maybe that last post was a little confusing, or maybe my readership has dropped more than a little... what do people consider to be xangancient now? i've been here for five whole years on july 9th. do i get anything for that, besides a nice warm feeling that i've done a good job?

thanks go out to the xanga devs for putting this all together... and thanks to the people who have been around since the start. hell, thanks to everyone who reads this. it's always amazed me that there would be so many people reading something that i wrote, and that they would come back for more. there's something about demi-fame that i like. maybe it's the part about being known without worrying about paparazzi and scandal...

countdown to the wedding: 95 days.

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

ok, so after a couple of years, i tried out some crypto stuff again.
thanks to sean[0], i have [GPG, WinPT][1], and enigmail[2] running.
if you're interested, i can put something up... like my public key,
or something like that.

for anyone keeping track, there's now 99 days left (1100011 in
binary,63 in hex, and 143 in octal - aww...) until the big day. we
were talking about deadlines for things that need to happen a month
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.2.1 (MingW32) - WinPT 0.7.96rc1

iD8DBQFEUSORzCapIJ8IzQMRArHfAKCHI6eFGF7FZWs9gTE/IgQpQVmT4QCfWsHa
bDq+L6kL5v8GLd/k8ISwZ+Y=
=RgR0
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

[0] http://www.xanga.com/sean
[1] http://winpt.sourceforge.net/en/download.php
[2] http://enigmail.mozdev.org

for anyone who didn't know, i'm getting married in august. very excited, and incredibly happy... as we were looking at some stuff online, we realized the number of days left:

*gulp* uh, really? when did that happen?

so i get this email...

...and it asks if i want to add someone as a friend.

uhh, what?

xanga doesn't have a friends thing, right? man, i've been paying way too little attention to this lately (meaning the past year+). all of the other projects i've been trying to get running are kinda half-going...

like the new look from the friends beta section though... and gotta read up on the other new features.

word to your collective mothers.

that's festive, right?

it's almost that time... the time to wonder if you'll be able to blog while on vacation. well, i'm almost 100% sure i won't be able to, but then again, with my blogquency™ (blogging frequency, coined right here), you might not notice at all.

i hope you have a great holiday, merry christmas, god jul (for the swedes), feliz navidad, happy channukah, and happy chrismahannukwanzukah for the rest of you. if none of the above fit you, have a good whatever you'd like to have. i can't believe it's almost 2006, and time is flying by so quickly... whoa.

there's so much to say...

...but not nearly
enough time to get it all down

let's just say that i'm still around,
i'm busy as anything (read the past few posts and you'll see), and i'd
love to write more, but just don't have the time or the memory to do it.

i'm still writing, and still reading a lot, and still doing web design stuff (check out Duty Free's site), but i'm all over the place. been to sweden and back (it was awesome) as of last month, and feel a little more traveled...

hope all is well with you and yours, and i'd like to thank the people who read me (both old and new) for coming by. amazingly enough, i'm still getting new subs on a semi-regular basis. interesting...

<CENSOR>**** YOU, ****IN' BACK BUTTON!</CENSOR>

ok, so i
started writing, hit the back button (a "convenient" key on my laptop's
keyboard), and wiped it all out. sweet.

annoying,
really... except for when i need it. guess i was trying to tell myself
that i needed to re-work a few things. hope all is well, and that
you're still checking on me once in a while.

projects for everyone!

here, there, and everywhere inbetween.

i'm a
busy boy. i'm busy at work, at home, even on my commute. i found out
that i'm going to sweden in september, and it's my first time ever
being out of the country. yikes. it's a little scary, but i'll get through it. sure, i'm going to a country where i don't speak the language, and don't know my way around, but i know people there and they'll help me out. we geeks stick together, right? heh.

i'm also trying to get four sites up and running while maintaining my sanity and spending time with the people i care about and making sure that i'm caught up on things... and taking care of my fellow xangans who might be looking for content.

the apartment is looking good, and my gf and i are looking forward to getting some of the books we have packed away onto the shelves. it's finally starting to look like a real place... it's only been two months, you know. hahaha... i'm a procrastinator. remind me to tell you about it sometime. speaking of books, check out the one at the bottom of this post. it's a little dry compared to some, but i like it and i'm into it. while i've been reading that i've been listening to neuromancer, by william gibson. i can't believe i just got into it a couple of months ago, and now i'm listening to it for the second time. awesome book, and i have the hardcopy version to read when i can.

hope all is well, and that you are enjoying some of the nice weather we're getting (your mileage may vary).

long time. been a while.

i have good reasons though.

i don't have premium
any more, and i think it's obvious why i haven't renewed it. i'm not on
xanga much lately, and i've been super busy with other projects,
including the return of a site a group of us had (five foot jacked,
but it's only a splash page right now). i've also been dating someone
since january, and she's awesome. we get along really well, and are
living together in southern NH. oh, and there was also a pretty big
thing that happened to me last month...

i got a sore throat that
started on monday, april 4th... plus a fever, and my tonsils grew. and
grew. and grew. it started monday, and i got to the doctor on
wednesday. he gave me something (didn't do a culture though) and sent
me on my way. by friday my right tonsil was ok, but the left one hurt.
i couldn't talk, i couldn't eat or drink anything, and sleeping was
horrible. i could barely swallow, and when i did it was really painful.
i went to a different doctor on sunday, who said it was a peritonsillar
abscess (my left tonsil had an infection in it). he said i needed to
see an ENT (ear, nose and throat) doc as soon as possible, and to call
first thing on monday morning.

guess what monday was? my dad's
birthday, my gf's first day at her new job, and the day we were moving
into our new apartment. whee. i dropped off the check to get into the
new place, then called the ENT. they called me back and said to come in
for 2:30. i went, they looked, and i was in surgery for an emergency
tonsillectomy by 5:45. yes, it was that bad. i stayed in the hospital
overnight, and the next day the ENT told me that if i hadn't been in
that my throat probably would've closed up within 12 hours, and i
might've ended up with a trach tube (not a pleasant time).

when i
came out of anasthesia, i could actually talk! i could swallow without
much pain (i was nervous at first), i could drink water... yeah, part
of it was the drugs they gave me, but part of it was not having the
huge mass in my throat. i even had a deviated uvula, meaning that the
thing that hangs in the back of my throat was pushed over. more fun for
me. i was out of work for two weeks, and my energy levels were WAY
down. i felt like napping after going up a couple of flights of
stairs... but things are mostly back to normal. i lost 16lbs in two
weeks, and have put about 8 back on. i feel a lot better, and i'm
looking forward to missing a lot of the sore throats i normally get
during the winter.

i hope everyone's doing well, and i'll try to come by and post something a little more often than once a month... then again, maybe i won't. i'll leave something to find me though.

we're headed into spring...

...and i'm headed into a new place.

we got an apartment, and hopefully moving in this weekend... barring any major stuff that needs to be fixed. i really don't want to wait any longer than that, but it's not our choice right now. grr... i need to plan when to get  atruck and find out when people can help us. wtf.

more details as things happen... i'll know tomorrow if friday is the big day (and saturday is the big moving day).