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The first week of the new year is typically the most exciting. You get to harbor all the false hope that you can somehow revise yourself to be a better person before ultimately caving in a few days down the line when a huge piece of delicious cake passes your way or you inadvertently procrastinate only to catch yourself later and write off your resolution as broken. Unlike other times of the year, the cracking of your resolutions is painful simply because you were actually making an effort--or if nothing else consciously thinking about not breaking them. This year, rather than putting forth a slew of things I'd like to improve I'm going to be thankful for the many good qualities I already have and would encourage you to do the same.
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That wacky Barack Obama is at it again--pulling in Iowa by a surprising margin last night. While Jamie and I were in Nashville we heard him speak with Tim Russert on MSNBC and he (Obama, not Russert) sounded pretty good (Russert sounded like the moron he is). He's a brief recap of the interview:
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This weekend I worked a lot on my new site: carsite. It's not actually called carsite but that's what I've been calling it. Carsite is nearly ready for beta testing (within the month hopefully) and I'm hoping that I can drum up some interest for testers when that time comes. The only thing really holding me back at this point is that I'm not sure how to do searches by zip code--if someone says "within 25 miles of 32303" how I know what zip codes are within that range. So I ask you, my fellow nerds (Brian, Ricky, Sunshine) if you know how to do this because I certainly don't and trying to ask Google how to do it yields nothing because apparently queries along the line of "search by zipcode" means something totally different. I'm really beginning to enjoy AJAX and if I had more Uriesque motivation I can think of a lot of things I could do with for this blog.
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Ok, if you want to skip this football entry and jump straight to my 2007 Christmas pictures go right ahead. Onto the meat. Now that LSU is the BCS Champion, I am ready to share my thoughts on the season. Since I am the back-to-back Pick 'Em Champion, you must listen to me. First of all, anyone who says the PAC10 is better than or even close to as good as the SEC is retarded. Although I don't root for any SEC teams, I do believe they are hands-down the best conference and FSU would probably go 4-8 there. The ACC is not the worst conference but only because the Big Ten is so bad. FSU could have easily lost last night's game by the same score. For the second year in a row, the Big Ten showed they are an anemic conference with no elite teams. Yes, Ohio State is a good team...but FSU is a good team too. Neither are great, let alone elite but when you play in the Big Ten you've got no one to beat up on you. I laughed out loud last night when Kirk Herbstreit said college fans thought the Big Ten was worse than Conference USA and the MAC. He said he didn't agree with them but it seems plausible to me.
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Today is Secret Day! Please use the form below to submit your name and a real life secret (nothing too traumatic please) about you. On Thursday I will take all the secrets and all the people that submitted and you can attempt to pair people up with their secret. I wanted to make the blog more interactive this year so here's the first one.
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Thanks to everyone who posted (mostly lame) secrets about themselves yesterday. If have not posted a secret about yourself, we really need about five more so go look at yesterday's entry and post one. If you need help coming up with one, here are some questions to get you started: Did you miss something significant in your life that most people got to experience? What's the meanest thing you did to someone before the age of 15? Are you scared of something weird?
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Ok, if you have not submitted a secret yet, today is your last day--go back two entries and fill out that form. Thanks.
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Happy 27th birthday Chris Green! You're still a young pup but nonetheless formally welcomed into the "Late 20's" group. We'll miss you and Miker in Tallahassee over Spring Break this year but I guess there's really no one still left here except T-Chris and Ricky anyway. Whatever, happy birthday!
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Where is the secret quiz?!?! Last night I accidentally fell around 9pm and missed my opportunity to upload it. Sorry, you're going to have to wait one more day. Everything was going fine--I had made a quick stop at RD after work and come home to play with the dogs when I got settled in watching this show on the history channel about Jupiter. I started to struggle staying awake around 7:30 and decided I should watch the rest of the show in bed in case I happened to fall asleep. I figured the dogs would wake me up around 11pm to go out. Surprisingly, they did not need to go out nor did they "let loose" in the house. The downside, of course, was that I woke up at 7:15 this morning when the alarm went off and missed a good three hours of my night. I originally woke up at 4:15am and decided to go back to sleep with the hopes of waking up (naturally) sometime around 6am so I could hit the little diner by my house and start my day off right. Alas. Anyway, the secrets are coming tomorrow for sure so start reaching deep into your brains to recall what you know about people.
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Ok, it's secret time. Take the quiz here. It's ugly but it works.
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I'm 28 years old and I have a bunch of papers taped to the walls of my office from various institutions of higher learning asserting that I am smart. While I'm sure this is true for everyone, I nonetheless feel like I have some very big holes in my general knowledge of the world. I'm not talking existentialism here but rather basic things that I think I should know that I just don't. Today I'm going to unabashedly list those things in the hopes that you, wise readers, will be able to answer these things and perhaps share some of your own.
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I realize that there will be very little sympathy for this entry but it is so cold here. The temperatures have stayed in the 30s for a couple of days now which wouldn't have been so bad had it not absolutely poured rain for the two days prior. I can only estimate the temperature in my office but, using unofficial measures, I would put it at around -40F (or roughly the temperature with the wind chill at the Packers game last night). I can't believe the Packers lost--like I told Steve while watching the game, it seemed like God Himself was willing the Packers to win and giving them more than ample opportunity. I really just wanted to see Good vs. Evil with the Packers winning a last-minute stunner over New England. Now it's going to be a 56-3 (assuming the Patriots call off the dogs at halftime) blowout with Stupid vs. Evil. Watching Eli Manning speak is just painful. You would think after a while doing interviews he'd stop sounding like a flustered eight year old but no, he just clanks his awkward way through through trying sentences like "It, well, uh, really just, it really feels good to uh, uh, you know, come out here and win. He needs a big str_replace("uh","",$whateverheistryingtosay). Yeah.
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Last night I saw Saw IV on the internets. It was the first time I'd ever watched a movie online and the experience wasn't that great. If the movie industry was smart they'd allow you to watch movies for free online when formatted as follows: Each movie is broken into four chunks and you can't stream the next chunk while one is streaming/playing. This ensures at least 20 minutes in between chunks and most users would be so irritated they'd just buy the movie for $4 on iTunes. For me it was a matter of principle so I sucked it the f* up and started redesigning a site I just bought while I waited.
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Although my mantra of the year has been suck it the f* up the past four days I have started to slip back into my old ways. I think the big problem for this particular bout is that I'm starting to hate sitting in front of a computer. I sit in front of a computer all day and then go home and do nothing but sit in front of a computer doing the same things I do at work but for myself: wrangle semicolons.
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Since this was going to be a revelation follow-up from yesterday I did a search for "A ha!" so I could find a picture. I figured I'd get a bunch of the band A Ha but I was under-prepared to find this one. Funny.
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Duh. I forgot to post the secret answers so everyone (except Kathy) could see what profound faults we've been hiding from the rest of the world.
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It's time to say goodbye to classical music and, to that end, to throwing money at universities to teach it to me. Over the past six months I've finally come to terms with the fact I just don't like classical music anymore and the thought of having to study it for another three years makes my stomach turn. Although I would have liked to have taught it at some level, I simply don't see how the world is in any sort of need for another atrocious "modern" flute solo or zzz-brass quintet. The funny part to me is that my music is played more now than it ever has and each year picks up dozens more of unsolicited performances than the last. This all started in about 2003 and with the passing of each calendar I get more emails telling me my music is great and larger checks being cut to me. The only "problem" is that it's all for a single genre; one that is neither respected nor appreciated in the classical realm and frankly I was also tired of having to downplay those to seem a decent member of the establishment. This sunk in last year after submitting applications to schools where I knew damn well I had more pieces performed annually than the entire composition faculty combined and still didn't get in. Did they sell a twenty copies of a single piece in the same month? If they did, why would their mom want twenty copies of their piece for solo flute?
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Because, believe it or not, I am a registered member of the Republican Party I threw my vote away on Rudy Giuliani on my lunch break yesterday. As far as I can remember, I have never voted for a winning candidate so my vote was probably the kiss of death and he's expected to formally drop out of the race today. He may be a fascist but at least he's a smart fascist. Since I voted I formally have a right to complain now. I was hoping the national race would come down to Obama and Giuliani so I could actually choose between two people I liked. Oh well. Looks like McCain and Obama now. Makes my decision easy since, I don't know, McCain is crazy?
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That last time Chris and I got together to beat GH3 on Co-Operative mode it was decided that after only making it 78% of the way through Metallica's One about 4,000 times we'd switch parts. With Chris now on lead we have officially made it into "A" range, topping out at 93% of the song. I never really felt strongly about Metallica one way or another but since we've played One so many times that I'm starting to really hate them. After playing the rhythm guitar part so many times now I'm pretty amazed that James Hetfield is able to both sing and play that part.
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Since I only had two Lost-watching friends in town (both fur-enclosed) I was of course sitting in front of my computer instead of in the rarely-used TV room. As soon as I heard the term "ocean six" I immediately tried to register it. Too bad it had been registered since...that's right August of last year. SOMEONE had insider knowledge. How Lostian.
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