I may hold on to this domain name for a while, but don’t expect to keep adding to this blog. If Kubrick were to make a movie about Bullplop, I think it’d be called “How I learned to stop worrying and love the blog.” It started as a hosted blog on blogger, then bought a domain and transferred it to bullplop.com. Eventually I saw the light and moved from blogger to wordpress. My posts have slowed down just because, like I said, I’m blogging in two other places.

Even though I don’t feel like contributing to this blog anymore, I don’t want it to be static either. I’m putting up a bit of code that I found today from a site called flickranywhere that will share my recent activity on my flickr page.

I did a demo of wordpress for one of the Senior VPs at work today and it got me re-excited about blogging again.

When I lived in taiwan, this was the time of year for vacation. I really liked that. I took two paid weeks in the middle of Febrary when i worked in a school in taiwan. I remember talking with my scooter mechanic one night. I couldn’t understand him all that well, not just because my mandarin is hen lan. (lame) but because of the air generator whirring in the background. From what I could tell we were talking about the upcoming new year xin(new) nian(year) and that that was the only time each year he’d turn the generator off. Those guys worked 7 days per week. they worked all the time. they worked really slowly, but they never really had time off. Except this week, when they take the whole week off. Shut the power off on all the tools and everything.

(His mechanic shop was a three story house, the bottom floor his shop, the other two floors his house with his family.)

I’m sure he’s out celebrating, doing bai bai where they put out fruit and burn incense and paper money. I loved seeing the chinese honor their ancestors. It’s not as solemn as it sounds in school. Filial Piety isn’t what they called it. For example, If they were remembering relatives who liked to gamble, or had a lot of debt, they’d burn more money. If they liked to drink, they’d put out beers with the fruit. (It’s so different from my beach life in San Diego.)

Xin Nian was a time for fireworks. I’m sure there’s firecrackers. Oh the fireworks. Chinese people use fireworks for everything. They use them to celebrate, but that includes celebrating at church, when campaigning for politician, during parades as you run around (which was really cool). There’s even a special holiday where in one city you can run through a seciton where they’re firing firecrackers off into the crowd. I should dig up some pictures of that.

Fireworks at church was funny. I could only imagine lighting off M-80’s at a lutheran potluck some Sunday after church. I know how they liked it, I lived next to a temple. Early sun mornings.. fireworks.

So to celebrate blogging again, to celebrate the new year, and the rest of the month when i won’t be working 60 hours between three projects, and to celebrate word press, I’m changing my theme. xin nian kaui le. Gong Xi Fa Cai!

Play this game to try it out.  Drag the socks around until you find it’s pair.

My final class presentations was this past Thursday. We met from 7 - 8:30 or so, then went out to Gordon Biersch for a few celebratory beers. I followed that up with more parties the last two days. I had the HR department holiday party on Friday, then the Mission Fed party on Saturday. Today I’ve been home all day, and am actually baking a pumpkin pie. (I know. I can’t believe it either)

Today it really hit me. I don’t have to do anything but work from this point on. Last Saturday, I finished my two projects for the sekester, the electronic portfolio, and personal knowledge management system. When I finished my PKMS on del.icio.us I was so happy I wrote a blog post calling myself a “Master of the University”- like the intellectual He-Man that I’ve become.

Now I’m home realizing it’s all over, after 8 semesters I can really relax, enjoy the holidays and look forward to not enrolling again in January. No homework at all in 2007!

Including my sister who went to UCLA and lost each year. Ha Ha!

Surprisingingly, that’s not the only rivalry game in LA today. Kind of crazy. The SC men’s basketball team takes on Loyola Marymount, which isn’t that big a deal, but it’s also the day that our two NHL teams and NBA teams face one another. The no longer Mighty Ducks are playing the LA Kings and the suddenly good Clippers are playing my Lakers.

Kobe’s coming off a 52 point game, but the Clips are coming off a season where they not only made the playoffs, but made it deeper than the Lakers did. Not only do they share a city of NBA fans, they share the same arena. I think today’s a “home” game for the Clippers, though each team will have the luxury of staying in their own locker room before the game.

And I’m not watching it. I’m catching the end of the first half of the “other” big game this year. #1 Ohio State Buckeyes are hosting the #2 Michigan Wolverines. It’s a huge rivalry game, one I remember from my days living in columbus. OH……… IO, peanut butter and chocolate buckeyes, and all that dreaded Maize and Blue.

It really is terrific to have TV fit your schedule, not the other way around. It frees up so much. I was able to go out, run errands, see a movie, vacuum and get everything ready for when my friends join us at 6 for the game.. that started an hour ago. We get to skip the halftime show and expert analysis and so on, and it actually ends up trimming close to an hour off a sports show. So what if it happened three hours ago? As long as I don’t find out who won, the entertainment of the game is as good in the evening as it would be in the afternoon. sometimes it’s better. In this case it is.

Michigan just scored a 37 yard touchdown to bring the score up to 14-21. And I’m about to skip all the commercials that follow the extra point. It’s really nice being able to finish all my domestics, then line the games up back to back. OSU closed the half with another touchdown and now it’s back to a 28-14 lead all at 5:30 PM for a 12:30 game.