An open letter to Oprah Winfrey:

Dear Oprah,

The world is abuzz over your most recent interview with James Frey, author of "A Million Little Pieces", where you excoriated him for his fabrications and embellishments in his so-called memoir. I have read about your personal stake in this drama, evolving from wide-eyed fan, to duped and shamed cheerleader, arriving finally at the natural habitat for talk show hosts, moral high-grounder. This emotional journey was a rollercoaster for us all.

I must admit, however, that a gnawing fear has been growing inside me as I read of your heroics. What if these recent days have merely whetted your appetite for witch hunting and truthiness slaying? What if you're already lining up another fat target in your holy scope of moral certitude?

What if that fat target is me?

So, call off those attack hounds you call producers and let me come clean, right here, right now. I, Mike "Is That A Blog In Your Pocket Or Are You Just Happy To See Me" Rockefeller, being of sound mind, and sexy sexy blog, do hereby admit to the following fibs in my blog

1) On December 7th, 2004, I did not actually say, "Agreed, that would be an unpleasant thing to insert in my anus."

2) On January 31st, 2005, my nose did not really write my blog entry for me.

3) My middle name is not "Is That A Blog In Your Pocket Or Are You Just Happy To See" me. It's Desiree.

4) In my "100 things about me post", thing #100 said, "If you met me in the real world, you'd think I was slightly annoying and a little rude. You'd be wrong." You'd be right.

5) On May 31st, 2005, I did not really try to see how many of my own knuckles I could gnaw off in an hour. Nor did I try to beat that record.

6) On October 16th, 2005, I did not actually menstruate.

7) My middle name is not Desiree.

8) On September 11th, 2005, I did not slice off my left testicle.

9) On December 6th, 2005, no flaming $100 bills were crapped out of my butt.

10) On January 11th, 2006, I did not think it was sexy when my wife puked.

11) My last name is not Rockefeller.

There. I hope you're happy now, Oprah. The shroud has been lifted and you may now all gawk at me in full frontal blogger nudity. I'm swinging in the wind, baby.

Cheers,
Mike

ps. May I please have a new car?

We had some friends come over tonight with their two kids. As the evening got a little later, all the kids started to get a bit cranky. Soon, due to some typical brother-sister conflict, both of our friends' kids exploded into tears and frustration. The parents realized it was probably time to get the kids to bed, calmed everyone down, and got ready to leave. On their way out, they apologized profusely for their kids' meltdown. The wife and I assured them that it was no big deal.

And it really was no big deal.

I am happy to report that after six and a half years of parenting, the sound of SOMEONE ELSE'S children screaming is reassuring and pleasant. When I hear that sound, I always think the same three thoughts. This happens in airplanes, restaurants, or really any place where kids scream (everywhere). The thoughts appear in this order:

1. Yay! That's not my kid screaming. I should go hug my daughter right now and thank her for not screaming. (Note: I did.)
2. Phew! Our peers also have kids that go ballistic at times. These people seem like good parents and their kids explode too. Perhaps I am not the very worst father on the planet.
3. Awwww. Poor kids/parents.

So, it appears that my first instinct is selfishness, followed closely by self reassurance, and then pulling up the rear is sympathy, the caboose of my emotional train.

Me me me me me! Someone, get me a blog.

It's a gloomy grey Saturday here in San Francisco. Daisy is baking cookies with a friend, Hank is doing a jigsaw puzzle with a friend, and I'm puttering around. It's borderline quaint around here.

The cookie baking process is pretty amusing. Daisy and her friend like to invent recipes. They've made bread and cake on past occasions, and today's concoction is for marshmalllow cookies. Although the end product is likely to be inedible, the process is darn cute. Two six year old girls semi-covered in cookie dough? All I have to do is add a kitten and I can post that picture here.

Speaking of random stupid links, today's contestant is a phobia clinic. This organization has pages dedicated to fears like Coulrophobia, which is the fear of clowns. They explain that the symptoms of coulrophobia are

shortness of breath, rapid breathing, irregular heartbeat, sweating, nausea, and overall feelings of dread

My favorite part is where they explain the "true cost of living with Coulrophobia".

If you are living with coulrophobia, what is the real cost to your health, your career or school, and to your family life? Avoiding the issue indefinitely would mean resigning yourself to living in fear, missing out on priceless life experiences big and small, living a life that is just a shadow of what it will be when the problem is gone.

For anyone earning a living, the financial toll of this phobia is incalculable. Living with fear means you can never concentrate fully and give your best. Lost opportunities. Poor performance or grades. Promotions that pass you by. coulrophobia will likely cost you tens, even hundreds of thousands of dollars over the course of your lifetime, let alone the cost to your health and quality of life.

Wow, the fear of clowns can cost you hundreds of thousands of dollars! And your health!

That's not the only fear they can solve. Other fears include:

Anthophobia - fear of flowers
Arachibutyrophobia — fear of peanut butter sticking to the roof of the mouth
Asymmetriphobia - fear of asymmetrical things
Aurophoba - fear of gold

Those four are merely the most amusing ones in the "A" section. They have a list of 452 different phobias. For all 452, the list of symptoms is:

shortness of breath, rapid breathing, irregular heartbeat, sweating, nausea, and overall feelings of dread

And for every single one of the 452, the true cost? Yep, hundreds of thousands of dollars. This is bad news for me because I seem to have suddenly developed a case of Phobophobia. Yep, fear of phobias. This explains my sweatiness. Thankfully, they have a cure for that one too.

I think my two current favorite phobias on the list are:

Zemmiphobia - fear of the great mole rat

and

Hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia -.... any guesses?

Nope, not the fear of hippos. Nor the fear of monsters. It is the fear of long words. Although the cost of this fear is incalculable, it comes to roughly hundreds of thousands of dollars.

I've been very frustrated by computers the last few days. They have not been submitting to my will as they are supposed to under the semi-capable hands of a programmamafier such as myself. We hateses them.

Shall I spend this blog post complaining about my inability to get my iTunes tunes to play through my stereo? Should I instead moan and groan about my slow databases at work? Hmmmm, none of those really hit the technological whiny sweet spot.

I think I'll bitch about icons.

Holy crap, I hate icons.

It's not that I hate all pictures. My six year old daughter draws some lovely images, and that Van Gogh fellow wasn't half bad either. But, if you want to communicate with me, if you have a piece of information that you wish to efficiently transmit to my brain, I'll tell you what I've been telling my daughter for years, "USE YOUR WORDS!".

I realize that there are many ways to communicate. A picture is worth a thousand words, there is interpretive dance, and on occasion I've been known to speak the language of love, but if you are a computer, and you want to allow me to reload a web page, why would you use a picture of two arrows pointing at each other? Those two arrows are now the universal computer icon for Reload or Refresh and to me it just looks like a Chase Your Own Tail button. Crap, they should just go ahead and use interpretive dance instead. Maybe the button could be labeled with a video of people dancing in a very refreshing manner, perhaps splashing under a tropical waterfall. Now that's a damn Refresh button!

I have a similar issue with the Back button in browsers. They're always big arrows pointing to the left. I understand in theory that this is because in English one reads from left to right, but to me it just looks like the browser is gesturing mysteriously at something invisible on the left of my monitor. Tell me, Lassie, what's over there? Did Timmy fall down the well over on the left? Hmmmm? Use your words, Lassie!

I have no idea what's really over there, but apparently I was just looking at it a minute ago. I would replace this icon with a picture of someone's back, or maybe a video of people dancing backwards.

Note that these two examples are probably the only icons that I actually do click on. All the other ones in my non-Browser programs are a great mystery to me. It's like trying to read Chinese. What happens if I press that button at the top of this Text program that looks like some squiggles and arrows? Is it what I click when I want to save my file or is it for ordering Broccoli Beef? How about the one next to it with a big "M" on it. Moo shoo pork?

Clearly my inability to understand icons is a sign that I'm now too old to use computers. My father has similar issues with the mouse. "I'll use a mouse when I grow a prehensile tail!" he has complained on many an occasion.

Perhaps the conclusion I can draw from this is that curmudgeonry is hereditary.

As we grow older and progress through the various stages of adulthood, we take on new responsibilities. Often this takes the form of working a job or being responsible for the care of others. Also, we must mock how young people dress.

This is a time-honored tradition. Each generation must howl with derision or outrage at how the next generation dresses. I'm not much of an outrage guy, so I'm going with derision in this post. Note that I am well aware that this mockery is bi-directional, but given that I still dress like I did in high school, I have decided that I'm immune from such attacks.

First up in the targeting scope are those brands of pants that have the brand name written squarely across the ass. Specifically, I speak of Juicy Couture.

Folks, maybe it's just that I'm more of a breast man than an ass man, but I am unable to do anything other than laugh at the word "JUICY" written across someone's butt cheeks. I'm not exactly sure what kind of juice comes out of an ass, but I'm pretty sure it's unappealing. I could see it saying, "ROUND" or "FIRM" or if they have to go with a culinary metaphor, maybe "SWEET" or "MEATY", but any images of the ass as a juice dispenser are met with nothing but derision.

I fully support people's right to advertise the juiciness of their ass, but I think I'll stick to beer and coffee.

Also, I realize that I'm the 10 millionth person to mock this particular fashion trend, but you gentlemen who like to wear your pants around your ankles, you look like clowns. I understand that this look, like the do-rag, is supposed to portray a gangster-like image of toughness, but when you have to hold up your pants to walk, that's not so tough. You walk like toddlers.

If you're going to hinder your mobility like that, you had better be armed to the freakin' teeth, because I could push you over and then make a very leisurely getaway.

Tomorrow I'll complain about my dentures or perhaps lament the early demise of the punch card.

Daisy and I had an hour to kill this morning so she suggested that we do a science experiment out of her activity book. I quietly thanked no one in particular for giving me a nerd-friendly child and agreed. Daisy then picked out a page and thrust it at me. I read the list of required materials:

• A glass bottle
• Paper
• Matches
• A peeled hard boiled egg

(Note: Daisy is very allergic to eggs. We have been instructed by her pediatrician that if she consumes eggs, we are to instantly stab her with a shot of epinephrine and then immediately drive her to the emergency room.)

Ok, so that list includes fire, glass, and a seriously major allergen for my daughter. Super. If you replaced "Paper" with "A child molester" it would be the perfect quadfecta of child danger. I thoughtfully considered this activity and realized that the alternative could very well be a game of "Daddy, I'll pretend to be the baby mouse and you'll be the mommy mouse!"

I found an empty wine bottle, a lighter, a few eggs, and a newspaper. Experiment on.

The instructions said to light the paper on fire, drop it into the bottle, and then place the hard-boiled egg on top of the bottle. The idea was that the burning paper would consume the oxygen in the bottle, creating a vacuum, which would then suck the egg down into the bottle. I tried to explain the physics of this to Daisy, but it's not easy to explain the concepts of vacuum and atmospheric pressure to a six year old. Luckily the lecture had a big finish, when I brought it home with "Look, fire!"

I am pleased to report that my daughter can touch eggs without having a reaction. I am displeased to report that this experiment is really hard to perform if the glass bottle in question is long-necked. By the time I got the flaming paper down into the bottle, the fire was extinguished, resulting in a unspectacular yet sooty egg.

We almost nailed it on one of the iterations, but the vacuum merely broke the egg apart, only sucking a piece of it down into the bottle. The instructions failed to mention that burnt egg doesn't smell so good.

Science is hard.

Who wants to hear more about my crappy career decisions? Me either. So in the the-glass-is-.00001%-full vein, here are the best two good things that happened to me today:

1) GMail (that's Google Mail, mom!) finally added a Delete button. All along they've been trying to convince their users to stash unwanted email into a multi-gigabyte archive which could still be searched, so they've been hiding the delete functionality in an awkward drop-down menu. I guess the folks at GMail support got tired of archiving all the complaint emails about the lack of a Delete button because they've finally relented. This will save me a click and mouse-movement every time I want to delete email, which frees up many seconds each day for me. Given that I'm borderline psychotic about efficiency, this is HUGE news.

2) A telemarketer called me. Yay! A tiny of ray of sunshine in my workday, it was.

Me: Hello
Telemarketer: ....
Me: Hellooooo?
TM: Hello
Me: Yes?
TM: Hello?
Me: CAN YOU HEAR ME?
TM: Oh, yes, there you are. Hi, my name is Russell and I'm calling on behalf of the firefighters fund. This call may be recorded for your protection...
Me: My protection?
TM: Yes.
Me: What do I need to be protected from?
TM: Well, any misinformation.
Me: Wouldn't I be better protected from misinformation if I just hung up on you?
TM: No.
Me: So, how exactly is someone listening to my phone call some sort of protection?
TM: Well, to ensure that you are receiving this information in an upright manner.
Me: So, without this person listening in, then I'm at risk from what you might tell me?
TM: Uh...no.
Me: So, how am I being protected then?
TM: Um, it's protection for me to make sure I don't get fired for making a mistake.
Me: Oh, so it's not me that's being protected, it's YOU. I'm feeling very unprotected now.
TM: Well, it's OUR protection.
Me: How am I being protected?
TM: Sir, may I tell you why I've called?
Me: First, apparently, I need some protection. How am I being protected?
TM: ...
Me: Hello?
TM:
Me: Hellooooooo?

Not my best work, but I'm a little rusty.

One of my daily parenting tasks is to help my daughter get ready in the morning. The first part of this is getting her awake enough to get dressed. Sometimes she pops awake right away, and other days it's quite a chore. On the "chore" days, I've been delighted recently to find a secret weapon in the wake-up battle.

For the last few months, wake-up time has loosely coincided with sunrise. When I pull open the curtains in her room, I can see the morning sky beginning to lighten and turn pink. This is useful because my daughter is simply smitten with a colorful sky.

She can be lying in bed, motionless and completely resistent to morning cajoling, but if I see that pink glow in the sky, all I have to do is say, "Daisy! You've GOT to see the colors in the sky NOW!"

She'll summon the strength to drag herself to her feet, shield her blinking eyes from the light with her hands, stagger over to the window, and delicately peek out at the morning sky, peering between a couple of her fingers. "Ooooh!" she'll exclaim, "That's beautiful."

Then, she'll plop back into bed, dive under the covers, and pretend to be asleep again. I'm not so easily fooled though.

I'm so lame.

First, my arms are sore. They're sore from the 5 minutes of climbing I did yesterday. I am not a man. I am a wussy little nancy boy.

Also, the company that I turned down came back to me today with a counter offer. It was pretty good, but still less than I'm making at my current job. The notion of changing jobs for less money was one that I just couldn't stomach, regardless of the potential value of the stock. So, I turned them down. One day, when I'm standing around the virtual watercooler with my other programmer friends, and we're talking about Krugling this and Krugling that, I'll realize what a horrible mistake I have made this week. But then we'll do what programmers do (talk about Battlestar Galactica, reminisce about where we were when the Bubble popped, and play grab-ass), and I'll forget all about the stupid career and financial choices I've made in my life. A little grab-ass goes a long way.

Today was the day of new things.

In the morning, I went to a climbing gym, where my daughter and I practiced our climbing skills. This is totally important if you wake up one morning in the middle of a cliff, or if you are a monkey. Given that my native habitat is in front of the blogspot domain, climbing isn't a core competency for me, but I tried it anyway.

Many thanks to Pablo and.....geez, I need a nickname for my friend X. She's kind of a renaissance woman, so I guess we'll call her Leonarda.

Many thanks to Pablo and Leonarda for inviting Daisy and I to the climbing gym. Daisy was fearless and enthusiastic, happily shimmying to the top of several routes. I, on the other hand, was wary and weak-armed. As it turns out, climbing has little in common with Java programming, but a good time was had by all. Pablo and Leonarda were excellent hosts, teaching us climbing jargon and ensuring our safety. Climb on!

My other new activity occurred this afternoon. I turned down a job offer, sort of. Before I get into that, first let me make an apology.

Pablo, I owe you an apology.

Around mid-December, a job opportunity fell into my lap. A couple friends of mine knew a guy who was starting a new software company. This company needed an experienced Java programmer. They recommended me. So, I figured I'd at least go through the motions and see if I was even remotely hire-able.

You see, I suck at interviewing. I'm not sure exactly what I do wrong. Maybe it's that I crack under the pressure of technical questions, or perhaps my surliness leaks out of the folds of my ill-fitting suit. Either way, it's been nearly 20 years since I successfully interviewed for a job.

So, I played this game. I cobbled together a crappy resume, wore my least wrinkled shirt, and made nice-nice with interviewers. Meanwhile, I hid this activity from my coworkers. This felt natural and made total sense for the coworkers that I don't socialize with, but it felt horrible for the coworkers who are my friends. Ultimately I decided that I didn't want coworker X to have to keep secrets from coworker Y, so I chose not to burden Pablo (or Bubba, who doesn't read this blog) with my little secret.

So, Pablo, I'm apologizing for sitting next to you in a car for 10 hours last week and not mentioning this. I did it because it seemed more polite than asking you to keep my secret. And now, what's a better and more personal way to apologize than to a made-up name in a semi-anonymous blog? Sorry, man.

Anyway, everything came to an unexciting climax today when I discussed salary with the prospective employees. This new company was hoping to pay me about 20% less than I'm making now in my current job. Plus, they'd want me to commute 30 miles to their office about 2 or 3 times a week. Also, they're much less fun than Pablo and Bubba. So, we agreed that they have a great potential business, and that I'm overpaid, and that we'd go our separate ways.

I guess it's good being overpaid, because theoretically I'm making more money than I deserve. On the other hand, it kind of sucks knowing that only foolish employers will be interested in paying me more money than I'm currently making, because I'm not sure how I'll retire, pay for Daisy's college, or support my relatives in their old age, but I did get to turn down this job offer, which was comforting.

I fear change.

After five days of class, I learned something very important. I learned that commuting sucks the big wazoo.

I've mentioned before that I work from home. When my current employer purchased the startup I was working for, part of the deal was that we would get to work from home rather than going into the soul-sucking office. (I'm not kidding about the soul-sucking. Dementors lurk. (Gack, my first Harry Potter reference in this blog. Next up? Care Bears.))

Anyway, so because the class was in the office, which is in the heart of Silicon valley, I commuted all five days this week. The trip took an hour each way. That's 10 hours of my life that I'll never get back unless I finally put together that damn time machine. I keep meaning to get to that, but it takes sooooo long, and it's hard to justify spending all that time. So, those 10 hours are just gone.

Meanwhile, other work-related projects were heating up, my boss quit, and my wife was sick . This all made for a bizarre and taxing week.

I'm bummed that my boss quit. Our team at work is pretty close-knit. We all worked together at a startup for years before we were purchased by Internet Corporation X. Our boss did a great job of shielding us from the politics of upper management, while still protecting us admirably. After about 5 rounds of layoffs, our team was one of the only ones to remain unscathed. Plus, our boss had a very healthy respect for work-life balance. It was easy to explain that you needed to take a day of vacation because of a sick kid, or a hangover.

He's the second guy to quit our team in the last 2 months. I'll miss him too.

Class was pretty good. Although I hope to never eat off of the lunch truck again, it was nice to learn something new. It had been about a dozen years since an employer sent me to some sort of class. I'm sure I'll forget it all before I get a chance to utilize my knowledge, but at least I knew it at one time. That counts for something, right?

Dear Penthouse Forum,

I never thought anything like this would happen to me. All these years I had thought that the letters in Penthouse Forum were just made up, but then it finally happened.

On Monday night, the wife and I went to bed as usual. I had no idea it would end up being such a crazy night!

After sleeping for about 3 hours, my wife started moaning and groaning. Oh baby! It had been a long time (never) since she had woken me up in the middle of the night for some lovin'. "Hey, I still got it!" I thought to myself. I wondered if she had been turned on by my massive biceps or my rock-hard abs. As I contemplated this daily puzzle, my wife shrieked unintelligibly and began to babble about the room spinning.

Bingo! Role playing time!

I performed a quick set of Kegel exercises and immediately adopted my Naughty Nurse persona. My wife pretended to be extremely dizzy and clutched me in mock fear.

"The room is spinning! I can't stand it! Oh, god! MIKE! What's going on?!?! I think I'm going to puke!" she purred.

Sexy! I jumped out of bed, only pausing briefly to flex my gluts, and ran to get some sort of puke bucket, a very naughy puke bucket. I returned quickly, relieved to find her moaning and quite obviously still very much in the mood.

"Ohhhhh! I can't take this! I'm gonna puke! Help me to the bathroom!!" she begged.

That sounded hot. It had been a long time since we had had bathroom sex. I tried to stay in character and refrained from groping her as I led her to the toilet. The Naughty Nurse is VERY good at his job.

The wife collapsed onto the bathroom floor and rubbed the toilet suggestively. She moaned sweet nothings like, "Why is this happening?!?!" and "I think I have a brain tumor!!", and then she teased me for a very long time. I finally began to understand the rules of this sex game. This was the kinkiest game we had played yet. Apparently the goal wasn't orgasm, or traditional Western Capitalistic intimacy, but rather to puke, sexy sexy puke. My role was to help her.

So, we waited quite a while Much longer than sex normally takes. I urged her to stick her finger down her throat (hot!) and tried to think of nauseating things to say. Nothing worked. She had horrible nausea, but just wasn't able to take it all the way and achieve a satisfying puke. Then, something happened.

Some folks would say it was the chili I had for dinner. Others would credit the burrito from the lunch truck, but I say it was love, true love in its purest form. When the hour was darkest, and my wife was in her greatest need, I came through with a particularly fragrant fart.

"Sorry," I offered.

She crinkled her nose and suddenly gagged. Within seconds, she was hurling. Ahhh, sweet satisfaction. The wife enjoyed several rounds of this satisfaction and felt much better afterwards. I had performed my manly duties.

She cleaned up a bit and then returned to bed with me. Unfortunately this was one of those nights when she was insatiable, so we returned to the bathroom. She claimed that she was too dizzy to walk by herself, but I knew she just wanted more of my bathroom lovin'. She needed more inspiration to achieve vomitgasm, but this time I was impotent.

I had shot my wad. I was spent. My sphincter was done for the night and I was gas free. My wife begged for more of my sweet flatulent action, but I was unable to perform and ashamed of it. So, like any good man, I turned to tools. Being a programmer, I grabbed the nearest laptop.

I searched wide across the Internet for the vilest, most disgusting, most nauseating images I could find. Although I was unable to find the always reliable goatse site, Google came through with an impressive array of images of people in mid-puke. I gathered a set of the most gag-reflex-inducing ones, and shared them with my wife.

They helped a little, but she was out of vomit herself. Despite still wanting to go on, and still being tremendously nauseated, she was done puking for the night. I kept her company the rest of the night. It was still super sexy.

And that, Penthouse Forum, is my story.

(Note 1: There seems to be some weird bug going around. We know two other people in San Francisco who also became afflicted with vertigo (sexy vertigo) and nausea the last couple days. Weird.)

(Note 2: I swear I read a story somewhat similar to this in somebody's blog a few weeks ago. A guy had written about how he ALMOST made his wife puke by farting. Hah! I am so much better of a husband than you!)

This week has exploded into busyification. Please stand by. This is not a test.

I'm going to be in class next week!

Yes, that's right. Five days from now, I am going to be SMARTER. By Friday, you'll probably be having this conversation with your friends:

You: Hey, isn't that...uh...whatshisface?
Friend: Huh?
You: That guy. He reminds me of that other guy, but different
Friend: I don't know why I'm friends with you.
You: You know! That guy with the blog! Mark, I think his name was. He was prepared to throw up at any time.
Friend: Oh, god. I can't believe you read him. Maybe you could do something more productive with your free time, like club baby harp seals, or crack.
You: I know. Anyway, that guy looks like him, but different somehow.
Friend: Uh huh.
You: Somehow....he looks...SMARTER!

Yes! Thank you! I'll be spending my work hours taking a class in CENSORED FOR YOUR PLEASURE, which will teach me the technical details of how to ALSO CENSORED FOR YOUR PLEASURE. I think we can all agree this will be quite interesting.

On a completely unrelated note, I've been enjoying having this conversation with my daughter.

Me: Well, today's the day. We're going to the Dad Farm. You ready?
Daisy: Yup! Let's go.
Me: All set to pick yourself a new dad?
Daisy: You bet!
Me: Ahhh, all those plump, ripe daddies, hanging from the trees, just ready to be plucked! What kind are you going to get.
Daisy: I'm not sure....
Me: Funny? Tall? Fat? Nice? Blue?
Daisy: Oh, definitely nice.
Me: And....funny?
Daisy: No.
Me: What? Not funny? You don't want a funny dad?!?!
Daisy: Oh...ok. A LITTLE funny.
Me: That's my girl.

I think it's always important to know your outs. This applies to many areas of life:

• Driving: When I'm in someone's blindspot and they're acting a little jiggy, I'll look around to see if there's an escape route, like other lanes or a shoulder
• Poker: It's extremely useful for me to calculate how many cards are left that will probably give me the winning hand. If I weren't all boozed up when I played, this would be even more useful.
• Career: What will I do if I get laid off? Or if I get assigned to the Computerized Runtime Application Processor?
  

Now that my 40's are are looming, and I'm coming in contact with more and more relatives who are suffering various old-age maladies, I'm wondering what my outs are for old-age. I hope that I live a long, healthy, and happy life, but that crap has a way of not working out. Bodies give out beneath us and brains seem to have an unpleasant way of rotting in our very skulls. So, how do I escape an unpleasant descent into old age?

Sure, there's healthy living and keeping mentally sharp blah blah blah, but all that seems like a lot of effort for an end-result that ain't guaranteed. I want easy answers. Traditionally, I've assumed that my only option was:

• Death!

This one is actually pretty appealing. Although I've never even come close to committing suicide, I've always found the notion comforting. There's a reason why my personal motto is, "I am prepared to give up at any time." Just having that out, and knowing that I can escape virtually any situation, has always enabled me to think rationally and find other less-drastic ways to avoid extreme unpleasantness. Old age, however, appears to be trickier to deny.

Until now!

After reading my one zillionth science fiction book, I have concluded that I will escape a frail and demented old age by....getting uploaded!

Between the ever-increasing storage and power of networked computers, Google's mysterious moves in the areas of "dark fiber" and my unassailably Pollyanna-like view of technology, I am convinced, CONVINCED, that someone (hello Larry and Sergey!) will figure out a way for us to upload our brains into some gigantic computer.

I can't wait!

No more jogging to keep fit! No more eating vegetables! They'll use my body as a battery to help fuel a computer big enough for us all! We'll spend our days discussing the minutia of zeroes and ones, flying through file systems portrayed as city-scapes and racing virtual motorcycles!

I am serious, people. This is going to happen and I am going to be first in line to sign up. The rest of you "meat" animals can wallow in your analog and dirt playgrounds.

Oh, and, happy Friday!

My daughter has been home sick the last couple days. Today my wife went off to work, leaving me and Uncle TV to watch over Daisy. I'll admit that Uncle TV has been doing most of the heavy lifting, since I'm actually trying to get some work done.

Daisy is actually feeling much better today. Her fever is down to 98.6, and her sass is up to 100%. I could sense a return to normalcy when she started hounding me in the kitchen about a small hole in my jeans, in the derriere area (say that 5 times fast). Amazingly stupidly, rather than ignoring her taunts, I chose this moment in her development to teach her one of the most important of childhood rhymes:

I see London,
I see France,
I see insert_name_here's underpants!

How long did it take me to regret this? About as long as it took her to start shrieking this rhyme as she danced around the kitchen, or, roughly, -2 seconds. I stood in the middle of this, and contemplated how I could rescue myself from this potty-mouthed poetic predicament. Inspiration struck after a minute or so.

"Daisy!" I exclaimed, "I can see your epidermis!"

Hah! Stopped her right in her tracks, as she nervously pawed at her pajamas.

That'll teach my wife to go to work.

I went to Best Buy tonight to buy a computer headset. I was feeling saucy

Pimply Clerk: Would you like to buy insurance on your headset? It's only $6.00.
Me: Insurance on my $25 headset? No, I think I'll roll the dice on this baby.
Pimply Clerk: (smirking) Are you sure? You could.... (quietly, almost ominously) fall.
Me: Sir, taking risks like this is what makes us feel alive. Life never feels quite so vibrant as when I decline insurance on headsets.
Pimply Clerk: (shaking head) Ok.

And, so, 2006 starts with a bolt! But, what happened to 2005? Let's review briefly.

In the last twelve months I've:

• Written 219 blog posts. That's 4 self-serving ramblings per week!
• Run 989 miles. If I had started here in San Francisco last January, I could have been north of Vancouver (that's in Canada!) by now.
• Retired from marathoning. I can still recall crossing the finishing line in Boston on April 18th of this year and saying, "Goddamn, I'm tired. This sucks. I quit." Some conclusions are only obvious in hindsight. I can't conceive of what hobby would be more stupid than marathoning, but surely someone else has.
• Slept dozens of hours. I haven't actually added up the number of hours I slept this year, but I'm pretty sure it's at least dozens.
• Eaten no caviar. I actually bought an ounce of it for New Year's Eve, because I have visions of becoming a pretentious bastard. I figure it'll go well with my curmudgeonliness. Alas, we never got around to eating it in 2005.
  
• Worked, parented, did chores, cut toenails, blah blah blah.

I think that covers it. So, what was special about 2005? Best or worst?

• Best TV Show? I'm probably going to go with The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, but Arrested Development deserves an Honorable Mention, and the Colbert Report made a strong late showing.
• Best book I read? That's a tough call. I'll say A Deepness In the Sky by Vernor Vinge. I read a ton of sci fi, and that may have been my favorite this year. I reserve the right to change this answer at any time
• Best craft project I heard of? My wife and two of her close friends have undertaken a herculean quilting effort. They've been at it for many months. When I first saw the pattern they were using, I was aghast at its complexity. When they explained that the pattern was merely for ONE SQUARE of the quilt, I couldn't stop laughing. That being said, the top crafting honor easily goes to the Mincemeat Vixen, for her cross stitch pattern pictured in this blog post.
• Worst blog post? Geez, so many worthy choices. I'm going with this one. I reserve the right to change this answer at any time.
  

That pretty well wraps up 2005. What am I hoping for in 2006?

• I haven't made any resolutions yet. They usually take a few weeks or months to ferment.
• I know I need to make tons more money. It has become apparent to me that the wife and I will need to provide financial support for other members of our family. I'm still waiting for those lottery winnings, so in the meantime I might need a Plan B.
• I'd like to be nicer in 2006, but that, unlike the lottery, seems unattainable.

I guess that's it. Welcome to 2006, all!