Anyone need any G-Mail accounts? I have 9 invites and no one to give them to. Leave a comment or e-mail me if you want one.

Meet little Stevie, Hello Stevie! Stevie likes to read, yes he does. One of Stevie’s Favorite things to read is the Internet. You see the Internet is filled with all sorts of fun and interesting things to read. There are news articles, stories, entertainment reviews, and Blogs. Can you say Blog? I knew that you could. A Blog is something like an online journal, and thousands of thousands of people have them all over the internet. That’s a lot of reading, isn’t it Stevie. There is only one problem with the internet, no it’s not Porn Stevie, that’s just silly talk. The problem with the internet is Glamour Advertising. Do you know what that is? That’s when you go to a web site and over on the side, or top, or middle of the site there is a big advertisement that is just staring at you, screaming “LOOK AT ME AND BUY MY STUFF NOW YOU F%$# PIECE OF S&^%!!!!!” taking all the attention away from what your trying to look at. This makes little Stevie sad, poor Stevie.

But there is something that can solve this problem. Do you know what that is? No, not throwing your PC through an advertising executives head causing severe bleeding and concussion, even though that would be fun. The answer is RSS. RSS is a format for syndicating news and the content of news-like sites. If it can be broken down into an XML format, and what can’t, then it can be put into RSS. Using a program such as Sharpreader, little Stevie can read all of his Favorite News Sites and Blogs without all the Advertising and Banners. This makes little Stevie happy. Not to mention that the program can be set to check these sites automatically, so when there is a new article, Stevie knows about it instantly. So how do you know if a site has an RSS feed? EASY! Look for the logo, or even an logo. Most sites will have a special link on the side to show that they are “Syndicated”.

You may ask yourself, “Self, what sort of sites does little Stevie read?” Go ahead, ask yourself that. I’ll wait. Hmmmm Hmmmm Hmmmm. That’s a good Question! Here is a big List of all of the Sites that Stevie reads, and all of them have RSS feeds.

That’s a pretty big list isn’t it? Let’s let Stevie get back to his reading, Good bye Stevie!

Ok, I just found a very cool gem on the net. Sad thing is, it’s not just the net, its MTV’s Video Mods. Some of you know I took a little dip into the Video Game Video genre with my stuff from Galaxies. I have even been thinking about making a new one in EQ2 (just because they are that fun). These guys have taken it to the next level though. MTV has contracted with some of the Major video game companies to script out videos using the famous game characters. Trippy to the Max.

Here it comes, the ever popular New Years Post. I got into work this morning and sat down to my normal morning routine. (Felt weird to start the usual again after being off for so long) This routine starts with running Sharpreader, my RSS news feed program, and reading through the various Blogs and News sites. The Common theme for blogs today was “Happy New Year, this Year I promise to….” And the “Here’s what I did on my Vacation.” Mostly because there have been no updates since before Christmas. Well, I have updated since Christmas and before then so there will be none of that type here. Although I guess I should do the New Years thing, but we will get to that in a moment.

The weekend went rather well, like most Govt. workers I got Friday off and spent it loafing around the house. We slept in and then Picked up on watching some Buffy season 7 episodes. By around 3ish it was time to head down to CC’s place for his New Years Bash! A grand time was had by all, and it was great to Hang out with Doc and Diz, Shipley and Brook (hope your feeling better Brook), CC and Cathy, Not to mention meeting all sorts of new people. I had every intention of Drinking heavily, but apparently I had something to eat earlier that disagreed with me and my stomach felt that large doses of alcohol was not the cure (no matter how hard I tried). But, None the less, I still had a great time. After the party we drove back to Docs place and crashed there for the evening.

New Year’s Day felt remarkably like an old year’s day. We got to spend most of the day with Doc and Diz. We headed out to the Norfolk Mall and had lunch at Johnny Rockets. After that we perused the mall for a while waiting for the movie we wanted to see to start. I really hate going to Malls when I have no money. What did we see, you ask? Why, none other than……

Phantom of the Opera.

This was an awesome adaptation of the musical. I was flashing back to the two times that I had seen Phantom on stage and the movie represented it very well. I got goose bumps at all the right scenes. On a down note, they changed some of the lines a tad, some of the normally sung lines, were spoken. Some of the Tempo for the music was sped up. The worst of the worst was that I was not fond of the singing voice for the Phantom. There were some songs that he got spot on, but other times had me close to cringing. The Good, though, defiantly outweighs the bad. The Effects were awesome, the scenery and costumes were amazing, The Acting Superb. It was almost like watching it again on stage. I wanted to stand a clap after songs and duck when the chandelier comes crashing down. All in all, go see this movie!

After the movie we got stuck in the Infamous Norfolk mall garage for about 45 min waiting for cars to clear out. It was getting late so Amy and I decided to head home and made fairly good time, even with stopping at Sonic for a Coney Island. Once home, I played a little EQ2 and then Headed to bed.

Sunday was a totally lazy day. We finished Season 7 of Buffy and that’s it! It’s all over, I started in July of 04 and on 02 Jan 05 I finished the entire Series! The downside is that all of the laying around on Sunday made me very lethargic and listless. I ended up gong to bed early and it was all downhill from there. Sleeping in then laying around, then going to bed early meant WAY too much rest, so much so, that I didn’t sleep well last night. That and my Cat decided to scream and yell at another cat this morning outside the window. Nothing like a huge rush of adrenaline at 5am eh?

So here it is, The New Year, 2005. I suppose I should lay out my resolutions. See, that’s the problem, 1: Resolutions usually end up being broken and 2: The things I want to do are not so much resolutions, but planned events. So, without further ado, the list: (and these are in no particular order)

• Clean and Minimalize the house. (I have way too much crap that I am not using and never even look at, so it’s time to go room by room and get rid of stuff)
• Prepare the house for Andrews Arrival (that’s an obvious one)
• Education (time to start looking into a better edumacation)
• Buying a House (Roots?)
• Exercise (when I was working out for dragon-con I felt better everyday, then I stopped, must pick that up again)
• Along with the Exercise, I need to get out more. (all of DC at my disposal, and I end up running around Antonica)
• And my Silly one: I am going to start using Firefox more. Too many people have advised me to switch from IE so I am going to give it a try.

So there you have it, Comment if you wish, Leave your resolutions!