Roll The Dice: Home Cookin'

I love how bloggers all go on hiatus during the holiday season. You can't blame us though. For some of us this is a full time job and the rest of us treat it as such. And with any job, everyone needs a break. But since I don't like my blog remaining stagnant for more than a few days at a time, I figured I'd drop in with a few of things that have been crossing my mind during my time home...

This is my first extended trip home in about two years. During that time, the longest period that I've been home has been two days. I've been here since Tuesday. Surprisingly, I'm not crawling up the walls. The break from my normal routine of randomness was definitely needed.

Speaking of randomness, my mom hates this shirt. Knowing that, I've made a point to wear it when I'm doing nothing around the house -- which so far has been about 90% of the time.

Going back to the subject of my lack of visitations, while it'd be easy to assume that I don't like my family (quite the contrary), most of that time away has been due to whatever crazy work schedule I was working at the time. Here's an important life tip: work for a company that values "family time." I know that saying that may be the equivalent of tossing coins in a fountain in today's economy, but the time spent with friends and family is more important than any paycheck you'll ever receive.

Speaking of companies that don't value family time, leaving Progressive gets the award for "Most Important Thing To Happen To Terence In 2008." That may seem trivial considering I just got my Master's degree a week ago, but I think it's deserving of the spot. First off, being in the new office wasn't as great as I wanted it to be, especially when compared to my [awesome] old office. Work stopped being enjoyable and simply became a means to an end. Once that time sink was removed from the picture, life opened itself up and I took full advantage of it. I traveled to wherever, whenever. I was able to have quality interactions with my friends (both old and new) again. For the first time since I finished undergrad, I didn't have to worry about working weekends, so I got to enjoy every ounce of football season (did I really drive to Boston for a football game?). Best of all, that big open void in my schedule allowed me to take on a full load of classes this past semester without having to worry about balancing a job and a social life. Having my MBA is nice and all, but leaving the world of insurance claims behind did a lot more for me personally as far as 2008 is concerned.

Continuing this subject of free time, looking at my blog posting numbers, this is my 303rd post of the year. That's a 147% increase from 2007. If I wanted to get silly with numbers, I could say that my output for 2008 (as of now) is the equivalent of the combined number of posts from 2005 and 2006 plus the first five months of 2007. With that sort of posting frequency, if I actually bothered to channel that effort into some form of constructive writing, I'd be well on my way to a book deal.

On the videogame front, I'm slightly surprised at the results of Nintendo's marketing strategy in regards to the Wii. Everyone knows about Wii Sports, Wii Play, and Wii Fit -- they're living under a rock if they don't. But waggle-riffic games aside, I think Nintendo is missing the boat on marketing their "core" games to this new audience they've amassed. New gamers associate the Wii with games that involve getting up and being active. While Nintendo's driven that point home, these new gamers have no clue that there are games that can be played via more "traditional" means. Why do I randomly bring this point up? Because I've surprised no less than six people in the past few weeks with the fact that there are Wii games that can be played using either a Classic or Gamecube controller. Two of those people I absolutely floored with the fact that I was sitting down and playing a Wii game.

Why has Comedy Central not been able to find a suitable replacement for "Chappelle's Show"? "Mind of Mencia" is horrible and David Alan Grier's "Chocolate News" is decent, but it's skits are no where near as side splitting as those on Chappelle's Show. Come on Comedy Central -- there's got to be some comedian out there who can fill Dave's shoes.

The only thing that's worse than filling out online job applications is filling out online job applications that require cover letters. I never know how long they need to be or what information needs to be included in them. The "experts" say that a cover letter should be used to amplify and elaborate the contents of the resume. Well if that's the case, what was the point of me spending time drafting a good resume?

Question posed to me in the past week: "Would you go out on a date with someone you weren't really interested in?" My answer: "Sure." My reasoning: Unless they're a complete loser or obviously not compatible with me, everyone deserves a fair shot.

I'm all for a movie being made about The Notorious B.I.G., but two things bother me:
1) How was Guerilla Black overlooked for the lead role? He looks and sounds just like B.I.G.
2) I'm sure I'm not the only one who thinks that an Eazy-E or Tupac movie would be a thousand times more interesting.

Speaking of Eazy-E, it's about damn time he got a little love. Nice work THQ.

Out of curiosity, is anyone using Facebook Connect as part of their normal web routines? I dig it because it peels back a few layers of "Internet anonymity." People tend to not act like total dipshits when they can't hide behind a username and a random avatar. I've also noticed that discussions also tend to be more civil and better constructed on the websites that have a large percentage of their users responding via Facebook Connect. Hopefully Facebook Connect (or something like it) becomes the sort of de facto standard when it comes to responding to something online.

One last note for my fellow music lovers, then I'm out of here. This book, pick it up. This RSS feed, add it.