'Tis that time when we reflect on back on previous year (for better or worse).

Here's what I've learned:
- It's impossible to find a job in MI with a company that's doing well (Jacobsons.. Ford.. Pulte..)
- Macs are so worth the extra few dollars
- Being sick on new years eve sucks
- Despite looking easy, installing a dishwasher can take up to ten hours
- Not only are all my friends married... now the children are arriving
- There is nothing more frustrating then being a lifelong MSU football fan
- Wisdom teeth do not come out easy
- Everyone loves the Wii
- 4 year olds are better then you at the Wii
- Dragonmead is evil, no matter how tasty.
- The first few Rolling Stones albums are really good.
- LCD TV's are great, but make hockey blurry.
- HD-DVD is the best and will win the format war (this statement may make the 2008 list...)

The other night was Bill Gates last CES keynote. While I was mostly watching in hopes for news on new media center features (and was disappointed), they did play a funny video about what it will be like on Bill's last day at Microsoft. It did, however, remind me of another video that was made for Bill Clinton's last days in office.

I?d like to express my outrage at the programming choices that were made yesterday. What kind of station broadcast 1 ? hours of a live sporting event to then cut it off completely? Only to eventually give a statement that it would be re-aired at 11:30 PM at night. Why was the Tigers game not moved to FSN Detroit which had no real programming on? Why was one of the events not moved to digital sub channel? If you had no intentions of showing the entire NASCAR race why start it at all? And then right before it does finally air at night? you announce the results. This shows no respect for you viewers, to which I no longer am one. If I want to watch one of your show? I?ll download it.

UPDATE:
The Response:
Thank you for your note.

Please know that we were also disappointed by this past weekend?s weather issues. As you?re certainly aware, the NASCAR race was scheduled for Saturday night. Due to inclement weather, the race was postponed until Sunday afternoon at 1pm. Fox 2 was already contractually bound to air the Tigers game at 2pm. After a brief rain delay in Kansas City, we had to switch coverage for the start of the baseball game.

It was a scenario that was out of our control.

Knowing that NASCAR fans would want to see the end of the race, we aired the finale after our late news.

Thanks for watching Fox 2.

Wow... a canned response that answered none of my questions... Thanks Fox 2!

More happy Fox 2 viewers:
http://community.myfoxdetroit.com/boards/topic.aspx?topic_id=4688a
http://community.myfoxdetroit.com/blogs/SportsFanWaterford/2007/05/06/NASCAR_Dumped

Congrats to the MSU Spartans hockey team on winning the national championship in hockey Saturday night. I'm pretty sure the neighbors knew I was watching the game with 18.9 seconds left.. I yelled... loud.

I had in the past used the away messages in IM as a method to convey to the world my immediate (and mostly pointless) thoughts. Problem is that now I use IM a lot at my job and putting "Sleepy.. looking to leave work early" or something like that would not be the best idea.

There is now a site call Twitter that basically does this same functionality. You post a short message and anyone who's subscribed to your feed will get the update. It works via the web, IM, and cell phone test messaging. It honestly reminds me of the mass text massages that we'd send via pagers (yes pagers) in the East Lansing days. "Meet at Peanut Barrel".. or "The office tonight" (Spartan Sports Den.. not the TV Show).

We'll see if it becomes 'a thing'.. or if it's the next friendster that I got bored with after a few days.

I'm 'BandiTT' on twitter.

Such as myself, who's been running RC2 as my main OS at home for a few weeks now. I found this site, that list real world software compatibility issues. Nice to know -before- you install something bad...

But on the flip side, it's a user driven page, and therefore, not perfect. For example...Virtual CloneDrive.. Not a good move last night... Killed my system and would not boot to anything. Had to do a repair from the Vista DVD to get it back. YET, it's listed as OK on this page. Go figure.

Not to be outdone... Firefox 2.0 came out today.

Download here.

I'll perform testing of both and give my opinions in a few weeks.

It's strange how preferences change over the years. Back when Internet Explorer came out around the same time as Windows 95 I was a big fan. It was the new kid on the block trying to break Netscape dominance. And for many years it's what I used, but at some point it became bloated and a hog. Probably when they integrated it into the shell. Then, what made it worse, it's been neglected for years and years now. IE 6 was awful. Very insecure and speaking as a web developer.. a nightmare of bugs and non-compliance to standards.

When Firefox came out it was breath of fresh air. Secure, fast, and actually had new features like tabbed browsing and the such (calm down Opera fanboys.. ya you had it first.. but honestly.. who cares? I use opera on my phone.. that's it).

Well now Microsoft, after over a year of Beta testing, has finally released IE 7. I -strongly- recommend everyone get this. Not to use... I still say Firefox, but to remove a huge security risk in your system. Microsoft should call it a security patch and not a update. But I will say that in my testing it's much more compliant to web standards. I do not have to code every page twice.. once the right way.. and once to make it work in IE6. For that alone I'm very excited to see it come out.

As of today I will no longer support IE6.

Whew... feels good to say that.

Nothing says baseball like a nice 30 some degree day with the possibility of snow showers.

BTW: Does it say something when the Tigers (winners) are man enough to play outdoors in the cold, yet the Lions (losers) always have to play in a dome?