One of my favourite singers, Jewel, has an album called 0304. Nobody could figure out what the title meant until she explained that it was written during 2003 and 2004, so I'm going to write this entry during 2007 and 2008 but it's 10 minutes to 8pm now, so it'll be "0708" in Bermuda or Eastern Canada I guess.

Christmas was a week ago and it was pretty good albeit rather quiet. I spent much of the day alone playing with my new gifts, eating some good food, and basically doing whatever I wanted that day. It was kinda lonely not being with family this year, but I've been there every year since, so I was forgiven. Plus, we opened our presents live over the internet with our webcams so we were together 'virtually' atleast. I got my dad some wine from Mick Fleetwood's private collection, and a bunch of books. I got my brother got some motorcycle stuff he wanted, my mom got a very nice winter hat made locally, and my sister-in-law got a hat too but it had little cat ears on it so it's very cute. I also sent some hand-made soaps and some locally-made jams.

I got a bunch of XBox games, some clothes, the Transformers movie (awesome and LOUD), and some books. Basically, everyone got me what I put on my amazon.com wishlist! My brother is setting up one for himself now.

For Christmas, our whole family toned down the gift-giving this year because it was getting out of hand. I'd say we all spent about 30% of what we normally spend which is actually a relief. I sent all my stuff in one box by UPS and it got there just in time. I was going to use the postal service but because I told them there was wine in the box, they wouldn't mail it. FedEx wouldn't either. I assumed UPS would not either, so I just labeled the contents as "food, clothes, and toys" and hoped that the wine bottle would not break during shipping! Worse, Canada Customs could have opened the box, discovered the wine and confiscated it!

Today is my birthday which is also rather quiet and I had to go to work. I didn't get much done because I'm trying to fix a bug in some software that is rather hard to find, but I DID spend almost the whole day there. In about 2 hours, I'm going to downtown Grass Valley to see what's happening in the streets and hopefully there will be some entertainment. If not, that's fine too because this town is very charming and I don't have to be in a wild party EVERY year.

Yesterday I celebrated my birthday by myself by going to the local Buca DiBeppo and getting the Quattro al Forno, which was pretty good and some spaghetti & meatballs to go. I got a coupon for a free dessert, so I chose Apple Pie with vanilla Ice Cream. All portions were huge and I went from hungry to stuffed in the space of an hour!

Here's a pretty good wild animal video on YouTube that I found:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=LU8DDYz68kM

My little house I'm renting is still very nice except a few days ago, I had no running water. The pipes must have frozen because water was running when I got back home later that day. I still haven't decided to buy the place or not. I'll decide in April, maybe.

Buying a house or land, or electronic gadgets is not high on my agenda right now because I'm spending too much money getting stuff for my online store. About 50% of the stuff I ordered in September has arrived which means another $12,000 of stuff will arrive by April. In the meantime, I'm taking pictures of everything and writing software to generate the web site from the data I put in an Excel spreadsheet.

To help with the pictures, I am using DeBabelizer, a product I used to work on in 1997 & 1998. I got an email offer to upgrade to the latest versions for $99, so I got the latest Mac version and the latest Windows version but I cannot install them because they are upgrades and I need serial numbers for the previous version. I'm 2 or 3 versions behind, so mine don't work though I was assured they would! So annoying... now I have to plead and beg for serial numbers that work.

Since this is the last day of the year, I think I'll reflect on the highs and lows of my 2007:
low: getting laid off at AOL
low: moving away from my friends in Virginia
high: getting the severance package from AOL
high: paying off the SL500
high: selling my SLK230 to my dad which keeps it in the family if I want it back one day
high: driving cross-country and dodging tumbleweeds in Colorado
high: finally driving through Colorado
high: moving my car to California. No more Personal Property Tax in VA! A savings of $2000 a year!
high: 3 or 4 days vacation in Miami plus a job interview that leads to an offer
high: free flight to Berkeley, CA for an interview that leads to an offer
high: being back in the bay area again after a 6-year absence
high: getting a work visa for the company in Miami
low: deciding whether to take the Miami job or the Berkeley job (it was rather tough)
high: getting a work visa for the company in Berkeley
low: taking the Berkeley job then getting let go after a week
low: living in hotels for two weeks searching for a new job (it was expensive)
high: getting an offer at Sling Media
high: getting an offer at Telestream
high: taking the offer at Telestream without having to decide
high: getting the work visa for Telestream in Vancouver
low: living in a crappy barn for 5 months during the summer incase I get let-go again in a week
high: saving money by living in a crappy barn for 5 months
high: going to the Apple Developers conference WWDC07
high: doing some serious Mac programming at work
high: finding the new house I'm in right now and moving in
high: buying a Sony PS3 and learning all about it
high: buying an HD DVD player for my XBox 360
high: buying an iPod Touch
high: seeing my friend Billie again (a girl from Australia I met in 1994 in California)
low: spending about $5000 to move my stuff from Virginia
high: scanning lots of my documents into the computer so moving is easier
low: selling something on eBay worth $350 only to have the post office lose it (no insurance)
high: no car accidents in 2007
high: no health problems
high: no crimes against me
high: no crashed hard drives
low: still haven't received my visa to visit Australia
low: dealing with United Airlines to use some credit I have with them
low: lost the retainer that keeps my teeth perfectly aligned (might want braces again soon)
low: didn't get any money from any of the people who owe me money (except my cousin in Canada)
low: bank balance not great because of the online store I want to setup
low: don't own a house or any land yet
low: still single