Hey Crazy kids. It’s time for a new bloggin’ system. I’ve followed Mike’s footsteps and gone to blogger.com. I tried it out way back in August, and here I am again. One of the most compelling reasons was how closely integrated with Picasa2 it is. You can upload and post pictures in seconds, it’s that easy. If you haven’t tried Picasa, you should! The other major reason was to have my blog stored somewhere safe. Before I had it stored on theburn.com, and I was afraid I’d screw up my Movable Type install. Now it is safely on Blogger.com’s servers, and they are the ones that have to make sure hard drives don’t fail, etc. Ok, now to post a picture of something!

Lately I’ve been on a book reading binge. My mom bought me Michael Crichton’s latest book for Christmas, and since then I’ve read two and I’ve almost finished a third. I’ve bought all of his books on hardback, but I’m looking for something else to jump into. I think I’m going to give this book/series a try. It’s called A Game of Thrones. It’s a big fantasy epic that spans multiple books. The fourth one is just about to come out, and it’s supposed to stretch for six books total. What’s amazing is how many reviews this book has…over 1000! Anyways, it might be fun. The library has a copy, so I’m going to check it out and see if it’s my kind of book/series or not. Ok, as you were.

It’s metaphor time.

Our lives are like a big picture. It tells who we are, how we feel, and what we care about. The big picture is the opposite of the nutshell. The big picture encompasses your entire life and being. The big picture began when you were born, and it’s finished when you die…and few people stop and realize it’s being painted.

The big picture began the day your life started. All the things you’ve done since then affect who you are, from day one to the end. It’s a slow and gradual process. How old are you? Whatever your answer, that’s how long you’ve held the paintbrush in your hand. Who you are isn’t decided the day you graduate High School. It’s not some mystical unknown future knowledge about yourself. There is a picture of your life this very moment, and you’re still painting it.

The most important question is this…what are you going to paint from here on out? You can’t unpaint what you’ve done, but you can paint over it. You can’t change who you’ve been, but you can change who you’re going to be. Whatever you do, never forget that at this very moment…

…you have a brush in your hand.

So my mom got me Michael Crichton’s new book for Christmas, State of Fear. Luckily subbing provides an ample amount of time for reading. In the last two weeks I’ve read over 1000 pages. Since hardcover books are fun, I decided to buy up all of his old books. I have most in paperback, but I want to have them in hardback too. Well, today I got the book Congo from someone on half.com. The book is in really good condition for being 25 years old, but there’s one problem. IT SMELLS. Not just like a book, but like dirty old dying dead people smell. It’s really gross. So gross that I bought a new one, haha!

Stacie and I got new cell phones about a week ago, and I just got a data cable to connect it to the computer. I’m having fun putting pictures of boo and Napolean Dynamite music on it.

AIM keeps disconnecting every two seconds and it’s driving me crazy. I’m going to put a real network card back in my machine, because I don’t trust my onboard anymore!

I’ve been having a lot of “techie” fun lately. The last two days I’ve been working on the good old Lunacade. It now plays eight different gaming systems. The newest is N64, but it’s fun just trying to make them all work!

Tonight at church I finally got a good live online radio broadcast program to work. For about 45 minutes I had a LIVE and online interview with Carly Patterson. We talked about her ongoing fight with tapeworms. Then I took some questions from the audience over AIM. It was so much fun I think we’re going to make it a weekly feature. Go over to www.theburn.com to read more about it!

I have boy’s PE at Sussman tomorrow. Should be very wet. Bye yo.

A trucker and his cargo have gone missing. His cargo? 3.6 million nickels. Would anyone in their right mind steal 3.6 million nickels? While that’s worth $180,000…do you know how long that would take to roll?

So Joe Lieberman thinks it’s a great idea for a global tsunami warning system. While I agree, it would be great if the people who died in the tsunami had been warned, I disagree that WE should have to pay for it! Lieberman proposes that the U.S. spend 30 million dollars to put the system in place, and then 7.5 million dollars a year to keep it running. Keep in mind this is on top of the warning we already have in the Pacific…for ourselves.

Another good question we should ask ourselves is, why are we literally throwing money to the same people that danced in the streets when we were attacked on 9-11? Did they send us money? Don’t start saying we’re more “fortunate” than they are. It’s not like success just landed in our laps here in the USA, we earned it. Maybe we should look at how much money they gave to us, determine what percentage it was of their GDP, and then give the same percent to them for tsunami relief? That sounds fair to me.

The great William Hung is doing what all successful Pop music stars do…he’s becoming an actor! While the film is in Chinese, I’m sure it will be great fun. Check it out here.