Ok, let me back up just a bit. It isn’t the league itself that’s saying it (although there are some whispered rumors I’m sure) but mostly the media with an occasional comment from the owners or coachs or players popping up in the press.  Usually because someone in the media asked them a stupid and leading question like “What do you think about the Patriots policy of running up the score?”.  Idiots.

Anyway, before I get off on a tangent about the evil, twisted ways of the media, let me steer the conversation back top the matter at hand, the Pats running up the score on their last 8 opponents.

Simple question.  ARE the New England Patriots intentionally running up the score?  Absolutely!  (more…)

Now the desktop holds a place very near and dear to my heart, going all the way back to the themes.org and Project: Magnus days of yesteryear. t.o. eventually got sucked up into freshmeat.net and slowly died, P:M was reborn this year under a new mission. In the interim sites like desktopian and deskmodhave come, gone and in the case of desktopian, come again. It’s been a truly weird and very, very long ride.

The desktop has kind of faded from the forefront in favor of hot new applications and protocols like Flex, Flash, AJAX and .NET. Everyone keeps trying to take the desktop ‘online’, creating and developing web based applications like Google Docs (formerly Writely) which now incorporates the online equivalent of Word, Excel and PowerPoint.

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To be honest, I’m kind of glad that Fox it taking this step, for one to show the writers they aren’t going to cave (sorry, not feeling the writers pain right now.. whiners) and two, in hopes that other networks will follow suit and finally cancel, postpone, flush all the shows that should never have seen the light of day.  Seriously, how many copies of Survivor (and how many lame ass seasons of said show), American Idol and ‘reality dating’ shows do we really need?

Not to mention shows that have little to no intrinsic value to start with, but are in some (magical) way ‘groundbreaking’.  ‘Lost’ was great season one, okay in season two and pretty much sucks now.  Time to go.  ‘Chuck’? Delete with extreme prejudice.     “The Return of Jezebel James”,  “New Amsterdam” and “Canterbury’s Law”?  Whoever green lighted them needs to be fired.  Now.  “Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles”?  Seriously, what chance does a series about a set of characters that everyone gave up on 10 years ago have?  Unless they have some way of ‘re-writing’ history so that T3 never happened (which some people would prefer) what’s the point?  We know how it ends.  No matter what they d0.

And that’s just Fox and a couple ABC, NBC shows!   What the hell happened to originality?  24 was groundbreaking.  So was Lost.  So was  Bablyon 5,  Matrix (yes it was a movie), Dr. Who, House,  Futurama, FireFly,  Hereos… the list goes on.  Sadly however it only amounts to about 1/10% of all the crap that has been, is and will be pushed out over the television or theaters.

Brian Kim has an important post on his site about how one stops comparing themselves with others. It’s important because far too many people (myself included) have gone into substantial debt while trying to live up to and bet the ideals that society has set of success. As Brian states:

From elementary to up until high school, it was all about appearance and popularity. After that came the comparisons of universities fellow students attended, if any. Then came the all too popular financial barometer. How much money do you make? What kind of material possessions do you own? What’s your marital status? How many friends do you have? And on and on and on.

He goes on to give suggestions and advice on how to break the pattern and regain control not only over your life, but your finances and mental state of well being.

He even goes so far as to illustrated how much of a vicious circle the entire situation really is:

What most people don’t realize is that the Jones’ are too busy keeping up with the Smiths and Smiths are too busy keeping up with the Browns and the Browns are too busy keeping up with the Millers, etc.

I would add two other possibilities:

1. The Joneses simply don’t care about your little ‘competition’
2. The Joneses are trying to also keep up with you, thereby escalating the competition to an extremely insane level.

The other aspect to consider is this: you might be trying to out do something that doesn’t even exist. Chances are, the oneupmanship scenario is all in you head, the Joneses don’t actually exist!

Anyway, the code freeze is now in effect so things will somewhat normalize over the next few days.  I hope.

Over the next few weeks I’m hoping to have a few articles out the door, not to mention solidifying the focus of this site.  A few ideas for articles currently in production are:

1. Dealing with relatives you don’t see or like over the holidays
2. Week in review. (This week, not last)
3. Quick and Easy Recipes
4. Digital Office - Going Virtual.
5. Revamping the BCS.
6. A new weekly feature: ‘…you might be an idiot’

Not exactly a giant workload for a week, but considering that there is a holiday stuck in there… maybe.  I have Friday off and I’m currently planning to spend the day getting my life (physical and virtual) organized.  We’ll see how well that goes.

Also on the production list is an article about me and the changes I’m trying to implement.  I won’t go into to much detail right now (don’t to spoil the surprise), but I will say that it is an interesting twist.  A direction I personally never thought I’d take.

See you soon.

It’s not coming up with ideas. I have 10 of those sitting in my Drafts queue waiting to be finished or started or tossed.

It’s not the writing because when I sit down to do it I am able, although I put far too much thought into my choice of words and take way too long.

It’s not a matter of having my own opinions, everyone that knows me knows I have *plenty* of those. Most aren’t that popular however, which does tend to make for great debates or conversations. Or arguments.  There have been one or two of those.

Anyway, it’s a combination of time, niche and willingness to give up X to do Y. Or in this case, give up that extra hour of watching Doctor Who or CSI: NY to write. Or going to bed just a little later or getting up just a bit earlier.

I can make the time if I give up something. It’s not like I can’t watch that 3rd episode of House tomorrow rather that tonight. I don’t have to get rid of the DVD’s by such-and-such date. It’s a weird thing I call ‘inverse procrastination’ . Instead of putting something off until later I do it now because I don’t want to wait, but at the same time, I am putting something *else* off till another time. Hence the procrastination part.

The thing that has prevented me from making that ’sacrifice’ has been that I haven’t had any kind of niche. Nothing unique to talk about or write about. Same reason why most of my story ideas never make it out of my head and onto paper or the computer.

Well, let me re-phrase that last paragraph a bit.  It’s not that I have nothing ‘unique’, it’s more like I have too many unique things.  Hell, even unique isn’t the correct word.  Gah!  See my point here?  It’s focus.  The ability to focus and zero in one 1 single topic or area or aspect of something that I can’t (and frankly don’t want to) do.  I have far, far to many hobbies, interests, fascinations, obsessions and what-not to focus on a single thing.

Then it hit me, this is my personal site.  It doesn’t have to have a niche.  In fact, having a niche would probably mean that I’m missing something somewhere related to someone somehow.  Plus there are my stories and writings as well as work and projects to talk about.  Oh and cooking.  There is always cooking.  To a point anyway, there are other places to expound on the cooking thing but I can mention it here.

So, starting today I’m going to try to post at least once a day.

With that, see you next week (Just planning ahead) (sort of)

Let’s just hope it’s a mole gone bad and not cancerous.