I really feel lucky to have such a great group of readers.

Of course, the more prolific commenters are my fellow bloggers, I’ve really enjoyed reading your posts, as well as the conversations that we have. I know that I haven’t been really good about reading and commenting on your blogs the last couple of months, but I haven’t forgotten about you. So, I wanted to wish everyone a Happy New Year.

So Happy New Year to Art, Pearl, Scott, Phil, Kellypea, Steven, Kevin, Ross, and anyone else that I forgot to mention. I hope you all have some good luck, good times, health and happiness in the upcoming year!

As for myself, every year, right after Christmas, even if I haven’t been thinking about it, I always start to feel the finality of the year. Of course, I also feel the hope that a New Year brings. I know that I’m not alone in this, since everyone starts making New Years resolutions. I generally avoid them, but this year is a little different. There are two reasons for this.

The first reason is that I recently had a little time to kill, and I had my planner with me. I realized that many of the goals I had set for myself, even written down, had never become more than words on paper. Sure writing your goals down is a great first step, but you should follow it through with more steps.

The second reason is that I realize the need to stop procrastinating. Every time I’ve slacked off on something, I always tell myself that I’ll pick it back up, "after the weekend", or some other handy future date. Of course, when that date comes, there’s always another one right over the horizon, and it sure is easier to put it off again than it is to adopt that behavior.

When I look back on 2007, I have to say that I didn’t really accomplish all that much. I haven’t read any of the books that I have wanted to read, I haven’t gotten back into shape, I haven’t stopped smoking. Trust me, I can go on and on.

I pledge to make this year better. To stop putting off the things I want to do. I also resolve to place the things that are important to me as the highest priorities.

I let too many days get consumed by fires, and too many evenings destroyed by the events of the day. Too many worthwhile goals are put off because I’m "too tired" or because "I don’t feel like it". Not anymore.

Here’s to 2008.

Bring it on!

Posted in New Years 9 Comments »

I just wanted to take a quick moment to wish everyone a Merry Christmas! I hope all of you are with the ones you love, and get to enjoy today, as well as this season.

I used to have a whole lot of trouble getting into the spirit of Christmas.

When I was in the Marine Corps, I never felt those pangs to be with family for Christmas. Besides my sister and my Aunt, the Marine Corps was my family, so I was right at home, wherever that may have been.

Merry Christmas to all of my brothers and sisters who made me feel at home those years. Semper Fi!

Now that I have kids, everything has changed, and the last couple of years I’ve really been able to see what it’s all about. I know it isn’t Thanksgiving, but I really feel thankful for my friends and family, and thankful that I’m in the right place in my life to appreciate them.

Seeing the kids eyes light up around this time of year is magical in itself, but the icing on the cake is watching my wife’s face light up when she sees the joy that the kids get from this season.

I hope that you can take a moment to appreciate the people that you care about, and to appreciate all of the men and women out there who aren’t with their families, because they wanted to do their part in keeping the rest of us safe.

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays Everyone!

Posted in Christmas 2 Comments »

NORAD Tracks Santa (North American Air Defense Command) - In 1955 Sears in Colorado Springs ran an advertisement for a special hotline that kids could call to track where Santa Claus is. In a strange twist, they misprinted the phone number, and the misprinted number turned out to be the Commander in Chief’s operations hotline for NORAD (at the time it was known as CONAD). Read the full story here. NORAD has been using their sophisticated mistle Missile tracking equipment to track Santa ever since. This year NORAD is using Google Maps, and you can even track Santa using Google Earth in 3d.

Google Earth’s Santa Tracker Page - The Google side of the NORAD / Google partnership. Evidently, Santa wants Google to implement naughty and nice data layers into Google earth.

Santa’s GPS - A Downloadable Application for Windows, written by Santa’s Elves to avoid all of those pesky Internet bottlenecks.

If you’re going to be up all night, these will give you a good idea of when you should jump into bed. You know Santa won’t come if your awake, right?

Posted in Christmas, WebServices, WebSites 3 Comments »

Friday started out to be a good day. As I was pulling into the parking lot at work, I realized that I had finished everything that I needed to do the previous day. This means that today I get to work on what I want to work on. Yippee!

One of the first things I decided to do was take care of a problem that has been nagging me for quite awhile. The hard drive on my primary machine.

The primary machine that I use has two physical hard drives in it. Drive 1 is a crappy Western Digital. I don’t like Western Digital Drives, due to personal experience. You probably figured that out though.

 Luckily the second hard drive is a Maxtor. The Western Digital has been having issues for at least 8 months or so, and every time I get any real drive access on it, like when Outlook is updating it’s offline files, the machine hangs for a little while.

My intent was to take a ghost image of the Problematic 150G Western Digital, and place the image on my fully functional Maxtor 250G Drive. Then I would switch the drives around, making the Maxtor my primary drive. After that, I could do what I want with the Western Digital.

I’ll make a long story short, and let you know that it didn’t work out as planned. I ended up having to reload Windows.

Now, when you’ve decided to reload your computer, and have prepared, it can be really beneficial, kind of a cleansing experience.

If you aren’t expecting to do it, then it can be a real pain.

This was a real pain.

The Lemonade Part

I didn’t realize how badly that flaky drive was slowing down my day to day operations. Since swapping those hard drives, the machine is flying. It’s also really nice to start over, I only have the applications on there that I really use.

I tend to install a lot of software, and although I uninstall it periodically, the computer tends to get a little cluttered.

It’s also nice to set everything up exactly the way you want it, get all of your images and shortcuts going again, the desktop arranged just so. I’m not a control freak, but I still like having my workspace squared away.

All in all, I’m glad that I had to re-load my computer, although I wasn’t expecting it, I did have the time to do it that day, and I’m really reaping the benefits of it now.

Posted in Personal-Computing, Hard-Drives, Rambling 10 Comments »

Pearl posted about the social networking Sites that she belongs to, and I figured I would give it a shot too. Here are the links to my profile pages, join if you would like, or ignore it, it’s your call.

Pownce - I still think they need to add a notification when someone replies to something you have replied to, but otherwise, this is one of my favorites.

My Blog Log - This one has stuck. I really like sending private messages with other bloggers, it’s an easy way to tell them something is broken without posting it on their site. Love the stats and the widget.

Del.icio.us - Constantly use this Del.icio.us, love it. I don’t use regular bookmarks anymore. I can’t say that I use the social networking features of it though.

Digg - I subscribe to my friends submissions, so that I can digg them too. That’s about the most I use it for. I don’t generally “digg” my own stories, but you’re welcome too.

Last.FM - I use this one sporadically. I use Pandora more than Last.FM.

Flickr - I haven’t posted anything here since I found out you can only display 200 (?) pictures at a time. Bummer. I meant to set up my own photo site, but I haven’t gotten around to it yet.

Blog Catalog - Their widget looks exactly like My Blog Log’s widget, but their site is much nicer looking, although painfully slow to load. I stick to My Blog Log, but I still belong to this one too.

Feel free to post any sites you really like.

Posted in Social Networks, WebSites No Comments »