Hi, folks.  I know I usually write a long post about this every year, so I won’t (for now).  Just please, go here, click on one of the hospitals, and buy a game or a book or a toy.  It all goes to the hospitals to help sick children.  It’s not like you’re just giving money to an organization and you don’t know what they’re going to do with it.  You’re buying the item and it’s going directly to the hospital where it will then give sick children some joy.  This is the only charity I support and I do my best to donate to it and support it every year.  Please take a minute and go to the site.  Even if you just donate a book or a package of batteries (yes, they’re on the list), those are things that these hospitals need.

Okay, I’m done.  I’m counting on all of you.

Y’all know I’m not exactly a huge sports fan, but if there’s any sport I don’t mind watching on TV, it’s football.  You also know that I come from a lineage of schools with losing football teams.  I went to Hightstown High School, and I don’t recall if they ever won a game.  And then I went to Rutgers shortly after they joined the Big East, and well, they sucked.  So I wasn’t exactly following the team or anything, because, well, I don’t follow sports, and they were a losing team, anyway.  I still have a bit of school pride, though, and for those of you who don’t follow sports at all, I must call your attention to the fact that the Scarlet Knights just beat #3 Lousiville tonight.  This makes them 9-0 for the season.  That’s…..that’s insane.  Rutgers?  Really?  Well, maybe I’m just jumping on the bandwagon, but that gives me a bit of pride in my old school.

I really hate “Yosh” Tanagawa.

Y’know, I kinda like paying bills.  I mean, I love that feeling, when I’m done, of being free of a financial burden.

I just wish I didn’t have to do it so often….

Being a fan of U2 as well as a fan of anything that makes fun of George W. Bush, I found this to be rather clever.  Someone took clips from numerous speeches and edited them together so that our president is singing U2′s Sunday Bloody Sunday.  Go look.

Check this one out….I was asked to write a guest post over on Consumerism Commentary about shopping for home theater equipment.  Keep in mind, I’m a lousy writer and I put that together late at night, so it probably sucks, but go read it anyway.  It’s the first of two parts.

Many of you may be aware of the saga surrounding my business site.  Many of you may just be interested to see it.  Anyway, our new site is finally live.  Go check it out!

I just watched Donnie Darko.  It more than made up for Legally Blonde 2.

I had a dream last night that managed to incorporate a good many of the things going on in my life right now.  It always strikes me as odd when that happens.  The dream went like this….

I got a phone call from Jon Jones, Media Services Manager over at Rider University, saying that he had an opportunity for me to go to Osaka, Japan for a gig.  Basically, I’d be babysitting a generator.  I thought he said that I was supposed to be there for, more or less, a month.  I thought he said something to the effect of I’d be there from the 12th through the 7th, which I took to mean August 12th to September 7th.  While I thought it would be cool to go to Japan for such an easy thing, I figured there was no way I could do it because I couldn’t be gone that long, and besides, Rider already had me doing so much install work that needed to be done before the end of August, how could I possibly be gone for that long?  Then my parents showed up and started saying the same thing about how I couldn’t leave for that long, etc.  So I called Jon to tell him that, and he clarified saying that I had mixed up the dates and that it was actually the 7th to the 12th, or something like that, but that it was basically only about 5 days and not a month.  So I figured, what the heck?  I was still nervous about it, though, because I basicallly know nothing about generators.  But I kept trying to convince myself that it was just a babysitting gig and not much could really go wrong with the generator and that I’d know enough and be able to figure out enough to do it, plus I get a free trip to Japan.  That’s more or less where things ended.

Okay, now let’s break this down a bit.  First, I’ve been doing a TON of work for Rider lately.  I spend a lot of time on the phone with Jon Jones.  Yesterday he called me about a new install in addition to the two I’m already booked for.  I also got an e-mail from him about a possible mistake on an install that I just finished up about a week ago.  So, that explains not only his presence in the dream, but the fact that I screwed up on the dates as well as my stressing over not being able to actually schedule everything I needed to do because there wasn’t enough time.  The generator thing relates to the fact that I’ve been spending way too much time lately researching generators to try to decide if I was going to buy one or rent one for these gigs I have coming up, and my acute awareness of the fact that despite all of my research, I really don’t know anything about generators and I’m just hoping that I’ve made the right decisions about that.

And Japan?  Well, I was playing Civilization last night until around 2:30 and was playing as the Japanese…

Here’s the thing….I just finished watching Legally Blonde 2: Red White & Blonde.  I liked the first movie, so I figured I’d add the second one to my Netflix list.  I knew it looked terrible, which is why I hadn’t seen it in the theaters, but, y’know, that’s what Netflix is for, right?  Well, this movie certainly exceeded my low expectations.  This movie was f’in retarded.  I’m sorry, but it was.  And every time I thought it couldn’t get more retarded, it just got worse.  Don’t get me wrong…I’d still rather sit through this movie than Magnolia.  But dear God in heaven….someone needs to stop these people.