triv.org

My parents house is built in the middle of a valley. Not a valley in the sense of mountains with sheep, lederhosen, and pine trees; but a valley in the way the midwest has valleys. A small bit of land that is lower than the bits around it. It's enough to turn the winds coming thru here from cold to colder. Combined with the substandard construction of my parents house, and the shower becomes how I image running out of a Finnish sauna into the snowy ford feels like. It's a mad dash to get dry before hypothermia sets in and you loose a toe.

So as I walk in the valley of the frozen toe, I take stock of this year that was.

Buy

Structure is a good thing. A job would have done the exact same thing, but having class to get to day after day is good. When you have nothing to do every day, the idea of doing anything seems insurmountable. I'm never doing a year with nothing to do again.

Hold

The new NHL. Crack down on interference: good. No two line pass rule: good. Shootouts: gimmicky, but good. No one paying a price to go to the net: bad. Puck handling rules for goalies: bad. Salary cap: too low.

Sell

2005 won't go down as the year when Microsoft died, but it certainly will go down as the year it was revealed to be mortal. No major product launches, a string of dire security flaws, no games and too few units at the 360 launch, and Google is still wiping the floor with MS on internet searching. Longhorn needs to hit it deep, and I mean deep, or MS is going to go down the long road to irrelevancy.

Buy

HDTV. Yes, there are way too many options for the consumer. Yes, there are too few channels broadcasting in hi-def. Yes, we still don't have a hi-def DVD standard. No, that doesn't matter. Watch one football game in HD and you'll never go back to that screen door you called a television.

Sell

Bush. Katrina, Iraq, Miers, domestic surveillance, indictments, social security reform dead on arrival, approval numbers in the Nixon range, ongoing investigations of a national security breach in the Vice Presidents office, oil prices - oh so high, deficits, cronyism, the boy in the bubble and the baby with the baboon heart. Utter failure.

Hold

Video iPod. I love my 60 gigger. It holds a lot of stuff, has a great screen, and a killer battery life. I'm not completely convinced of the model of selling video on the iTunes store. Right now, I'm much more tempted to rip DVDs to my pod. There just isn't content on the store, and I can't watch what I do get from the store on my TV with any quality.

Sell

Blogs. Blogs are on their way out. You heard it here first. On a blog. Irony man. Irony.

Buy

Roller Coasters. In my youth I loved roller coasters. In college my interest waned, but it seems to have come back. I've been playing with roller coaster simulators, reading up on rides, planning trips for the summer, and learning some of the math behind coaster designs. Next step: get a place to build my own.

Sell

The Red Sox. I'm a big Red Sox fan. I have been for a while because no one can be a Tigers fan right now and be happy. That being said, the front office is a mess right now; they're dysfunctional. They're bleeding quality players, which is a sign that they have lost their commitment to winning. Worse than that, the team simply isn't as good as it was 2 months ago and the front office doesn't seem to care. Someone needs to keep the Yankees down and I'm worried that there's no one left to do the job.

Hold

Tivo. They look to be near death, but they just won't die. Ten bucks that they bleed to death by August.