This year has seen the following events in my life (in no particular order):  I got married, I changed jobs to my current job (which I love), spent a week in las vegas,  drove a tow truck for the first time, spent a week in florida,  got an xbox 360, and bought a new car.

Now – that’s just the things I can think of off the top of my head.   I’m sure there are other things that have happened (such as me catching perhaps the best shot of my photographic career),  and plenty of other things that have made this a great year.

By far the biggest and best thing (as mentioned above) is that I got married and now get to spend my life with my best friend  - it doesn’t get more awesome than that.    A close second was snagging a new job at one of the best email and 1:1 marketing companies in the world.   I was able to move out of a position that was in a toxic environment for a variety of reasons,(which I won’t post here), and into a position in an environment that allows me to thrive.

I was able to spend two weeks in places I love – Florida and Las Vegas.    Florida was for my honeymoon, and was everything I hoped it would be (which had a lot to do with the person I was with).    Las Vegas was a work trip to install firewalls in a data center.   As you can imagine, experiencing Vegas through a cold noisy data center isn’t exactly the best experience.  We did manage to have some fun while out there, though, and I love that part of the country.

I also was finally able to ditch the 13 year old honda civic that I’ve had for years.   My upgrade?   I went the sensible route and got a Toyota Camry (2010 model) – and I love it.

Thanks to my brother-in-law Steve, I got to drive a flat-bed tow truck while up visiting Ann’s family this summer.  I only stalled it twice (once while IN traffic) – which is better than I expected.

And – as you hopefully read on my previous post – I finally broke down and got an Xbox 360.   While I do enjoy it,  I’m honestly not sure we really have time for it.   Ann does now because she’s on break from school,  but I generally don’t have too much time to spend playing games (which is why my World of Warcraft characters are languishing).   I’ll see how it shakes out, but I’m not sure I’ll get as much use out of it as I should.

While 2009 was a good year in many ways – it wasn’t without it’s downside.    The biggest downside was the passing of my Uncle, Marty Whelan, who was a very big part of our family.  Marty will be missed – but never forgotten.

Thanksgiving, along with the help of two days of PTO (Paid Time Off, for those who don’t know), allowed me to enjoy a nice six-day weekend.  I did thoroughly enjoy the time off as it allowed me to unwind quite a bit and disconnect myself from work.

Over that weekend I finally broke down and installed our new garbage disposal – which we’ve had for almost six months – replacing the old battered and abused garbage disposal that came with the house (and couldn’t perform it’s primary duty at all, was loud as hell and made the entire countertop shake).  The new unit, an Evolution Compact series from Insinkerator is nothing short of wonderful in comparison.   We can put things down the garbage disposal now that would have resulted in a clogged sink before.  It’s a lot quieter as well, and does not cause the counter to shake either – making it better on all counts.

The installation was significantly easier than I was expecting,  even though I decided to remove the old mounting from the old unit (same mounting type, or so it looked) in favor of using the new hardware.   Installation – for me anyways – required nothing more than a little upper body strength to hold the disposer in place, plumbers putty, and enough wiring knowledge to connect wires with wire caps.   Thankfully I had my wonderful wife to help me,  which did prove to be quite helpful.

This weekend I also found myself looking at Bento (from Filemaker) again as a tool to get some things organized.  I’ve had mixed feelings about Bento since I first tried their beta release,  not FULLY understanding what I could use it for (or would use it for). With the release of Bento 3 recently, though, I decided to give it another look (since the upgrade was only about $30 since I had a valid Bento 2 license).

I have to say,  when combining it with the $5 iPhone app,   Bento has become a bit more useful for me.   I’m working on building a home inventory of our electronic and expensive equipment – a project that is going very well since I can take my iPhone around with me to the various equipment, enter in the details, and sync it back to Bento on my Macbook Pro.   I’ve also used it to organize and catalog my wine collection.   Admittedly it’s not a large collection (currently only 9 unopened bottles),  but Ann and I are planning on going to a local wine store to find some new wines to try.  This will help me organize the new arrivals.

My Dad has been using Bento to catalog his wine as well, though he is using a custom built template to do so (whereas I’m using a new template in version 3 for wine collections).   He’s got a very large collection of wine,  and his process involved going to each bottle and taking a picture with his camera,  uploading into Aperture, Selecting the images, exporting to a directory, and importing into the correct record in Bento.

My process was much easier (and I believe he’s going to switch to my process after I showed it to him):   I create the library on my mac, and sync the blank library to my iPhone.   I then take my iPhone with me, enter the data straight from the bottles – and from within Bento on my phone, use it’s camera to take the picture of the wine.    It’s then already stored in Bento and I can sync everything back to my Macbook Pro.   I think all told it took me about 15 minutes to catalog my wine.

As I’ve gone through this process, I’m starting to see more and more of the capabilities of this software, and I’m actually starting to get excited about some of the things that I could possibly do with it.   It’s certainly not for everybody, and some people just won’t get any use out of it,  but I am really starting to enjoy it myself now that I’m finally “getting it”.

And lastly – while setting up my old Macbook Pro (after Apple replaced BOTH of the dead batteries I had for it.  Applecare FTW!) – I got to thinking about how great it would be to have my 1Password data sync between my various macs like it does between my iPhone and Mac.  I tweeted about wanting to be able to do that, and had SEVERAL people (Including the folks who made 1Password, which is just plain awesome) suggest using Dropbox to do it.   This turned out to be incredibly simple to do and has me wondering why the hell I didn’t do this sooner.

The fact that the folks from Agile Web Solutions responded to my “I wish there were an easy way to sync 1password data between my macs” tweet with the answer to how to do so, is awesome.   They’ve proven to be very responsive to their customers, and in the process are building a lot of goodwill and a solid base of supporters.  I think that’s definitely an example of “The Way It Should Be Done”.

Convenient – yes.  Private – no.

What most people, in the United States anyways, don’t seem to realize is that we do NOT own the personal and private data that is collected about us.   The companies that collect the data own it.  What’s perhaps more disturbing is that there is nothing that forces them to let you even SEE what data they’ve collected, much less anything with which you can use to compel them to destroy it.  In fact, most of these companies have little reason to destroy it, and significant reason not to.

The US Government, rather than create regulations and laws to protect it’s citizens and their privacy,  has given in to industry pressure to leave things alone.   “We’ll self regulate ourselves!” exclaim the industry players,  trying to assure the government that no oversight is needed,  that they know how best to handle the average citizens personal details.

Look at the big three credit bureaus – they collect all sorts of information about you from what you spend your money on to when you make your payments on any number of accounts.  They pull in vast amounts of information about you and – in most cases – make it very difficult to SEE what data is collected, much less actually dispute it.  There are limited government regulations around this,  mainly requiring that the consumer is eligible to receive a free credit report once a year.  Beyond that – these companies are free to data mine your information for whatever purpose they see fit, and also to sell your information to anybody they want.   You see – we have no control over that.   We don’t own the data (even though it’s data about US) – they do.   And every time we use plastic to pay,   or get a new mortgage,  or take out a loan,   they get all of that information.

If you think that’s scary, look at all the kids today who are putting their information into Facebook.   I’m just as guilty of this as anybody else (as evidenced by the fact that some of you are undoubtedly reading this ON facebook, where it’s syndicated.  As an aside – you really should read this stuff on my blog itself for better formatting).  People wonder why Facebook is valued at billions of dollars when it has not really made any money?   It’s not the revenue stream that’s worth that much money, I can tell you that much.   It’s the DATA!   With Millions of people putting all sorts of juicy details about themselves into the site, we’re giving Facebook all sorts of details into our lives – data that can be mined and made useful. Before you go rush off to delete the information you’ve put into the site (or try marking your profile to make it “private”) you should know that – even data you delete from your profile, is still stored in their databases. It’s just not shown on your profile anymore.  There’s no reason for them to delete the data, after all.  The same thing goes for Myspace, Twitter, YouTube, etc.

I won’t go so far as to say Privacy is dead.  It’s not.  Not yet, anyways.

I also will point out that SOME data remains mostly private.   Sort of.   Like health information.

Health information is private in the sense that it is protected (HIPAA), and there are strict laws around what can and can not be shared (anything considered protected health information, or PHI, is protected).  I spent the better part of a year building an information security program around this kind of data for a medicare contractor.  There are very detailed laws around it, and environments where this is stored are under fairly high scrutiny from the government. Having said all that – your data is still handled by numerous people as it works it’s way through the system.  All of these people are subject to seeing your data – in a ’secure’ fashion – while doing their jobs.

Sadly, in the information age – where vast amounts of our personal data are increasingly finding their way into networked databases – our privacy is dwindling, even if we do not perceive this to be the case. We won’t realize our privacy is gone until well after the last of our privacy disappears.

This Saturday Ann and I spent the majority of the day being completely and utterly lazy.  We watched some TV (finishing off Leverage season 1) and lounged around the house.  Late saturday afternoon, however, we got cleaned up and went down to our friends house in Greenwood.  These same friends were the awesome photographers who shot our wedding.

We had a wonderful time hanging out with friends  - they are currently on a very short list of “married friends” – grilling ribs, drinking beer, and enjoying a gorgeous saturday evening.

After dinner we went out to the fire pit in their back yard to burn some excess wood that they had laying around their garage – which gave me  and John (his name is John too) an excuse to get out our cameras and do some photography (always fun!).  I’ve really been on a photography kick recently – wanting to grab my camera and just shoot anything and everything.   I’m not so much concerned about getting lots of great photographs as I am just getting photographs.   I experiment, try new things and see what works and what doesn’t.  I shoot digital and have a large storage capacity in my camera, so I can afford to experiment.   Eventually I will dial it down and start shooting more conservatively – focusing not so much on getting lots of pictures – of which one or two are really great.  Instead I’ll focus on taking few pictures, but having ALL of them (or close to it) turn out great.   That’s what I aspire to,  and that’s what I tend to call a good (or great, awesome, stupendous, amazing, incredible) photographer.   For now, I’m still an amateur.   I’m OK with that.

While we did that Ann played with their daughter Molly – a 45 minute game of tag combined with swinging on a swing set and generally being silly.  I could tell Ann was having a blast, as she seemed to have a big grin plastered to her face the whole evening.   She loves kids, and consequently is great with them.   Molly seems to really enjoy playing with Ann too and I got several pictures of the two of them goofing off.  It made me look forward to when we have kids of our own, knowing that I’ll get to see that kind of joy – and get to photograph it – as they grow up.

We also played with their dog – a beautiful German Shepherd named Rain – for a while.   That might just be one of the most hyper dogs I’ve ever seen.  She got super-excited by a group of ducks that she took of running after them – running right through the invisible fence that kept her in the yard.  She took that opportunity to run around the pond adjacent to their house, prompting John and Molly to go chasing after her.   Eventually they herded her back towards their house and I crouched down and called her over as she approached.  Much to my surprise – rather than running from me she came right up to me to be petted.  It *almost* made me want to get a dog.  Ann really wants one, and I don’t.   I don’t think we’ve got enough space, nor do we have enough time, to really take care of one.

Rain was tired afterwards and laid down to rest – giving me a great opportunity to snap some pictures.  I’d not taken pictures of dogs before,  mainly because we don’t have any.   I’ve done cats plenty of time, and they rarely give me the opportunity to frame a good shot.  Rain, however, seemed perfectly content to lay there as I took pictures – allowing me to get a few good ones that I really liked.   I’ll admit, it was a nice change over shooting Cats.

Once the sun started going down the mosquitos came out en-force.  Ann was tired after running around with Molly, and John and I had taken all the photos we were going to.   The fire had wound down as well, so we decided to head back in the house where John and I played Nazi Zombies (part of COD World at War) and Ann pretended to study (but instead watched us play.   This also got her to say that she really wanted an XBox).   And so the rest of the night went,   a mixture of rounds of Nazi Zombies and hanging out, snacking and talking.  It was an awesome time hanging out with friends, and something we certainly don’t get to do often enough.

Now, I look forward to the week ahead and all of the exciting things that are part of it.  Tuesday night brings the Cloud Computing group meeting at BlueLock, which I’ll be attending for the first time.   Thursday brings a much needed back massage and dinner / hanging out with my good friend Jason.   Add to the week my first batch of Chili this season,  probably grilling several times, and spending time with my best friend (who is also my wife), and I’ve certainly got a lot to look forward to.

To see more photos from that night, check out the Flickr set I created for them.

Some nights, though,  we eschew the normal routine and do something a little different – and tonight was one of those nights.  While trying to decide what to make for dinner (rifling through our pantry trying to figure out what we even HAD to make), Ann made an offhanded comment about our neighbors bbq-ing. That in turn made me want to grill,  so we decided to go to the store and get some hamburgers to grill (and pick up a few other things we needed anyway).  So – off to the store we went.

When we came back, after putting away the groceries, I went outside to fire up the grill.   Ann followed me out,  school book in hand, to study outside on the deck while I grilled.   After starting the grill – I went and grabbed my camera to do some photography in the backyard.

And so it went – Ann intently studying on the deck while I wandered around the back yard taking photographs of anything and everything I could think of.   I used a short wide-angle lens to do nearly every shot I took – trying to get used to shooting in that format in preparation for a new lens I’m getting soon (a 10-20mm super wide angle).  I have to say I enjoy it a lot more than I thought I might.

I took some shots of plants,  of Ann,  of the grill and my yard in general.   For the first time in a few months I really enjoyed the photographic process and it has made me want to shoot more, and try new things again.   I also thoroughly enjoyed spending time in close proximity to Ann and grilling burgers for dinner.   I’m pretty happy with the photos I managed to snap as well – and look forward to doing more and improving as I do.

After dinner we did go our separate ways – Ann to her office and me to mine, though Ann did get some poking and prodding with her instruments in as well.   I think I’ve had my ears, eyes and nose checked more in the past few weeks than in the previous 27 years I’ve been on this planet.   I don’t mind, though – at least I know I’m healthy.

I also found out through a friend at work, a fellow photographer, about a photography club here in Indianapolis that meets weekly.  I’m considering checking this out as I want to a.) meet new photographers and b.) enhance my own skills and experience.  Photography comes in as my third favorite thing in life (behind Ann and computers, in that order).  I think it’s time I gave it a little more attention and nurture my fledgling skills.

For those wondering – all of the images in this post were taken this evening while out goofing off with Ann.   I posted a few more than these on my flickr page (linked to the right), if you’re interested in seeing more.

Some companies strike a compromise – seeking to implement and maintain a secure environment, without necessarily breaking the bank doing so.   They implement policies and procedures that offer a fair degree of safety and security,  but also give the business the flexibility to achieve it’s business objectives.   The smart companies know that no system is every truly fully secure – or else nothing would get done.  The real key is to have a comprehensive, yet sane, global information security program.   The focus should be on maintaining a constant level of security appropriate to the environment through a series of security controls.  This should include an incident response plan that details who the players are in any security incident response scenario,   and clearly defines what their roles and responsibilities are.

One aspect of information security that I’d like to focus on is event monitoring and correlation.  The key here is to monitor the environment, know what’s going on, and be capable of reacting to security incidents fast and decisively.   Whether done in-house, or probably more cost effective, contracted as a managed service,  security monitoring and event correlation is a huge help in knowing what’s going on inside your network.   I’m amazed at how many companies I’ve seen that don’t have basic monitoring inside their organizations.  These companies (and colleges and universities) are operating blind.   They have no visibility into the goings-ons inside their own networks, and as a result are often completely clueless as to the threats running rampant there.

In college I noticed that there didn’t seem to be any way to know what was going on with the campus network.    Viruses ran rampant (blaster, anybody?) and nobody would know until the network would slow to a crawl.  I was able to solve the problem for them with a passive detection tool – a virtual honeynet.   We went from not knowing to knowing within seconds of an infected machine being brought onto the network,   and were able to respond appropriately.

Just having the detection systems in place is not enough, though.   For every company that doesn’t have any detection at all I’ve seen at least one more that had it, but didn’t monitor it unless something happened that caused them to look.   That’s worse than useless!   If you’re going to invest time and energy into getting a detection system, you need to ensure it’s monitored (constantly,   just because it’s not business hours doesn’t mean someone’s not trying to break in) – either in house or by a managed security services provider.

Obviously I’m glossing over a lot here.  I’m not attempting to write an in-depth discussion of information security as a whole.   I did, however, want to point out an area of infosec that I’ve personally experienced as offering a significant benefit,   yet seen lacking in many organizations.

This past weekend, along with Labor Day on monday, provided such an opportunity for me.  I spent time with family and Ann,  played some World of Warcraft, and got a few things done I had wanted to for a while.   The top thing on that list was cleaning my home office.   I spend such a vast amount of time in there working, reading, and playing that it’s distracting when it becomes cluttered and messy.   As much as I am not one known for being neat and tidy all the time,   I really do get a sense of calm and accomplishment when things are clean and orderly.

My home office is my sanctuary,  and also a haven of my complete geekery.   Primarily it consists of a custom built desk that my friend Nic helped me put together almost a year ago.  The desk was constructed using two old cabinets that used to be in my Dad’s home office, with 3/4″ plywood screwed down on top of them to act as a base and reinforcement for a 10 foot long section of countertop I bought at Menards for $50.   I replaced the hardware on the drawers and cabinet doors for about $20.  I then screwed an old wiring basket (leftover from the Proxito days) onto the bottom of the desk towards the back to help keep wires off the floor.  It needs a little re-working now, but has proven to be quite helpful.

The right hand cabinet houses my networking equipment (DSL Modem,  managed gigabit switch) and the stereo receiver my computers use.  I used a drill and saw to cut out part of the back panel in the cabinet to allow wiring to be run.  I am investigating what it would take to install some fans (120mm or 80mm cabinet fans – quiet ones) to give some added ventilation as it CAN get warm in there.

The left hand cabinet provides additional storage, as well as a filing cabinet – all hidden conveniently out of the way.  Directly over the left hand cabinet is a book shelf, also having come from my Dad’s old home office.   The only addition to the bookshelf itself is a set of 4 LED lights hidden into the top shelf area for some extra illumination at night.

My desk is completed by a custom built quad-core workstation that dual boots the latest version of Ubuntu and a RC of Windows 7.  Featuring dual 22″ widescreen LCD’s on articulating arms – this is where I do a lot of my work, and all of my gaming, at home.    Sitting right next to my primary workstation is my 24″ iMac which is used for photo editing and other odds and ends.  I’ve got Aperture 2 and Adobe CS3 loaded on it, and absolutely love that machine.

But really, what home office would be complete without a comfortable place to sit and read, away from the desk and keyboards?  My solution to this is an oversize chair with ottoman (thanks, Jason!).   This is honestly one of my favorite places to sit and read,  and one that is sadly under-utilized.  I am planning on rectifying that, though, and spend more time reading (and less time watching TV and/or playing games).  The chair is almost too comfortable, though, so I have to be weary of reading in it while even remotely sleepy or an unexpected nap will most certainly ensue.  Ann’s cat, Chester, can attest to it being comfortable – she naps on it daily.

And there you have it, kids, my home office in all it’s clean and functional glory!

We are a nation where obesity is an ever present and growing problem (no pun intended). And why shouldn’t we be? Fast food restaurants are everywhere, and often offer low cost (and low nutrition) meals that “taste great” and cost little money. But fast food isn’t the only problem, and certainly aren’t the worst offenders. Chain restaurants like Applebee’s, TGI Friday’s, Chili’s and more all are serving up disgusting amounts of calories per meal.

An article in Time describes some efforts by the government (federal) to force these restaurants to display calorie information beside items on their menu. The idea being that knowing that you’re eating 75% of your recommended daily caloric intake would make you think twice about it. It also throws out some interesting figures – such as the Tripple Whopper with Cheese from Burger King, which has 1,250 calories. That’s over HALF of your daily recommended intake. But, for those of you who would think to yourself “I’ll just go to a sit-down family restaurant, that’s gotta be healthier!” – try out the Quesadilla Burger from Applebee’s – a whopping 1,440 calories (nearly 75% of your daily recommended caloric intake), or the fried macaroni and cheese from the Cheesecake Factory, which comes in at an astounding 1,570 calories (along with a disgusting 69 grams of saturated fat – which Time helpfully points out is more than you should eat in a 3.5 day period). It honestly makes me seriously consider avoiding eating out as much as possible.

You see, I am not immune to this poison we call the restaurant industry today. Working at a technology company in Downtown Indianapolis I found myself going out to lunch pretty much every day. We’d go to places like Le Peeps, Weber Grill, PF Changs, etc. Nearly every single one of the things I would eat at those places were as bad, possibly worse, than those I list above. It’s no surprise that I gained weight ; a lot of weight. I found that eating out so much, my belt got tighter, my waist got bigger and my wallet got slimmer.

This was distressing to me, as a few years back – as those who read this blog semi-regularly may note – I gave up drinking soda, and through the course of doing that also stopped going to fast food restaurants as well. This worked amazingly well for me as I lost a lot of weight and felt much better about myself. Then I got a new job, and started going out to eat lunch on a regular basis. And so began the slowly expanding waist line.

What I’ve started doing (two weeks in and going strong) – is bring my lunch. A sandwich, some crackers of some sort, and a cup of low-fat (or sometimes even fat free) yogurt, accompanied by a 32 oz bottle of water (not bottled water, mind you, a water bottle I refill and carry around with me everywhere) provide me with a tasty lunch that is much healthier and a whole lot cheaper than going out constantly. But, taking my lunch at first made me miss out on the social aspect of going out to lunch. I also noticed that I was often not getting a break during the day as I worked through lunch. To combat that, I’ve taken to going out to lunch with my coworkers when they go (at least once or twice a week), but not ordering anything. I’m there for the company and the conversation. Then, when we get back from lunch I eat mine at my desk while I work on various things. I get the best of both worlds, and nobody has any objections.

The materials to make lunch for a week (or more) end up costing the same as just one or two lunches out…. and you can’t beat that.

On May 30th, a few short weeks ago, I got married to a wonderful, amazing, beautiful woman – Ann. The wedding ceremony was beautiful, and the reception was everything I hoped it could/would be. The ceremony was at Holy Rosary Catholic Church in downtown Indianapolis, and was followed by a reception in the back yard at my parents house. The weather forecast called for rain most of the day, and that morning I prayed for the weather to hold out until AFTER the reception. I believe my exact words were something along the lines of “just please let the rain hold off until after the reception, then you can unleash whatever hell you want to”. Interestingly enough, about 5 minutes after the reception ended the severe weather sirens went off and we spotted a funnel cloud with a tornado starting to come down. It was, thankfully, moving away from us.

Ann and I followed our wedding with a week in Florida, which provided a nice and relaxing start to our marriage. You just can’t beat floating around in a pool, relaxing on the beach, and getting splashed by a 12,000 pound killer whale. We also saw dolphins, both in captivity and in the wild (feeding them in captivity, and having one swim up and past us slowly in the wild, we believe to say hello). We spent several evenings in a pool-side spa drinking wine and watching the sunset. We ate some really great food (including an absolutely amazing peanut butter chocolate truffle pie) and generally had the time of our lives.

Then we came home and opened wedding presents. It was like Christmas. We got a lot of great and amazing stuff. We also had a huge volume of trash from boxes, wrapping paper, etc. I think the trash collectors hate coming to our house now. Ann says he looked especially pissed off this week.

Things are starting to settle down, now, and Ann and I are relaxing into our lives together. I couldn’t be happier than I am now, waking up next to the love of my life every single day.   

Now, you’re probably thinking “so, if you got married on the 30th, and only took a week for the honeymoon, why have you not written anything about it until now?!”

The answer is fairly simple – it’s a matter of time. I’m back to work full time doing information security work for an amazing one to one marketing company. On top of that I’m helping some friends at the Open InfoSec Foundation by performing some contract work at night and in free time.

This coming Saturday I’m getting my feet wet with Motor Sports photography, as I’ve landed some credentials to shoot at the Mid-Ohio grand-am race. We’re leaving at 3am to make it to the track in time to get setup and start shooting when the drivers and cars come out, and the actual race is at 5pm, meaning it’s going to be a VERY long day. It should be fun, though, and having access is always nice.

So, it’s a new year.  2009.  When I was a kid, I used to imagine that somehow by crossing over into a new year things were different.   As though somehow the fact that it was suddenly January 1st meant that some unseen factor had changed, that everything was suddenly different than it used to be.  I know now that nothing really changes, except I now have to start putting 09 instead of 08 when I sign dates.  For the next few weeks anything that has to be dated by me will have a crossed out 08 in front of a hastily written 09, and THAT is really all that has changed. 

I’m actually having a very good day today.  I got some time to play WoW this morning – a game I’ve fallen in love with for the fiftybillionth time, and play whenever I get the chance.   Afterwards I had lunch with Ann before we went to pick out the tuxes for the wedding.   Nothing real fancy there, though I’m sure I’ll look nice (along with all the guys who will be there to help me celebrate). 

We also got paint, which Ann used to paint the upstairs hallway while I worked on re-doing the wiring for my workstation in my home office.  I turned a horrible mess of wires that were visible into a horrible mess of wires that nobody could see.  That’s an improvement, I suppose.   

Those of you who read my super-secret personal blog know that when I went on my trip to the west coast back in November I bought a ridiculously expensive pen,  as well as a hand-stitched leather journal.  I am happy to report that I am thoroughly enjoying both.  I have a much greater sense of freedom about what I write when it’s in a journal that is just for me.  I can let out my feelings and thoughts in a raw, unfiltered fashion. While I *can* do that here, it’s probably not a good idea for me to do so.  Besides, there’s just something fun about writing in a journal with a fountain pen….. Bob Leeds (that pen guy from California) was right… fountain pens are better. 

I am extremely happy with my home office.   It’s not large, but I don’t need it to be.   My desk *is* large, though.   It’s 10 feet wide and is everything I had hoped it could be. It’s still not 100% finished,  but is very VERY close, and that’s exciting.   All in all the office is everything I had hoped and envisioned and then some – I don’t think I could make it any better if I tried. Of course,  any suggestions from fellow geeks are welcome. 

That’s all for now – I’ll try to write something witty and humorous soon.   I make no promises.