It’s been a long, a very long year. Here are some of the things for which I am thankful.
- My kids. My daughter just gave the family the first of its next generation, and everyone moves up a notch 🙂 Me to grandmum, her to mother, my son to uncle, and my dad to great-grandfather. My son moved back in with me last spring, and it’s been a joy to daily share in his life once again.
- My father and step-mother. Dad has been fighting a brain tumor for more than two years now with strength, dignity and good humor. We call Dawn ESM (for “evil stepmother”) but she has been the mother to all of us that we have not had since Mom died almost seventeen years ago.
- Marie, my best friend. She has her own business but still finds time to call and chat for hours about cats and cooking!
- Surya, where I work. I gripe about them, but they took me in from the unemployment line and gave me my dignity back. I was ashamed of myself, mired in depression, thought of myself as worthless. They took a chance on me and I have given to them more than I thought I had.
- Ubuntu, the operating system. I played with Linux for years, never getting serious with it. I really loved Gentoo but ended up spending more time tuning the OS than doing work. When I really HAD to have a mail server working, reliably, in a day, I turned to Ubuntu. And it’s still chugging away, handling all the company’s email, and soon its web services.
- Python, the computer language. Simple but deep, powerful and readable, as good to use for simple one-line programs as for huge projects. It brought joy back to programming, regained my skills and I think I might be ready to once again proudly call myself a coder.
- Sony Online Entertainment, for EverQuest 2. I tried all sorts of MMOs, including a couple of betas for upcoming MMOs; none gave me that feeling that there was too much to do and most of it fun that EQ2 did.
- Blizzard, for World of Warcraft. WoW took precisely enough time for me to finish so SOE had enough time to make EQ2 fun.
- Prophetic Fate, Crimson Eternity, and Revolution. My homes in WoW, EQ1 and EQ2. They all put up with me, gave me friends when I needed friends and fun when I needed fun. Great people, every one.
- AggroMe. His enthusiasm for EQ2 brought me back to the game and got me blogging. And thanks to the people who tell me they are playing EQ2 because of my blog 🙂
- NPR. Thanks for keeping me informed!
- EQ2-Daily, for letting me know about other EQ2 sites and letting people know about mine. Virgin Worlds for their great podcast! I haven’t listened to EQ2-Daily’s, but I plan to.
- Harmonix for Guitar Hero and Guitar Hero 2. They might make me learn guitar someday.
Thanks everyone for such a wonderful 2006. I can hardly wait to see what 2007 brings.
Pleanty of things to be thankful this year, glad to see your site is back up and running and you’re having fun with the new format of it — just a reminder, my site’s changed (again!) to http://mmoquests.com/blog – looking forward to reading more updates! 🙂 (( Old site was mmoadventures ))
Oops, missed the change! I’ll fix it right now.