He not busy being born is busy dying - Bob Dylan

Looking back, 2007 was not necessarily the best year on record for me. Granted, I didn’t have any really big, traumatic events and for that I’m grateful, but in other ways I really failed to make personal progress on some things I wanted to change. As often seems to be the case, it leaves me standing at a crossroads of sorts as a new year thunders in. And I’m torn about which direction to take. The road that is safe and comfortable? Or the dark, twisty path that barely appears as a smudge on my crumpled and worn map?

As you can see… hopefully… work is underway on the new blog template. I dived in up to my elbows and have taken most of the site offline while I work behind the scenes. You can at least get an idea of the general style and color scheme I’m working on already. Overall, my goal is to simplify things greatly. The old template was a technical masterpiece but I think it was hard to navigate around and I know that it was a lot of work maintaining it for me. I want to get “back to basics” with the new design.

I’ve concluded I’m not happy with this blog layout any more. It’s just not me. That seems to always be the case when you use someone else’s design. I’m working on a new custom layout, so don’t be surprised if things get a little weird around here while I’m working. It’ll be a while before I start testing the new template online though, so don’t panic just yet…

I’ve written about this before, a tradition a friend and I have on the occasions his wife heads out of town several times a year. During these brief periods of time when he has the opportunity to be master of his own schedule for a while, we celebrate a sacred time we like to call… Man Day.

Testing Vimeo for video hosting, seems to be much better video quality than YouTube so far.

Is it me, or are drivers on our nations highways becoming an increasingly surly lot? I realize I’m spoiled by the fact I don’t commute on a regular basis. However, I’ve had to do more driving for a variety of reasons lately and it sure seems like my fellow drivers are less courteous than ever before.

I stole this from Leesa, but she stole it from Stacie first… that’s karma for you. Update: Just to be clear, I did not steal it from Shephard…

Did I mention how *ready* I am for the year to be over? I really need to catch my breath. I’ve just been way too busy lately. Not with shopping though, that’s been done for a while now. The Internet is your friend, I avoid stores this time of year. So what’s happened lately? Let’s see… the small, seasonal drama gig I was working on is over, Lindsey had her winter concert and Matt and I overdosed on movies… what, you want details? Keep reading…

I upgraded my computer today courtesy of an early Christmas gift from a business associate for which I do a little freelance software development. I’ve been squeezed for disk space now and making noises about adding another hard drive. My friend caught wind of those plans and presented me with a nice external hard drive. Combined, I now have around 1.25 terabytes of storage on my main computer. That’s all good… but I have to confess, this new drive is kinda freakin’ me out…

Shephard is taunting me. First he creates a meez avatar and slyly points out that it’s in his sidebar now. Sure enough, there he is all Christmas-y and cheerful. But wait! What has he got in his hand?! Aha, a seemingly innocent little cartoonish rendering has a much darker purpose…