All appears to have gone well with this current upgrade cycle. I still have not gotten to the display issues in Internet Explorer, but I will, someday.

In other news, my host has increased my storage capacity by a factor of five and bandwidth by three. Considering the fact that I was not close to hitting either (especially in bandwidth), it does not matter a whole hell of a lot. For those of you reading this and checking the time, yes it is almost New Years, but I suppose it is not the end of the world to take this year off, I suppose I will make up for it next year. Anyways, here's a good New Years Resolution: Update the blog more often.

-Trevor

Happy 2007 Everybody! I know it is not quite there yet, but I have a fantastic gif that I craftily modified to indicate that 2006 is almost no more. I will particularly amazed if I will be up during that time, but what are you going to do...

-Trevor

Tonight I will be upgrading the software for my blog to a newer version, so sorry for an inconvenience I cause. This should hopefully give a performance gain as well as "enhance security" from hackers, though I do not think this site is generally popular enough to warrant someone defacing the site, I guess I may never know. I will also soon be removing my original gallery and using only "Gallery 2". I am much happier with the look and feel, not to mention there are numerous database problems with the first which I don't think I will be able to fix. I will try to port over some of my favorite photos, but I do not think I can find a way to easily automatically transfer the photos, I will just transfer some until I am sick of doing it manually.

-Trevor

I don't know why I always start my first posts after a long silence by apologizing, so this time I will not. In any case soon after arriving in Minnesota, it was clear that I would have to go back to Arizona with my parents (It was not really a hard decision). Here is a small diary of the trip so far (Pictures are located in Gallery 2):

Day 1:

We left around 3 am in the morning. I was pretty tired, I had about two hours of sleep, NaLeah, Becky, and Devin seemed especially talkative (or it could have been me as well). The drive was fairly eventless, which I guess in this case is a good thing. Actually, when in Iowa for my first time, we got gas just out of Des Moines and found a pretty cool covered bridge (who knew that Iowa had something worth looking at ). We made it to Liberal, Kansas. We finished the evening with frozen dinners, not perfect, but better than nothing I suppose.

Day 2 (Christmas Eve):

I was pretty disappointed that there was not more snow in Minnesota when I was up, so I was pretty surprised that there was snow on the side of the roads outside of Dalhart, TX! A couple days prior, there was a storm that closed a portion of I-40 (the same storm system that closed Denver), but I thought that it would have melted pretty quick. However, I was amazed by the White Sands National Monument in New Mexico. It was so white, it looked just like snow, but warm. We even saw people sledding in the sand. This really was pretty neat, I got my white Christmas. After getting into Tucson, we had a nice dinner and then went to bed early.

Day 3 (Christmas, it generally happens the day after Christmas Eve):

Since most things are closed on Christmas, we needed to do something that tends to be open all the time, free trails, thus the Saguaro National Park fit the bill nicely. We got some pretty good hiking in that day. After about three hours, we were pretty tired and so went home and made dinner.

I almost forgot to mention that we stopped at Winterhaven, a subdivision in Tucson that has been well lit during the holidays for the last 56 years. It was pretty amazing, unfortunately, I forgot my camera. We were actually quite surprised about the turnout, there were police controlling traffic in the area and the only way into the neighborhood was by foot. Some of the displays were absolutely amazing. If in Tucson around the holidays, I highly recommend anyone to check it out.

Day 4:

All of us were pretty tired from walking on Christmas, so we thought we would take it a bit easier today. Since Mom had not seen San Xavier yet (Dad and I saw it when looking for housing a couple of summers ago), we decided that it would be good to see it. They are still working on the renovations that they had been when I first saw it and could not really notice much difference, but I suppose these things take time. The Mission is worth a visit if you are in Tucson. While peaceful, I cannot say that it was a spiritual experience, though I do not know if I have had a spiritual experience in my life, so I cannot put down San Xavier for that. I was sort of disappointed by the gift shop though. I was really hoping for some hand-crafted Native American crafts, but the gifts tended to be the standard issue t-shirt and coffee mug memorabilia that people purchase and soon after sell at garage sales. In the end, I picked up a prayer candle that seems to be pretty popular amongst the practicing Catholics down here, thus I can at least pretend to be one.

Before my parents left, Dad was pretty excited about the prospects of finding some fresh pecans. South of Tucson, there are some Pecan groves that stretch for miles and is one of the greenest places in the desert...in the summer. Over Thanksgiving, I went with a friend to a cabin in Madera Canyon for his Families Thanksgiving dinner and the trees had nice and green leaves. However, the leaves have since fallen leaving miles of leafless trees. Well, in any case, we went to the pecan's store and picked up some fresh pecans at reasonable prices, and I even bought myself some Pecan tea. It is actually pretty good, made by Arbuckle's right in Tucson.

After our journey South of Tucson, we decided that it was time to get some authentic Mexican food; Taco Bell was definitely out, especially when in the Southwest. What better place than Pico de Gallo! After a recent waitress change, Mary's Lucky Dollar just is not as good as it used to be and I did not think my parents were ready for the outdoor El Guero Canelo yet, so Pico de Gallo it was. The food is always good and we got some tacos with corn tortillas. By the end of this, we were all tired and went home and watched some Heroes.

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Well, I will catch everyone up later, it is getting a tad late and should be getting to bed.

-Trevor

I uploaded some more photos to my new gallery. This includes my most recent drive back down to Arizona with my parents. You may or may not find them interesting.

-Trevor

Once upon a time, I thought I would never find another show that would be nearly as absorbing as the comedy that was Seinfeld (not counting the series finale that was shameful...). Then I found Heroes. While it is certainly not a comedy by any stretch of the imagination, it certainly does have it's charm and now I am quite thoroughly hooked. If I wanted to sound any cornier, I would say it really "rocked my world."

Unfortunately for me, this series just started so I cannot obsessively watch as much of the show as I want and I now just have to wait like all the other chumps who are normally the early adopters of the shows. However, so I do not suffer the pain of watching a show all by myself, I urge you all to try to get into the Heroes bandwagon as well.

The basic story line is that a group of people around the world are discovering that they have unique abilities and unfortunately, there are some who have foresight of this, thus creating a possibility for conflict. I certainly do not want to give any spoilers, but you should watch, otherwise, who can I talk to for support.

For those who have watched the show, there is a wiki set up for the show here: Heroes Wiki. There are also multiple legal avenues of catching up on the show, first check out NBC's Heroes website (Commercials ) or there is also a Heroes marathon on January 1st.

My sister found this video on YouTube. I found the story was pretty interesting. It was a school project and looking at the views and the positive reviews, I would give it an A .

Well, now that I have a couple moments, I thought I would update this blog to inform the world what I have been up to. Not a whole lot in fact, but after finishing up my finals, I decided that since my parents were driving down over Christmas, it would be a good idea to fly up and surprise my family. And surprise I did; I believe the first words from my dad were, "What the hell are you doing here?" It was classic and made the trip worth while. Well, I have been hanging out at home for a while getting up to date with my family, but other than that not much has been going on. I'm heading back out on Friday evening or Saturday, weather dependent.

The Spring is looking to be a bit of more of the same for right now in terms of school. Still have some classes, but the end is near. I'll see if I am happy with the classes I have by the Spring, but I may still have one or more classes left in the Fall before I really hit on working on my dissertation papers.

-Trevor

Well I suppose it has been a very long time since I have posted something on this site. I have no excuse other than I've been busy. Well, my Thanksgiving was good, I went to a friend's family for Thanksgiving and then I helped co-host a party that last Saturday. We had an excellent turnout (~40 people) so it was pretty cool. Well, I'm going to sign off for a bit, but hope everyone is doing well.

-Trevor