I love you Vinney

I'll tell you this - receiving hundreds of emails in response to my first article "back" was quite possibly the best welcome back I could ever have. It felt just like the old days, and I was even sick as a dog to make things truly like the old days :) Thanks guys.

I've been battling a sinus infection ever since I got back from Taiwan; Vinney has been taking care of me, even more care than I could ask for, but I'll get to talking about her in a bit. Let me get through some business first (and save the best for last).

The number one request I had for a drive review under the new methodology was to see some of those drives we compared in RAID-0, to see the true benefits of RAID. I've just about finished running the WD740s in RAID-0 through the new suite, and I'm going to try and get a couple more drives in there for the review which will go live sometime next week.

The next biggest requests were for SCSI reviews, reviews of the new Hitachi 400GB drive and reviews of Samsung's HDDs as well. I've already been in touch with Hitachi and I've got one PATA and two SATA 7K400 (400GB) drives on the way, so you'll see reviews of them not next week, but the following week to continue with my "HDD review a week" promise. I've got a lot of making up to do in order to get back to where things were before school took over my life and I'm trying to get there, one review at a time :)

The sinus infection pushed back my Dothan review, which definitely upset me but I'm going to get back on that as soon as I'm better.

The launch of the new site has also been pushed back until the beginning of July, but the delay is not without its benefits. We're going to have at least one more new section with the new site, as well as even more input into the design of the new site as there's going to be a fairly big AT design meeting coming up next week. I apologize for the delay, but I promise that it will be well worth it. If there are any changes you'd like to see made with the new site, let me know - as usual, we're all ears.

One of our new writers, who will be debuting his work next month in the Digital Cameras section on the new site, is actually getting married this weekend. Vinney and I are driving up to Maryland tomorrow night to attend his wedding. I was introduced to both the bride and groom by Vinney, who also introduced the bride to her groom if I recall correctly. They are both wonderful people who made me feel extremely comfortable when I started dating Vinney seemingly ages ago, so I'm ecstatic to see them happy together. Congrats to Allison and Steve, and you'll be able to give Steve your own congrats next month when he starts writing for AT. As I alluded to before, Steve will be heading up the new Digital Cameras section on AT, and his commitment is going to echo mine - a DC review a week is what you can expect.

We've got a ton of interesting goodies in for reviews that will be popping up in a couple of weeks. PCI Express graphics cards, DDR2 memory, new processors, new chipsets, SATA controllers with Native Command Queuing support are all wonderful reminders of what makes this job fun. After I get back from the weekend in MD I'm going to be working with Derek and Wes in developing a good game plan for the final weeks in June to put together a handful of reviews of technology that we've been hearing about for a very long time now. It's good to see some of this stuff finally come to fruition.

With site stuff out of the way, time for more personal blogging. I've got this issue with traveling to Taiwan, basically whenever I get back I can't sleep on a normal schedule for about two weeks. I've really tried hard to get on a normal schedule this time around, because I've got Vinney to spend time with during the normal awake hours, but me being sick has made it even more difficult to maintain a proper sleeping schedule; hence why you find me up lifting weights at 3:43AM and blogging afterwards.

Being up at strange hours of the night has also given me a lot of time to think; time to think not about work or the day-to-day, but mostly about my life and its direction at this point. I've had enough experiences by this early point in life to leave me with a fairly cynical take on trusting people. Now I realize that just about everyone says that it's tough to trust people and you should always keep your guard up, etc... but I tend to think that I stray a bit from the norm here. I pretty much always keep to myself, both with sharing myself (which is ironic considering I'm talking about all of this in a blog, but true nonetheless) and with trusting others. I'm an only child and I never really wanted any siblings, I somehow enjoyed being alone most of the time and having a couple of friends to spend time with when I didn't want to be alone. I don't regret not having the brother/sister experiences when I was little; I saw others who had that, and honestly didn't want it. That being said, given the right person, I was never too hesitant to want to open up and share myself with that person.

What's most interesting about that last statement is that the right person whom I speak of, hadn't come along until Vinney (my fiancee or fiance, which one is it? Words I haven't used in a review tend to evade my understanding :)....). I had shared bits and pieces of myself with people in the past, and I was for a long time involved with someone who I shared my day-to-day with but kept most of my inner thoughts (silly and not), fears and nuances away from; but it wasn't until Vinney that I actually shared my entire self with. When I say entire, I mean entire. I'm talking about every little thing that pops into your head, as vulnerable, silly or _______ (insert adjective here) as it may make you be, I share with her. And in doing so, make myself totally vulnerable to any number of things that scare the hell out of me, but somehow with her they are non-issues.

Everyone asks how you tell if you've found "the one" and there's never a real answer, other than you'll know when you get there. I think for each and every person the answer to that question differs a bit, but for me one part of my answer is that with Vinney I felt very few inhibitions the first time I talked to her, and shortly thereafter none whatsoever, which for me is a huge thing, given my spiel on trust and sharing ones self from a couple paragraphs up.

I'm not writing all of this to come to some dramatic point, or conclude with a set of my Final Words, but rather to share a part of the happiness that consumes me. See, I get these strange moments of inspiration where something, sometimes something very small, will trigger a barrage of on-top-of-the-world feelings. For me, those feelings always revolve around my beautiful wife-to-be and being that I cannot draw or do any other sort of creative art, I write to express. What's interesting (to me at least) is that it's often seeing someone else hurt or treated poorly that makes me want to cherish Vinney all that much more.

I was watching TV the other day and ended up watching Divorce Court (hey, I'm sick, eating soup and watching mid-day TV on the couch, cut me some slack). What kept me on the channel was the couple getting a divorce, basically two kids, one 19 and one 21 - with an 8 month old child. The relationship was so devoid of love and so full of hurt for one another. The husband had cheated on the wife a bunch, etc... the usual stuff you find on those shows. And all it made me do was want to write pages upon pages about how much I love Vinney. Maybe I'm weird, I know I'm not normal by any definition, but this is the kind of thing that happens to me.

So I'm sitting up, at now 4 in the morning, thinking about my day, my life, my work - and what has put me in the best mood and made me feel on top of the world was just the thought of my lovely Vinney. If I had a live webcam (don't get any ideas) you'd be staring at the face of a very content, very happy, very lovestruck man - and that to me, is the greatest feeling I could ever have. I'll spend the rest of my life living, working, doing the things I try to do every day, but it's this feeling right now that has me complete.

I love you Vinney :)

Goodnight all and take care.