Christ, what has it been - 3 months with 1 post? Does anyone care? Well, this is done purely out of obligation and with hopes for reaching1000 posts (21 to go after this). So December...
- I was sick from the day after Thanksgiving to the until the 3rd week in December with a nasty cold and sinus infection. I finally went to the doctor which resulted in some Zithromax. I began to feel normal again around the 19th or 20th, which was way too long to be sick
- Those around the Northeast are already aware, but we had a nasty ice storm blow through Eastern NY and New Englad which resulted in 555,000 customers being left without power. Even though I didn't lose power this still sucked for me as one of my responsibilities at work is dealing with the Outage Management system. Needless to say, it was a stressful 5-6 days monitoring the system round the clock, made worse by dealing with illness.
- When I'm not carrying a pager and performing life support on a mission critical application I spend my time at work participating in a project to replace the failing OMS system. This requires a ton of travel, so much so that I feel I spent more time in hotels since the beginning of October than at home. You know it's bad when you're scanning hotel porn saying "Seen it, Seen it, Seen it, oooo Cougars!". The good news is that due to the shitty economy the company is scaling back on travel. I'm hoping to spend most of the winter in Syracuse (I can't believe I'm saying this) vs Westborough MA or Long Island.
- Jesus H, 65" of snow already. The snow blower is ready for a mid-season tuneup, and we're less than 10 days into official winter.
- Little enthusiasm for Christmas this year. Had my parents and my brother and sister-in-law packed into our too small house. Kinda weird, but no fireworks. My kids spent Christmas Eve vomiting while my wife and I spent the night stripping beds, and washing vomit out of kids hair. Lovely. I give this Christmas a "4" on a scale of 1-10. I did get all of the books I wanted, so yeah for me.
- My fucking teeth strike again. 3 days before Christmas I had a dental implant put in. It was supposed to be a $500 crown lengthening, but the decay was so extensive that the tooth was marked as hopeless. So my present to myself for Xmas was a $3000 dental bill. For that I got a tooth extracted, a hole drilled into my jawbone, a bone graft, a titanium screw, and a bunch of stitches. And Vicodin, which while nice, still aint worth $3K. There goes that big screen plasma I had been eyeing. Even sadder, is that this single tooth has cost me over $6000 during it's lifespan: $500 worth of fillings, $1000 root canal, $1000 crown, $3000 implant, and another $1000 for a new crown in the near future. Fuck me.
- On to sports. I'm relatively happy with the hiring of Doug Marrone as the new SU football coach. I had wanted Skip Holtz or Turner Gill, but Marrone presents himself as a good fit. And really, how can it be worse? You did see this, right?
- Don't get me started on the Bills. Another season in the toilet. Jauron has to be fired, right? I mean, how can he go on? If he is the decent person everyone says he is he should resign.
- NFL Playoffs: without any analysis, straight shoot from the hip I'm going Indy/Giants in the Superbowl for a Manning brother show down. I like Indy to take it all, but don't ask me why.
I think that's it for the moment. More in 2009, I think.