Dear website designers of the world:

STOP RE-SIZING MY WINDOW! I like my browser window at the size it’s at. I spent a lot of time finding the window size that best suited me. Who the hell are you to come along and make it full screen? Or half screen? Or whatever other size you want it to be? Knock it off. It’s not cool and all it does is make me never visit your site again.

Thanks.

7 years. A lot can happen in a person’s life in 7 years. That’s all of high school and most of college. Can you remember how much happened to you during those years? How much you changed, how many friends you made, lost, shared great times with? It seems like a long time.

7 years is how long I’ve been married to Alison as of today. It hasn’t always been great. Of course it hasn’t always been great. Can you think of anyone who you’ve been around consistently for 7 years where everything has ALWAYS been great? But there are moments that are SO great, so perfect, that they make up for that. There’s always an underlying current of trust and support and love that no matter what is on the surface, I always know that our bond is strong. It’s really amazing.

She’s really amazing. I don’t know what I’d do without her. No matter anything I might say, I need her. I love her, and I’m proud and honored to have spent these past 7 years as her husband. I’m looking forward to the next 7, and the next 7 after that, and after that, and after that……

I guess I normally assume that everyone reading this is one of my friends off-line as well as on-line, and therefore I can say certain things without explanation. However, in deference to those of you who might not already know all of these things, allow me to provide some basic preamble. The rest of you can skip ahead a paragraph.

I love movies. For some time now, I’ve talked about having a movie theater in my house. My wife, daughter and I are moving into a new house soon, and I have been talking about building a dedicated theater room into the basement. I’ve been talking about it a lot. Many people are probably very tired of hearing about it. It’s going to be expensive, though. I’ve recently confirmed a bunch of jobs that would allow me to build this theater.

So, I’ve been having some guilt issues lately. I’ve been thinking, “I should probably spend this money on something else.” The thing is, there are plenty of other things I should probably be doing with the money. I need to buy a cargo van for the business. The money that I would spend on the theater would go a long way towards that. Or, I could put the money aside into savings, because with my irregular financial situation, I could end up needing it. Granted, even if I spend this money, there will be at least as much as I’m spending left over from the jobs that are going to provide this money to begin with. Still, I feel guilty because it seems like it would be frivolous to spend this money on something that, really, I don’t actually need.

Then there’s the other side of the coin. I’ve become obsessed with the idea of having this. I haven’t bothered watching many movies at home recently because it seems silly to watch them on such a small screen with a small sound system when I could, within a matter of months, be watching them in a dedicated room on a large screen with an awesome sound system. I LOVE movies. I love home theater. This isn’t something that I would build/buy and then never use. I would probably use it nearly every day.

So, given that…is it wrong to spend the money? I’m not really sure, but the question has come into my mind recently, and that makes things more difficult.

I think it says a lot about our country that a fantastic movie like Cinderella Man has such a poor turnout that AMC Theaters feels it necessary to offer refunds to anyone who did not like the movie, just to get people to come out to see it, while a total piece of crap like War of the Worlds ends up being the number one movie at the box office.