I've never been a huge fan of the whole 'card' thing. I mean, I see the point in the occasional purpose driven card (i.e. 'I'm sorry' or 'get well soon' cards), but your classic 'today is a capitalist gift giving holiday so here is a card to accompany your gift' cards just seems pointless to me. The only thing I like less than giving cards, is having to pick them out. That's not to say that I'm simply unwilling to spend the time to find a good one, because that's not it at all. I just find it nearly impossible to find a card that can just say 'happy [insert holiday or occasion here]' without making it out to be the sappiest, most significant event in your entire life. I don't know if you've ever been to a Hallmark Store before, but it's absolutely ridiculous...

Earlier today I was joking around with some of my friends at work. One of them made a comment about Marine's being brainwashed and I immediately started screaming the Marine Corps Rifleman's Creed. Well, at least to the best of my ability. This resulted in us doing a quick Google search, studying up on the actual creed, and eventually giving me the brilliant idea to appropriate the text and create the Mac User's Creed. And this is what I came up with...

I had no idea, until about an hour ago, that Daylight Savings Time ended this morning. I'm still not even completely sure whether we gained or lost an hour. You would think that being oblivious to this fact would screwed with my whole day, but everything went off without a hitch. I guess I have technology to thank for this...

I'm not really one for superstitions, but I've been experiencing something very strange lately. Somehow, each week one of my regular television shows devotes an element of that episode's story line to some situation that parallels something I'm experiencing in my own life. The first time it happened I thought nothing of it, but as a trend began building from week to week I began to get sort of caught up in the significance I was imagining in each episode. For the last month these parallelisms were comforting. Each one took a very unfavorable situation and showed how the character pulled through it. I would watch each show, identify with the characters frustrations or sadness, and invest a little piece of me in the outcome of his situation. When things worked out, it genuinely made me happy. Happy for the character and hopeful that the outcome of my situations would be the same...

It's been a little over a year since I decided to start attending church. During my transition from an nonbeliever to a believer, there were quite a few things that I struggled with and many that I still do. One of he most difficult to deal with is he juxtaposition between what I believe and what I'm expected to believe. I understand the burden of a christian to be accountable for their actions at all times, but lately I've grown sick of mindless conformity I see around me. Though this conformity has been frustrating me fore quite some time now, the upcoming election has just brought the feelings too close to the surface to not invoke a rant. I'm just so sick of people not having an opinion of their own. It's one thing to truly believe in something and another thing to simply take a side because you feel that is what you're supposed to...

The only thing worse than walking into a public bathroom is walking into a public bathroom where the previous occupants failed to clean up after themselves. For a person like me, someone who's an anal-retentive clean-freak, this causes a huge paradoxical situation. On the one hand there's a mess that needs to be cleaned, but on the other hand that mess is disgusting and I wouldn't want to risk germ transfer. Ordinarily my quest for germ-free self-preservation would win over my OCD, but there is a third factor that has to be weighed in...

Tonight marked the first anniversary of a pretty big event for me. It was a year ago tonight that I dislocated my knee. Some of you might remember my post about the event, but I haven't really talked much about it since I mentioned finishing my therapy classes. It's crazy that it's been so long already. I don't really have much else to say about it. I guess I just wanted to acknowledge the anniversary...

Have you ever noticed how irrationally overprotective we are over new possessions when we get them? It doesn't even seem to matter how expensive or how fragile the object is. For some reason during the first few days or weeks, we act as if that new toy or gadget, is made of glass. The strangest part about this condition, which I am dubbing "The 'Oh no, it's new' Effect", is that after a short time the protective nature is replaced by an almost negligent behavior towards the possession. Take for instance, my new MacBook Pro. As of right now, I'm nurturing my little baby: setting it down on desks carefully, making sure to not jam cables into the ports, closing the lid gently, and just generally trying to take care of it. The thing is, in a few weeks I'm not even going to think twice about plopping it down on my desk, throwing across the room onto my bed, or sliding it across a table to better position it. None of that will matter. Which begs the question, why does it even matter now...

I've decided it's time for a little detox. For the next few weeks I'm going to give up Coffee, Beer, Wine, and Hard Alcohol. I'm not really sure why or where I got the idea, but I figure it will likely be good for me. I wouldn't go so far as to say I've become dependent on these things, but they've definitely become a regular part of my daily routine. When I'm at work, I like to start the morning off with a few cups of coffee and, since I sit right next to the coffee pot, that few often becomes many if there's no one else in the office to finish it off. I'm not even sure the coffee wakes me up in the morning. As far as I can tell, it makes me more tired and just forces me to use the restroom more often then normal...

This has turned out to be a super busy year for me. Besides my main job, where I'm putting in 36 hours a week, I have three other companies that I do a lot of contract work for. Unlike my main job, the contracted work doesn't yield paychecks on any kind of regular schedule. As I drove to the bank today to cash my 'real job' paycheck, I realized that being an independent contractor is a lot like being Charlie Brown around Valentine's Day...