I was thinking about this post for a few days now.

2011 has been divided into three roughly equal parts for me. This division wasn’t made by me purposefully, but rather forced upon me.

- = -

Part One

This was the second half-year of my stay at QuinStreet. This was after the Insurance.com acquisition. I was kept aboard and at the time was hopeful that things would work out. I had some doubts, but I was seeing real progress in how the thinking was shaping up.

At this time I started really thinking about moving and En was brought into the mix as well. We had things to do around the house that we didn’t really move forward with because we didn’t want to sink a lot of cash into the house that we didn’t know we would be staying at for any real length of time.

Things were odd. Things were on hold.

- = -

Part Two

On a fateful day in mid May I crashed my bicycle. This was a disruption if ever there was one. The accident wasn’t chosen by me obviously. Could there be things I could have done differently to prevent it? Probably. But hindsight is 20/20. What’s done is done.

That day changed my summer. It changed many things. I was going to go on a trip with En somewhere. That was obviously canceled. My riding, both bicycle and motorcycle, was curtailed. I was helpless for a month or so.

Not a day has gone by since then that I don’t get a reminder sometime about it. Something that causes me to think of it. (Even excluding the scar or neurapraxia)

We did go to X-Day like we always do. It was a strange not being able to do nearly as much of the setup work. Even just walking to the shower was a pain (literally). The seeping wound on my leg wasn’t helping matters much either. (It was a stitch that hadn’t yet worked its way out) We brought along the crutches but thankfully I didn’t have to use them — I just had to walk slowly.

That summer with me working from home melded with the start of part three.

- = -

Part Three

I’m not going to recap all of what I wrote about looking for a job. You can find it if you want.

Suffice it to say that as summer started turning to fall the mood at the office changed dramatically. With one of my co-workers leaving it put me in an odd spot. A spot that left me way too stressed out for my own good — the classic untenable position. A position that I didn’t choose. I tried to effect change. Try as I might the condition didn’t improve.

This led to a long and protracted effort to change jobs. Part three is that process.

A process where En and I did a 180 to restart settling into the house. A process of putting up the antenna in the back yard. A process of reconnecting.

I wound up somewhere where I’m happy.    (And it’s closer to my house!)

- = -

2011 has been a year of things happening to me. It’s strange. The feeling of being a passenger on my own life.

I’m hoping 2012 is more riding, and less of being along for the ride.

There’s something cool about Tony’s show “No Reservations.”

On the face of it it’s a show about food. Deeper it is about people. People all over the world. People that are the same the world over.

There’s a ride report I read a while ago on Advrider a while back. A gent rode from the UK to India through Iran if I recall correctly. The more you see of the world the more you see that everyone seems to want the same things. People want to be happy. People want their kids to have a better go than they did. People want to be among friends. People what to show their friends a good time.

People are more alike than they are different.

It’s like they say we share 99% of our DNA with chimps.

We share damn near 100% with one another.

On Tuesday I took delivery of the new TV I mentioned last week.

It’s almost perfect.

It has two dead sub-pixels and an every-so-slightly warped bezel.

I notice neither problem when watching TV. Even if I try to find the problem I can’t.

I wrote to Amazon about it though to get their take about the issue. The solution they presented had two choices — I could return it and get a new one or they would refund a percentage of the cost and we call it a day.

I haven’t clicked the go button yet… but I think I will. Is good enough (and cheaper), good enough? What about the replacement… it might be worse.

I wrote a bit ago about worlds colliding.

I resolved the one I wrote about before just this week. The collision went well. Group hug on rainbow unicorns.

Today: another collision.

Head on and completely surprising.

Heh. I guess it keeps me on my toes and keeps life interesting.

Just a quick one today. Every week or so I get a question about buying Vec.com.

A response to all of them: No, it’s not for sale.

I guess if someone offered enough cash for it I might be swayed; nearly everything has a price after all. If someone was willing to drop 1MM on it I’d likely sell… but… yeah.

I picked up vec.com way back in 1994. I’ve been using it ever since. Mainly for email, but lately for the blog as well.

I like it though. I’ve been Vector or Vec from way back in the bulletin board days in the 80′s. I’m attached to it. 

Here’s the way I look at it. I have the domain and I’m happy. It’s costing me minimal money to keep it and I’m smiling. If you were to offer $20K for it I would have money but I wouldn’t have the domain. I’m happy now without the extra cash, ergo, I’m going to turn it down.

Am I stupid? You can certainly make a cogent argument for that case and I’m not going to argue.

I enjoy Christmas. It’s an odd thing to say with my views on religion. But I do.

To me Christmas is a secular holiday. In many ways it’s going back to the roots of all this: winter solstice.

It’s a celebration of family. A celebration of the days getting longer… or at least not getting any shorter. A feast. A break. Nearly uniformly there are bright colors involved to get out of the gray of the time.

Sure, I capitalize it. It’s a proper noun.

I was reading a post from a friend of mine just now. It’s from someone eight years my junior. Somewhere in her message she was talking about her boyfriend and his PTSD “from the war.”

“From the war,” to me, sounds like something you get from WWII or Vietnam.

To hear (or read) people my age, or younger, talk like that creeps me out in a way. I understand it on an intellectual level, but viscerally I don’t get it.

Why?

I guess the whole thing is that wars happen to other people, to other generations. When I was in high school I wore a ribbon on to symbolize solidarity with the troops that had just landed in Iraq for the first gulf war.

Those troops were just a few years older than I was.

Those are the men and women that have the PTSD now.

Whatever you think of war and fighting on the macro level, you also have to consider it on the micro level. The level that has the people doing the job we sent them to do.

They are our generation.

- = -

On my way home from my mom’s house this Christmas eve I heard on the radio someone sending a shoutout back home to her folks in Solon.

I was just getting off 422. In Solon.

150 beers = 1 beer stein

Tour: Complete!

Bonus round: complete!