First the links.

Back in the day, people shared their google influence with me when I shared what I had with them. As I've written before, I think it's sleazy, but I'm doing it today because:

1. I just remembered that I'm sleazy.

2. I actually like these people. I linked out in the past expecting others to link back. It didn't matter if I liked them - I just wanted the inbound links, which is far sleazier than gratuitously linking out.

- Yuvi - It should be obvious right now that we have a symbiotic linking relationship, but it's still based on mutual appreciate of style. The most recent one that I loved was this - it's about how Yuvi handles sharing a computer with his younger brothers who take up Yuvi's computer time playing what I understand is one of the stupidest video games on the planet. What's good is Yuvi's method and how it's not only going to solve the problem of having to share, but also something else that he doesn't want to address directly. I had to share a computer when I was younger, but I got around it by simply not sharing it. I didn't care that my family hated me for tying up both the TV and the computer since the TV was our monitor. What was important to me was spending the entire weekend coding since school would get in the way of my projects during the week.

- Lloyd Humph - In one of my recent posts, he advertised his site, taking a bit of a "You can't stop me" attitude about it. He wants to get his site out there by exploiting my comments section. My solution to that is to take away the naughtiness that he seems to enjoy so much by providing him with a perfectly legitimate link. Take that, Lloyd Humph.

- Aristo - He started his Neopoleon relationship by leaving a comment where he said he was leaving because I was going insane. He came back a little while later, probably because he realized that I'd always been insane, and this wasn't a new thing. Now he's put up his own site, and he says that it was because of me. I figure that's either a compliment or a challenge. Whichever, I'm happy.

- Russel Ball - Russel links to me on occasion to say all manner of nice things about my latest creative projects. I love that. It's nice to know people are enjoying them, because it's all rather time consuming. I'd do it anyway since I'm having a good time, but the approval makes me feel all warm inside.

- Chris Rondat - Also known as Beer28 - I can't believe I'm doing this, but he's having a genuinely hard time right now, and we're also being civil toward each other at the moment, and I want to capture that for all to see. I don't have a lot of joy over how he usually conducts himself, but this is a side of him I haven't seen.

- Marty Mazurik - Marty gave me my first job in the tech industry when he contracted me to write a Linux textbook. He challenged me in the way a good boss ought to. He placed his offer like a bet, and then rooted for me all the way through. It took twelve days to present him with a book of about 25,000 words, which is not the kind of thing anybody would ordinarily do. It'd be tremendously difficult to motivate myself to do something like that. Like other people in my life I'd feel comfortable referring to as "mentors", Marty built me up with the sort of confidence that gets you thinking, "Ok, I can do this thing." I'd normally think of that kind of sentiment as banal, but it was true here, and it was nice. There was a falling out later, due entirely to me being an asshole, and I don't know how to atone for that. Still, I'm thankful I met the guy.

- The Tao Cowboy - Like other people on this list, he compliments my writing and creative crap in such a way that I feel like I'm actually producing something good. I'm insecure as hell, so any praise I get is greatly appreciated. 'Course, it can't go too far since insecurity is probably what keeps me posting things publicly. If I felt validated, I wouldn't need to seek approval from a bunch of people I don't know.

That's that for now. I probably missed a few people. As usual, I'm pulling this stuff from Technorati, so I only find people who've linked to me. A google search yields an entirely different set of results based on my name rather than links. It's a lot harder to keep track of that crowd.

- Astrid - She thinks I'm awesome, I think she's awesome - this is an easy decision. Very similar sense of humor, and quality email exchanges. Even though we'll sometimes go for weeks without responding to each other (that's more me than her), it's good stuff. The primary reason I take a long time to respond is that our emails are longer than most posts. It can take it out of you after a while.

Anyway, I 'preciate it, guys.

For the Christmas part of this post, I saw something my former boss linked to, and, no disrespect to anyone who's into this, I see it as Spinal Tap for the holidays except that these guys take themselves very seriously. They do have an interesting light show, putting on more of a spectacle than a concert, but... it's still outrageously funny to me :)

I watched a few of their videos on YouTube, and arrived at the conclusion that their stage is a guitar powered time machine that allows them to make brief jumps forward from the 80s, but only as long as they rock:

Happy early Christmas from the land of shoulder pads and fists in the air :)