Do you ever have so much to do that rather than work you just sit there with a blank blood-shot-eyed stare and ask yourself whether your computer is a loyal friend, or the abusive, wife-beater wearing root of all of your psychological torment? Nah, me neither.

Monday night in NY with all of my homies from the NY office was great! Here’s the best recount of the events, and specifically of karaoke to too many Bon Jovi songs. I love NY. Thanks guys! And thanks Dana, for coming out. It was great to catch up!

Tuesday I came back on a 3 hour delayed plane to a mountain of crap, then yesterday my train was way late getting to Union Station because of busted brakes. So here I sit today, normal, and finally recovered.

Yes, I have almost acheived computing Nirvana. The other day I installed a DVD burner on my Mac G4. I got it mad cheap from Staples.com – only $170 after rebates. It’s the same drive as the Apple SuperDrive (Pioneer DVR-105) and even though Apple itself doesn’t allow you to buy a SuperDrive and put it into an old G4, they kindly put up the world’s greatest user forums where other kind souls helped me pick out the right drive. To find the best price, I used Dealmac.com, another lifesaver. which required an upgrade from Mac OSX 10.2 to 10.2.3.

And last night I installed iLife. Now I could care less at this point how they tweaked my iMovie, I assume it will rock, and iTunes, and iPhoto too. But I really wanted to use iDVD. So I did. And it crashed, and crashed again, and crashed again. But in the end I did get the tutorial to burn. And man, iDVD is a lot of fun.

It’s just too bad Michael Jackson is such a freak. He really is talented, and his early 80’s music is my favorite. Especially when I hear it play on the radio of my “Banshee” in GTA Vice City. But, I am so over his plastic face, and his reculusive lifestyle. For a guy that sings (sang) pop-music, he is awfully alternative.

Our poor (well not really, more like well-to-do) Youth Group kids. I swear, kids have more problems growing up in a well-off area than some in poorer neighborhoods. Parents are medicating their kids, and putting them into mental institutions for no reason. I’m extremely disturbed. I don’t remember high school causing the kind of serious problems that I hear around here – depression, suicidal tendencies, anxiety attacks. I really think that there ought to be some more formal training for being a parent. Since there are no longer tribes, nor extended families living near each other, people really don’t know how to raise their kids. Kids really need to talk about what’s going on, and the last thing they need is to have some pills shoved in their face, or to be shipped off to a mental health clinic. This has got to be the best way of starting kids on chemical dependencies and a life long counseling program. I hope that Tricia and I can raise Mason without these crutches.

That’s what you get when you drive to Palos Heights from Aurora after getting up at 5:30am only to find that one of the players on your volleyball team decided not to show up. There goes the tournament fees, there goes my Sunday. I haven’t had this happen to me since high school. Grown men can really suck.

I’m so very full of chili from our groovy SuperBowl Party. It was definitely the Grand Opening of our basement. Hard as we worked to make it all nice down there, everyone still congregated in our kitchen. There is an amazing gravitational pull in the kitchen of of our house. Next time we are going to install a tractor beam in the basement to offset the kitchen. Hindsight is 20/20.

So Monster decided to change its look and feel for the Super Bowl. Whoopee! I agree with all of Walt’s points about the reduced productivity, and the striking resemblance to Apple Switch. I’d like to add to that.

Monster has become a frightening hodge-podge of different “projects” cobbled together to resemble a web property. It is scary how different each area of the site now looks and interacts. From the recruiter backend, to the Career Center, to My Monster, every thing looks different. The use of graphic Monster buttons and catchy little callouts all over the page makes the site look like the outfield at your local minor league ballpark (and they’ve started cleaning up the aesthetics of those ballparks). I really think that Monster is due for a total architecture and look and feel upgrade. Unfortunately I know how difficult that would be.

What a Christmas. We went to ye olde Rochester, NY for classic family yuletide cheer. And of course we brought the boy (Mason) along. Let me just say that his family loves him! Toys, Toys, Toys! and he’s only one year old. It was momentous that we could turn his car seat around toward the front.

Other random thoughts… I bought $25 brand new boots to leave at home, Tricia bought $16 retro-1975 shoes to bring back to Chicago. My cousin Jason cut his long hair, my sister Lindsey grew out her semi-short hair. Full-size beds are much smaller than King-size beds, playpens from the mid 80’s are much larger than playpens from the 00’s. Babies like boxes and wrapping paper more than toys, Daddies like toys more than boxes and wrapping paper.

I got Grand Theft Auto Vice City for Christmas. It has to be the best game in the world. I know what I’m doing on New Years.

My little 11 month old is so bright. He’s learning to IM me. For those that understand baby imbabble, that means I love you Daddy.