Hey Blog, Howya Doin?

Blogging is an easy thing to do. It's also an easy thing not to do. So why do I so often choose to not blog, than to blog?

I don't worry too much about not blogging until I take one of my trips down bloggery lane. I will occasionally find great joy in looking back on the early parts of this decade. I know that I will some day like to read about my experiences in the latter half of the decade. Unfortunately, I won't find such records here.

However, let's take a snapshot now, shall we?

Work is busy. Work is challenging. For the past two weeks I had this perpetual feeling of swimming against a tide, falling beneath the surface, and wondering why-oh-why did I leave ELDP island. I joked internally that I was waking up every morning and thinking, "Is this the day I quit, or get fired?" I kept that sentiment inside because I knew that neither would be the option.

Why? Because the fun part of growing up is realizing your own silly patterns. I've been here before often enough to know how I react. There's a wonderful moment when I realize, "Ah, you're going to quit, right? Like you said you would when you started all those rotations, and previous jobs? Remember how you ended up not quitting, and eventually doing a great job? I bet you'll once again remember that you don't excel because you're the smartest, but because you work harder than most. One might say you're too dumb to give up, so you'll win again."

It's like calling bullshit on myself, and I take great joy in doing so.

Outside of work, life is terrific. Oh, did I mention in this venue that Jackie is pregnant? Yep, two months to go!

The prospect of fatherhood is wonderfully exciting. Sometimes its unbelievable. Sometimes I sit back and think, "crap, I'm really grown up now." Of course, that's usually while I'm waiting for the Wii to load Mario Kart. Some things never change...

...but some things do! So fatherhood is going to rock. The road to fatherhood is full of thrills, and far less bumpy than the motherhood road our better halves take.

I now understand why wives are called our better halves, too. Seeing the perpetual discomfort and freaky things that happen to a woman's body in real time is wild. Thank you, dear!

A week ago we were watching Jackie's belly in a dark room with a light coming from another room. With the right lighting we could actually see the belly twitch as the kid, whom we gave the androgynous name, "Thumper", kicked. It's the kind of thing you can watch for hours and not get bored, like fail blog videos or a dog chasing its tail.

Speaking of the dog, Cara is still around. I mean, I love the dog! Newfoundlands really are the best breed. Obvious caveats include: you must not mind drool, or grooming a dog for 45min a week, or getting bumped around by a dog that doesn't know its own size. Also, when I write lists like that I realize how appropriate the dog is as a substitute when I'm not around.

Speaking of not being around, going back for an MBA is one of the most ambitious dumb things I've done. I've obviously forgotten any math skills from my engineering background, because if I did have them I would add up the number of hours in a week, and the number of hours I need to sleep, work, and live a happy life, and I would quickly realize I need to figure out time travel to survive.

Speaking of time travel, how awesome was Season 5 of Lost? Anyone keeping tabs on the comic-con videos this summer? It's as if they never crashed...

Speaking of crashing, it's time to end Friday before a weekend of leadership, Villanova style. Go Wildcats!

Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaalt!

If you found Michael as annoying as I did in Seasons 1&2, then you'll certainly enjoy this!

My Lost Theory

ABC might get mad at this spoiler, but I have to share with you what is most certainly the point of all this time travel. After several "skips" of the "record" we will find out before the close of the season how Daniel Faraday becomes the front man for Weezer!

Lost Hiatus Happenings

As any fine connoisseur of good TV knows, Lost returns on January 21st. This news means two awesome things. For one, Lost is back! The engrossing, thought-provoking, mind-bending, geek-elating, mystery-inducing show returns t entertain us for 16 weeks and answer at least some of the questions left over the hiatus. For two, the hiatus is over!

The magnificence of Lost when it is on the air only magnifies the withdrawal when it is not. This last stretch left us Lostless for 8 months! However, since the show's inception the producers take pity on us by providing inter-season distractions via Alternate Reality Games. This hiatus proved no exception.

The ARG started out with a commercial during last season's finale inviting you to join the NEW Dharma Initiative. Once joining, you received emails inviting you to play different online aptitude tests. The producers learned their lesson least season and concurrently leaked the answers and cheats on other websites. Anyone that used the answers and cheats to ring up inhuman success found out at the end of the series they failed miserably. Well played ARG creators!

Of course, the ultimate aptitude test and selection of the participants for the new Dharma Initiatve would occur at Comic-Con. Coincidentally, each preceding year the Lost Producers (Damon Lindeloff and Carlton Cuse) held a session where they answered questions and then revealed some little nugget to get Lost fans hooked for the coming season. For example, before Season 4 they showed a video of a Dharma tutorial for a station called "The Orchid" that contained bunnies that seemed to disobey traditional space-time expectations (which as you should remember is where we ended up at the end of Season 4).

This Comic-Con proved no exception as you can see in the video below. For those of you spoiler-avoiders out there that want to start the season "clean", I offer you my rationalization for why this video is not a spoiler. I define spoiler as something the producers would not want us to see prior to the airing of an episode. Since this comes straight from the producers, it is, in fact, not a spoiler.



There's a couple of interesting nuggets in the video

• Looks like the final answer on the good doctor's name is Pierre Chang.
• Whoever operates the camera sounds very familiar. Daniel Faraday? Horace Goodspeed? 
• Baby's cryin'! But whose baby? If Charlotte used to be on the island, is it her? If it's Pierre's child could it be Miles Strom? 
• He has a working arm which is not always the case of a Dharma training video. Notice how he talks about the purge and looks down worriedly at his arm. 
• "Time is not of the essence, it is the essence." Considering how the last season ended we're certainly in for some time traveling this season. 

Soon after Comic-Con the ARG pittered out. The website blamed the economy and stated the procuders of the ABC show Lost would take over the site. Since then those that signed up received weekly videos from the producers with nuggets to whet our appetites on the coming season. For example, we can look forward to more Smokey and for those of you with a thing for undead footwear we'll find out why Christian Shephard wore white tennis shoes when he appeared to Jack in Season 1. 

Oh, and it appears a new ARG started up on this website for Ajira Airways. Nothing much to find there except except for some polar bears and a promise for new flights on January 21st...a magical date indeed!