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Every year about this time, some sort of small alarm goes off in my head and I suddenly realize that another year of existence has passed. Don’t get me wrong, I truly love my life and really have enjoyed every year of it so far. However, this season always fills me with a mixture of wonder, excitement, and confusion. I wonder how in the world yet another year has passed, and I’ve done so very little of interest! I’m excited to spend another lovely year in this existence, doing the “so very little” I was just wondering about. And I’m confused how, after nearly 30 years on this earth, I’m still so filled with alarm regarding the swiftness of each passing year.

For me, 2009 was a great year! Let me start off by saying that I am a very lucky man. I love my wife, my home and my job – a singular accomplishment indeed. And overall, I’m very happy. However, as with any situation where a man feels three wholly different emotions at once, there must be a pause to catch ones breath. Most men are not wired for such emotion filled events. After a suitable length of time, and some soothing breathing, further thoughts can continue and I can sit back to evaluate these emotions at length.

Wonder

It never ceases to amaze me that all conversations with acquaintances, family and even friends eventually turn to the dreaded question of “So… what have you been up to?” or something along these lines. I hate this question. To start with, they have usually just finished expounding on their recent acts of greatness – a promotion, an amazing vacation, a nomination for some prestigious award, or something equally victorious. I then, have to respond with something as trivial as “Not much.” And frankly, in their eyes, I’m sure it’s the truth. You see, my wife and I don’t enjoy the “normal” pastimes of sunny vacations, trips to the ocean or other such notable adventures. Instead, we usually find a fun recipe and make dinner together. Or we forgo showers for a week while backpacking on a muddy trail in a torrential downpour. And we love every minute of it.

But to the rest of the world, these pastimes usually seem absurd. With regards to the latter, I’m usually asked – why don’t you just fly to a sunny spot and enjoy the scenery from a lounge chair with a cold alcoholic beverage in your hand? And frankly, if I have to explain the joy in lugging 5 days of food up a steep muddy cliff, I highly doubt they will understand. With regards to cooking a meal, many times I get the response “That sounds like so much effort! Why didn’t you just go out for dinner?” Once or twice I’ve tried to reason with people and yet usually come across the inevitable point where I have to concede that yes, cooking does mean doing the dishes. With this confession, they feel they have won. This is fine with me as it probably means more secluded hiking trails and shorter lines at the grocery store. These are both positive results in my mind.

Excitement

Often to the chagrin of those around me, I’m a perpetual optimist. Whether or not it comes from my mother’s almost annoyingly cheery outlook on life, or my stubbornness to admit that the world may not fully be on my side, I don’t know. Regardless, I like to look at another year as a gift – the chance to continue for another 365 days doing those things which bring me joy. My wife and I both agree that greater amounts of backpacking are in order this coming year. She’s also begun on a delightful culinary odyssey that will surely bring no small amount of delicious food to our table. This, my friends, is what I call living the good life. Feel free to disagree if you must.

Confusion

Frankly, I must say that being in a state of confusion is not reserved for a new year approaching. Something as simple as locating my cellular phone often brings about no small amounts of confusion, especially when I know beyond a doubt that I left it on the dresser, and yet somehow it appears on the charger near the picture window – right where I would have put it if I were trying to charge it. I know I must have, in a moment of incredible lucidity, placed it there and yet I have no recollection of the act. The same can be said for the unexplainable disappearance of several pairs of scissors, the seemingly impossible act of locating both my hammer and the proper size nail simultaneously, as well as the ability to lose all the hair from my knuckles while light a coal stove, despite extreme care. I take pride in my ability to thrive on confusion.

However, the confusion regarding the passage of time is somewhat unique. As a year passes, it always seems that the end of the week is very far away. Yet, last Monday seems like an eternity ago. How is this possible? Being of the engineering mindset, I have concluded the following: The future moves much more slowly than the past. Think about it.

Happy New Year! Wishing you and yours a blessed 2010 filled with your own wonder, excitement and of course, confusion!

Usually, I love to grocery shop.  I realize that for a man, this is somewhat abnormal by today’s standards, but I have never been one to conform to standards – just ask my wife.  So on many occasions, I find myself browsing the isles of the grocery store on the way home from work looking for whatever Katherine needs to finish off her dinner masterpiece (or simply looking for chocolate covered pretzels and Diet Mountain Dew).

After living in Houghton, MI for three years during college where the primary grocery store was meager, to say the least, I feel very spoiled now by the variety of produce, the abundance of tasty treats and the shear volume of anything and everything a person could want.  There is even an entire isle devoted to nothing other than pet food, an entire corner devoted to international beers and three isles devoted to ethnic foods.  What’s more, the staff is usually pleasant and most actually know where to find that elusive can of olives you’ve spent the previous 10 minutes looking for.

However, the check out clerks are somewhat of an anomaly.  It seems that as soon as one of them becomes knowledgeable about anything, they instantly get transferred to that department.  Which means that more often than not, the person ringing you out and bagging your groceries still has a name tag stating Trainee, or something to that affect.  Now don’t get me wrong.  I usually have excellent luck picking someone who looks halfway awake and somewhat coherent.  Today I picked a nice looking teenage girl who seemed to be mostly with it.  Arriving in line and placing my groceries on the conveyor belt, I get asked the key question:

“Would plastic bags be okay for you this evening?”

Now I do understand that paper bags probably cost the store a few pennies more.  However, putting plastic bags in the back of a pick-up truck usually ends up very poorly.  To start with, as soon as I take one corner at a speed greater than 5 miles per hour, I hear the telltale clunking noise of my groceries rolling from one side of the truck bed to the other.  In the process, they all roll out of the plastic bag and the bag inevitably blows out of the truck landing smack in the middle of an elderly person’s windshield causing them to careen off the road.  Not good by anyone’s account.

So to counter the million dollar question, I have concocted a very nice, albeit a bit rehearsed, response.

“Actually, if it’s not too much trouble, could I please have paper?  I find plastic bags don’t work so well in the back of my pickup truck.”

Honest, simple and if said with a smile usually wins them over instantly.  Not so tonight.  With a sigh, the girl turns around, fetches a paper bag, and begins to scan items and place them in the bag.  About halfway through my cart of groceries, she’s still on bag number one and it’s starting to balloon out at the seams.

“I’m sorry.  That’s beginning to look a bit unwieldy.  Would it be possible to split that between two bags?”

Without missing a beat she responds, “I haven’t met the quota for the number of items to place in a paper bag yet.” and continues to try to wrangle the half gallon of milk into the already bursting bag.

Now believe me, I do understand quotas.  I understand that they are told to put lets say 15 items in each bag.  This is all fine.  But a little common sense tells us that 15 heavy items such as half-gallons of milk may not be the smartest way to go.  Or how about bulky items.  15 boxes of cereal clearly won’t fit either unless this particular bag served its previous life as a magician’s prop.

“I understand that”, I say sympathetically.  ”But clearly that rule has to be amended based on the size of the items, doesn’t it?”

She sighs again, a bit louder this time, and reaches for a second bag.  This continues until all of my groceries are crammed into three bags.  She heaves the bags back into the cart, looks at me and gives me my total.  As she hands me my receipt she informs me, “Next time, ask for double paper bags.  Then they won’t rip when you try to lift them.”

Curiously, I ask “But isn’t the quota twice as high for double bags?”

“Of course not.  We couldn’t fit that many things in one bag.”

I half expected her to end with “Duh!”, but she refrained.

This is getting ridiculous.  Seriously ridiculous.

So tonight, I have a wonderful dinner with my wife, and we sit down to watch a DVD and catch up on what’s going on in the world.  From across the couch I hear “Jon and Kate’s divorce is finalized!” Thinking to myself, what the heck news is my wife reading, I ask.  Turns out, it’s freaking CNN Top Stories RSS feed!  And here’s the article.  What the hell people.  Is this what our country finds “Top News”?  Apparently, this is where our countries interests lie.

Let me make a couple things clear.  I hate celebrity news.  I hate cable TV.  Yes.  I said it.  Hate me all you want, but to me the idea of paying hundreds of dollars a year to purchase the rights to watch TV laced with ads is completely ludicrous!  And every time I talk to my cable subscribing friends, all I ever hear about is the lack of good programming.  And yet they still pay!  So you can imagine my frustration that going to a reputable news source for some insight into the happenings in the real world, I come across two people who have turned a divorce into a publicity stunt and are dragging their children along for the ride (and even more publicity).

And I think what’s even worse is that we, as Americans, have allowed this to happen by actually giving a shit when some rich celebrities sneeze.  Get over it people.  Put down the remote, disengage yourself from your fake world inside that picture box and look around the room.  Look around your community.  Here are real people.  In today’s economic times, the last thing we need is to focus on those who have plenty of money and fame and choose to do nothing good with it.  Instead, we should focus on something real, something tangible.  What about that friend you know who’s going through a divorce and it’s tearing them up?  What about those around us who have no family to celebrate the holidays with?

So yes.  Call me bitter, call me un-American.  But get these two idiots out of the news and let them fight their fights behind closed doors.   Because I’m sick of hearing about them!

Yesterday morning, the European union officially dropped the antitrust charges against Microsoft with regards to their default browser, Internet Explorer. According to The Washington Post:

Under the terms of the settlement agreement, Microsoft will need to implement a ballot screen that lets users in Europe replace Internet Explorer with another browser, starting March 2010. The deal also means computer manufacturers will now be able to ship PCs in Europe that do not come pre-installed with IE.

This is great news for those living in Europe as it finally allows people to have easy choices instead of Internet Explorer.  Unfortunately, it seems that those of us in the U.S. are not going to benefit from this same courtesy.

Microsoft has long plagued web developers with it’s lack of adherence to common standards, instead choosing to forge ahead in their own little world and assuming everyone will adopt their standards.  While things have improved dramatically in the latest releases, as a web developer, I can’t help but have a bitter taste for Internet Explorer.

So now the question becomes, what can we, in the United States, do about this?  Simple.  Install Firefox, Chrome or Opera and never click on that stupid Internet Explorer icon again!

This is freaking unbelievable to me.  Apple has been in the browser business for much longer than Google.  And Safari ships with all Mac computers as the default browser!  But apparently, Google Chrome is just that cool!

Just last week, Google finally released official betas for its Chrome browser for Mac and Linux. That release had a nice effect on market share for the browser, propelling it past Apple’s Safari and into third place.

So what does this really mean?  Frankly, not a whole heck of a lot since this means that Chrome now has a total of just over 4.4% of the browser market share.   Good, but certainly not in any position to overtake Firefox or Internet Explorer .  In all honesty, I’d be thrilled if Internet Explorer got knocked down a few pegs. But you can have my Firefox when you pry it out of my cold, dead hands.  Yes. I’m that attached to it.

So… what do I think of Chrome?  Well, it’s better than Internet Explorer.  It’s better than Opera.  Versus Safari — it’s about a tossup for me.  I’m really not overly attached to either.  I tried Safari.  I really did.  But it just lacks the plugins of Firefox — a feature which I take full advantage of.  And at the end of the day, things are just more intuitive for me in Firefox.  Chrome, on the other hand, is just very different.  And I like that.  And I’ll probably download it and play with it more.