Today marks the 23^rd anniversary of my birth, well, kind of. I was born on Leap Year in 1984, so my birthday is slightly strange. Most people ask me when I celebrate it and I usually reply with a sarcastic, “Whenever I want”, which isn’t true. For the most part I celebrate it February 28^th or March 1^st, depending on which is more convenient. During a Leap Year, a big celebration occurs, since I actually have a day to celebrate it on.

Does my birthday mean I am wiser or just older? Well, what has happened in the last year:

1. I graduated from college
2. I got my first job
3. I quit my first job
4. I made some great friends

And in the middle of all of it, I started dating a wonderful girl.

I have to say, it’s been a great year.

In case you didn’t understand my neat little title, I really do miss not having my iPod. I let my dad borrow it for a week long trip to Virginia and it has only been three days without it but I really hate not having it.

There are certain points in my day when having some music playing really helps and I have been forced to listen to streaming radio, which just doesn’t cut it.

Another item on my to-do list is to reorganize my music and photo libraries to make them completely run off of external hard drives and backed up via Amazon S3. I am currently encrypting all of the data I pass on to S3 and though JungleDisk works well on OS X, I’d like to find something that does not require so many steps to start, use, and close.

We all love the weekend. It is the break we need from the grind of work, school, and everyday life. But, have you ever had one of those weekends that, when it was over, felt like it went by extremely fast, but during it seemed to last a long time?

The kind of weekend where everything that happens is great and even the smallest little details that no one else would notice make it even better. Those are the best weekends.

I spent this weekend with Jessica. Her birthday is tomorrow and mine is somewhere in between tomorrow and Thursday (Leap Year), so this was our birthday weekend. She got me two tickets to the Astros vs. Cardinals game at Minute Maid park and said that she is “treating me to a game, some hot dogs, cotton candy, and cold beer”. So I get to spend a day at the ball park with the girl who makes me happy enjoying the little details.

I have now been in the Houston area two and a half weeks. During the transition I have been staying at my parent’s house which has worked out well, however, I am ready to move to a place of my own.

Finding an apartment in Houston has been difficult because quite frankly, I do not know exactly where I want to live. I have been using HousingMaps (great site) to find possible locations and relatively compare the different prices.

My original thoughts are to live either in the west portion of town (read, Katy), the northwest portion, or inside the loop somewhere near the Galleria. Why the Galleria area you ask? Well, for one, I would be going against traffic every morning and afternoon. Secondly, the area is much less “suburban” and more eclectic than the rest of Houston, especially near Rice.

As far as price range, a lot of the places in those areas are near what I want to pay, so now I just need to get out there and look.

In what is becoming an all too familiar occurrence, Texas Tech basketball fell apart in a crucial “prove yourself” game.

The outcome of the night became apparent four minutes into the first half as Jarrius Jackson attempted multiple times to make a basket and failed. To top it off, the entire starting five for the University of Texas was on fire, nailing shot after shot.

A series of steals by Durant slowly wore down the Tech offense and allowed Texas to grow their lead close to 20. From there on out it was a downhill battle for us. This was especially apparent when Bob Knight switched the defense to a 3-2 zone… Yes, you heard right, Bob Knight himself switched defensive tactics to a 3-2 zone.

One aside. Texas played a great game and they will be in the NCAA tournament. However, there was one flaw that came to light during the game. If they cannot play a faster paced game, Texas seems to lose its edge. They seem to struggle to move the ball around when the game is not as up tempo as they are used to. Also, their free throw shooting has to improve before the tournament or it’s going to be a quick 1 and out for them.

Whatever the flaws in Texas’ offense it was more than enough to stop us.

CallWave Mobile looks like the perfect solution to the problem I have had with voicemail for a while.

Too bad it doesn’t work with my SprinPCS number.

Google Reader now supports embedded video in feeds. That’s pretty sweet!

I just want to put it out there that Time Warner Cable has some of the worst communication lines I have ever experienced.

For the last 20 minutes I have been unsuccessfully trying to contact them via the phone number on their website. All I get is a busy signal. Supposedly the number posted is a 24/7 number and I should be able to get through, but so far, that’s a lie.

All I want to do is put my service on hold during my move and it’s impossible to do. Frustration is not a good enough word for how I feel right now. If you are a customer service person, take heed, monitor your phone and other communication systems.

In time for tonight’s game, my friends have trained our dog Jackson a cool trick:

I’d rather be a dead dog as well….

I have made changes to the RSS feed for this site.

The main change is the ability to read the entire entry from the feed itself (full post) instead of excerpts. It will still show the last 10 entries but will have the posts in their entirety.

I have also added CDATA to the feed, so it will be slightly formatted (paragraphs, images, etc.).

Just some slight improvements to help the folks who visit the site through a feed-reader.