First, I hope everyone who reads this had a happy thanksgiving, and they considered all the stuff they really have to be thankful for. There's a lot of people out there who've got genuinely crappy lives going on, and we have the good fortune not to be them. Not even close. If you've got enough internet access to be reading this, odds are you're in the top fifteenth-percentile of people on Earth, in terms of "not much to complain about". I think it's healthy to remember that in a worst case scenario, I can see myself losing job and money, health and home, and still being able to crash on a friend's couch for a month or so, or (gasp!) move back home with the folks.

...so i'm thankful that my own idea of utter personal collapse is working at a Hardee's in rural Iowa... an existence that the majority of the population of the planet would trade for in an instant. I'm never going to starve to death, and I have tons of people who love me enough to let me mooch off them, should I need to. I'm also thankful that I may very well not need to.

Next on my list of stuff to talk about: I just turned 34 seventeen minutes ago. So, according to biblical scholars, I've outlived Jesus Christ. (although Maggie's gotta get up tomorrow at 6:30am, so I think Christ'll retain the better win/loss percentage in the "cheerfully rising from the dead" column.)

Finally, to inject some nerd-tech into this (a motif on this blog, as of late), I've been playing around with xml-rpc, and things like the movable-type plugins platform, and Amazon webservices. I've got a plugin installed that puts my wishlist at the bottom right of my main blog page... it's pretty cool. There's a link to the page at sourceforge that'll let anyone else do the same. Too bad Amazon's "partner shops" can't be added to wishlists. I also need cargo pants and isotoner gloves, but those don't make "the list", for technical reasons. I guess now that the list is here, i can augment it myself, huh?

check out my fotolog, too... it's an ongoing project I chat with Heif and some other dudes about. Fun stuff.