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I’m hanging out in Nacogdoches right now. I’ve been here for the past four or five days, and all in all I have had a relaxing and extremely fun time with most of the usual suspects and a handful of unusual suspects. Coming back to this town and milling around is a necessary recharge of my mental and spiritual batteries, and I think the idea of tackling on a new year with a renewed vigor would be near impossible if I couldn’t come back here. I think everyone who comes here over the holidays know that moments like this will only become more rare as time goes by, so we always make the best of it and it become a big love fest around here. Great times. I actually took ZERO pictures this time around, which is an indicator of the fact that I’ve been having too good of a time to think about taking pictures.

The combined Christmas and New Year’s break went very well this year. Christmas with the family was particularly good as we actually had a lot to do and everyone and everything got along without a hitch. Everybody had an idea of what should be in the Christmas dinner, so we compromised and put everything in the Christmas dinner. It was way too much to eat but easily the best holiday/family dinner we’ve had in some time. By some sort of default, I ended up manning the gas barbecue grill too cook about half of the dinner, and the Christmas miracle was everything came out (eh, well, chicken was a little pink near the bone…)

It’ll be difficult for me to go back to the grindstone at work tomorrow. We’re supposed to be hitting the ground running, and my co-workers are getting a day’s head start on me as I type this. I’ll be heading back to Austin sometime today.

My year can be summarized by a lot of the usual things: went through some interesting things, faced some interesting challenges, a lot of sucked, but a lot of good times were there as well, and all in all I learned a lot and came out, I hope, a better and wiser person. I’m hoping for more of the same in the new year.

Coming up soon: favorite albums of 2007.

Hey guys. Having a few issues with my router, so that’s why the server hasn’t been accessible. Which was okay, anyways, because I took the opportunity to upgrade the OS.

So after big Joe go married a few weekends ago, it seems that I finally feel free of outside obligations to go anywhere or do anything and finally getting some of my own personal stuff out of the way. I’ve been slowly cleaning the apartment up removing clutter, but the most exciting thing to happen to me as of recently is the purchase of a new mattress.

It’s an indicator of how wholly unexciting my life really is, but this new mattress is a big deal to me because it means I’m finally getting some decent sleep in…ever, really. I don’t think I’ve ever had a good mattress to sleep on in a regular basis, and I do mean that in the sense that just about every mattress I’ve had until now was of sub-par quality. Growing up I slept an old and worn out mattress. In college I slept on crappy value mattresses that were either part of the rental or were free throw-aways from other college dorms. When I moved out on my own, my parents gave me a full size that they themselves had 10 plus years to wear out. So now I have a brand new queen size quality mattress with a pillow top, and I’ve only had it since Tuesday, but I’m pretty sure I’ve already been sleeping better and waking up feeling better. I’m hoping that this will also put an end to the hours of lying awake at night and even the occasional sleepless night that I’ve been having for several years now.

Without going into too much detail, things at work have been pretty good as well. Our team at Cisco is growing rapidly and we have changed up our development process, and overall I think it’s greatly benefitting us. We’re due to move into some new office space at the end of the month, and I think we’re at the cusp of some exciting things. We were also told that our product has finally pulled in a pretty good amount of revenue for the company this quarter, which is sort of a first for us, so it’s helped renewed my optimism for what we’re doing. What has also been nice is that a few of our new hires are just-out-of-college guys with a solid sense of geek pride, so I’ve been enjoying finally having some people on the team that I can truly think of as my peers.

As usual, and like everybody else, I’m still trying to get the rest of my stuff in order though.

Hopefully, you’ll hear some more things from me soon.

I’m back, and I’m REALLY tired. Nap time. I’ll write an update later.

I’m going to be in Nacogdoches late-ish Wednesday evening until Saturday morning, from which I will be going to Houston and sticking around until late Sunday or early Monday depending on how I feel. If you want to see me in that time, contact me any way you know how.

Oct. 2, 2007. I’m finally going to see Genesis live.

…

In Chicago.

Tom, this means I’m finally coming to visit you in St. Louis.