10 year anniversary

This month marks the 10-year anniversary of an event that turned out to be more significant then I thought it would be. Sometime during February of 1996 my dad got a new computer and got this new thing called the 'internet'. I was a senior in high school at the time and I thought it was pretty cool but nothing that special and didn't see what all the fuss was about with e-mail and the World Wide Web. E-mail was a cool idea I thought, but why would I use that when I could use the phone. Little did I know that when I became a freshman at Penn State all the sudden I would use e-mail a lot for school and e-mail high school friends and family.
Well, 10 years later I use the Internet a lot to say the least. First off I have this blog. Then I have my regular webpage. I have a webpage just for my pictures. I look at friend’s webpages online. I use the Internet for e-mail. I probably get at least 10 e-mails a day (some are junk, some are semi-junk like reminders to pay bill, and others are legit e-mails from friends & family) I probably get over 20 e-mails a day at work. I use the web for research at work. I use instant messaging services like AOL IM. I pay my bills online, I check my bank account, retirement account, brokerage account online. I buy airline tickets online. I'm a member of internet communities like myspace and friendster. I've done job searches online. I read newspaper articles online. I check sports scores online. I’ve downloaded songs and videos online. Occasionally I even look at things online that I probably can't discuss in this blog ;-). Basically in 10 years I have gone from never using the Internet to using it a lot in my daily life. Hard to believe that the first 18 years of my live I spent without using the Internet.

Dick Cheney

There has been a lot of news this week about Dick Cheney accidently shooting somebody during a hunting trip. I agree with people who defend Dick Cheney and say that it is completely overblown. I also do understand to some extent why it got media coverage since it's not every day that a high profile figure shoots somebody but still it's not something that should be in the news for more then a few days at most. I agree with people that say there are more important things to worry about in the world then some minor private incident. However, I do sense lots of hypocricy in some people since wasn't it only 7 years ago that another high profile figure (Bill Clinton)had some personal matters that were completely overblown. With both of these issues there were many more important things to focus on in this world. Sure it would be better if high profile people in government didn't accidently shoot people or have sexual runins with interns, but since neither of those things are a serious crime it's not something that should warrant extensive news coverage. The people who want the news coverage are the media (which always like these type of stories) and members of the opposite political party who think they can score political points when a rival has some bad press. Basically when it comes to politics to say there is hypocricy on both sides would be the understatement of the millenium.

Valentine's day

I'm happy this Valentine's day. Do I have a new year girlfriend you ask. No, I don't. I'm happy this year because unlike last year I can relax, talk to who every I want, do what ever I want on Valentine's day and Valentine's day weekend. Last year I had a girlfriend during Valentine's day and she was very nice, but she kind of drove me nuts during that weekend to be quite honest. There were so many things I was expected to do and just a lot of unnecessary pressure. (Lots of this was due to the excessive commercialization of Valentines's day) Don't get me wrong I prefer to have a girlfriend, but sometime I think I would prefer to have one 364 days of the year and take that one day off:-) Plus as a lot of guys can tell you, sometimes the best time to be single are the weeks before Valentine's day because girls are usually looking for a Valentine much harder then guys are.

winter is back

Looks like winter is back this weekend! King of Prussia got 17 inches of snow. It took me an hour to get my car out this afternoon. I had to improvise and use a dustpan since I don't have a shovel :-).

Let's go Steelers!

Being that the Philadelphia Eagles season was over about 2 months ago I've been rooting for the other Pennsylvania NFL team the Pittsburgh Steelers. So with the Superbowl coming up this weekend, I'll definitely be rooting for the Steelers. I'd like to see Bill Cowher win a Superbowl just because I think he's been one of the best coaches in the game over the past 10-15 years and same for Jerome Bettis who's been one of the best running backs in the NFL for the past 10-15 years. So let's go Steelers on Sunday, bring one home for Pennsylvania!