This past Saturday I went ahead and purchased a FlipUltra. This thing is pretty sweet. The plan was actually to get one of the new ones, the Mino HD, but since I had some gift cards to spend, I only spent like $12 on this one. Today I plugged it into my computer for the first time. I haven't edited anything yet, but I've put together a few clips of me sitting around playing guitar. Since I've recently started trying to play some solos, It's nice seeing my progress, and how my fingers look while I'm playing. I'll try to get something put together I can share online.

Well, Christmas was almost a month ago. So maybe I'm a bit late. Maybe not. Who cares? Not I. So I got some stuff, blah blah blah, you're not interested. I did, though, get some good books. A couple of Tim Sandlin novels. Great books, in that comedy-novel genre, but I'm through them by now. I got "House of Leaves," by Mark Z, Danielewski. Haven't read more than the introduction, but so far, i think this could turn out to be the weirdest book I've ever read. What kind of a *novel* has a 40 page index in the back? Weird. Anyway, I had mentioned to my mom and step-dad that I'm going to try to go back to school come the spring term. And that I wanted to branch out from the audio/video production type program I used to be in, that I wanted to go for some kind of computer science degree. So they got me a couple of beginner level Java programming books.

So today, I started into the first of them. I've made it through a few (well, 8, actually) of the 24 lessons in this book, and I have to say, I've impressed myself with how well I'm comprehending it all. I mean, other than playing around with BASIC back in elementary school, I've got literally no experience with any of this. I guess I do spend an awful lot of time on the interwebs using other people's Java programs, but starting from scratch is all new to me.

So far, it's all been text-based, writing short programs to display text from a command prompt or terminal. Just kind of getting the hang of some of these keywords and commands. I've got 4 chapters of objects to get through next, then finally some programs with a visual output. I can't wait.

So I was reading an article about Chris "Jesus" Ferguson, and I got an idea. I think his $10,000 goal might be a bit high, but I think I'm going to give it a shot. $0 to $5,000. Should take a *while* to get started, hell, it's tough just getting entry into the freerolls. they fill up so quickly it's ridiculous. then I've got to win a few of em. Then play some *really* low limits to build up even a small bankroll. This is going to take a *long* time. But, I think I can do it. wish me luck.

So here I am, back in Ohio. Sitting here pondering my options. When I first decided to move back here, I had been thinking about following Chris into the Navy. When I found that I was ineligible to join up, I went to my plan B. I wasn't thrilled about the Army, but I needed something to help me out. I thought the military would have been my best option. I'd have a place to stay, wouldn't need a car (but would be in a position to buy one as soon as I got out), and would have all the money I needed to get my ass into school. However, the Army said no also.