I just read my friend Dave’s blog post over on deargravity about his 2009 experiences and I thought I should do something similar. It was  a very weird year that’s for sure, but all in all for me it wasn’t all that bad. The biggest events of my year were breaking up to finding myself, buying a car to falling in love again, and many more things of that nature. I’ll break this down into seasons and highlight key events to make this a little more of a speedy read.

Winter-Spring (Jan. – March)

So Happy New Year!!! It’s 2009, woo woo! Nothing much has changed since last year. Same job at Irish Alley, same beautiful girl friend (that wasn’t at the New Years Party), nothing really to write home about. January 29, my geekness lead me to purchase my iPhone! Had the best birthday ever on February 5 because it was spent with the girl I loved. Then just 2 weeks later, I get another birthday present, my 2000 Civic Si! March 3 was probably the biggest relationship argument I’ve ever had over loving my car more than her. Dumb arguments…

Spring-Summer (April-June)

After breaking up with my girlfriend over some stupid arguments and finding out some secrets she was keeping, April started off horrible. I felt so out of place in the world, I decided it was time for a drive. Drove to Harrisonburg on I-81 as fast as I possibly could just to clear my mind. I stopped in at a Sheetz and talked to this girl who needed help pumping gas. After helping her out, I realized I wasn’t the person I felt like I was, mean and cold, but something someone more caring and loving than ever. Then May brought the big Twitter boom, everybody and there mama got a Twitter account. Already having one, I felt more in the loop and made some friends on there @loldave, @pobenschain, and @edgebz. Then some crazy rebounding happened… Not going into details about that *cough mountain troll* but June wasn’t all bad, nice warm days and fun times at the Quarry oh and a Bella Morte concert!

Summer-Fall (July-Sept.)

July’s best moment was Kings Dominion hands down. Lot’s more swimming at the Quarry and a few bond fires. Running kids off of our turf had to be an excellent end to July at the Quarry. Started talking to a beautiful young woman and fell in love with her during the first weeks of August. Love blooming before fall never works and it was more of a fling I guess. Still, she taught me alot about not to look at the outer appearance and appreciate the inner beauty of someone. Wake me up when September ends… because it was so boring and pointless.

Fall-Winter (Oct.-Dec.)

Nothing  über happened in October except on Halloween my iPhone 3G met it’s demise from a pot of broccoli water at work… Which lead to me buying a 3GS in November. It was a lonely November playing COD:MW2 to pass the time, listening to music from Emmure and playing iPhone games. Jailbroke my iPhone and made a Cydia repo for the fun of it and nothing more. December 31, 2009 was spent at work most of the day then lead to a party at Ben’s house. Hung out with all my Kroger friends and my homies. Then at the stroke of midnight, 2009 was finished!

Woo, what a year!

Let me finish this post by saying that 2010 will be a better year for sure! It started off really well last night when a beautiful girl sat on my lap, took my beanie, took a picture, and got my number, yeah it looks to be starting off better than last! So Happy New Year and best wishes in the upcoming year!

It’s another Twitter trend, TubularTuesday. Basically what this trend is about is posting links to Youtube videos that the user wishes to share with the Twitterverse. So check out Twitter and search for #tubulartuesday to find users posting their favorite Youtube videos. What are some trends you would like to see get off the ground? Comment below and we’ll start a revolution.

This is just a quick post about snow. Snow is falling in my area right now as I type this. No problem for me, I’ll drive my Civic home tonight no sweat. This isn’t how everyone else feels. This morning while I was getting gas, I drove by our local Krogers store and to my surprise the entire parking lot was full. Driving through the cluster of idiot drivers and Wal-Mart minded pedestrians, I notice a lot of people were simply carrying bread and milk. What the hell are you going to make with bread and milk? “Hmm I think I’ll have some liquid fat and some bleached wheat.” It’s been the same ever since I can remember snow equals crazy actions and no milk or bread left in sight. It really sucks living in a backwards town sometimes

Is it just me or does it seem like everyone “caught” for downloading music are only downloading popular music. I mean stuff like Akon, Taylor Swift, Britney Spears, Insert Boy Band Here, etc etc etc; your basic sounds exactly the same as the next one music. Is this because lables only target people who download today’s “hit” music, or is there something more in depth I’m missing?

Most of the techy people I’ve met listen to basically the same music or have very similar taste. Most of these people use the more digital deviant side of P2P (Bittorrent) to get there fix of screamo, hardcore, heavy metal, techno, dubstep, and even alittle reggae, while the average computer user uses Frostwire or something similar that also requires no thought process to use. Now with most of your average users downloading pop and redneck rock, most of the people attacked by the RIAA and the like are these people.

Maybe this isn’t such a bad thing if you look at it like this. Having these people removed from the Internet for awhile may actually promote some creativity. With that said, attacking these people only fuels the ever burning fire that rages within the tech savvy. Even though a majority of the time these users aren’t even targets, they take these blows as personal attacks. They hate the music but the hate for the companies that attack their less tasteful comrads even more.

The reason these folks are attacked (in my opinion so take it only as that, MY opinion), is because these musical “artists” will make their cause more mainstream; stopping pirates at all cost. By making this a public knowledge, it makes pirates look like evil people who will steal candy from children if given the chance. Trust me, this is not the case with pirates at all. In a recent study, pirates actually purchase more hard media (DVDs, books, music, games, and software) as well as technology to listen or play them on while the non-evil non-pirates buy way less.

Still, pirates are targeted more than these people. Why? Most artists would rather give away music and have more concerts or swag sales than less fans by taking legal action against a few of them. It’s almost like the companies are biting the mighty hands that feed them. So the next time you read of someone having to fork out a ton of money for 24 illegally downloaded songs, look at that list, because chances are they are or were chart topping hits.

I recently got back into modifying my mobile devices. This includes my PSP, iPhone, iPod, and soon my DSi. Now you aren’t supposed to modify “THEIR” device to make it do what you want but how is it “THEIR” device once you purchase it? Right? I mean, companies like Sony and Apple are always releasing firmware updates to fix exploits in the firmware to keep your device safe. While this may be the case sometimes, more than likely, they’re patching these flaws to prevent you from making your device work for you, not with you. Think about it this way, my old iPhone was at 3.1.2 firmware and was beat up beyond belief. I took it in the AT&T and they looked at it and laughed. It’s that bad. My old phone’s buttons wouldn’t work half the time and it drained the battery, until now. After “jailbreaking” it with blackra1n, I installed SBSettings from the jailbroken “App Store” Cydia. What this does is allows me to shutdown my device, restart, and most importantly lock my iPhone. On my 3GS, I installed SBSettings for the same reasons even though my buttons work! There’s many more things you can do like theme your phone so it’s unique with Winterboard, install id Software’s Wolf3D LEGALLY because it was released as source code and someone has compiled it and placed it on Cydia, and my personal favorite play NES and SNES games on your iPhone! For my PSP it’s the same way. I can run NES, GBA, SNES, PS1, N64 games and I can use Edison Carter’s Cheat Devices for GTA:LCS and GTA:VCS! It’s awesome! For any help doing this to your devices, leave a comment below and I’ll see what I can do!