• Curse $#@& ticketmaster
• Stare at screen in disbelief, seven minutes after sale begins
• Learn secret formula that puts you in a 15+minute queue when you click Find Tickets the second that link becomes available
• Scoop puddled remains of wife off floor
• Jump off cliff in despair

Dammit.

I stand outside the electronic citadel of ticketmaster and shake the e-dust off my sandals. Cursed be you, ticketmaster; may you crumble into financial dust amid scandal and shame.

Unless you have two more tickets lying around?

Boy, do I love the weekends these days. Try as I might, I can't seem to make myself get to bed earlier than 11:30 or midnight, and I have to get up by 6:30. I do much better with a regular sleep pattern, and I also work best when that sleep pattern involves going to bed earlier and getting up earlier. The big loser here is exercise. As in, I'm getting almost none of it. I haven't run regularly since Xmas, and it affects my mood and self-perception something awful.

So when the weekend gets here, I sleep. A lot. I wake up to find excuses to sleep more. Quite frankly it's probably symptomatic of depression, which regular exercise helps me keep in check. If only it weren't a whopping 5 degrees here (minus-15-degree wind chill, I understand). That kinda puts a damper on those long runs. I like having feeling in my face, and I'm not sure I'm ready to give that up just yet.

Okay, rather than imagine that I can magically fix what ails my site in time to avoid losing all my readers, I've adopted one of Blogger's standard templates in the interim, while I work on the beta.

Actually, I kinda like this template design. A lot. Darn. All that work and I still come up as a duffer!

Okay, let me refine my earlier statement: if you are viewing this page correctly, apparently you could only be using PC IE6. Mac users can't see things right, and other browsers simply refuse to display the page. Greaaaaaaat...

But, then, that's why they call 'em beta releases. The Management appreciates your patience!

It's been said that people tend to turn inward, to withdraw from others, as a natural habit. We become self-absorbed, caught up in our own dramas and reveries, and can miss what happens around us. We become still, and sometimes stagnate. The solution, the wise tell us, is found in moving toward community. It is in the interaction with others that we find our own wit, that we learn to test our talents, that we find whether or not what we hold dear and believe in stands up to scrutiny. The postmodern self is the self enacted in social networks.

All of which is more or less a high-falutin' preamble to the question that lies before me now:

Do I 1) spend my Xmas dough on modding my Xbox and furthering my soldering skills, essentially in the service of a geekout that few others will see or appreciate, or do I 2) use that dough to get Xbox Live, and thereby step into an arena where my Halo skills can develop to a truly legendary level?

What to do, Gentle Reader? What to do?!! Ah, decisions to struggle through. A more germane question about Xbox Live: can I engage in high-demand broadband gaming using the swiped wireless access from my upstairs neighbor? Now that's the question of the hour. Do I get a wireless bridge and cross my fingers? Or do I come clean, use the latest and greatest Earthlink offer to get us back up to high-speed access, and be sure of the deal? Stay tuned!

Well, if you're viewing this page, you're viewing it in Internet Explorer, as the current design doesn't play well with Mozilla Firefox. I'm working on that, as well as a few UI tweaks. As you'll see, I tried to streamline the design a bit, and make it a bit more efficient. That said, I'd welcome comments or suggestions on how to improve things.

Me on the pier at Edisto, over Christmas