And so, another year winds down. This year kind sucked in a lot of ways, though, as most years do, it had a couple of good moments. Mostly, it’s good to get it over with, I guess (other than being that much closer to death, of course – but then I tend to look on the bright side most of time). Yesterday was one of those bright moments. Not only did SU go to a bowl game for the first time since 2004, and win a bowl game (and have a winning season and at least eight wins) for the first time since 2001, but they were actually fun to watch in the most entertaining bowl game of the season so far, racking up almost 500 yards of offense, and scoring 22 points in the second half of a “shootout” type of game to win by two points. This, for an offense that has pretty much sucked and was boring to watch all year, even when it won. So that was a pleasant surprise. Now we can fully devote our attention to basketball. Notre Dame tomorrow in the Dome. And I hate Notre Dame (quite possibly even more than I hate Georgetown, though that’s a tough call).

This is the sixth New Year’s Eve that this place has been around (I know – pretty hard to believe), and if you’ve been around here all that time, you probably know that our family tradition is to watch the Twilight Zone Marathon on what, as part of the dumbing down of America, they now call the SyFy channel. It commences at 8AM eastern with “Perchance To Dream” and wraps up with “The Last Rights Of Jeff Myrtlebank” on Sunday morning at 5:30.

Our little tradition started on New Year’s Eve, 1998, and this year, we’re kind of coming full circle. It was back in August ’98 that I got off dialup, and got RoadRunner. Back then, they didn’t have these cheap SOHO routers for sharing your Internet connection, and I’d been using one of my computers to share my dial-up connection with the other computers in the house (if somebody tried to load a web page, my computer in the basement would automatically dial out). When they installed RoadRunner, my plan was to continue with that – except I’d need to install 2 NICs in the computer. The installation tech assured me that was just not possible, and I said “ok” and then went ahead and did it as soon as he left. It was, of course, quite possible. But anyways…

I’d moved into my wife’s house, and she only had crappy basic cable back then. No Sci Fi channel (very few channels at all, really, and one crappy little TV the size of a postage stamp without surround sound or anything; I shudder to think of those days, though I upgraded the equipment, at least, when I got there). Anyhow, the cable signal was really crappy, and the tech guy (different tech; back then, it took two installers, believe it or not) had to go out on the pole and remove an old trap that was used to limit us to basic cable. He informed me that I’d be getting all the channels for a day or two, until they came out and replaced the trap.

I was sad, of course, but figured I could live with it. That year, by the way, SU finished with eight wins (going 8-4, losing to Florida in the Orange Bowl on Jan 2, 1999).

So, fast forward to the afternoon of New Year’s Eve in the year 2000 (that was the one after the world was gonna come to and end because computers would think it was the year 1900, and when Bill Clinton was quietly keeping America safe from the terrorists, unlike his successor, who, about 9 months later, would sit on his ass in Florida while the Twin Towers fell).

Back on 12/31/2000, I was off from work (things were more civilized back then), and we were watching the TZ Marathon as we had been for the past couple of years, when suddenly the door bell rang. It was a cable dude, informing me that he needed to put a trap on the cable line, because we were getting all the channels.

And so, just like that, no more Twilight Zone. Bummer.

The thought of life w/ basic cable was rather sobering (which is no way to go through New Year’s Eve), so the next day I went to Best Buy and got a DirecTV package, which was installed a couple of days later. So, on New Year’s Eve 2001, the tradition continued.

DirecTV had gotten to kind of suck in a lot of ways over the years, and so, when we moved out here this yesr, I decided to dump them and go with cable again. So, here we are, ready for the Marathon, and with SU winning eight games once again.

In 1998, basic analog cable was about 8 bucks a month. Now, for digital “surf and view” with HBO and DVR, I pay, well, I’d just as soon not think about what I pay. Let’s just say it’s more than $8. But then gas was about a buck a gallon back then, too.

Even worse, I have to go to f*ckin’ work today.

Have a good day, and whatever y’all do to ring in the new year tonight, stay safe and happy.