I’m not normally one to sit down and make New Years’ resolutions because I’m a big believer in constant, ongoing self-improvement as opposed to a big bang of improvements once a year. That said, I’ve also learned that sometimes you need to simply draw a line in the sand to kick-start your motivation to actually accomplish tasks from that crazy-long to-do list you have. And that’s where I am. I spend too much time thinking about the things I want to do, and not enough time actually doing them.

I’m visiting my best friend Eric in Chicago this weekend. I’ve never been to Chicago before, but I must say that the few blocks of downtown that I’ve seen are simply breathtaking. Beautiful architecture and tall buildings give this place a very different feel from the more familiar San Francisco or San Jose, CA. Between the flights today, I didn’t have a chance to eat dinner. So when I got here, I decided to get something to eat. That, and I wanted to go exploring a bit.

Nine months ago I simply stopped blogging. I’m not really sure why, although I suspect I just needed a break from writing for a while so I could take some time to gather my thoughts. I’d been blogging since early 2003, and I simply didn’t have anything else to say. Since the last time I wrote, a few things have happened. First off, I quit my job last September to co-found my first startup, Foleeo. We’ve been keeping our eyes on the web and watching what’s been going on.

Okay, so the “Best Wife in the World” award once again goes to my wife, Sarah. We usually have 2 Christmases at our house. Everybody always gets together with their families for “real” Christmas, and so did we. But we also have a Christmas with all of our friends (which we call “UFKS Christmas”) a week or two before “real” Christmas, so that we can all get together without having to compete with other family stuff. So at UFKS Christmas this year, my wife let me open my “big present” early.

.__h_google_maps.card { color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-family: "SF Pro Text", "San Francisco", -apple-system, system-ui, BlinkMacSystemFont, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; border: 1px solid rgb(219, 219, 219); padding: 0; margin-bottom: 30px; } .__h_google_maps.card .card-body { position: relative; padding: 0; padding-bottom: 56.25%; height: 0; overflow: hidden; } .__h_google_maps.card .card-body iframe { position: absolute; top: 0; left: 0; width: 100%; height: 100%; border: 0; } I am now officially a homeowner! Our escrow closed about three weeks ago, and we moved in two weeks ago.

Good News: I just landed a new job with a medical equipment company called Stryker. I had a 3.5 hour interview with 6 people, but I feel that it all went extremely well. Apparently they felt so too, because I’m now contracting for them. Best of all, it only took me 7 minutes to drive there the other day which is much better than the 1 hour commute I was making before. Good/Bad News: My best friend Eric is about to finish up Navigator training in the Air Force (if you’ve seen Top Gun, he’s Goose instead of Maverick).

Sometimes I’m working on my site so much, that I don’t stop to realize that I haven’t posted anything in a while. I think we all do that, but here’s a bit of what’s been going on lately: Tarzan 1.2: I’ve been very hard at work on the next Tarzan release. This release will be everything I’d hoped the last release would be, before I realized it was a bit too ambitious. Rather than talk about the things I want to do, there are a few things that are already done and in the bag.

When Jesus came to this earth over 2000 years ago, he came as a child — a baby. Although he was God in human flesh, he didn’t have the kind of birth that should be owed to the future king. Rather being born in a warm, clean hospital, his parents were kicked out to the barn to spend the night sleeping with animals, hay, and manure. The King of all kings and the Lord of all lords was born in a manger in the city of Bethleham, and nobody took notice except for a teenage virgin, a young carpenter, thee confused shepherds, and several bewildered animals.

I want everyone to do me a favor. If you’re going to add me to your buddy lists and contact me completely out of the blue while I’m at work, that’s perfectly fine. Just don’t be a psycho asking me super-personal questions. If you want to ask me questions about code, scripts, the web, etc., that’s fine. If you just want to randomly chat about nothing, I’d suggest getting an AOL account. If you start (or continue) to ask me questions like where exactly I live, or what my phone number is, you’re only going to piss me off.

Two and a half weeks?! Ryan, that’s just no good. What’s your deal, man? Why are you being suck a slacker? This is the obligatory “Sorry, I’ve been busy” post as made famous by Dan Rubin, Todd Dominey, and Adam Polselli. Every time that I’ve come across something cool lately, my boss has handed me another 5 hours of work that is due in three. Everytime, I’ve gone to work on Feed Parser, or Blocker, or Blogroller, my wife says “Time for dinner!

Things have been rather hecktic lately. I recently moved into a new apartment, I had my car accident, and I started a brand-new job all in a span of a week and a half. I’m still getting used to my new job. I have to take the train to get to work and back everyday, and it has so far proven to be less than reliable (it took 2.5 hours to move 45 miles last Friday). I’ve been keeping up decently with the blogs I read over the last few weeks, particularly SxSW this weekend (I hope I can go next year), but I’m still unpacking my stuff, and am still waiting on the delivery of my new computer desk which is now two weeks late (I’ll never shop Office Max again).

I woke up this morning and looked outside as I heard the rain beating down on our roof. I got dressed, got my daughter dressed, we both put on our jackets, and left to go to the babysitters. One bad thing about Californians is that they seem to completely forget how to drive when the weather is anything but sunny. Heavy fog? Hi-Beams and 90 MPH speeds. Heavy Rain? Swirving in and out of traffic without a blinker. I always make it a point to be extra careful when my daughter’s in the car, and even more careful when the weather is bad.

I dropped off my daughter at the babysitter’s house this morning. She didn’t want to go, but she needed to because Daddy needed to get to work, and Mommy was already at work. On the way to work, I put in one of my favorite albums, Ben Folds Five. It’s one of the few albums where I like every single song on it. It’s too bad they broke up. If only the recording industry would produce more albums of that caliber, I wouldn’t mind buying more CDs.

It’s time to sit down with a cup of hot chocolate and watch the Christmas lights twinkle on the tree… I took my 2 year-old daughter outside this evening so we could walk down the street and look at all of the Christmas lights on all of the houses. There’s one house in particular that always goes all-out for every holiday, Christmas not being an exception. She pointed at a big blow-up doll of Santa Claus and yelled “Santa, daddy! Santa!

If you’ve never seen Office Space, you need to stop what you’re doing, whatever it is, and rent it immediately. It really should own it’s own spot in your movie collection. For those who have seen it before, you’ll know who Milton is. (Here’s a soundboard just for fun.) If you work in an office, you’ll be able to appreciate this movie. One of the supporting characters is a poor guy named Milton Waddams. His office keeps getting moved around, until he eventually ends up in the basement.

A guy named David emailed me today with a question. “How do you pronounce ‘Skyzyx’?” The thought had never occurred to me before. I guess it should have. It’s not a name or a word of any sort, it’s just a name of my own creation. I came up with it back in 1992. I was in eighth grade, and I decided to create a word out of all of the “cool” looking letters of the alphabet. After a few tries, “Skyzyx” was the polished word.

I hardly slept at all last night. I’ve had a headache for the last few days, and my throat has been scratchy for 2 or 3 days. I knew it was coming. Last night my nose got all plugged up, which meant two things: I had to breathe through my mouth, which caused my tongue to get all dried out; and I began to snore. I don’t usually snore. My wife says that she never hears me snore, so either I don’t usually snore, or she’s just a really deep sleeper.

I got turned down for CalGrant this year. For those not familiar, CalGrant is the California State College Grant System. CalGrant has three flavors: A, B, and C. Apparently, my Tech School Bachelor program doesn’t qualify for C; My wife and I make too much money for B (the cap is $30k per year); and I don’t have enough “need” to qualify for CalGrant A. Anyways, I’m sitting here filling out a scholarship application through my school. After I got past questions like “Full Name”, “SSN”, and “Is a third party contributing to your education?