Last night my good friend Davy suggested to me that I do a semi-regular Q&A “column” on guardyourpants.com. Since I’ve been feeling a little more quiet lately, that sounded like a great idea to me. After all, the blog ain’t gonna write itself. (That’s for Davy.) I’m not sure with what regularity I’ll be doing it. I suppose that depends highly upon the volume and quality of questions I receive. In other words, it’s up to you.

Davy also suggested that tech questions would be a good thing for me to cover. I welcome those, but I also already spend a lot of time answering those kinds of questions. I think I’d rather have a wide-open field. While tech questions may play to what I have some knowledge about, I think it’d be fun to open myself up to personal questions, opinion questions, etc. Hey it might even be fun if you guys asked me about things I know nothing about. Let’s just get crazy with it.

So, hit me. You can submit questions via comments or email. If you want to ask a question anonymously, just don’t use your real name in the comments and I promise not to try and track you down. Seriously. I’m wide open here and I promise to answer honestly so long as it doesn’t cross any major lines. (For example, I never talk about work on this blog, so don’t bother asking about that.) I’m sure most of you reading this blog have a sense of where my lines might be, so I’m not worried. Bring it on.

I’ll post the first “Ask Nick” entry whenever I get a question I like.

By popular demand, the following is a list of items I would not mind acquiring on or around the time of my birthday. I did not want to do such a list this year, because I prefer for people just to pick things out. Apparently I’m hard to shop for though, so here we are. Also, please do not interpret this entry as me demanding gifts. I do not need anything. This is just for the people who have asked. As always, if you just can’t decide what to get me or you want to give me the best gift ever, feel free to make a donation to Make-A-Wish on my behalf. Really.

If you insist on getting me a gift, here’s a list of fairly reasonable items I’ve been eye’ing lately…

• Mexican Train - This is top of my list and I may have to acquire this for myself prior to vacation this year, so if you do buy it you might want to let me in early on it. Just saying.
• T-shirts from threadless.com - Men’s large should do. If you’re going here, you’ll have to be brave enough to pick out a design you think I’d like.
• Solio Hybrid Solar Charger - This is a little pricey for a birthday gift but it’s super cool and I do want one.
• Static Electricity Eliminator - I haaaate being shocked from static and I seem to be prone to it. Nifty.
• iTunes or Amazon gift cards - for purchasing music, which I do a lot of. If you’re really brave, just buy me something you think I’d like.
• Spycraft - A geeky book about CIA tech over the years. What? Like you didn’t know I was geeky enough to want something like this.
• Tea from Adagio - I prefer their black, flavored black and white teas. If you’re a tea snob and want to surprise me with something delicious, go for it.

So there are a few things. It’s not much, but if that doesn’t help you or put you on the right track, there’s not much I can do for you. Thanks for trying anyway!

I don’t know that I’ve gone so long without checking in here before. That’s a very bad thing because I don’t want to be one of those people with a blog that doesn’t really blog. I mean, I know I’ve slowed down over the last year, but this probably marks a low point.

I’m not without excuses though! If you’ll recall, an entry or two ago I shared that I’d be having my wisdom teeth removed. I did, and didn’t go well. I’ll spare you the details (if you’ve somehow managed to escape them for this long) but I dealt with more pain than I had planned on for considerably longer than I had planned on. During that time I mostly just went to work and then went right to bed after I got home. No blogging for me.

That lasted about a week and a half. Just as I started to feel fairly normal again, I developed an inner ear infection. Lots of dizziness and motion sickness were involved in that. Again, a lot of going to work and then going to bed when I got home. As of this past Friday, that all seemed to fade out.

That brings us to this week, where I seem to have picked up some sort of cold from Connor. Exciting. I don’t say all of this to whine (’cause I really am trying not to do that), but to say that I have honestly just not felt like doing much of anything, though there have been a few exceptions.

Yes, I’ve managed to have a few adventures in between sick days, including Cristin’s birthday weekend bash (also documented thoroughly here, here, here, here, here and here.), reading the entire Twilight series, a couple of laptop failures, my first completely successful Sunday running lights at church, starting a workout routine (that needs to start up again as soon as I’m well) and escaping the heavy hand of the law in traffic court.

So, it’s not that I haven’t had things to talk about. In fact, I’ve got four entries drafted that I have yet to post. I’ve just been kind of out of it lately. I’m back, though and I’ll get back into the swing of things in no time.

Once again it is the time of year when I become borderline obsessive on the weekends. Yes, football season is almost here. None of you cared when I wrote about it last year, so let me just forewarn you that I’ll be doing the same again this year. Sorry, but football has become a great love of mine. More specifically, attending home games at my alma mater has become a real thrill for me. Mostly because I never would have imagined a good program and game day atmosphere existing there. It’s been beyond exciting to see the football program turn around (almost) 180 degrees from where it was just a couple of season ago. The Flames won their first conference championship in ‘07 and they’ve been unanimously picked by the conference’s coaches and some media folks to win again in ‘08. Some of us have high hopes they’ll see their first trip to the NCAA Division I playoffs this year. I’m not counting those chickens before they hatch, however, and it’s a long road between here and there which brings me to my reason for writing this entry.

Just like last year, I have season tickets and I have no intention whatsoever of missing a single home game. So look at the dates below and be aware that you should not invite me to your birthday party, birth any babies you want me to see, have holiday celebrations, get married, etc. I will not be there. I will be watching football. On the other hand, if you would like to join me for a game, just let me know. We have once again purchased 4 seats (little ones don’t count if they’re under 3) for the season and you are all welcome to help us fill them. It’s a fun way to pass an afternoon/evening, even if you’re not totally into football. Just look at the dates and if you’re interested, comment or email me. First come, first serve. Here’s the ‘08 home schedule:

1. Aug 30, 2008 - 7:00 PM: North Greenville (Div. II)
2. Sep 6, 2008 - 7:00 PM: Glenville State (Div. II)
3. Oct 11, 2008 - 3:30 PM: Stony Brook (Big South Conference Game)
4. Oct 18, 2008 - 3:30 PM: Lafayette
5. Oct 25, 2008 - 3:30 PM: Charleston Southern (Homecoming, Big South Conference Game)
6. Nov 15, 2008 - 1:00 PM: Gardner-Webb (Big South Conference Game)
7. Nov 22, 2008 - 1:00 PM: Elon

If you live out of town and want to catch an away game here’s the full schedule to look over. Hope to see some of you at the games.

Warning: I’m going to do my best not to post any spoilers, but this is a post about The Dark Knight. If you haven’t already been to see the movie, you’re a horrible person and you should also probably stop reading now. This will be a review, so if something slips and you keep reading, it’s your own fault. You’ve been warned.

So, it was perfect for me. The movie matched the hype, for once, and Ledger’s performance was absolutely perfect. I’m not one to make nice with the dead, so if he had blown it, I’d say so. He deserves any awards he may get for the role. He was a scary lunatic who made people in the theater with us laugh at horrible things, which is exactly what Joker should do. His performance made the film, for sure, and I found it impossible not to be completely engaged when he was on screen.

Fortunately, the rest of the movie was awesome as well. Had Ledger’s performance been the only thing carrying the movie, it would still have been great, but there was so much more. Everyone played their parts perfectly, especially the minor characters. It was a gritty, real portrayal of some of Gotham’s most notorious characters and it was fantastic. I loved every stunt, every explosion and every scene. The dialogue (in a very few spots) might have been the movie’s only week point, but at the same time it is still a comic book movie. There’s only so far you can stretch realism over the superhero type of story.

I will not say this is the best movie I’ve ever seen. It might be, but to me I think the overall series is bigger than just this movie. It’s just like I wouldn’t say The Empire Strikes Back was the best movie I’d ever seen. It was dark, the bad guys won a lot, it was left open ended and it was really good. The Star Wars series needs Empire. In the same way, Nolan’s Batman movies need The Dark Knight. It’s a middle movie. It’s dark. It’s a huge part of the story. To isolate The Dark Knight portion of the story and say “Best movie ever!” just doesn’t fit to me, though. I may have to re-visit that opinion in a couple of years. It’s certainly the most perfect movie I’ve seen. I’ll leave it at that. Seems like the best way to sum it up.

Update: By the way, if you somehow missed the larger philosophical, sociological and political questions raised by this movie, you may want to read this fantastic analysis of the themes found in The Dark Knight.