"Forgive me Muse, for I have sinned. It has been nearly three months since my last confession."

I have a myriad of excuses why I've let my writing "go to pot" in the last several months. Work, holidays, family - we've heard it all before. The truth of the matter is - after some more introspective thinking, I've concluded that one big reason was that I was getting tired of micromanaging my website, especially keeping up with my weblog. I was getting tired of the effort it took to keep everything updated - if I updated my weblog, I had to update my main page and my weblog page. If I updated my journal, I had to update my main page and my weblog. It was becoming a chore and a half just to keep everything updated.

Thus you will find that my weblog is no longer shown on my main page. The weblog is still there but from this day forth, I will no longer update it any longer. I intend to do all my writing, whether it be a daily itinerary, links to my latest hot deals, or cute anecdotes in my journal. I've decided to say "to hell" with convention. Who says a journal has to be writing only? Who says you can't add links to a journal entry?

Every now and then, it's always good to take a step back and do a personal accounting of where you've been, where you are, and where you're going. And I sure didn't like where I was going. I'm taking a back to basics or KISS (keep it simple stupid) approach. So there.

I do admit somewhat sheepishly that I was getting hung up over stupid sophomoric things like page hits, site visits, number of comments, who was reading what where when, how come I'm not popular, yadda yadda yadda. Well, as they say, there comes a time when it's time to put our childish behaviors behind us. So I am. This journal is about me, about my thoughts, my ideas, and I am doing it for me with no regards anysoforwith as far as popularity, and crap like that.

Now that I've gotten all that off my chest, on to the "good" stuff, that is, the nonsensical gibberish you've all come to love or perhaps, hate. What have I been up to the last three months? And how do I tell all that in fifty words or less without boring you all to gnawing on the nearest wooden object? I think a list is in order here (The Diary Critic be damned).

1. Work - two trips in the last month (one of which I just returned from) to Louisiana to present results for one of my projects. Both meetings went excellent even though I was pretty much on my own without my boss on the most recent one. Both trips have gone as well as can be expected, with last minute snafus and Mr. Murphy visiting us during crunch time. We survived as we'd done in the past.

Other work related news: our company won three out of the six Arkansas Engineering Excellence Awards given recently, one of which won the overall "Grand Perceptor" award. I also happened to be one of the modelers on that particular project - Yay me! Co-worker Buddy's project also won the award for their particular category - Yay Buddy! :)

2. Family - our family has been doing wonderful lately. Jen has gotten Ariel on a more routine homeschool schedule. Braden has just been growing in leaps and bounds. And we really enjoyed our semi-recent vacation to Austin, TX where we attended one of my friend's wedding. It was wonderful to be "home" again - for I still consider Austin a second home.

3. Computer crap - well, the one constant in my life is that I'm usually tweaking stuff with my computers at home, these past two weeks are no exception. I upgraded the motherboard for my Pentium box, upgraded the processor & O/S. That computer is running quite nicely now! I also realized that I had upgraded it completely that I could now put the HP back to its original state, and possibly sell it as an internet/WP machine to someone who could use it. Just be sure and check out my computer specs for the latest.

I also added what I consider one of my "masterpieces" of my lifetime to my portfolio page - a work I did for my Parageography class at UT. Please check out my Zeitheim when you have a moment. It's truly a work to behold.

Are you asleep yet? I know I'm just rambling but mostly just wanted to kinda get this off my chest for now. Better entries upcoming I promise. I figure to get back in the writing habit, I gotta start somewhere right? Writing crap is better than no writing at all, at least that's the way I feel tonight.

Stay tuned, caped crusaders, and bear with me as I get my writing cap dusted off and working again.