Chris.Derecola

I guess my original assertion that I would post more often was a bit off the mark. The truth is, other than my ramblings on Yelp, I haven’t had much to talk about. Life, for the most part, has been the same over the last couple months. More specifically, I’ve been enjoying my free time by going to new restaurants/hangouts, going to the gym and playing a ton of Call of Duty. I keep thinking I should be doing something, but every time I look into taking a class or starting a new project, I realize I’m having a helluva good time doing exactly what I’m doing. We’ve had a couple smaller things, like celebrating Christmas and going to a Flyers’ game with my family, but nothing major. Melissa just started grad school this week and there are no trips in the next couple months, so I don’t think that pattern is going to change any time soon.

There is one item of note; I turn 33 in about a week. I’m sort of indifferent about the whole thing, although I have thought about whether 33 is still early-30′s for if that qualifies me as mid-30′s. Either way, I’m okay with it. To celebrate the occasion, I replaced my Wish List page on this site with a link to my Amazon wish list. Amazon’s Universal Wish List feature lets me add pretty much anything I want, so there’s no use to keep a separate list (smart move by them). There were a couple things on the old page I didn’t add, but I’m not worried about it as I’m in an “own less stuff” phase. At this point, I’m not even sure if I still really want those things (except maybe the comics).

Stay tuned, chances are I’ll have an awesome announcement in the next few weeks.

Five years ago today, I started this blog. At this point, I honestly can’t remember my reasons for starting it but I’m sure it had something to do with staying current on internet technologies and having lots of opinions that I like to share. It’s made a number of visual changes over the years, however the theme has stayed mostly the same along the way. The back end has gone from manually updated HTML pages, to a combination of SHTML and Blogger, to 100% of the site being developed in WordPress. I really like where it’s at on both sides of the coin, so I probably won’t tinker with it for awhile.

This is my 358th post (excluding one from September ’09 that remains unpublished) and as much as I would like it to be a nice round number, it just didn’t work out that way. If you’re doing the math, which I did, that’s one every five days or so. A respectable average, no doubt, but one that has made step changes down over the years. As you can see below, I was very/over active in 2007, it became a little more normal in 2008, grad school lowered it more in 2009 and getting laid off in early 2010 really whored it. I’m sure the widespread adoption of bite-size-updates via Facebook has also played a role.

I think I’ve finally started coming around, but I doubt I’ll return to 2007 levels. If I had to guess, I’ll probably settle in around 2009 levels or a wee bit less. Hope to see you in another five years!