Keith Watanabe * NET 2.0

I consider this year to be perhaps one of the worst years in my life.  I want to forget this year completely and hope that 2008 proves to be better.  While towards the end things got a little better, for the most part, this year was quite wretched to the point where I partly hope that it never existed.  Here's my list of crap that happened this year to make it the worst:

• Continued wasting my time for HLIKK
• Was forced to go to that wretched backwater swampland called Connecticut for about a month, ruining any potential of returning to the states for longer than a week due to tax purposes
• Being forced to endure one of the worst coding projects  with visionless managers nearly driving me nuts
• Still no gf
• Almost getting a gf but because of indecision and the hopes of getting another woman (which still didn't work out), I ended up with nothing
• Messing up on about four other potentials (in one case, losing out because of my job at HLIKK)
• Wasting time on numerous home projects that lead nowhere
• Wasting time on so-called friends that lead nowhere
• Wasting time and money on recruiters that lead nowhere
• Father died (October)

Those are my personal issues.  Globally, more oppression occurred:

• Japan's re-instituting of fingerprinting foreigners
• MPAA/RIAA's increasingly greasy tactics
• Throttling of networks by Cable companies
• Demise of allofmp3.com
• Delays with the shuttle
• Continued efforts in Iraq
• The increased bureaucratic power trips taken by the useless TSA (bans on liquids, electronic devices and soon-to-be batteries)
• Subprime Loan crash (although some may argue this might result in a good thing)
• Fires of California
• Destruction of the  Frontier and Stardust in Las Vegas
• Slow decay of Vonage through the numerous suits of the telecom monopolies in the states

From a positive viewpoint, these things did happen:

• New, better job
• Fixed my home's roof in LA
• Found out that I had some money that I'm going to try withdrawing from my 401k out here
• The property in Hawaii
• Improvement on my blog's code
• Made new friends from KPMG
• Still managed to save money

Globally, some positive things were seen this year:

• Continued death of Big Media
• The increased interest in Green Technologies
• The lowering of the dollar (good for me at least)
• The birth of the latest bubble for online advertisement
• The lowering of borrowing by the Feds
• The increased stores from Krispy Kreme in Japan (Finally!!!!)
• The Midtown (I'm a sucker for large construction projects)
• The continued growth of the ISS
• Continued rise of online media
• The instituting of Democrats in the House and Senate (although I've yet to see something positive, but I still think most of the real work will occur once Bush gets out of office)
• The removal of numerous Bush allies in government (still not enough)
• The rise of Obama for the 2008 elections (not my top candidate, but of the most likely candidates, I still prefer him over Clinton)

Wait for next blog on 2008 predictions!