Milestones

17 years ago (and a week) I started this blog.

10 years ago today I moved from Seattle to San Diego. I packed whatever I could fit in the back of my Camaro, drove down I-5 and stayed with Jello in SF. The next day we drove down the Pacific Coast Highway, stopping in Santa Barbara for the night. After making our way through LA we arrived in San Diego and celebrated by having a beer at the bar inside the Hillcrest Whole Foods.

Jello and I at the grocery store bar

0 years ago Michigan won the National Championship. Their first since 1997, when I was 9. At the time I was young enough to think it would be a somewhat regular occurrence. But it was a long arduous road to get back to the top of the mountain. Many better writers have waxed poetic on this journey and what it means. For me it's sheer joy and elation, having stood in the Big House and watched us lose to Toledo in 2008. All those low moments and having to watch all the players who graduated without ever sniffing a Championship, or worse, a win against Ohio State. Those lows make this high feel even higher.

I'd love nothing more than a Michigan dynasty. But it's a rapidly diminishing marginal return. That feeling of the first win against Ohio State after losing 8 in a row doesn't compare with their feelings if they had won a 9th. Just getting back here, even once is enough for me. As Blake Corum said "Business is Finished". I will still be a huge fan forever and watch every game, but that weight of them desperately needing to win each game feels like it's been lifted. Maybe not against our rivals who we need to beat to keep talking trash, but if we lose to USC or Texas next year, I think I'd be immediately at peace with it. I don't want to wait another 26 years, but I'm content to ride this championship for at least the next 10.

The end of a fun tradition

I'm a little late posting my annual chart of the birthday messages I receive, which I've been doing annually for 13 years now. You may have noticed that in the past two years the posts have gotten a bit shorter, and I've stopped adding in new things to track. I think the novelty has worn off, and the humor that I derive so much self worth from the number of people that wish me happy birthday has been completely played out. I've also pretty much stopped using facebook, and one of the few things keeping me from deleting my account is this stupid tradition. So with that said, I think this will be the last time I make a post about the number of happy birthday messages I receive.

It was fun while it lasted, but here is what is very likely the last Birthday Messages chart I'll ever post.

Blogger's picture scaling sucks.

The biggest surprise in these numbers is that I've maintained a relative steady number of facebook friends.

For those wondering, I had a nice birthday. For breakfast we went to a pancake breakfast for the nearby fire department, for lunch I made Reubens on the flattop and for dinner we went to my favorite Japanese restaurant in Davis and then did brownies and ice cream back at our house for dessert. It was a nice way to head into year 36.

Thanks for following along with my weird birthday message obsession all these years. 

12 Years Behind the Keyboard

My last blogoversary post was in 2016 when this blog turned 9. I completely missed my 10th anniversary (and 11th).

Keen-eyed readers may have noticed an uptick in blogging output in 2018. 6 posts is the most production this blog has seen since 2014. About a year ago I decided to improve how I manage my life. I found an app where I can manage tasks and set up recurring reminders to help me remember to floss twice a week. One of those is to blog every 8 weeks. That's how you get to 6 posts in a year. Maybe I'll up it to every 6 weeks, but I'm not sure if my readers can handle that much content.

I think the key to blogging for 12 years is a combination of holding on to obsolete technology along with learning the dvorak keyboard layout. If you're going to pound out this many posts you might as well use a better keyboard layout than QWERTY. I know I've mentioned it in a few posts, but I've never officially blogged about it, since I learned to type on the dvorak keyboard layout about 6 months before starting the blog. Maybe that'll be a good post.

I feel like since I started the blog that people are much more wary about putting their personal information on the internet, especially facebook and other social media. I too share that concern, and have really reduced how much info I put on my social media. I realize how much not-so-great info I have on this blog about me, but my hope is that no one thinks to look for someone's blog anymore. But I'm trying to put less personal info out there on the blog, and at the same time trying to find interesting things to post about.

I am also well aware that some of the things that I blogged about in college would probably no longer be a good idea to post on the internet today. Maybe I'm more mature or maybe societal values have changed. I'm keeping these posts up, since I see the blog primarily as a diary to remind myself of how cool I used to be. Please ignore the ones that are now in poor taste.

Here's to blogging in poor taste in 2019!

Happy 9th Blogiversary!

My loyal readers,

I don't know how many of you still exist, but to those of you who do - kudos on your commitment to this blog. It's been rarer and rarer that I post here, now that I have the twitters, the facebookers, the snapchatters, the instagrammers and the grinders. While many moons have come and gone since my last post, this here blog has never been far from my heart. So with that, I wish myself a happy and successful 9th year of blogging, which is about a third of my overall life thus far.

Getting married - it didn't happen in a field though.

Seeing as my blogiversary post has either been forgotten or delayed the past several years, I'm proud to write a few lines for the 2016 blogging season. My last on-time blogiversary post was on my 3rd Blorthday in 2010. And if you haven't picked up on it yet, I intend to continue to mostly blog about how much blogging I do. I should blog more!

Golfing in Puerto Rico whilst very hungover

My last post was in May. Since then, just a few minor things have happened. I got married in June which was nice. I went on some trips to Puerto Rico, Seattle, DC, Detroit, Costa Rica and the Caribbean. I didn't blog about any of them, but looking back I probably should have. I've continued to work on my house and still like my job. So there is the Christmas Card for you.

I have several things I should blog about, and perhaps one of my goals for 2016 will be to blog more, but it seems like I'm sticking with a kind of outdated system. But whatever, I do what I want, and it's my blog so if I don't want to post for 9 months then deal with it! So there.

Skiing in Tahoe

Blogging is easy. Convincing myself to blog is hard. But either way, here's to a great 2016 and an even better 9th year behind the keyboard of whatever this blog is called now.

WTTIF Gets Wood

Hello friends,

Long time no see. I've haven't been blogging at a incredible rate. But this post will have to be made as the official 5 year anniversary post. Which, for the record, is 5 days late. And I forgot to write one last year. Given the recent trend soon anniversary posts will constitute a large percentage of this blogs posts. Last year  I even blogged about how my lack of blogging has affected the number of birthday wall posts that I normally get. But that's not the reason I blog. As I laid out in my introductory post, this blog is to be used for the sole purpose of getting chicks.

But 5 years ago people were just figuring out how to dump things on this big truck we call an internet. Being a blogger was edgy and cool. Haven't any of you seen hackers? It was just like that. I was Dade "Zero Cool" Murphy and my readers were a sexier version of Angelina Jolie. But as the years dragged on I find that having a blog is considered passe. Blogs don't get chicks anymore. Today's babes only want guys with Tumblrs and over 100 twitter followers. I might as well be writing this on my LiveJournal while updating my MySpace.

Another problem with the blog is that content is harder to come by. It used to be that when I had no responsibilities I could go out and do stupid shit and then write (poorly) about it. But with a full-time professional job I have less time to spend doing stupid shit. And I refuse to let this blog divulge into me posting links to interesting things or write about my opinions on politics. There is enough of that on the internet already, thank you very much. And I'm not going to bore everyone by writing about my job.

The other real problem that has contributed to the demise of the blog has been the rise of Twitter. I've had a twitter account since March of 2009. It is interesting to note that it was also the last month that I also blogged more than 7 times. I think the twitters have taken away some of the low level content that once comprised the majority of the filler posts between the long posts. That basically leaves the blog for all the long-winded (boring) stuff like big trips. The problem is that no one wants to hear about other peoples trips unless there are pictures of naked people or you're leaving friends behind in Bloomington Indiana.

The good news is that I do have some posts that I plan on posting in the near future. You can consider this the preantepenultimate post of January 2012. Let's see where this year takes us, and let's pour some out for the last 5.

P.S. I'm really proud of what I did with the title of this post. Very high level stuff.

WTTIF Turns Three

I'm pretty sure this blog jumped the shark on Saturday August 15th, 2009. But up until then, this was a pretty strong year for the blog. As the standard for the birthday post, I re-read all my posts from the past year. The upsetting thing is how many absurd things happened over the last year that I didn't blog about. That's why I think I might make a couple of posts about some of the crazy things I never got to blog about.

Who knows what this year will hold. But I hope to blog more. Right now my life is consumed by Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 and NCAA Football '10 so some posts will have to wait.

FYI

I just ate a sandwich that was just bread, mayo, cheese and very undercooked bacon. I now feel terrible.

Also, it is job recruiting season and believe it or not this blog might be viewed negatively by some employers. So the blog might be down for indeterminate lengths of time over the next several months. Thank goodness there is someone out there to push me down the Google search results.

I've decided to Blog More

I think I am going to start posting multi-day posts. This means that post might be shorter, quicker and not so much content based. Think more zwarlick. Only not so much with the non sequiturs.

In my horrendous effort to spell non-sequitur I typed seqwitier, and the built in spell checkers first suggestion was "frontiersman". That's terrible.

Happy Birthday to My Blog

I started my blog a year ago and 65 posts later I am still going strong. I have had some good posts and I have had some great posts. I re-read all of my posts over the last year and it reminded me of some things I probably would have otherwise forgotten. I was going to list the best blog posts of 2007 but they are all great in some way, whether it be blatant self promotion, update about my life, or a great story. I hope this year will be just as blogable as the last. Maybe this year I will get that craigslist missed connection, or finally have that Tucker Max-esq story. It's been a great year and I can't wait till next year to remember all the crazy stuff I did this year.

Just one other thing from today. Al, Pete, Ross and I went to Burger King, we had a bunch of coupons that were buy one get one free. I got 2 double stacker's, Pete got 2 chicken sandwich's, Ross got a huge load of food and Al got 2 triple stacker's. There were drinks and fries to go around. We averaged 2000 calories each. Al and Pete both got aver 2100 calories and Al had almost 200 grams of fat. An hour later and a bad case of the meat sweats we finally finished all of our food. We came home, enjoyed a food coma and watched football.