So another year has passed. It seemed quick, as it usually does. And what a year!

For the world in general, it seems 2005 was not the best of years. Earthquakes, tsunamis, and wars were rampant. Most tragic of these disasters had to be the earthquake in India and Pakistan which killed more than 70,000 people. I felt that didn't get the media coverage it should have. The loss of life was unbelievable. This lack of media is probably because we had our own problems here in the US, with 27 named storms, five of those being "major" hurricanes. Katrina, of course, being the most destructive.

Pope John Paul II passed away and Cardinal Ratzinger was elected our new German pope, Benedict XVIth. And I took particular interest this year, the year I returned to the Catholic church.

On a more local level, Bismarck is exploding with new retail business and home construction. Hobby Lobby, Home Depot, Lowes, Kohls, Best Buy, and many other stores opened up during the last year. And many more are on the way, including no less than two Wal-Mart Supercenters and a Sam's Club. This is disheartening, in a way. The appeal of Bismarck was that it wasn't completely overrun by retail and ugly sprawling suburbia as far as the eye can see. Soon, we will be a carbon-copy of Fargo.

On a more personal level, my brother Ira and stepsister Lauren graduated from NDSU and UND, respectively, at the end of the fall semester.

My good friend, Melanie, was married on June 10th. My brother, Ira, proposed to his then-girlfriend Heather. She said yes, and she'll join the family in 2007.

This year, I was one lazy cyclist, though I did take part in a short bike tour, "Bike the Border," at the end of June. But Jesse, the adventurous fellow that he is, took off on a solo, unsupported bicycle tour of Australia around Christmas.

The tail end of my year was rather uneventful, spent at work in my cubicle and buried in books at home.

2006 is a big unknown. In February, I will be travelling to Rome for about two weeks. I am very much looking forward to that. And I'm planning on taking some bicycle tour, though I'm not sure where or with whom at this point.

Happy (very belated) New Year!

I'm in Saint Paul, Minnesota, this week for a course in Solaris 10. Class has been very interesting. I've been learning about Zones, DTrace, and Web-based Jumpstarts; all very exciting and useful stuff. It looks like DTrace will be a great replacement for my previous uses of the truss command. And web-based jumpstarts will surely replace our existing TFTP/NFS/RARP-based jumpstarts for our South Dakota data center.

In the off hours, I've been taking advantage of my hotel's luxurious accommodations. I went geocaching, caught "Munich" at a local cinema, and browsed a local shopping mall. In this local shopping mall there happened to be an Apple store. It was full of shiny, new iPods, and I took one home.

During the day, we take a ten minute break every hour or so. Classmate Mitch, sitting next to me, kept playing with his iPod and singing its praises during these breaks. Apparently, there is now an FM tuner available for the iPod. The previous lack of this feature and the cost of the iPod were the big drawbacks that kept me from buying. The fact that it syncs with iTunes, has an optional tuner, and downloads podcasts automatically were the features that made me buy.

This wouldn't even be worthy of noting, except that the iPod is so frickin' expensive. Remember when Walkman tape players were $80 and that was a really nice one? Ha. The iPod 30GB model is $300. That said, it is a nice product from which I will get a lot of use.

Yes, yes... I have too many gadgets. Laugh all you want.