You know, it’s hard to believe that I’ve been writing in this blog for the past 5 years. It is interesting looking back and seeing what I wrote, how I was and how I’ve changed. Even during a brief span of 5 years I can see how things can wear you down and make you weary. Fun fact, some places I use the username WearyPuzzlehead rather than just Puzzlehead. I think James Bai hates me. Ah, well. If Hometown AOL was still alive and kicking then we would have been able to see that I used to have my own, small company – Puzzlehead Designs – which I conjured up in 1996.

Anywho, I’ve taken a good long look at my posts recently and I’ve seen the funny, the sad, the interesting and the not so interesting housed on my site. I’ve been BIG AND MIGHTY. I’ve also been MIGHTY EMBARASSING. Regardless, what I’ve posted here has been me mostly unfiltered and raw; filled with spelling and grammatical mistakes. There are things I’ve planned to write about but haven’t due to sloth. What’s even worse is that there are things that I want to write about that’s already happened that I don’t want to forget and that I want to share. That right there is the crux of this blog: I don’t want to forget things. The unfortunate truth is that I feel like my mind is slowly slipping at a glacier-like pace and my memories are starting to get fuzzy.

On of my fondest memories from five years ago was working with Matt and Harrison at Lockheed and running my defunct forum at Nest-Egg Designs. While we worked there the work environment was getting pretty rocky (read through my archives!) and we would discuss potential business ventures together on a secret part of my message board. We went so far as to plan a few of these things out and we daydreamed of leaving our jobs and becoming our own bosses. But it was just that: daydreaming. We never got around to committing to any of our ideas either due to logistics or plain old reality. The nice thing about it, though, was that we were able to escape the unfriendly atmosphere at work by seeing this artificial light that we created at the end of the tunnel.

There were the times when I was in North Carolina that Martin Jevicky and I would sit in our office and laugh our asses off while we worked and listened to Led Zepplin. Keep in mind that he sort of looked like the lead singer to Midnight Oil. We’d argue about the work we were doing and then have ‘music battles’ with our computers. Eventually we’d head out to lunch after he’d suddenly blurt out ‘Shit, Michael. I can’t stand this bullshit that those guys are pushing on me and you. They hate you. Why don’t you take me to lunch?’ and we’d head off to some weird place to eat in the RTP.

I wish that I could recall the number of raucous happy hours I threw and paid for. Lord, I vaguely remember being drunk off my ass a few times and leaving a 200% tip. There were times when there were only 3 of us at a happy hour – me, Sam & Thorpe was quite the experience – and other times when there were as many as 30 people.

This week Angela will be in Arizona and I asked her to try a little experiment with me: Go out, have fun, visit Inky, don’t worry about anything back here at home and don’t contact me. I tried not to contact her when I was in Philly recently but there were a few times that I did because of issues that require both of our attention. During this trip to Arizona she should be squared away and well prepared that she really doesn’t have a need to contact me. Unless, of course, she thought about it and really wanted to.

And that right there encapsulates how I’m feeling about things at the moment. Circling back to the original thoughts behind this post I think I have my blog, my ideas and thoughts here so that I can remember as much as I can about my life, it’s events and the people that are in it. And in some weird, selfish way of thinking, I hope that people remember me.