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I have turned off comments on my blog. Too much spam. It is pretty frustrating to get 20 emails a day letting me know some stupid bot is leaving a comment about the greatest poker site in the world. Fortunately the Internet will go on without comments on my blog.

Well, it is almost Christmas and I still have shopping to do. I am always intrigued with the holidays because sometimes they are special times that you never forget while other times it is frustrating and depressing. I am not saying that my life is horrible or anything like that. I am always amazed at how well things seem to go for me. I am just saying the holidays can bring out the bad sometimes.

The holidays can be tough because sometimes people just do not have the capacity to take on the hoildays with good attitude. I am convinced that going into Christmas with a list of all the things you want to get people will make the holidays a better place than thinking about how much you are going to rack up on stuff. The kicker is it is not always easy for people to put away their worries about their own finances or personal situations. It is really too bad because great people that do nothing but care for others can enter the holidays with a few debts and a broken relationship and things just get ruined in a really bad way.

Alright, enough of the sad talk. So far Christmas has been pretty good. I am pretty stressed with some work and school stuff that I have been working on but I did get some more ram in my laptop so now I feel like I have a real computer. Tomorrow I have to do a bunch of shopping and I am so tired right now that everytime I think about it I cringe. Sometimes the thought that counts costs a lot more than the money you spend. I think I will write a hallmark card with that one.

This week I have been taking a class on Web Services using .NET. The teacher is really great and understands everything in a very intimate way. It has been very interesting so far but it is a lot to take in for only one week. The other side of things that is somewhat frustrating is the Microsoft lock in. I have never been that much of a rebel but MS really makes me feel like I am in prison. There is nothing explaining how anything works so if you don't use Visual Studio then you are stuck. This is ridiculus because it is all just text. I should be able to use whatever editor I want and I should not have to depend on stupid wizards to create crappy code. It is very frustrating. The worst thing about it is the extremely long and verbose class library. It is full of functionality but it also forces you to use something like Visual Studio. There is no way you are going to remember all the XMLValidatedReader, System.XML.Services.somethingelse.yetanotherthing, and all the others that I can't remember. It is just too much.

This is the main thing I enjoy about php, it is easy to see what you can do with the existing libraries. Python has also been relatively easy to see what you can do as well. In any sense, I am excited to learn C# but all the MS hooks are daunting. It makes me just want to fight the man...

By the way, I don't want work where I have to do a lot of travel. I just can't sleep without Lauren. I have been going to bed early and just laying in bed. I am consistantly going to bed around 4:00 am with a wake up around 5:30 am. This is getting me sick I think which is pretty crappy. Oh well, I am coming home soon love!