Isn't the line after that something incredibly prolific like "Susan, you're fired"?

All right, here we go again:

1. the new spidey is gonna be awesome, Paras you're a fool
2. the best line from F4 is "let's not fight about this (Doom to Sue) " to which she replies, "No, let's!"
THAT MAKES IT A CLASSIC RIGHT THERE

i'm not sure anyone really wants to know all that happened to me this year, nor am i sure i want to tell it, but hell, i'll give it a go.

a lot has changed in my life, from the obvious to the subtle, the public to the very personal... 2006 is a year that was both monumental and one that i would happily leave behind in a heartbeat. if anyone had told me how challenging it would be, i probably would've opted to skip it by. alas, that option was never available to me, so with much happiness, i am sitting just over two days away from full completion, prepared to say goodbye to it, as well as good riddance.

i worked a shitty minimum wage job at the start, but happily so, i've never been promoted so quickly in my life, and additionally, the ability to go home at the end of the day and not think about work was fabulous. that quickly changed to being a lab/research monkey for my future MSc. supervisors, with the added effort of applying to graduate school and starting my literature searches, meetings with industry associates, and on-the-ground field research. life slowly became more complicated, but, for the most part, i embraced the change, and the challenge. summer rolled around and i was whisked to the exotic destinations of High Level and Conklin, Alberta, multiple times, such that i became a familiar face (and name!) to the staff at Karen's Katering in Conklin, and i was starting to gain some cred among the rig pig workers also staying at the camp. amidst the bears, long sleepy drives and bad food, i enjoyed myself, and made fast friends with some of my coworkers and fellow students. this friendship continued to build as i switched from research assistant/lab monkey to official graduate student in september, complete with pay cut and then raise as i joined the ranks of renewable resources teaching assistants, and attempted to maintain friendly but entirely professional relationships with my students/classmates. the combination of taking classes, teaching labs and marking papers proved to be an intense stress, but one that i have learned from, and certainly enjoyed (for the most part).

but even with all of that, 2006 wasn't first and foremost about my career changes and educational status. it was about the people in it. ...i think, in the end, i've gained a sort-of balance... it really hurts, but i think the grand scheme of things has left me more or less still standing upright and not listing in any particular direction...

i lost a lot of people this year. a mentor in january, of a freak riding accident... someone i really looked up to. a friend at the end of april... one of those people who made me smile every time i talked to her, and one who made me feel the impossible was possible. my grandmother... and grandfather (of different sides, my parents are both now orphans) both in may, huge holes in my heart, especially my grandmother... people i cannot replace, stories and histories i will never hear or learn. advice i won't gain, points of view i may actually be better off without(!) and all the love and encouragement one could ever desire... another elder in my life a day before my birthday, all those remembrances... one of my aunts in august, and all the pain that brings with it, a life still full of promise and future, family ripped apart at the seams... it's a lot. a lot of emptiness, a lot missing now. sometimes i get afraid of opening the newspaper just in case more people are found in the obituaries... so far so good, knock on wood.

but, on the sunny side of things, i've had all kinds of friends and family celebrate positive events in their lives, from watching relationships bud, to positive shifts in employment and scholastic status, to learning that there are children on the way, to hearing that there are marriages coming up to joyfully celebrating marriages as they happen.

it has been a year of changes, a year of growth, and a year of maturitation. and while this year has been interesting, and has given me much to look forward to in 2007 (from knitting booties to throwing confetti, haha!), i would not relive it for all the money in the world. and try as i might it will continue to shape me far into the future, no doubt.

This is one interesting bullshit website.

http://www.rythospital.com/

My year had a lot of ups and downs. I think I can contribute all of this to my job at Stream-Flo. Well technically I got this job in 2005 (Dec.12) but I really started working at it in 2006 (Jan 3). This job signaled the beginning of my adult life and the end of my carefree university student days.

Because of this job I got my first car, subsquently I found out the price of insurance for under 25 year old drivers. Still this car gave me freedom I could never imagine. I could leave and go as I pleased, spirturally this car was my faithful warhorse.

This in a way gave me more confidence. I was no longer a young foolish university student, I was now a young foolish engineer. The only key difference I could see was I had money and a car.

I suppose money, a car and confidence eventually makes you do things you would never think you would do. I think you all know what I'm talking about. I took a chance with her even though I knew she was out of my leauge. This was pretty uncharacteristic of me, I didn't like the feeling of uncertainty, but as some people will tell you the pain of rejection is much less then pain of wondering what could of been. So I took a chance and I'm happy for the memeories that I got and that can never be taken away. I still think of her sometimes but she's starting to fade. I know you'll have other loves in life but she will always be my first.

And so the year kept moving on and I started to get the trappings of a young adult: buisness cards, corporate name tag, underling respect. I was still confused at it all. Had I've become this young adult overnight? Were all my carefree days over?

Well at the end of this year many more things have happened that I haven't mentioned and I still am confused at what the rest of my life will hold. I suppose we never know what lies ahead I'm just glad I have good friends and family to go with me on my journey.

Man, I've seen the first Fantastic Four movie and it was pretty bad, but I'm still more into watching this movie than the new Spiderman...

FANTASTIC FOUR: RISE OF SILVER SURFER TRAILER

SPOILER ALERT pretty obvious that after you watch this they'll be renaming the next group the Terrific Three

i'm alive.

the smell dissipated, but the gas company doesn't know what it was... apparently people smelled it over by the sobeys... we called 911, and the fire trucks (like 7 of them) hung our on our street for over an hour... and then they fanned out to see if they could find the source of the smell... no dice apparently...

I guess I'll start things off, as it was my idea.

One of the great things this year has seen for me is the amazing amount I've learned about web programming. Even what I just did over the past few days would have been impossible for me a year ago. Between this site, little projects with Beck, the websites we've built for Clever Name, and the work I did for Streetprint, I like my knowledge base has grown to dwarf what I thought I knew even just last year.

At the same time, I've found out a lot about my own ability to manage time, and to motivate myself to getting stuff done. (For example, forcing myself to meet a deadline by making public that I'm working on something... brilliant.)

A lot has happened over the last year, and developing as a developer, as it were, probably isn't the biggest thing, but it's definitely one of the most dramatic changes I can point to over the course of a year.

Ok, folks, my project, as it were, is ready to go. I've copied over the files, and, hopefully, I haven't broken anything.

So the first part of it is best explained by earlier-in-the-afternoon Paras, who was a lot more coherent. So just go here. If you want to write one, there's a little checkbox in the post form that you tick off to indicate your intentions.

The second part is a comment system. Right now, it's not on all posts, just the "best-of" ones. But, assuming it passes this initial bug-checking phase, I'll make it so that you can choose to make your posts commentable. I don't really know how it'll affect conversation, but it's a tool that may provide an new dynamic. It is the most complicated part of this upgrade, and, as such, may run into the most bugs. I had some inexplicable 'crashing-IE' problems, so, please, let me know if this happens to you.

As you may find out, you can't comment without logging in. I don't really have a single strong reason for it, just that it seems like a good way to keep it clean. As I say in my log-in-to-comment error message, I'm open to being convinced to not require the login.

So that's all I've got cooking now. Most major changes to the board in the next few months will be me cleaning up code and making it easier to add features and fix bugs without pulling out much hair.

As always, yell at me about bugs.