Lately I’ve been absolutely in love with a couple of different anime, although I’ve only been able to see snippets of both of them because they haven’t been widely released in the United States yet: ToraDora!, a series with a plot that could very easily be a standard anime plot, but in reality is absolutely fabulous, different, and original in a very familiar way. It’s clearly a slice-of-life story, but sports a nice guy everyone thinks is violent because of the way he looks, a violent girl everyone wants to be next to because of the way she looks, and the unique friendship between the two of them and the way they handle the rest of their circle of friends. I want to be someone’s Ryuuji to their Taiga so bad. Now where will I find a short, sassy, powerhouse blonde? I have no idea….

That’s the bulk of the opening sequence of ToraDora! with some added characters and longer effects – I love the opening sequence, but this one’s just a bit more fun to watch, and it’s in HD! Or…YouTube’s version of HD, anyway. When I hit Otakon this year (and it’s probably about time to start thinking about rooms and such) I want to see if I can find anything ToraDora! related, maybe DVDs of the series, even if they’re fansubs.

The phrase “vanilla salt” comes from the incredibly catchy ending theme:

Which is adorable, but doesn’t tell you as much about Ryuuji’s character as the end theme for the 2nd season does – Ryuuji loves his friends. And keep count of how many people come to see him, and then how many slices of cake are missing at the end there. He reminds me of me a little.

The other series I’ve been a little ashamed to admit I really love the idea of is Maria Holic – another story that’s incredibly unique but clearly for adults. A poor girl retreats to an all-girl school after realizing that dealing with boys not only makes her ill (she’s clearly a lesbian) but gives her hives. At her new school, she meets a boy who’s masquerading as a girl – a girl who’s not just the central character to the series, but is an amazing, brilliant, sadistic character with a world view that I can definitely appreciate. I almost want to pick up the Manga, but I’m worried that anything released in the US would probably be sanitized, and I don’t want to miss the gender-screwing nuances in the Japanese version. Oh, and before I embed this? You…might not want to play it at work. There’s nothing blatant about it, but the floating 3d female figures are indeed nude, not that it’s not obvious.

That’s the opening sequence. You…can see how awesome the series would be. The end theme on the other hand is adorable by comparison, and definitely a pick-me-up kind of video that i turn to whenever I need a little 8-bit happiness.

Anyway, this has already been a pretty video heavy post, and if any of you follow my exploits over at Plurk you’ve probably seen them all already, and I apologize for the repeats. If not, you’re in for a treat.

In other news, it’s been a pretty hectic week; I haven’t had time to really get back to the things I’ve been making a habit of quite yet like exercising every night when I get home and picking out records to spin into a mix at the end of the week; but I’m hoping that I can get back to it pretty quickly. I have managed to get myself back to the regularity of cooking my own food and doing some light exercise in the morning, both of which are lovely, refreshing returns to normalcy for me after the holiday traveling. That’s not to say I didn’t like the traveling, and that’s not to say I couldn’t have put more effort into exercising while I was on vacation and when I was in Vegas working CES, but I just didn’t – now that I’m home though, I’m happy to get back to it.

Speaking of CES, I did my taxes and I should be getting a very pleasant surprise back from Uncle Sam this year because I can claim my home office and travel expenses for freelancing as deductions. The hilarious thing though is that while I can claim those things and I clearly upped my withholding far too much last year to compensate for my freelancing income, and the federal government is willing to pay back my interest-free loan, the state government on the other hand wants a little cash. Not much, but something. The best part is that I was due a refund until I put in the county in which I live.

Besides that, I still have so much stuff from CES that I want to write about and photos I want to upload. CES really was like a treasure trove of experiences and sights and sounds, and that was only partially because it took place in Las Vegas. I’m definitely planning on going back next year. Considering there’s something like 28 inches of snow on the ground outside, I might have the time to post those pictures, and those products I haven’t written about just yet. I already took the time to dig myself out today, so tomorrow I can relax and spend some time uploading pictures – including those of the snow.

I’m glad I went shopping before the snow hit though, I should be good in here for a good while, curled up where it’s warm with a hot cup of coffee. Now, to move the space heater over to my computer.

So I’m home, no travel plans in the immediate future – I’m not even entirely sure if I want to spend the money to go to PAX East if I don’t know anyone else going (although I’m sure I’d meet a ton of awesome people), but I have my feet up and I’m planning to work my way through the hands-on reviews and press contacts I made at CES while playing through my ever-growing backlog of games for that shiny new XBox 360 I got for my birthday and the variety of PC games I’ve installed but haven’t so much as opened. I have a lot of entertainment here at home I haven’t dived into lately – I’ve even neglected my poor Netflix movies: I took them with me to Vegas in case I had time to watch them (yeah, right) and they traveled back with me in the same place I packed them. There’s a lot to do back here, and it might be time to put my feet up for just a little bit before jetting off somewhere else.

Although, I can always hop on a train to New York City and stay up there with friends for a few days – the 3 hour trip up there gives plenty of time for a little single-player gaming on my MacBook Pro (I’ve been looking for a reason to Boot Camp it again) and watch a movie or two. I guess I want time to put my feet up, but I love the fast pace of traveling and seeing people and doing new things. That and all of the people I love so dearly are a ways away from me – I mean, even my family are about an hour and a half drive.

But no sooner than I get my feet up at home does my mother fall ill and take a trip to the hospital. She’s doing well, there’s no worry there, but she’s in for quite a recovery and I want to be there for her and my father as much as I possibly can right now. Watching my father around my mother, being her rock, her anchor – it’s amazing to see. My father uses me occasionally as a sounding board, especially in tough times, but if someday I could be half as strong and brave as he is, I would be honored, and I think I would honor him.

Regardless, that means I haven’t had a lot of time to spend at home even though I’ve been back in town. It’s kind of ironic, but as things smooth over, I’ll be able to get back to my routine, my resolutions, and my habits – I’ll get back to spinning on the weekends and working out every night, and I’ll get back to cooking more (I need to go to the grocery store first!) – especially now that I found out the wellness program at my office sets you up with a registered nurse who’ll call you to check up on your health every couple of weeks, make sure you’re doing well, offer advice working out or eating well, even send you recipes or refer you to doctors or specialists! And it’s all included with the insurance I get – I’m appalled I didn’t know about this sooner: if I had I would have been all over it.

I’ve been doing really well at keeping my blogs updated, and it looks like another gig is coming my way – I don’t want to jinx it quite yet, but I’ll say that it’s political blogging, and while my politicial blog, Not So Humble tends to be the least trafficked of my blogs (I don’t exactly make a huge effort to get it in front of people, I admit) this might serve as a bit of a boost for it and for my political writing. There’s been so much political news and I’ve been thinking about it so much that I think it’s time I let off a little bit of steam from that direction.

Speaking of my blogs, I’ve been on a weekly update schedule for my newest (and most popular) blogging project, The Classy Geek, and I’m considering a twice-a-week update schedule to get more eyes on the site. Sheesh, there just aren’t enough hours in the day or week to do all of this delicious writing. Thankfully all of the traveling and business hasn’t skewed my update schedule too much – I’ve still managed to keep updated, even if a few blogs slipped a day or two before getting back on schedule.

Talk about good problems to have.

In the meantime, I’ve been trying to get all of my CES photos up on Lorelei Complex, after which I’ll organize them into galleries and put them up on PhotoWerks. My box of swag from CES arrived last week, and I just got around to opening it last night, that’s how hectic things have been. Now I have a stack of stuff to write about in addition to what I’ve written about already.

Sheesh – I need to stop thinking of new projects. The more I sit here and think, the more I come up with new things I need to do. I need new pictures of myself to share on the Web, I need to move my home office around a bit and tidy it up, make a little more room for my laptop, the list just grows the more I think about it. I certainly know how to keep myself busy.

I know, I know, good problems to have.

that’s one of my favorite desktops up there – I guess I just have a thing for girls who know how to handle a blade or two.

What an amazing couple of weeks! I didn’t expressly mention it last update, but I went up to New York City for New Year’s, and had an amazing time. Rang in 2010 in proper style with a party at Alms‘ pad, and met a ton of new people I was more than happy to be introduced to. Spent a good couple of days in town too, seeing a few places I hadn’t seen before, and eating in a few tasty places that I hadn’t experienced – including this place called The Grand Lux Cafe, which served hefty portions of really elegant food, and if you order your dessert when you order your entree, they’ll bake it to-order in the back while you’re eating your meal.

That’s right – we had an apple tart, fresh baked beignets, and pecan chocolate-chip cookies: all fresh baked, brought to our table to eat after our meal. Naturally we wound up boxing most of the desserts up and taking them back with us for future devouring while watching the Doctor Who marathon on SyFy. Thinking back, it’s hard to believe that I was on a train to and from New York City only about 2 weeks ago.

As soon as I got back in town from New York for New Year’s, I was packing my bags to head to Las Vegas for CES 2010. I couldn’t even begin to explain how fantastic the trip to Las Vegas was here, or how wonderful CES was as a whole, but if you follow me on Twitter you’ll see all of my updates in my history for that time period. The trip out there was interesting enough, but the suite I stayed in was even more amazing than the trip (photos of the suite at my moblog, and yes I really need to upload the rest of the pictures I took!) and since I could see the fountains at The Bellagio (where I stayed) from my suite window, it was an even more memorable trip.

The show itself was fantastic, and I saw a lot of really promising and really interesting technology there. I’ve posted a number of those sights and sounds to Gearlog, and I’m planning on posting more as I get review units of some of the really awesome gear I saw at the show. I even have some video in my back pocket, if my editors like it. Today I picked up my box of swag that I mailed to myself from the hotel in Vegas, so I’ll have plenty more to write about when I get a little more free time. In fact, this has been the first couple of days I’ve had some free time to write at all since I got back in town last Monday, and then werk set in full-force.

But back to Vegas for a second – I managed to meet up with a lot of PC Mag folks while I was out there, the least of which for dinner once before everyone flew back out of town, and my editor at PopSci happened to be in town as well, so it was really good catching up with her again. Also, Blogging Molly herself, of A Duck a Day was there too, and it was good talking to her again as well. I also got to meet the illustrious Narilka in person after knowing her digitally for oh, what now, 10 years, for dinner, and meet her husband Zadesquieb as well – that alone was worth the trip. Actually, now that I think about it, there were probably a couple of dozen moments like that, that I could say were alone worth the trip.

Whether or not I’d go back next year though depends on who I’d meet there and what I would do – the show was amazing and an incredible experience, but Vegas really is a “buddy city,” one where you simply see and do so much while there that it’s ten times better having someone to bounce your sights and sounds off of. I was incredibly proud to make the trip myself, frankly, but next time it’d be cool to go with a friend or even another journalist covering the event.

In the meantime though, I’m back in town now, and my spate of traveling over and across the holidays is all said and done. I don’t have any travel plans at all for at least several months, and I’m going to have to do something about that. Talking to my mother and father about my recent trips has been wonderful, and they wholeheartedly encourage this new wanderlust – I’m young, single, and have nothing tying me down – I should be able to freely go see my friends in far-off places, meet new people, eat at fancy places, and fall head over heels for new cities…and the people who live in them.

For the meantime though, I’m back here in my apartment with my feet up, making sure to suppress the start of a cold that’s trying to eek it’s way up my throat. I managed to stay well my whole time in Vegas, and not catch the same CES-plague that caught up with just about everyone else I knew who traveled out there, I have no intention of slowing down now. The real question is whether I should hop a train back to NYC sometime in the near future to see some people I miss dearly, or whether I should head off somewhere new and different. We’ll see.

In the meantime though, I have a ton of writing to catch up on, photos to upload, and for once I think I’ll get a good solid night’s sleep.

Just for you guys though, I’ll…just sit this here. It’s one of my favorite new blogs – never ceases to bring a smile to my face.

Thanks in no small part to Rae, I’ve been diving back through my back collection of CDs, finding music that I haven’t listened to in a while. When I was in New York and at her house, she played U.N.K.L.E.’s Lonely Soul, and when I started marveling at it she mentioned it was on a soundtrack and she liked it, but hadn’t heard the rest of the album. So…we took care of that. U.N.K.L.E.’s Psyence Fiction is one of those storytelling albums that you absolutely have to hear at least once from start to finish, starting from the first track all the way through to the outro track at the end – the narrative of the songs is really amazing, and some of the short tracks in between some of the longer ones are fun to hear as well. Between that and The Avalanches, she and Alms have a tendency to stumble on really awesome bands completely by accident.

Speaking of whom, since I’ll doubtlessly be busy this weekend with New Years festivities, I figured I would take care of my annual look back and reflection ritual a little earlier rather than later. Usually I wait until sometime in January to really start thinking about the things I want to do with the coming year, but I think this year I have some pretty strong ideas of the things I’d like to work towards and the things I’d like to do. Let’s take a look back to this time last year, shall we?

A lot has obviously changed between the time I wrote that post and now, but most of my goals and desires haven’t. (Can you believe my beloved Deneb, the computer I was building at that very moment, is a year old now? Sheesh – it feels like it was just yesterday I was reading all about the new hotness in processors and video cards and making tentative decisions on the components I wanted to install in her that Christmas.) So here’s what I wanted to do and how I did:

Media //

** Rebuild my home theatre/media computer (Polaris) with more storage. This will allow me to rip and store more music and movies easily, and back up our main computers to it!
So this one came kind of inadvertantly! Polaris is powered down now and Orion is my new home server/theatre computer, and he’s stuffed with four 1TB hard drives and a 250GB drive for the OS and applications. And good thing, too – I’ve been collecting video podcasts and other various video downloads! I’m glad for the space, now I just have to figure out how to get the video to the TV over something other than s-video. Maybe I should pick up a new video card that supports HDMI, now that I have a shiny new TV. No rush here though!

** Figure out an easy way to digitize VHS tapes before they disintegrate.
Ugh – I still need to do this. I have tons of VHS tapes still, and I’d really like to get them in a format I can back up or even take around with me when I travel. I’ll try for this one this year!

Personal //

** Take more pictures. (partially so I dont have to start every post with a picture from Lucky Star) When Photowerks seemed to die, I stopped taking and uploading photos. Photowerks is fine now, let’s put it back to good use!
I’ve actually really nailed this one, it’s just not been in the way I thought it would be! I thought I would start taking lots of photo galleries of trips and such and uploading them to Photowerks, which I did for a few outings, but I’ve been making use of Lorelei Complex (my moblog) much more than I thought I would! In fact, all of the photos from my trip to New York City are up there!

** Do more for myself on weekends than sleep. It’s so easy to get into the mindset that the weekends are for relaxing and getting away from the stresses of the week; which is true, but that relaxing doesn’t have to always entail sleeping in super-late and lounging around. At least not all the time.
This one actually was kind of reactive to some behaviors I was indulging in around the turn of the year, and I would say that with some of the major life changes that came early in 2009, this was all but wiped away. My weekends are still chill-and-relax times when I’m not traveling or something, but they’re also times for housekeeping and tidying, laundry and cooking, and often staying up late with some ideas in my head and a glass of wine. I’m definitely over this one, happily.

** Experiment more. See strange places, visit wierd and new things in my backyard, try strange foods and restaurants – I’d like to branch out a bit. I keep hearing from people who live in my area about restaurants I’ve never seen. I’d like to try some of them.
If I had to rate this one on a scale of 1 to 10, I’d give myself an 8.5 or a 9 on this one having knocked it out of the park. It took a lot of changes to get me where I am now, but especially in the latter part of the year I’ve been making plans and getting out of my comfort zone. Traveling to New York and back twice, headed to Vegas for CES next week (good lord it really is next week), deciding to go through with Otakon earlier in the year…it’s all been pretty amazing, and even though it’s forced me to peel back some of the layers of my comfort zone and my semi-hermit nature, I’m glad for it. The only thing I’d like to do a little more of is trying some new restaurants in the area. I live in a different place than I did when I made this resolution, so I have a whole spate of new eateries to try!

** Revive Before I Sleep. I all but forgot about it around the middle of the year, and I want to follow through on those lists, and come up with more.
Hmm. I keep stopping and starting on this one because that list is over at Aeria Gloris (my livejournal). I made a little inadvertent progress on this one, but not a ton. I’m not going to hold myself strictly to that, but I’m kidding myself if I don’t admit there’s a lot on that list that I really want to accomplish, even if they’re actually really small and quick little things I can do for myself.

Well then! I made more progress this year than I thought I would. I actually made some other serious changes this past year that I think reflect really well on my personal goals: I update all of my blogs at least once a week, and put them all on an update schedule that I strive to keep. I’ve been doing that for a couple of months now and it seems to be working out really well. I’ve been making a point (just like I mentioned above) to travel more and see the people I love who don’t necessarily live within arms reach of me. I’ve been doing more personally and spiritually enriching things: indulging in more music, spending time at my turntables, posting my mixes for the world to hear, doing more reading of both books that make me think and manga that make me feel good, watching more movies and making use of my Netflix subscription, reconnecting with old friends, and so on. It’s been a delightful change, and as negative as the impetus for all of those changes may have been, if there’s anything that’s true, it’s that there’s something in my blood that burns and churns to take bad things that happen to me and turn them into something good.

So let’s look forward to 2010 and see what I can do this year, shall we? As well as keeping up the momentum on the things I’ve been doing (taking pictures, traveling, ripping music and movies, etc) what else can I do?

Media //

** Digitize those damned VHS tapes! – Even if I have to buy a stupid USB VCR, I’ve got to do something; I’ve moved a bunch of my tapes several times, and I wonder how much more they can take.

** Get back to ripping CDs – I fell off the wagon a little here when I moved, so I have a lot of music ripped but there’s even more that’s not…and I’d probably listen to a lot of my older stuff if it were digitized, not to mention use the mp3s in some of the vinyl mixes I’ve been spinning.

Personal //

** Keep Experimenting! – Don’t let up on your traveling, don’t let up on trying new things, and find some new interesting places to eat…and people to eat with!

** Revive Before I Sleep – Time to look harder at this; some of the items are obviously harder than others (catch and gut and cook my own fish? really?) but some of them are pretty easy things I’ve always wanted to do.

** Keep Writing – One of the biggest changes I made this year was to focus on my writing, and through all of the writing I do I’ve met so many amazing people: World of Warcraft players, technology writers and pundits, wine and liquor lovers, and all around classy people. I have so many blogs on so many different topics, I want to keep that up.

** Continue exercising; losing weight – My DDR workouts have already helped me shed about 30 pounds, and I’d like to keep up that momentum. The holidays had me stumbling a little bit, but I’d like to get back on the pads and keep up the workout. Eventually I may even pull the workout clothes I already put in the trunk of the car out and use the gym at the office!

I think those are pretty good, don’t you? All doable, all reasonable. I was going to toss in a little something about making sure to treat myself to more media like music and movies and books every now and again, but I don’t think I’ll have a problem doing that – I’ve never had an issue making sure I had something shiny when I wanted it, but I’d like to be a little more targeted in the coming months, remembering to get albums from artists I already love as well as spontaneously picking up one from someone I just discovered, buying manga I’ve been meaning to read as well as titles I’ve been keeping up with, stuff like that. I’ll consider that a reminder, not so much a resolution.

Anyway, here’s to a happy conclusion of 2009 for all of you. The year started out well, hit some turbulence early on, but emerged pretty strongly and has turned into an amazing year. Here’s to keeping up the momentum, and to great things in 2010!

From the Vocaloids and I to you and yours, I hope you’re having a very happy holiday season – a happy hanukkah, a merry christmas, and a very very happy new year.

Yes, I’m being a bit facetious, but I can happily say that this holiday has been absolutely fantastic, and I like to think that it started long before the actual day – Thanksgiving was lovely as I mentioned, and my trip to New York City was phenomenal and I still have tons of stories to tell from it. (I’m only partially kidding when I say I left my heart back there.) I got all of my holiday shopping done before I went to New York, so it was all waiting for me when I got back, no last minute rush there, and like most years I managed to get all of my holiday shopping done without setting foot in a store or having to shove my way through people. (with the exception of having to pick up holiday cards and wrapping paper, so there was that) All in all, it was chill, relaxing, and almost entirely without undue stress. I even had a chance to get a little people-watching in when I went to get my wrapping paper.

Everyone was happy with the gifts they received this year, and I splurged a little bit on my parents – picked my mom up some gadgetry that she needed (an iPod Touch to replace her now-dead Palm Zire and a
Nintendo DS she can’t put down) and gave my dad something to make the most of his shiny new HDTV he picked up after Thanksgiving – Planet Earth on Blu-Ray, and a Harmony One remote. I gave them a few other things, but I think they really appreciated those.

I on the other hand picked up a few things I needed, some workout clothes that I like a lot, a little bit of spending money, all lovely things (I may take some of that spending money and put it to some of the Blu-Ray discs on my wishlist!) – and thanks to the lovely Narilka and Zannah, I now have a shiny new copy of Borderlands! I really can’t begin to say how grateful I am for such generous friends this year.

My white elephant for the shack was very well received, and mine should be on its way, so I hear; and the secret santa we set up over at Plurk (again thanks to Narilka) went swimmingly – my giftee has yet to get the ones I ordered for them, but the ones I got were lovely, delicious treats and some gloves to keep my hands warm! (you can see them at at my moblog here)

So all in all, it’s been a pretty bountiful holiday season, and at the same time it’s been personally rewarding too – lots of time with family and friends and people I hold near and dear to my heart. It’s been good to be surrounded by people who love you and cherish your presence in your life, it’s a feeling I’d recommend to anyone, and if you’re ever in town, hey – let me be one of those people, okay?

In other news, I’ve been fixated on the closing theme to K-ON! lately, it’s been firmly implanted in my head and it won’t come out, so of course I’m going to share it with you:

The first line (and the chorus, wherever you hear “lazy” and “crazy”) translates to “Please don’t say you were lazy when you were actually crazy.” I love it. It’s a little misrepresentative of the anime, since Mio (the dark-haired girl singing in that video) is actually the Bass player and Yui is the lead guitarist and does a lot of the singing, but I love it anyway. They also did a lot for a closing sequence to make the characters actually appear as though they’re singing the words of the song, which I thought was a really nice touch. Mio’s expressions in various places are kind of compelling too. All in all, it’s pretty well done, I dig it.

I won’t embed another one, but the opening sequence to K-ON! is a different matter. Aside from being one of the most sugary adorable things I’ve ever seen, the work put into making it look like Yui is actually playing the guitar (look closely at 0:07 and 1:01) although I’m not a guitar player, so it could just LOOK impressive and be nothing more. Still! Cool effort.

I haven’t actually been paying attention to anime lately – I don’t remember how I stumbled on the K-ON! opening and closing themes, I haven’t seen any of the actual anime, although that may have to change if they’re that adorable. I could use a few more uplifting and actually happy titles in my collection – not everything I watch and enjoy has to be heavy and difficult.

Speaking of heavy but still enjoyable, the office treated us to Avatar in IMAX and 3D, and I have to say it was worth the experience. I didn’t have to pay for it or the snacks, but even if I had I would have been happy to – and to spend the 2 hours and 40 minutes I spent in there. For being such a long movie, I have to say it moved VERY quickly and kept the pace up throughout. The story’s been told a dozen times, so I didn’t expect too much there, although it was still enjoyable. What was absolutely fantastic was the world that the movie created: the world was distinctly alien to our own, but familiar enough that it really did seem like a place you could go to and set foot on. Everything from the bugs hanging in the air during some of the panning shots to some of the amazing animals were all impressive – and the fact that the Na’vi characters were all entirely CG but came off like real human beings (complete with emotion on their faces and non-verbal actions that were completely believable) made it incredible. I’m actually really glad I saw it, and glad I saw it in the theaters on a huge screen, and in 3D. That’s saying a lot for me, since I’m normally not a huge “go to the movies” person.

And yes, Avatar completely rekindled my love for Michelle Rodriguez. Yum.

That aside though, here’s hoping this coming workweek is nice and slow, and since Alms and Rae will be in town for New Year’s, there’s something else to look forward to – it’s actually funny, since I just found out, and I had been thinking earlier about whether I wanted to head down to Annapolis for First Night or do something a little closer to home. Looks like closer to home it is!

Then the weekend after that it’s onto a plane and out to Las Vegas for CES! Another adventure, and I’m staying in a lovely suite in the Bellagio. I wonder if I’ll be able to see the fountains from my room! Even if I can’t, I hear they’re not to be missed, and Nari and a ton of PC Mag folks will be there at the same time as I will, so I’ll have some company when I want it. I hear there are crazy nerd parties out there – cocktails and marketing reps showing off their hot gear. Kinda looking forward to that. I should probably put my stuff in to the dry cleaner’s before I go.

In the interim though, I hope you all had as lovely a holiday as I have, and have a wonderful wonderful New Year’s. I’ve been thinking a bit about my resolutions from last year, and how well I’ve done. I knocked a few of those off the list pretty easily this year almost unintentionally, but it’s good to see that I’ve internalized so many of my personal goals, large and small. I have to chuckle at myself from a year ago though – I’ve learned so much in such a short period of time. Here’s to 2010.

I’m making a note here. Huge success.

Seriously – I’d be lying if I said that my trip to New York City wasn’t the best vacation I’ve had in years, and even that might be understating how wonderful the trip was by some margin. I had an amazing time, and hanging out with Alms and Rae who were both my company and my local guides out and about New York City, and seeing the lovely Dia for a couple of days while she breezed into town and meeting her hilariously funny girlfriend Lauren, all made the trip that much better for me.

I think it helped that I didn’t have a specific agenda in mind when I landed – my primary goal was to spend time with friends and decompress a bit, and I certainly did that. I posted all of the photos I took as I took them over at Lorelei Complex (my moblog) – all the sights I saw, the walk through Times Square I took in the middle of the night and my visit to the Macy’s store window (and the raciness nearby), my visit to Rockefeller Center, the delicious mac n’ cheese at S’mac, the spice table at the Union Square holiday craft market (from which I bought some lovely loose tea), the insides of The Strand bookstore – including the rare books room, everything. I can’t believe how jam packed the trip was with experiences and things to do, and I even got a decent amount of sleep.

I managed to drop by the PC Mag offices to meet up with my editor and go to lunch at a fabulous Vietnamese with her and some of the other folks I work with remotely up there, and I even got a tour of their labs. (seriously, the PC Mag labs are full of amazing shiny devices and are encased in glass walls and doors that remind me of something straight out of Star Trek – when you badge to get into the labs, these huge glass-paned doors slide open to let you pass. It’s awesome, I could live in there) My editor even walked me through an awesome Indian market in the area of their offices, one I would have bought tons of stuff from if I had space in my suitcases to bring the stuff home.

As it was, I already had enough extra stuff to try and get home, but I managed to get back in good shape. The only thing I had to actually carry on the plane back was a very swanky new hat I bought while walking about with Alms, and all of the Pocky and fresh tea I had.

I can’t thank Rae and Alms enough for their hospitality and their company and their love. Words can’t express how welcome they made me feel, and how much I miss them (and their respective families and cats) already.

No sooner than I got back to town, picked up my car (it was in the shop while I was away – somehow I managed to kill 3 out of my 4 engine cylinder coils) and went back to the office did we promptly get something like 12-20 inches of snow. And it’s still falling. It’s bad enough that the major weekend work that I flew back in time to make got canceled (which technically means I could have stayed out the snow with Alms and Rae!) but I managed to stock up on a few supplies before the worst of the storm hit. Right now it’s bad enough that I have no intention of heading out of the apartment for anything.

I finished all of my holiday shopping before I left, and the packages were waiting at my desk at work as soon as I returned, which is nice – ow I just have to wrap up everything, mail some cards, and get ready for the big event next week. I’m looking forward to it – it’s actually surprising how much more festive everything is in NYC – when I flew up from DC, there were no carols being played in the airport, no stores playing holiday music, but as soon as I landed in NYC, the carols were blaring, the trees and ribbons were up, and the Empire State building was lit up blue and white for Hanukkah. Even the lobby of my hotel was incredibly festive – the whole trip really got me into the spirit of the season.

As for now, I finished uploading the last of my pics to Lorelei Complex, updating all of my blogs (looks like Wordpress 2.9 is out), catching up on some backlogged writing I missed during the last days of my trip, and watching the podcasts I didn’t have time to because I was out enjoying NYC. I’m glad I’m home, but I miss NYC in ways I can’t describe – and miss the people up there more.

The heart swells.

Today my “Secret Project” is no longer a secret project! I’ve been working on this little side-project for months now, writing and writing and writing long-form articles and how-tos and segments and putting them all together offline and then building out the perfect design for it all, and finally, FINALLY all of my work is complete, systems are ready for launch, and I’m pulling the tarp down.

I give you: The Classy Geek.

Your weekly dose of all things geeky and classy, and proof the those two things don’t at all have to be mutually exclusive. If you want to read more about what the whole project is about, check out The Classy Geek about page.

I’m really excited to see where this project goes – I have a list of columns a mile long and some additional articles in the hopper to publish over the coming weeks, and I’m even thinking about doing a video podcast, if there’s interest around it. In any event, head over, take a look, leave a comment, and let me know what you think!

It’s been a long long week, not to mention a long weekend, but I managed to finish a lot of things in the past week that I’ve been meaning to get done for months now. I’ll make another announcement tomorrow on the big news so I don’t spoil or bury it here, but suffice to say it’s been a project months in the making and I’m so so so glad to have it all finished and ready to release to the public. There’s even more I want to do with it, but there’ll be time for that.

I can’t believe I didn’t mention it last week (unless I did it this week and time just flies) but it’s official: I’m going to CES 2010 in Las Vegas! The lovely Narilka had a coupon code to get me in for free, which I had every intention of using, but then I discovered that if I registed as press I could get in for free and get access to some other shiny behind the scenes goodies – so I cleared it with my editor at PC Magazine, made sure she’s okay with me working for her while I’m out there, and there we go – I get in for free and get to cover the event as a freelance writer!

I’ll be staying in The Bellagio in a lovely suite while I’m there – and I’ll be there for the whole conference, complete with the pre-weekend show days when things are traditionally a little quieter but still packed with product releases and other interesting things. I really can’t explain how much I’m looking forward to this.

Before I get there though, I’ll be in New York City this time next week for a couple of days – flying up next Saturday and then back the following Thursday to hang out with some good good friends, one of whom is coming in from out of town and bringing her girlfriend with her who I’ve never met. I haven’t been to New York City in years, and I love the place. It’ll be good to be back. While I’m in town I’m going to try and eat at every landmark place I can think of, and I can get started by eating at the Tick Tock Diner, which is on the ground floor of The New Yorker Hotel, where I’ll be staying at least for some of the nights while I’m in town.

I’ll also wind up dropping in on my PC Magazine friends while I’m there, and hopefully taking a tour of their labs and offices and seeing where the magic happens up there – and reconnecting with the people I work with via e-mail. It’s kind of an unusual vacation in both cases, but I’m definitely looking forward to them both. I haven’t been on a plane in entirely too long, and it’ll be nice to take the one-hour jaunt from DC to New York City to get warmed up, and then the longer 5-7 hour flight out from DC to Vegas after New Year’s for CES. I said I was going to make this a jubilee year and I was going to get off my ass and start traveling and experiencing the world around me, and I think I’m finally making good on that promise.

In not quite as exciting news, I finally got around to posting the last 2 mixes I spun over at Plastic Bohemia, and I’m uploading a third (that I spun tonight actually) as we speak. My little plan to set aside 2 tracks every night for a week and then have a full mix for the weekend has actually gone really really well (holiday weeks not included, of course) and I’ve spun and recorded more mixes in the past couple of months than I have in the past couple of years. It’s really refreshing to have some time behind the turntables again, and it’s not so much time that I can’t fit it into an otherwise busy schedule.

Admittedly some things have had to slip because of all of the time and attention I put to writing, music, and friends – namely video games. I can’t remember the last time I logged into World of Warcraft – probably while I was at my parents’ place after the office LAN party. The LAN party made me want to play more video games something fierce, I just haven’t had time. Now though, I’ll make a point to relax a bit this week before I have to fly out of town.

Hey, at least I managed to finish my holiday shopping!

It’s getting colder. Not that I mind – I tried on my winter coat for the first time since last year’s cold – the one I had left at my parents’ because it was one of the many things in my arms when I fled there in the spring – and found myself swimming in it. It’s a pleasant surprise, but then again, Autumn has always brought me nice things, including the passing into Winter. I don’t mind either, as long as I can stay warm.

One the way back from my parents’ house for Thanksgiving, I was listening to The Blues Show on WXPN and thinking about the monumental truths that blues artists had to have been tapped into when they were singing, enjoying every note. It’s really remarkable how many people really think the blues are deep, down, depressed music, and to a certain extent they are – when you have the blues, it means something – but at the same time the blues often are some of the most inspirational music you could listen to. A number of songs tell you all about the deep, dark hole that the singer is in, but always there’s a glimmer of hope somewhere behind the music. It’s really remarkable how good I felt while listening to the blues, and I was feeling pretty good before I turned the radio on.

On the way home I was thinking about everything I needed to do when I got back to my pad. Reseat my computer’s processor, do the laundry, tidy up the place, get some writing done, book my travel plans, and I had something of a realization – it didn’t feel major, and I won’t characterize it as epiphanal even though it may be: I was looking forward to all of it. I was looking forward to all of the tough stuff, all of the fun stuff, I was even looking forward to going back into the office at werk on Monday. And as I told myself in my head that I was looking forward to it, the same voice in the back of my head piped up and said “I’m looking forward to all of it – I’m looking forward to life.” I think that’s the first time I’ve ever been really said that to myself, and it was an incredibly liberating thing to feel. That doesn’t mean there won’t be difficult things, that doesn’t mean there won’t be things I don’t feel like dealing with, but it’s a great feeling, even now when I say it to myself again, right now.

So speaking of my poor computer, Deneb, was sitting on my workbench with the side case door off because after pwning n00bs at the office LAN party on Wednesday (which was crazy fun, and we definitely need to do it more often – I learned that apparently I have mad latent Call of Duty: Modern Warfare multiplayer skills) I got her home and hooked her back up to discover that she would only stay on for a few minutes before shutting herself off. Granted, by the time I got home on Wednesday I really needed to decompress and get some sleep to head up to my parents’ place for Thanksgiving on Thursday, so I fiddled with her a bit, just long enough to realize that the auto-shut off was symptomatic of an overheating processor (the Core i7 is smart enough to shut down before temps get to dangerous levels) and upon checking the heat sink and fan I found it loose and not firmly fastened down – it must have wiggled loose while I was lugging her back and forth to and from the office.

Since I really needed to get to bed, I played a little Soul Calibur IV on the 360 and head to bed to get up for the holiday and head up north to see my parents. Thanksgiving itself was lovely as usual – my father brined a turkey and it was probably the best turkey I’ve ever eaten in my life: it was so good I wound up picking at it in the middle of the night and even wanted to eat the white meat – something I almost never do because it’s usually too dry when compared to the dark meat to me. Dad also made his legendary macaroni and cheese, Mom made stuffing and candied yams, you know – classic Thanksgiving eats, and it was all phenomenal.

My parents napped over the course of the night because they were headed up to their local Air Force base for a Black Friday sale in the wee hours of the AM (and they returned triumphant with a shiny new Sony Bravia HDTV and Sony blu-ray player for my parents’ living room that looks spectacular…I’m glad I helped them pick it out!) and I spent the evening writing a bit and catching up on sleep. it’s completely out of the norm to do Black Friday sales in our family, but I have to admit, it was a pretty good deal they caught. Now it’s on to Cyber Monday.

Friday and Saturday I spent the day with my parents, indulging in good advice, sharing some technology buying tips for them this holiday season, getting caught up with my weekly writing that I missed over the holiday, and helping out a bit around the house. Saturday night I finally got a chance to really test the GPS feature on my Morotola Droid, and I can honestly say it’s amazing enough that I don’t need to buy a car GPS anymore – now I just need to pick up the car dock so I can put it on something while I’m using it to navigate. It actually found a slightly different route to get me home that’s a little faster, so no complaints there.

And here I am at home. On the way out of my parents’ house watching a special on Motown music and groups like The Four Tops and The Temptations that kindled an old love of traditional R&B and Soul in my heart. On the way home, listening to the blues while I was in range of XPN out of Philidelphia, then over to The Shamrock and Thistle where I listened to protest songs, labor march chants, and civil rights protest spirituals penned by Pete Seeger (who is a literally amazing man in every sense of the word – the man who wrote “If I Had a Hammer” and the original writer of “Turn, Turn, Turn,” and one of the people responsible for making “We Shall Overcome” a popular anthem of the civil rights movement, and “Step by Step,” of which the video is above) and an interview with him, then listening to Hot Jazz Saturday Nights when I was in range of WAMU in Washington DC, thrilled to be in my own little world of beautiful old music. Even this morning I hit the iPod on the dock next to my bed, fired up Pandora and started my Miles Davis channel to listen to some Jazz.

When I was a child, there was always music in our house. Especially on Saturdays and Sundays – and really especially on Sundays. I would wake to the smell of food cooking in the kitchen and the sounds of Gospel in the morning and Jazz in the late morning and early afternoons. When my parents made the switch from Gospel to Jazz, I knew it was time to get up, get dressed, and head out to join them.

Speaking of music, I should tidy up my last 2 mixes for Plastic Bohemia and post them – I’ve been procrastinating because I know there are some mixing errors in them and I hesitate to post them publicly, but my friends at Plurk have been nagging me for them, so I’ll concede and chalk it up to practice. Between that, some writing, and booking my travel plans (more on that later), I have a lot to do, and I’m going to try and get a lot of it done today so I don’t get lured into the inertia of the werkweek and wind up not doing anything.

With that, I’m looking forward to all of it. Damn it’s liberating to say so.

Stumbled on the image up there (and the wallpaper sized version if you click on it) and it reminds me to run out and pick up the next volume of Aria that was released this month. I know I’ve mentioned it elsewhere, but there’s something about the almost utopian story and Alicia’s smile that’s incredibly soothing and calming. I think it has to do with the fact that she’s always peacefully happy – almost always calm; she’s the epitome of zen. Even when she’s scrubbing the floors, she understands that the universe has chosen her at this very moment to enjoy the bliss of scrubbing the floors. It’s a sense of peace that I strive to attain someday, even though I’m completely aware that it’s a conscious choice – one that doesn’t require you to run from the realities and hardships of life, but embrace them like water washing over you. Running from them or bracing against them only makes it worse.

In any event, the “biggest loser” competition at the office is going well! I’m in the middle of the pack (and definitely not one of the poor folks in the contest who have actually gained weight), but I think there’s somethin’ shady going on with some of the folks at the front – either that or I really need to step up my game! My DDR aerobics are great and I manage to slip in about 30-45 minutes a day of them, but maybe it’s time to pull my workout clothes out of the back of the car and hit the elliptical at the office gym or step it up!

So last week, I picked up a Verizon Wireless, and I have to admit, I’m pleased with it in just about every way. I mean, there are some apps that I miss because it’s Android and not my trusty iPod Touch, but my chief worry when I got it was that I’d regret just not jumping ship on an iPhone and instead taking a chance on something new – I don’t regret it at all. I have games to play, the contacts syncing with Facebook and GMail and everything is killer (it’s crazy calling my coworkers and having it recognize their names just because I forgot I added them as friends on Facebook) and of course I really like the Google navigation that’s included – I seriously don’t need GPS anymore – just one of those fancy car docks.

Last week I also think I found what very well may be my favorite local watering hole. The place is called Frisco Grille – it’s actually next door to a killer coffee shop (Tim – you’ll remember it, you ran the joint for years) called Riverside, and according to my boss they serve amazing tapas. When I was there it was a little late for food and we stayed until last call and we got essentially sent home for the night, but the microbrews and beers on tap are legendary – according to some of my other coworkers people come from miles around whenever they open a new cask. When I was there they had live music too, so that’s another couple of points in my book.

Finally, someplace to retreat and have a beer every now and again. My coworkers tend to like the bigger, more bombastic bars in the area like the Greene Turtle or Nottingham’s (in the basement of an office building nearby), or Pub Dog (which I actually like a lot, they have good microbrews and specialty beers brewed on-site too) for happy hours and such, but I don’t mind a cozy spot for a drink now and again. Besides, they have a killer imperial stout It’s funny, there have been an explosion of bars and such since I moved back into the area. I’m glad there’s more to see and do than when I was much younger.

Next week is Thanksgiving, which I’ll likely be spending with family, but I’d like to buckle down and do a little writing as well – I’ve been neglecting my secret project, and to really open the doors the way I want to, I’ll need some killer content to get started with, which requires a couple of days of writing. I keep meaning to do it on the weekends, but I need that time to relax and sleep in a bit. You know, recoup from the rigors of the week.

Aside from this, I’ve been debating a couple of trips lately. I’d like to get up to New York City to visit friends during the holidays (because I hear NYC is gorgeous during the holiday season, and a good friend of mine is about to graduate from grad school and she has an exhibition I’d like to see), but shortly after the holidays I’m thinking about heading to Vegas for CES. Then in March there’s actually a Penny Arcade Expo in Boston (they’re doing a PAX East because so many of us wanted one on our coast), and a couple of months later there’s Otakon again…it’s all about how much the trips will cost, of course – I have the vacation time, that’s not an issue.

Still – it’s always difficult when you haven’t traveled in a while to just make the decision to, make travel plans, and up and do it. The company I work for has a new New York City office now, so I might be able to make it a business trip. Sheesh, if I’m thinking that way, one of my old high school friends I’ve recently re-connected with is in Denver, where we have a huge office. I’ve never been there, and I could make the company send me and pay for me if I wanted to visit. Slowly but surely I’ll make it out to Seattle to visit friends on that coast.

In other news, I picked up a ton of XBox 360 games, but of course I’m running into the problem that I did when I got my first XBox: I have so many now I can’t decide what to play first. Analysis paralysis is a terrible terrible thing. I may need to just pick one at random and fire it up. But first I think I’ll have to sink the cash into XBox Live so I can play online with some of the fine folks who have been prodding me at Plurk to join them for a game.

You know, let me do that now while I’m thinking about it. Then I can set up the thing for streaming video from Netflix – which I’ve really been working lately. I think I’ve seen more movies and anime in the past couple of weeks than I have in the past couple of years. Now I just need to figure out what to do with all of my old VHS tapes!

This week was marked by a distinct lack of sleep. The weather has definitely been turning colder and grayer and for a couple of days in there it was drizzly and icky – perfect days to stay in with a warm cup of coffee or cocoa and just get some writing done, but I didn’t have that luxury. This week I had to sit through two different vendor briefings (at least they fed us for the second one) on different days in the middle of the week, and meetings encircling the whole event. On the up side, I didn’t fall behind too much on my writing, working out, and selecting tracks for my weekly mix, so I managed to make time for those things at least.

Aside from those things, I picked up a few games for the Xbox 360, since after I hooked it up I discovered that the wireless controller works from across the room where my computer is. Pretty pleased with that. It’s actually pretty cool how my interest in blu-ray movies and console games picked up after I had the right equipment to actually make use of them. I’ll report back when some more of the games I picked up (all used, of course!) show up. In the meantime, I’ve really got to get off my butt and call the Salvation Army to come and pick up the old 32-inch CRT that’s sitting on the floor in the middle of my library.

In other news, I applied for another freelancing gig lately, so here’s hoping I pick that up. I’m not going to hold my breath – they’re a big name and I’m sure there are tons and tons of applicants for it, but I’ll still keep my fingers crossed. We’ll see! In other news, I should probably keep an eye out for more properties to freelance for – not that I have a ton of time really, but if there’s any time to do it, it’s certainly now.

Oh – before I forget, have you seen this hummingbird nest cam? The birds are so adorable, even when they’re only staying still long enough to sit on their eggs. I know, off topic aside, but still fun to watch.

So I’ve actually been really impressed with HTC’s new marketing lately – they have a couple of really good commercials (I really like the second one) out and about the airwaves lately. It’s clear they’re aiming at people like me, who are in love with their phones (don’t get me wrong, I acknowledge I’m coming from a really dumb phone to a smart one, but even when I had a dumb phone I was attached to my iPod Touch.)

Their hardware engineering has tended to be less than stellar, but they’re on a pretty big personalization streak which I really dig. Even though I don’t own one of their products, I really dig the commercials. Speaking of Android phones, I picked up the Droid by Motorola this week, since my Verizon Wireless contract was up for renewal and I was able to get an additional discount on the purchase price. So far I really dig i – I’m planning a hands-on review for Gears and Widgets, which I’m glad to say is doing pretty well for a small blog, traffic-wise.

The other nice thing that happened this week is that my workout efforts appear to be paying off – more than a few people commented on my progress so far and have told me it’s more than visible. While I was off watching Ice Pirates with coworkers at our office movie night, a couple of other coworkers were off at a happy hour since some of our out-of-town colleagues were in town for meetings. Earlier that day one of my coworkers told me she really noticed the improvement and said I look good, which I appreciate, but she’s pretty demanding otherwise so I half accepted the compliment and half assumed she needed something. It wasn’t until the next day that I found out from our senior director and our CIO that apparently my progress had been discussed at that happy hour the night before, in very positive terms.

It’s a blessing and a curse, right? I’m glad I’ve shorn off some weight, and I look and feel a bit better – not like I don’t have a ways to go to get to my goal – but I have to keep it up otherwise people will notice it come back! Thank goodness for free office gyms and Dance Dance Revolution.

Now then, next week let’s see if I can manage to get a little more sleep…and eat a few more salads in spite of the chilly weather. I wonder what’s leafy and good for you when the chilly seasons set in?

I know I keep saying that I’m having big weeks, but this week was no exception. It was kind of a long, mundane week (except for weigh-in at the office: I’m down about 15 lbs from where I started at the beginning of the office “Biggest Loser” contest!) until everything came crashing together on Friday. The TV I ordered back in September finally shipped, and on Tuesday they called to let me know that I should hear from the delivery folks on Thursday. Thursday came and they called to let me know they were willing to deliver on Friday in the afternoon.

So Friday I worked in the office in the morning, then took calls and meetings from home in the afternoon. Sure enough, the 50-inch plasma I bought for the living room arrived right on time, along with its blu-ray player. I don’t know if I mentioned it last week, but while I was waiting for my living room gear to come off of backorder, I snagged another deal for a 32-inch LCD TV and blu-ray player for the bedroom to replace the 19-inch CRT I had in there – so I picked them up too, not knowing that UPS would try to deliver the blu-ray player on Thursday (so they called to let me know I could pick it up on Friday morning) and then the TV on Friday afternoon.

So at about 1pm, they delivered the plasma for the bedroom. After they verified it was in good order and left, I finished up some work at home and ran out to go pick up my bedroom blu-ray player from the UPS distribution center closest to my house, then drove up to my local Comcast office to trade in my standard def cable receiver for a pair of HD receivers (one for the living room and one for the bedroom), and over to Target to pick up some miscellanea, and then hurry back home to make sure I didn’t miss UPS if they tried to deliver the second TV. I got home, kept working (with breaks to set up my TV, of course) and waited for UPS to arrive with the 2nd TV.

Of course the delivery person never managed to get up the stairs to knock on my apartment door (I partially blame the security door, I partially blame laziness), so I called to have them hold it for me. In the meantime, I realized from unboxing my plasma, the 2 blu-ray players, and the shiny new XBox 360 that Pastilla sold me for my birthday that I had completely forgotten to pick up the appropriate cables to set up all of my new gear, so I ran out to Target to pick up the cables I’d need to hook up my old PS2 and original XBox to my shiny new plasma, along with the HDMI cables needed for my new cable box, the blu-ray player, and the XBox 360, not to mention the ones I’d need for the new LCD in the bedroom.

Found the cables at Target, thought they were a little pricey so I headed to Best Buy (right up the street) – found they were pricier there, decided to fiddle with the Droid while I was there, ran into a coworker who was buying a Droid (which he later said to avoid because while it supports exchange, it doesn’t support our busted exchange implementation – which I blame on our company more than I blame Motorola for), went back to target where the cables were cheaper, bought my cables, and then headed back to UPS to pick up the TV. This makes 3 times I’ve been to target today and twice I’ve been to the UPS distribution center.

Finally around 9pm I got home, had everything I needed, and set in to work. By about 1am or so, I was all finished, tested everything to make sure it all worked, and finally – finally, I’ve joined the 21st century and am enjoying HD goodness in my apartment, both in the living room and in the bedroom. (Some pics already up at Lorelei Complex, more to come when I get out the good camera….or buy a Droid.) I moved the CRT from the bedroom and the DVD player it had to the guest room, and by the time I went to bed Friday night I was all set for my family to visit on Saturday and see everything.

Of course the new gear was a hit, which is always nice – I love that when I get new shinies my parents always make a beeline to my place to see the toys. Everyone stayed for a while, my mother made dinner, and we commiserated on the upcoming holidays for a while. The only downer was that my attempts to slowly and gently broach the topic of my moving out of the area with my parents didn’t go well (again – it usually doesn’t), and I’m getting more and more frustrated about how I can bring the topic up and get their support instead of guilt, even if I’m thinking of moving to New York City for a while before an eventual move to someplace I’ve always wanted to live, like Seattle.

Granted, a lot has to change between now and any move to New York City – the kind of life I want to live when I get there will require some changes, but it’s a target I’m still aiming for. The same applies for Seattle – any cross country move would be expensive, but the life I see in my head will require a bit of work before I can embark on it, so I shouldn’t be in any particular hurry just yet. At the same time, I feel like I’m 30 years old and the clock is ticking. My mother even said something to the effect of “who at your age wants to live in a city,” implying I’m too old to want such things. Of course that ignores that I’ve spent my 20s living in the suburbs mostly to be close to them, not because I particularly care for the burbs, so that’s a blade with barbs. Regardless, it’s still a little ways off, and the changes I need to make are slow.

I can start by calling the Salvation Army to come pick up that huge 30-inch CRT that used to be in my living room and a few other items that I need to get rid of. Lightening the load and all that.

In other news, I’ve been working on a plan to revitalize Plastic Bohemia and spend some more time behind my turntables: every day after my workout I’ll select two records from my collection. By the end of the week, I should have 10 records, which is definitely enough for a solid mix! This way I can turn out a mix every week if I’m aggressive, and I have 10 records waiting for me right now. The question is whether or not I really feel like hitting the decks tonight. I’m tempted to force myself, partially because I think it’s such a great idea. Of course, when I record them, I’ll post them at Plastic Bohemia for the world to hear and download.

To that end, I’m off to find a recipe for a chicken chili stew that I can toss into my crock pot – the weather’s definitely getting cooler (even though it was gorgeous and warm today) and I’m getting the desire for more soups, stews, and long, slow cooked deliciousness. I think it’s going to be a wonderful winter. I can’t wait for all of the bright, twinkling lights to come out. I hear Starbucks already has gingerbread lattes, and I do have this gift card from a few months back…

It’s getting colder outside and I love it. I’ve already made full use of my investment in some long sleeved dress shirts, and I’m definitely looking forward to breaking out my woolen coats, both long and short, and feeling the chill air of the season.

I just had a conversation with someone over at Plurk about why I love the fall so much – I’m a very asethetic person, so the fall has always appealed to me: it’s the end of the heat and swelter of the summer, but it’s also the beginning of the overcast days that I love, where it’s dark enough that I don’t have to wear sunglasses but still daytime. Days like today, where the streetlights are confused as to what time it is. I love that it’s hoodie season, and I can walk down the street in a long sleeved dress shirt or a henley and I’m not too hot. I love the smell of apples, both cooking and fresh, and I love the slow change of the leaves from lush and green to brown and red and finally coating the ground in a nourishing carpet from which life will come again in the springtime. I like the smell of wood smoke and people lighting fires and turning on their heaters for the first time of the year.

I like ladies in short skirts, tall boots, and long jackets, all of whom seem to only come out around this time of year. I like gentlemen in shiny dress shirts with long sleeves all wearing the ends cuffed differently. I like an excuse to put on my black shirt with the french cuffs.

Sure, it doesn’t hurt that October also harbors my birthday, but I’d be an October child anyway, I think.

In other news, it’s been a pretty hardcore writing week for me, and I’m glad to say so. I’ve gotten some great feedback on my Gears and Widgets column on multi-ethnic steampunk possibilities, and I think I was spot on with my roundup of Apple’s recent product announcements.

More professionally, I started this week with a hands-on of Grooveshark’s new interface, and then wound up following it up with another in-depth look at a similar service called JukeFly that I admittedly didn’t like as much, but see the usefulness of.

This weekend I’m clearing out my writing dance card to spend some time on a pet project I want to announce badly. We’ll see how it goes, what with it also being Halloween and all. Speaking of which, I have my lab coat all ready.

Now then, I need to hunt for wordpress themes – I have big plans, and I’ve been wanting to make these entries a little more targeted and less vomitous – although frankly, I think everyone needs a place to be a little vomitous too. So less vomitous, not totally un-vomitous. You’d be dissapointed if I weren’t vomitous, I know!

David was curious what I spent a lot of my time this weekend doing, and since I wrote my last entry while I was in the middle of if, I didn’t really wrap up what I’d been up to. In short, this was one of those weekends where the creativity tap was turned on at some point or another and once it was on it flowed like a fire hose – it was all but impossible to turn off, even when I desperately needed to sleep for work this morning.

I puttered about the house to a large extent, recabling my turntables so I can turn them and the mixer and their dedicated speakers on and off with a single power strip (boo vampire power!) and also so the wine fridge had a more direct route straight to the wall socket as to not let it hop between power supplies. I finally got around to taming the mess of cables hanging from my desk (photos of my desk to come so you understand how important this actually was) with some velcro ties – the back of my desk, and thus where all the cables are, faces out to the living room, so I wanted to make it a little more presentable.

But the real magic happened when I sat down at my computer. I went on a Kaskade binge, spending most of the weekend playing with Grooveshark’s beta, which is scheduled to go live Tuesday at midnight – along with a hands-on rundown I wrote for AppScout.

I wound up with my arms up to my elbows in all of my sites, including ones that I haven’t announced yet, and another that I have no plans to announce. I’m a firm believer that everyone – even prolific and vocal bloggers like me who have a desperate need to be heard and acknowledged – need a place where they can be as venomous as they need to be and as vulnerable as they have to be with little fear anyone will find what they have to say. For me, I started a blog that’s just for me. The other one is waiting until I have more time to write the first batch of articles to populate the content with, and then I’ll go live with it.

Aside from the design and writing, it was all about analytics, tracking, Wordpress plug-ins….all things happening behind the scenes. Installing search plug-ins, changing permalink structure, making use of my old ass Google Analytics account that hadn’t been properly set up, other litle tweaks to layout and features that I think will make a huge improvement in readibility overall and at least help people find me easier -and help me know when people find me. Nothing shiny, sorry David, but I’m still working on some shiny things too. I have theme hunting to do, I think – and I have no desire to use the regurgitated ones that everyone and their mother is using, like Pixel and variations thus.

So there you have it. It was pretty busy, and I’m hoping to carry some of that momentum through the week. Saturday I hit the market because I had the urge to cook for myself, and wound up making some shrimp and chicken baja soft tacos – a recipe that currently only exists in my head. I should write it down, but the results are here and here. Sunday I decided to try the lovely Stephanie Simpson’s recipe for Easy Chicken Satay. It turned out beautifully and tasty – even for my first experiment with black rice. The results? here and here.

Anyway, I think this off-schedule entry helps, and my new secret project definitely does, since it gives me a place to mentally and emotionally vomit whenever I need to.

One thing’s for sure though, that Kaskade binge hasn’t stopped. One track that’s specifically stuck with me this weekend was Angel on My Shoulder:

Would it be weird to say I’m listening to it right now?

Finally have a little downtime to relax. The birthday week is coming to a close, but like I said in my last post, I have every intention of making this a jubilee year, so I’m doing a little travel planning to see friends around the country. As always, money is the big consideration, so I’m thinking about how I can do things on the cheap, and save money at home to make it a little easier to jetset across the country. My post at Tom’s Hardware hasn’t gone live quite yet, but I’m on pins and needles waiting for it to come up. If anything, it gives me an excuse to check the site every day, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing – I love the site.

The day job has been crushing me lately. Not necessarily in a bad way, just in a “won’t let up the pressure” kind of way – it means there’s more than enough work to do to keep some of these projects I’m working on under control, and it doesn’t seem to look like it’s going to let up anytime soon. Always something going on, I suppose. That’s not really a bad thing though – I’d rather be engaged and have something to do and therefore make sure I’m gainfully employed than be disengaged and have nothing to do, thus rendering myself expendable. The only down side though is that it makes it pretty difficult to find time to write. I still write when I have spare time at the office, but if I don’t, I usually get home, hit the DDR pads for a good half hour-45 minute workout (which has been doing me really well lately, by the way! I’ve dropped a full 10 pounds since I started this “biggest loser” competition at the office!) and then make dinner. After that, it’s dinner, spend some time writing if I need to, gaming if I have time to, and then off to bed to get to the office in the morning.

It may sound bad, but I actually really like it. I can always skip any of that if something comes up in the evening, and my weekends are free to either relax – like this weekend – or do something special and fancy if I get the urge to.

Found that Kaskade track a little while ago. The lyrics speak to me something fierce, good lord.

So I don’t know if I mentioned, but I have a couple of blog projects up my sleeve – both of them I’m keeping up there for the time being because I don’t want to let on they’re coming and then take forever to build them out. One thing I’m thinking about doing that I feel comfortable talking about though is that I’m considering changing themes across my blogs. I’ve had most of them since I launched them, and I’m worried some of them are a little stale and woefully Web 1.0 – plus I’m cramming things into the sidebars of them on multiple sites when some of the newer themes make it much easier to integrate plug-ins that will bring in my Twitter feed, for example, or shuffle through photos, and things like that. If anyone has any strong feelings one way or the other, let me know, yeah?

Now I just have to find the time to do these things. I’ve said it before in jest, but it might be a good idea to take a couple of days off of work just to work on personal projects. Some people take staycations and work on the house, or build a shed, or landscape the lawn, or renovate the kitchen, I’d be doing something similar!