Finally created my "me" page!

Although I have been on the web for more than a decade, I've never really had a page that was just about me. Until NOW! Mwah-ha-ha-ha! (Okay, so I'm not an evil mastermind, I can still practice the laugh. You never know.)

The All About Vince page is a collection of "inputs and outputs", things I read (or hear or watch) and things I write. At the moment, it's almost entirely composed of Javascript or Flash widgets that pull in me-data from various ports of call on the web. So far I've covered my delicious bookmarks, my Amazon wishlist, and most importantly, thanks to Google's Feed API and their swank FeedControl, all of my blogs.

There's plenty more I want to add, but the page is a Work In Progress (just like me :).

Had a good day

I slept in, got to work late, had a very productive day of coding (with a passing test suite to prove it), and started watching season 2 of The Unit. I'm in a good mood, and it's been a good day. Happens so rarely, I thought I would record it for posterity. Now I'm off to bed. :)

Took some time off

The last few months have run me ragged at work. The result has been a large gap in posts to all my personal web sites, and a burned-out feeling. So last week I finally hit the breaking point and took some vacation, during which I did pretty much nothing but lie around the house. I'd like to say it felt good, but really it was more like just working out a cramp.

I have resolved to live a more balanced life (whatever that means) so as not to drive myself to an early grave. Let's see how long that lasts!

On a side note, a certain evil person has introduced me to sudoku, which I was trying hard to avoid. Now I'm dreaming about little squares filled with numbers. Argh!

Got distracted by my day job

I've had my head so deep into my day job lately that I haven't done much in the way of personal stuff. Last week I added a quick post to Control-Escape about CSS Layouts with YUI Grids. It's not very detailed, but it doesn't really have to be, the documentation provided by Yahoo is plenty good. This week all I managed to do was tweak a couple of links and fix an environment bug that wasn't detecting Windows clients correctly. Just the same, page views look to be up about 20% over last month, and revenues are following. There's a possibility that the site will actually pay for its own hosting this month, an historical first.

I didn't post anything at Media Brothers this week. Mikey took up my slack with a nice review of Band of Brothers. I've got a few ideas floating around, but I can't seem to organize any of them into a coherent article.

Meanwhile, the post office can't seem to keep my Netflix queue turning over. I've been reduced to actually reading things on paper. If I ever finish one, I'll put a review on Media Brothers.

Had a multi-post week

Just couldn't stop myself this past week. I've been pouring content onto Media Brothers. I made a post about the AppleTV that The Steve announced at Macworld Expo. That's been getting some traffic from del.icio.us. Then I wrote a review of Ladyhawke, for no particular reason. Then I finally got inspired to drop a post about network neutrality. And according to FeedBurner, Media Brothers actually has some subscribers now too!

And yet, I still have not had time to write about my cataloging project, nor to write those articles for Control-Escape that I keep putting off. I don't get how so many "bloggers" have time to write ten posts a day. I really don't.

Beat the Market - Sort of

I just did the math on my meager 401k investments to see how I did in 2006. The answer: not bad, and better than 2005 by a lot. My annual return on capital came in at 15.97%, a very respectable return. The Nasdaq 100 gained only 6.93%. The S&P 500 came in at 15.85%, so I just squeaked past it. But the Dow Jones Industrial Average whupped me at 18.91% return.

On the other hand, if you count 401k company matching funds as gains rather than contributions, that would give me a return on investment of 38.75%. Now that's what I call a return! And since contributions are made with pre-tax dollars, only about two-thirds of the investment is mine, the rest is a loan from Uncle Sam. He'll get his in the end, though. He always does.

My play-money portfolio actually dropped a bit this year (Texas Instruments, you big slacker!), but has a 50% return over two years, so I'm not complaining. I figure it picks back up this year.

If only that decimal place were moved to the right a couple of digits, I'd be rolling in money. Oh well. Time compounds all accounts.

Got sore from doing 10 push-ups

Boy, am I ever out of shape. I hate making New Year's Resolutions, but I really need to make the coming year about getting myself healthier. I don't want to live forever, but I don't want to get old before my time, either. Got to lay off the fast food and get off my duff occasionally. I used to love doing Yoga, what happened to that? Haven't done any all year.

Started Documenting the Resurrection

Finally started my series of articles on Resurrecting a Dead Site over at the Webmaster's Journal on Control-Escape, with an article on web analytics. I hope to follow this up with articles on CSS layout, server-side includes, Adsense, and search. Possibly one on blogging, too, but I am hardly an expert at that.

Composed the article while re-watching Xena Warrior Princess - Season Three on DVD. (Have I ever mentioned that all my computers are named for characters from Xena?) I love these languid, low-pressure days in front of my Mac! Alas, tomorrow it is back to work at the day job.

Went to the doctor

Paid another visit to the doctor yesterday, who gave me a stack of meds to try and get rid of this tonsillitis. Gave me this liquid gunk, the dosage is 1/2 teaspoon?! That's 2.5ml. More fluid sticks to the spoon than goes down my gullet. Not sure how that's supposed to help.