“Once a year you should pretend that you are putting your house up for sale. You should fix the things that need fixing. You should clean the spots that need cleaning, and you should dispose of the items that you no longer use.”

It’s good advice (it came from a very wise woman). It makes sense; after all, why the hell should be willing you fix up a house for someone else but be willing to live in anything less?

Well ... I’ve been following this advice. This has also led me to put a car on the market.

This got me to thinking about possessions. It also led me to say the oddest thing:

“If I were to win the lottery, I would throw much of this crap out.”

Excluding the core items of my life (i.e. those things that I can say that I’ve used in the last year), 95% of what’s remaining falls into the category of “I don’t want to buy it again if I need it.” Do I ever really need these things again? No. Do they usually get lost in the sea of crap? Yes. Do I end up buying the newer model anyways? Yes.

So why do I keep this stuff? I have bags of old computer connectors. I have power cords. I have old furniture. I have a laundry list of things that I can say with 100% certainly I will never use again. In an effort to avoid discarding something important and thus causing future pain, I live my daily life in a clutter of crap.

While many people dream of a lottery win so that they can buy things. I dream of a day that I can throw things out.

I’ve been quite busy lately. As such, I haven’t had the time (or the energy) to give this log the attention that it deserves. The good news is that I woke up this morning with the overwhelming urge to write. While I can’t promise that the bulk of that effort will be spent here, I do promise to post something later today.

If I were a betting man, I would bet that I will be talking about the nature of possessions. With that said, I never know what’s coming. ;)

In the meantime, I am ridiculously excited about "Press N' Seal." If you don't have some, run (don't walk) to the store and get some.

"Like 'Press N' Seal' is the new 'Cling Wrap'"

Speaking of sports -- can someone please tell Tony "Stat Boy" Reali to spit out the marbles! I find his mumbling intolerable. Tony seems like a nice guy but his delivery isn't neary as quick as Max Kellerman's and he's missing that little spark. :(

Edit: Since this currently is Google's number one reference for "Tony Reali" and he is "Stat Boy" I fear that he might actually read this. Just remember Tony -- "You're good enough. You're smart enough, and doggonit people like you."

Another Edit: Since the original posting Tony has gotten MUCH better. Good job! I hope that there are no hard feelings and keep up the good work.

It is not often that I do the following, but I am officially declaring the dictionary wrong. “What’s the word?” you ask.

Sport

The other night, while watching the Westminster Dog Show, the announcer referred to 'this wonderful sport.' I finally reached my limit. Let's get this straight right now; dog breeding is not now nor will it ever be a sport. Somewhere along the line we, as a society, let the word sport deteriorate to the point where a poofed Pekinese waddling around an old lady with a blue dress and even bluer hair is called a sport.

Hoping to set the record straight and perhaps even reclaim the spirit behind the word, I will now lay out a series of questions designed to help you determine if you are, in fact, engaging in a sport. Fear not, though. If you fail the tests, I will help you pick the appropriate noun for your activity of choice.

Q: What's the difference between sales and marketing?

A: Sales knows that they're lying.

The time that I would have spent writing/posting was sucked up in an html to php conversion. Actually the conversion was trivial. The real problem is the re-direction from the html to php. I spent too many hours thinking, "If only there were a gosh darn .htaccess for IIS."

For now many of the old .html files now have client redirects. I really don't like this solution, but for now it will have to do.

The good news is that I can do a site rebuild in under a minute. This is a task that previously took 11 minutes. It also is much faster on the comment posting (2-3 seconds)

Like always, if you experience any issues, please let me know.

Wow. I just realized that today is the one-year anniversary of this little here blog. I suppose that I should wax philosophical about it, but I won't. I told myself when I started that I wouldn't be one of those blogs that talks about blogging too much. If I feel, like yesterday, that I can make a point, I will do it. However, usually I stay clear of the topic.

As for today -- lay off. It's my Anniversary. I might not even proofread this puppy.

Perhaps it's just me, but I find it ironic that this is the paper anniversary of my weblog. ;)

I constructed the following paragraph as an English quiz:

Last night I dreamt that I was a bookkeeper. Technically, I was a librarian, but I did keep books there. I lived in a library filled to the rafters with books made of silver. It was a Rousseauian Utopia that far exceeded my previous dreams. Wait; that’s wrong. I think that Moore might be the Utopian guy. I suppose that doesn’t really matter. I was being facetious. My idea of Utopia doesn't come with books. Books are just another form of power. Books are a way that people try to own thoughts. If it were up to me, I would make all books uncopyrightable!

Many of the words in the paragraph are interesting to a language geek like me. The question is “Which ones are interesting and why?”

I paraphrase Balanchine as I say ‘imagination doesn’t come like a stomach ache; like everything else in life, you need to work at it.’

As I sit here at my computer and contemplate the future of this online journal, the above thought sits like a ton of brinks on the decision scale. That’s a good thing. Without it, there would, most likely, be no entries.

I won’t lie to you – lately I have been considering ending this experiment. The journal’s one year anniversary is fast approaching and I feel like I am in a rut. I have been struggling to find the purpose in it all. Oh I have hundreds of people who read the site, but the lack of comments can sometimes be a little sad. As a result, I often check the logs (picture a comic asking, “Is this thing on?”). There I am depressed by the sheer number of superfluous hits that are, in one way or another, related to smut. This leaves me wondering what type of writing experiment this is.

I don’t have the desire to be a “personal” blogger. By that I mean the type of person who shares his or her inner thoughts. Likewise, I don’t want to be a “my daily events” blogger. I’m not about to waste my time memorializing my breakfast choices. Furthermore, if learning of my uneventful trip to the drycleaners changes your life, I question your use of time and, quite possibly, your medication level. The mundane aspects of my life aren’t interesting to me. They certainly shouldn’t be interesting to you. Besides, if you lean toward the voyeuristic, there are plenty of places to feed those urges.

Over the past year I have attempted to be different, and, for the most part, I have enjoyed it. I admit that some entries were more interesting than others, but even then I attempted to incorporate something of interest. Sometimes it was a turn of a phrase. Other times, I worked to capture a cadence or an emotion. In any case, I attempted to give a little nugget of something to the world.

It has provided a place to practice a craft, but, more importantly, it has helped to free me. It has both validated and underscored my belief that imagination and thought aren’t finite wells. You won’t use them up. The truth is quite the opposite.

There was a time in my life when I felt the need to protect my ideas. I was afraid that I would accidentally give away the million-dollar thought. I feared that I would publish, for free, my “one good work.”

It took many years to come to the realization that such inclinations were counterproductive. I just didn’t understand that the pursuit of protection was fraught with irony. The best way to stop the thoughts from coming is to stop thinking. I spent all that creative energy protecting the “secret.” Somehow I didn’t expect this to affect my imagination. Oh well… C’est la vie.

The Internet boom and the proliferation of the NDAs (Non-Disclosure Agreements) didn’t help the cause. Living in the Silicon Valley during the mid 90s was an interesting time. The Internet was new and it seemed like a goldmine. Heck, forget the mine; it seemed like the streets were actually lined with gold. You just needed to get an idea (any harebrained one would do) and execute. As long as you followed one rule you would be fine; keep your idea a secret so that you can get a big enough head start.

With the precision of the changing of the guard, every meeting began with the signing of the NDAs. Every dinner had portions of the discussion that were conducted in a nearly inaudible whisper. There was a belief that all you needed was a head start, but what they didn’t tell you was that execution was what won the game. Oh sure, there are the exceptions, but, for the most part, businesses succeeded not because of some head start but instead because they ran a good business. Truth be told, in many cases the head-start didn’t matter one bit. Why? Because there was a shift in direction that rendered that advantage moot. In these cases it was much more important to have leadership and a group of people who had exercised their creative muscles. It was more important to have an open group.

This brings us to my present dilemma – what do I do here? I really should power through my current apathy towards the journal. The benefits are numerous. I suppose that I could turn comments off. I could then pretend that people were just dying to leave a comment but couldn’t. I have also been toying with including more pure fiction. This has its own issues, though. I don’t plan to use this site to write a book and I fear that others might get tired of what would probably amount to nothing more than writing exercises.

I know that I need to stop with the “to/two/too” titles. While I do have fun with them, I also find them to be confining.

I’m open to suggestions. Like always, if you feel more comfortable, you can just drop me an e-mail (for some odd reason I get a bunch of e-mails and few comments) Hmm…

Thanks for listening,
Steve

Last night I watched 'Mystic River'. Now I must vent!

---Spoiler Protected---

I will ditch my standard narrative voice for this entry. I am also not going to bother with actually organizing my thoughts. Consider this a rant! It might end up being graphic too. Yikes!

Clint, please stop doing your own music. There should be a rule in Hollywood; Hans Zimmer should be the only person allowed to add scores to movies. The music in this movie was distractingly bad.

Who wrote/directed the last 10-15 minutes of this movie? I know that it can't be the same person that did the rest of it. What the hell happened? Did we decide to throw ALL subtlety out the window? I couldn't help but think that this movie was tested and changed as a result.

Let's put it this way. The real life equivalent would be someone sitting down on the toilet to have a nice bowel movement. That person gets half way through and decides now is not the right time. He stands up, pulls his pants up, and walks away. Needless to say -- the end was a mess!

If you are going to give it a Hollywood ending, do it all the way. Have Jimmy get the cell phone call that saves Dave’s life. I'm not advocating that, but if you're going to do it, do it. If they had any chutzpah, they would have cut to the credits with the big white bang!

Instead you have Sean's weak plot line wrapped up. Don't get me started about that. You have Jimmy's wife behaving in a way that was completely out of character (and not earned in the slightest!). You have every bit of Dave's action explained, and you have a typical cop/mobster moment. What the HELL!

The movie was on its way to a solid B+ before mystery person X got a hold of the ending. It just makes me mad… mad I tell you!

Thus ends the rant.

The other day I got in my car and, in order to put on my seatbelt, passed my coffee to my wife. I looked at her and as if channeling the television of my youth said, "Hold it, but don't drink it." I chuckled to myself as I remembered the commercials, but my comment was greeted with a blank stare.

"Oh come on -- you know the commercial. Don't you?"

Nothing.

"It's for... It's for.... Oh shit. What's it for?.... Oh this is going to drive me nuts! YooHoo? Sunkist? Sunny D? Oh man... OK. I'll figure it out when we get home."

"How can this not be on the Internet? Everything is on the Internet. DAMN YOU GOOGLE!"

I now sit here a quivering mass. I slowly rock back and forth parroting, "Hold it, but don't drink it. Hold it but don't drink it."

Help me. Save me. I can't take it anymore.

Say what you want about Kentucky Fried Chicken -- they sure know how to market their brand.

After already having navigated themselves from "Fried" to F (i.e. from Kentucky Fried Chicken to KFC), they are now attempting to change the F to Fresh.

Their latest ads tout "Kitchen Fresh Chicken." I don't know how successful they'll be, but I'll certainly give them credit for hutzpah.

I think that we're back up and running again. Yay! If you have any problems, let me know. Barring any unforeseen issues, I shall now put the IT hat back in the closet and unearth the writer's headgear (a plaid fedora if you must know).

Tomorrow (Monday) evening I need to take the site down for a little work. It will be up again Tuesday noonish (I hope). Wish me luck!