Fred Rogers, the man who taught, entertained and traveled to the Land of Make Believe with children of all ages for 50 years, has died at age 74 after a brief battle with stomach cancer.

OK - I admit it - I reneged on a vow to never again watch an award show. Last night I was very bored (and Alias hadn't come on yet) so I actually watched some of the Grammy Awards show. My conclusion? If choice in music is any indication, there might be some hope for the world yet.

While some of the Grammy festivities was the usual circus parade of drivel and underwhelming copycat-of-the-next-guy performances, those who won many of the awards were quite a different story.

This weekend, SWMBO and I went to dinner with a group of our closest friends in what has become an annual New Year's event. We always use this time to reflect on the prior year and look toward the coming one.

We usually sit around and talk about the major things that have happened to us during the year and try to predict what will happen soon or what we have planned in the new year.

Even if you're not a total Lord Of The Rings geek (I'm sure not), you've gotta check out this forum.

But be forewarned - as of this writing, it's 22 pages long and still growing. But if you've got some time to kill (or want to print it out for later) it's well worth the time. Some of these things are a scream!

So I've now entered the world of blogging, huh? What, exactly, that means I have no idea. But, I had space on a server and it seemed a shame to let it go to waste.

As this is my first real post, I guess I'll provide some background.