24 never fails to surprise the audience

24 season 6 once again started with a bang, with back-to-back double episode last sunday and monday night.

first four episode's highlights:
1. Jack, after two years of torture from the Chinese government, is being turned over to the US govt.
2. Jack, just moments after being free, is being informed by Bill that he will likely die once he's turned over to Fayed who asked for him as one of the demands, in exchange for information leading to the terrorists.
3. Jack's dialog: "i would rather die for something, than die for nothing"
4. Jack bit a terrorist on his neck to death!
5. Assad stabbing one of the terrorist in the knee, and being able to make him talk, after Jack concluded that he won't. Jack then realized that he had lost "it".
6. President Palmer giving in to Fayed's demand of releasing 110 extremely dangerous terrorists
7. Jack shooting Agent Curtis to death to prevent him from killing Assad - a long time terrorist turned ally, then Jack's emotional suffering after killing a friend, almost fainting and throwing up.
8. Despite all the effort to prevent it, a suitcase nuke exploded in LA! (this one left the CTU and the WhiteHouse crew in awe, myself included). yeah, the season literally started with a BANG!

a shift

Before anything, let me greet you (if there is actually any reader left here) a Happy New Year. May yours and mine be peaceful and productive, and may we not regret come December that nothing in our life had really improved and a year was spent accomplishing nothing! Nope, I didn't regret slacking on my blog, as this thing is at the bottom of my priority list right now, and I can't promise a regular update from this point forward =)

Nuff talk, let's move on!

How about a little shocker? No, I'd be gentle. I'll do it bit by bit maybe, and let you figure it out. Here goes... We don't have a bookshelf yet on our new place, (yes we moved to slightly bigger place, but we are still renting, and no I won't digress.) so you could now just find my books stacked on every part of the house. If I think now, there is probably two in the kitchen counter, one or two on the sofa table and maybe one in the coffee table; around ten on Nel's dresser, and another 8 on the small table beside the dresser, and maybe 3 or 4 on the bedside table. Oh, there might also be one on top of the chest , and maybe one or two on Nick and Bill's bedroom. The difference though is before, all those books would be from Apress, MicrosoftPress, Wrox, Addison-Wesley and are all about .Net, Xml, UML, software process and designs, etc. Now you can see author names like Max Lucado and Philip Yancey. I also now listen to Bo, and James MacDonald on my iPod.

Things are also going great in my life. I've increased the number of people I know in 2006 to close to a hundred, most of them I consider my friend. That's pretty amazing considering I probably only have twenty the year before. I've met some very special people too, like Lex, which I would probably mention again in the future. There is a big shift in my priorities, and as I've mentioned the casualties are blogging, photography, and even the time I spend honing my programming skills. But I know, and I feel, that I am doing things the way they should really be done. I feel more relaxed and less stressed (if not at all), and observing that I get to spend my time more efficiently. Our number one priority which is to buy a house, have now moved down to number 4 or 5 maybe. The booming Alberta economy and it's side-effect of sky-rocketing property prices doesn't worry me anymore - even a bit! Don't you wish you're as unaffected as I am? Wanna know my secret? Tune in!