Growing up is hard to do. I mean, come on, why should I be concerned about things like housing prices, making responsible decisions with my money, and our government’s inability to balance a budget? For some reason, I’m supposed to be concerned about these things now that I’m a father and a husband and … a grown-up. Ooh! Who wants that label? Not me. Funny thing though, even though I don’t want the label, the concerns I’ve brought up are things that I am really worried about.

Many people make resolutions when a new year approaches. Sometimes I do and sometimes I don’t. Usually when I do, they only last temporarily so that’s why I’m hesitant to make any for 2008. Plus, when you write them down, you’re so earnest in your determination but it never works out like that, does it?

Maybe it’s the Christmas season and being around family and friends, I always get introspective when a new year is right around the corner. I worry about the economy, the kids, the house, the job, etc. I wish that I had the time to examine the moral and ethical decisions that I have to make this coming year before they happen. What will they be? I wonder if the mistakes that were made in 2007 will be made in 08. That includes my mistakes as well as others. The big four-oh is right around the corner for me. What will that be like? Read more  »

Update (09/14/08): While most of the information here is factually correct, my use of each social network has changed drastically since December of 2007.

The web is more interesting when you can use it to find long lost acquaintances, share web sites, and interact with your friends and colleagues. The term social gets attached to web sites and networks but its hard for me to think of them as being social. I’m not really interacting with people on social sites, I’m interacting with information about people. But, its pretty clear that these sites have changed the way we use the internet; its not just shopping and email anymore. I like to think of my collection of social networks as one big personal information manager.

So, in order to expose myself further to the online world (and hopefully, get to know others), here are the social networks that I’m apart of and how I use them. I’m not pretending to have just discovered any of these. They’ve been around awhile but I recently came across someone’s blog where they shared their StumbleUpon account and everyone noticed. I listed the applications in order of my preference but, before you go trying all of them, please be aware of each’s reason for existing (for example, please don’t contact me via LinkedIn if you want to see my movie preferences).

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