Today’s Holidailies prompt is: “It’s the first day of Holidailies, so introduce yourself.”

Hi, there.  Some of you may remember me from the previous year.  I used to have a livejournal with the username ‘jetblack’ and I decided I would give this another try to see if I could make it all the way to 31 (instead of making it to 8 and then losing steam).  It’s hard to post every day, you know?  But I feel that I can give this another go in 2007 and see if I can have a really Happy New Year by celebrating with the rest of my fellow Holidailies bloggers!

I’m thirty-one (sob!) and I live in the best state in the Union: California!  It may get a little cold in December, but it’s pretty much summer-like year ’round.  Though, we could use a little more rain this year, for sure.  Anyway, I live with my beautiful wife, Julia, and I work for an application continuity appliance manufacturer as a technical support engineer.  For the most part, this means I’m on call once every four weeks, and have to give up massive amounts of sleep in order to do my job.

I love to write, and I just won my third NaNoWriMo in a row.  I love music.  I love watching television and movies.  I love reading books.  I have an obvious West Wing addiction that I can’t seem to shake no matter how hard I try (see the quotations of the moment within the left column).  I love baseball, football, basketball, and hockey.  Most of all, I love meeting new people and making new friends, which makes the Internet just that much of an ideal place to be.

I hope to read more from everyone and I’m looking forward to an awesome December!

Current Mood: optimistic

WordPress Posts | No Comments »

I have already had a number of people ask me what I want for Christmas this year.  I tried to setup a Barnes & Noble wish list, but the options on it are pretty weak.  Besides, many of you are hopelessly tied to the big online machine that funds the Republican National Committee and its candidates, Amazon.com.  To make things easier on those who want to buy me a Christmas gift, I’ve updated the list and I’ve added a new widget to the blog, here, on the left hand side.

There are some items on there I’m not expecting, because it’s too expensive… but I figured, hey… what the hell?

Current Mood: awake

WordPress Posts | No Comments »

For those of you who have been reading my blog for at least a year, you know that I participated in Holidailies last December.  Holidailies is a month-long blogging version of NaNoWriMo, but instead of writing a novel, you have to blog once a day, every day of the month.  I liked the concept of Holidailies, but the pressure of blogging every day loomed over my poor brain that I was unable to keep up after a week.  And that sucks.  Oh, but the cool thing is that one of my posts made the Best of Holidailies last year, which was really awesome.  I didn’t think it would actually get selected.  The prompt was just way too cool to pass up.

I’m giving it another shot.  And I got a little penguin button for my site, too!

Current Mood: optimistic

WordPress Posts | No Comments »

So, according to my Feedburner statistics, it looks like I had 43 readers yesterday. I don’t think I even posted anything yesterday, either, so it’s like when I put up 6 posts in one day, you guys don’t read, but then I don’t blog for a day and suddenly I’m popular. I wonder what would happen if I stopped posting altogether Anyway, I spent Sunday at Todd’s again and I’m starting to get the hang of that drive up and down. I took Jody and Teri with me, so they could hang out with their brother on the holiday weekend. Todd’s by himself up there, so I was not wanting him to just enjoy his solitude while everyone else around him was busy with family things, yanno?

Quick question for anyone out there: am I the only one playing GameTap these days? I’m poised to cancel on 11/30, but if I have enough buddies on there, I might reconsider. Actually, I may stay because I looked at the list of new games for January 08, and they’re bringing back all the titles I used to play on DOS in the early 90s. Just for that, 10 bucks a month is worth it. Seriously, though, I have no friends on GameTap and I’m feeling lonely.

—————-
Now playing on iTunes: Kajiura Yuki - Opening Theme (Kyousuke No. 1)

Current Mood: curious

WordPress Posts | 3 Comments »

I’m really liking this series. I started watching it this week and I’m pretty hooked on it so far, into the fifth episode. Has anyone watched this series and if so, did you like it?

———–
Now playing on VLC Player: Death Note - Kakehiki

Current Mood: enthralled

WordPress Posts | 3 Comments »

A special note to those who have friended me on LiveJournal: This will be my final entry. Please switch to the feed, located as the ‘newest post’ on my livejournal. All my new posts will be carried on the feed.

I hope everyone had a good Thanksgiving. I think the best part of the night is actually when you get to a point where you can’t eat anymore, even though you want to. What is it about eating that makes you feel good? Especially really good food; it’s like foreplay before awesome sex or something. So long as you follow it up with chocolate, right? I had awesome food prepared by my lovely wife yesterday, and all she did was braze a whole turkey breast in a red wine sauce that was later prepared as the gravy. Man, I wish every Thanksgiving turkey could taste that good, because were it not for my low-capacity stomach, I would have eaten the whole thing myself!

In other news, I’ve been backup on-call this week. Unfortunately, on a holiday, this usually means that the primary on-call person doesn’t always pick up the phone when it’s called. And I try to be a good backup by answering no matter where I am or what I’m doing, lest it roll down to the next guy in rotation and interrupt his dinner with his family. Oh yes, it’s not a sexist remark to only say him; there are no women on my team (which is sad). Not to say that my company is discriminating… we just haven’t found any women who a) were qualified enough to get an offer and b) more men than woman apply for the position. So the chances of a woman being hired are less likely just following the law of large numbers. Next week, I will be rotating onto primary on-call, which I’m looking forward to. It really helps to learn the ropes when they throw you into the deep end of the pool. And truth be told, I was beginning to get bored with just training all the time. It helps immensely when you get to apply that knowledge.

Hey, I have a question for you all… what’s your favorite dish at Thanksgiving dinner?

—–
Now playing on WinDVD: Hornblower: The Examination for Lieutenant

Current Mood: content

WordPress Posts | 4 Comments »

According to most people’s posts, you’re supposed to list the things you’re thankful for.  So, I guess I’ll do that a little later on in the post.  I’ve been working my way through my desk and trying to unearth the surface of it, since it’s covered in papers, mugs, and assorted electronics.

This week, I’ve been playing a lot of Ace Combat 6, and I’ve been enjoying this game immensely.  I’ve been a big fan of the Ace Combat series, having played the very first game on the PlayStation way back in the mid-90s.  Since then, I’ve owned a PS2 and played all the sequels.  Some were good, some were not so good.  But each of them really relies on you knowing how to handle a fighter using a game controller.  I’ve been indulging in some of the online ranked matches, too, and getting my ass handed to me on a regular basis.

Which reminds me, I should put up my gamercard for XboxLive on my blog somewhere.

I’m thankful for a lot of things… but I think if I had to chose one, I would be thankful that I’m happy with my life and the way it is right now.  I’m married to a wonderful woman.  I have a full-time job.  I got my new laptop… I mean, the list goes on.

I hope everyone had a good Thanksgiving today.

PS: One more day of LJ posting.  Then it’s bye-bye LiveJournal for good.  Get on the feed, if you haven’t already.

—————-
Now playing on iTunes: Corinne Bailey Rae - Call Me When You Get This

Current Mood: thankful

WordPress Posts | No Comments »

Until all LiveJournal cross-posting will come to a halt. On November 23rd, I will no longer be posting my new blog’s posts to my livejournal account. This means that if you haven’t already done so, you should add the jetblacks_place feed available here on LJ. Take a moment and do that now, if you want to keep reading my posts.

I’ve made my WordPress blog as LJ-compatible as possible. You can login using your livejournal URL (http://yourname.livejournal.com) under the URL portion of commenting. It’ll redirect you back to your LJ to authorize the call, but it’ll help you with making sure you don’t have to keep entering in information all the time.

I know this move will lose a lot of people, but then again, you guys weren’t really reading me to begin with, right?

—————-
Now playing on iTunes: Hirano Aya - God knows…

Current Mood: bouncy

WordPress Posts | No Comments »

I left work early yesterday because I had scheduled a customer call at midnight. There was a system in Israel that required some tender loving care, but the on-site administrator wouldn’t be available until late. So, I told my boss’ boss that I would be taking off a few hours early so I could rest up and be fresh for the call. The call, which I thought would take like a couple of hours, ended up being closer to four and half. I didn’t get to sleep until 4:30am, after being awake for more than twenty hours straight and feeling the fatigue set in around 11:30pm.

I won’t go into exactly how many fucking roadblocks this system put up in my way during the attempt to resolve the issue, but needless to say that it put up a good fight before I finally conquered the bitch and made it dance the way I needed it to. It was like hurry up and wait for most of it, considering the mean distance between me and the system, but there was a watchdog on the system that kept rebooting it every half-hour or so. So, I would make a lot of progress, but then the watchdog would kick off and then erase what I did. That happened twice before I said, fuck it… I’m not waiting for it to refresh the screen. Luckily, I didn’t typo, so it was all good, but spending an hour and a half on that alone was driving me up a wall. In between refreshes, I watched DVDs, or read a book or two.

By the time I was finished with that part of it, I collapsed into bed and woke up just in time for the status meeting at work. I’m so happy I got to work from home today!

—————-
Now playing on iTunes: misia - hate na kutsu duku SUTORI (Live version)

Current Mood: cheerful

WordPress Posts | No Comments »

Toshiba finally shipped out my new laptop, and holy crap, is it huge.  It’s like twice the height of my old one, because it blocks half my 19 inch flatscreen (which I sometimes use as my extended desktop when I need it).   Also, they’re using a better version of TruBright, because I think folks on the International Space Station can see this thing from space.

Because my previous laptop’s name was Hammerhead, I had to pick a new name for this one.  It is being called, ‘Bebop,’ after the name of the fishing trawler they flew on within Cowboy Bebop.  I figured it was appropriate, considering how freakin’ huge this thing is.  I’m seriously going to have to consider getting a bigger laptop case, because I don’t think my Targus backpack is big enough to carry it in.  It’s literally a replacement for your television, and it has a coax connection on the back.  I use to think Qosmio’s were pieces of shit, but this one has changed my mind, so far.  We’ll see how well it does in the coming days.

—————-
Now playing on iTunes: The Delgados - The Light Before We Land

Current Mood: jubilant

WordPress Posts | No Comments »