So up here in Canada, the day after Christmas is called Boxing Day, and its a shopping fiesta-stravaga-smo-rrific day that has an analogy stateside as “Black Friday”, the day after American Thanksgiving. Whereas the Christmas holidays are (or should be) about the great spirit of giving to others, Boxing Day is a day devoted to the indulgence of oneself. Mostly through purchases of stuff you delayed until after Christmas, like when you KNEW that $22 top you were never going to buy at retail is now discounted down to $9.

Two days ago great hordes of shoppers woke up groggily after a post-Xmas day feast and headed to malls and big-box stores around the country to gorge door crasher sales while trying not to trample any innocent children. And I have to say that I usually participate in this shopping fiesta-stravaga-smo-riferous event, mostly for the pure thrill of watching women (and sometimes, men) almost kill each other for almost-free t-shirts and technology.

This year was a bit laid back for me, as I sipped a coffee and played with my son while my wife dived in feet (and fists) firsts into the boxing day fray. My “Best Buy” was in fact a totally free T-shirt, as Old Navy was literally giving away graphic t-shirts for a period of time (any graphic tee — no buy one, get one free … just totally free). I picked up some DVD’s (including Denzel Washington’s Man on Fire, one of the finest revenge movies in recent memory — trust me on this one) as well since they were (quite) cheap … $10 a pop.

Anyway, with all of that out of the way along with some more eating and family time, its long past time I got back to blogging.

Some housekeeping issues, for those who give 3.5c:

• DJI is now fully part of b5media, as they have included DJI in the b5 blogroll, and finally (FINALLY), I’ve added the b5 blogroll to my sidebar. It was actually available for a week (or more), thanks to the seriously wicked code-ful skillz of Aaron “Techno-Admiral” Brazell. No, seriously — anyone who can code a working Wordpress Widget in an afternoon deserves a serious tip-and-a-half. The styling needs a bit work, but at least it DOES work. Thanks Aaron, and thanks to the b5 team. You can now find me under “technology” with other blogs such as Mark Evan’s own MapleLeaf 2.0, a look at the Canadian 2.0 scene, New Linux User (self explanatory), and the Gadget Blog (also, rather self explanatory).
• Being away for even a few days over Xmas does have its drawbacks. Namely, people who are trying to contact you with Real News tend to be disappointed when you don’t answer their emails. Who am I referring to? Matthew Chen of Megite tried to let me in on the fact that Megite has added a Video portion to their news aggregating site — but because I wasn’t around, the tip went to Rex Dixon’s blog; the whole thing was subsequently crunched on TechCrunch (including that Rex’s blog who helped ‘break’ the story). I guess I SHOULD get that blackberry for myself in the post-xmas boxing day week sales! Anyway, congratulations to Matthew on getting crunched — Megite’s really adding some unique value to the news aggregator space.
• My contact form is getting hammered with spam every day. And quite frankly, one of these days I’m going to hit “SPAM” rather than “DELETE” on one of these notices (it emails me with the result), thereby blacklisting my own URL. I know its going to happen soon, therefore, if anyone has any recommendations as to another kind of contact plugin for WP (that’s good at screening spam) let me know. Maybe I should add a captcha (or gotcha, or whatever those things are) to the contact form instead. Your thoughts, as always are welcome.