What can I say about 2009? First third was crappy, middle half was ok, and then the last third was fun. Why do I say this? Well, I was in India at the end of 08/start of 09 and when I got back I was laid off from work. Because of “these economic times” my company couldn’t afford to keep me on. So yeah, that made the year start off kinda crappy. This meant that I had to put a hold my house hunting process, and switch to a job hunting mode. The good news was that I managed to get a job at NYU in mid March, right around my birthday.

This started the “ok” middle part of the year… Basically lots of work at the new job, applying for grad school, searching for a house, and stuff like that. During this time, I found a place in Hoboken that I really liked, the interest rates were amazingly low, the price was right, and the gov’t was still giving out free money for buying a place. How could I refuse such a deal? I ended up getting the place at the end of May, and moved the first weekend in June.

The rest of the summer was spent going absolutely crazy at work thanks to NYU changing some policies. I can talk more about this insanity in another post, it deserves it’s own post. Also, moving and getting a place furnished and set up takes a lot of time and effort, never realized that before. So, by the end of the summer, I was pretty tired, and needed a break.

I took a nice two week vacation in Egypt. Not only did I get to see the pyramids and tons of culture there, I also got to spend two day floating down the Nile in a sail boat. But the highlight (other than pyramids) was spending a night out in the desert. I never thought that I would enjoy it this much, but it was fantastic. The night sky without any light pollution is an amazing thing to see. I could see a concentrated band of stars that makes up Milky Way. I so want to go back just to experience that again.

So, yes, Egypt was the start of the fun last third of the year. Soon after I got back, I found out that I got in Stern for a part-time MBA program I’m a student once again… And I finished the year off in Nashville, ringing in the New Years with my brother, sister-in-law and their friends down there.

I’m glad 2009 is over, it was a hectic/crazy year. I’m glad how it turned out in the end, had some awesome times during the year. And I’m hopeful that 2010 will continue from where the fun third of 2009 ended off at.

This is a more important message: don’t forget to update all of your passwords! Most people recommend updating passwords on a 6 month basis, so why not get started now? Update at the start of the year, and at the middle of the year. So, what’s the best way to come up with a password? I strongly recommend using this random password generator website. Take a part of the third random password that’s generated, and replace some of the characters with special characters, and you’ve got a perfect password then. I know I’m going through all of my accounts and making sure everything is newly locked down and updated.

And even better, saw a brand new trailer for Caprica. I’m hoping it’s going to be a good show. At least the music will live up to the standards of BSG becaue the same musical director, Bear McCreary, is in charge of the soundtrack. He also did the music for the new Terminator tv show.

But, what’s been happening over the last 1.5 months? Well, as some of you might know, I was on vacation for two weeks. I needed a break from work, and wanted to go far away. There are plenty of pictures online, Facebook and my photo site. I had an amazing time. But unfortunately, while I was gone, the Giants decided to start losing games… The two weeks I didn’t watch, they lost; then I come back, and the lose again! They really need to get their act together again and start playing well.

Other than that, I’m moving my Roth IRA account from Scottrade to Wells Fargo because Wells Fargo is giving me more free trades, and is waiving all the fees for me. When I put in the paperwork to move the account, the folks at Scottrade gave me a call trying to convince me to stay with them, selling the fact that they have lower fees, lower commissions and streaming quotes. The dude was really insistent that I stay with them, he was definitely pushing his sell too hard and I didn’t like that. But hopefully, my account should get moved over soon enough.

Beyond these things, I can’t believe this year is almost over. This year has flown by, and it’s been a crazy year. I’ll do my usual annual wrap up in January, but I can’t believe how fast this year has gone by.

Chrome starts crashing when I open up too many tabs and I think it happens when the pages have a lot of flash, or mainly ads on it. And the odd thing is, this is only really happening on my laptop and not my work computer. Chrome is default browser on both of them, and it’s only crashing on the laptop. Both are running XP Service Pack 3, and have Intel Core 2 Duos. Anyone seen anything similar with their installation of Chrome?

Banks often claim the Patriot Act as the reason they need pull credit for any bank account, but the act only says that the bank needs to verify someone’s identity. It doesn’t say anything about needing a credit report for it. To verify someone’s identity, can’t you just use a copy of a person’s drivers license? Or if that’s not enough, how about a passport?

And the kicker on all this, I’ve already got a credit product with Wells Fargo. If I was good enough for them to extend my credit a couple of months ago, why do you need a new credit report now?

Overall, I would rate the movie a solid 6.5… It was good, but there were too many changes that detracted from the plot to make it a really good movie. I didn’t want, and I didn’t expect everything in the book to be translated into the movie, but my issues is that they changed things that should not have been changed. I’ve got four main issues with the movie. Be warned, major spoilers ahead for the movie and for the book.

1. The redemption of Severus Snape is not supposed to happen in this movie. We are not supposed to get even a hint of Snape being a good person till the very end of book 7. Rowling devoted an entire chapter in book 7 to Snape to explain what he did, and why he did those things. Till that point we are always lead to believe that Snape is bad, and he should not be trusted especially after the event of book 6. The movie decided to include some foreshadowing to show that Snape might be good after all. When Harry and Dumbledore return to Hogwarts, Harry hides underneath a platform (instead of his cloak). As he is hiding there, Snape see him on the way up to the tower and tells Harry to stay silent! If Snape is a Death Eater and bad (as seen in the next moment when he kills Dumbledore) why does the Harry to stay silent?!? He would have dragged Harry with him to Voldemort; my point is, Bad Snape would have done something, the redeemed Snape would have done nothing. And we see the redeemed Snape right now. This is a problem for the next movie because Harry is supposed to hate Snape to no end for what he did, but I don’t see how he can have the same level of hatred in this case. Snape is also my favorite character, so this was a really disappointing change to me.
2. The Battle for Hogwarts. Now I know the huge battle is book 7, but book6 does have the DA fighting against the Death Eaters. It’s a pretty significant battle in that we see the students and teachers fighting side by side, the DA really showing off it’s skills, and the final use of the Luck Potion. This is a smaller nitpick, but I was expecting at least one battle scene and we got nothing… Kinda of a big letdown that there’s no battle.
3. The Horcrux hints – Before Dumbledore dies, he has given Harry a decent amount of information on the rest of the Horcruxes and what they are (at least what they might be). The movie doesn’t really go into any depth about this. I know if we went through every memory that we had in the book, the movie would be closer to 5 hours long, but Harry is missing crucial information. I don’t understand how he is supposed to start/continue his quest without any of information, unless we are to assume that he knows all of it, but we just didn’t see it on screen.
4. Finally, and this is minor, but the whole romance made it into almost a comedy. This is supposed to be a pretty serious book, but they kept putting in scenes with Harry and Ginny that were just plain odd and funny. And changing the plot so that Harry and Ginny start liking each other much sooner and both of them are aware of it… not so good. At least they could have kept that part intact with Harry surprising everyone with him kissing Ginny.

So, overall it was alright; pretty disappointing when compared to the book. Before I went to the movie I was hoping it would be good enough for me to return and see it in IMAX, but after this let down, I highly doubt that is going to happen. Hopefully, next year when movie 7 (and are released, they will live up to the book.