A new year, my thoughts on the holiday season and more...

Hope you all had a Happy New Year!

With that being said, I did what many other average males do...wait until the last minute to do the Christmas shopping for my family. All told, I got it all done within a matter of 24 hours prior to the family gathering for the annual gift-opening event. Looks like Santa Claus was good to everyone, including yours truly. And we even got to have a nice Christmas dinner as well...check out the family photo above...yes, we were all gathered together in one house!

Right before Christmas, I treated myself to a terrific Christmas show from Daryl Hall & John Oates in Philadelphia. The mix of holiday and classic Hall & Oates tunes made for a truly memorable night in Center City Philadelphia. The entire hometown crowd showed nothing but love and respect not only for the band, but also for the entire setlist served up that night in December. Pictures of that evening can be found on my photo album page at http://maniacmel.smugmug.com/.

While I was browsing around the malls, electronic stores and shopping centers, I noticed that the big ticket items were HDTVs, video game systems like PlayStation 3 and Wii, next generation hi-def Blu-ray and HD-DVD players, etc. Well, I am here to tell you that despite the fact that I witnessed many people purchasing the cheaper HD-DVD players, the fact of the matter is that it's Blu-ray that's going to win this hi-def format war. Yes, this is the "VHS vs. Betamax" war happening all over again, except this time, I predict that Blu-ray will be the perennial winner and end the format war rather quickly. With Warner Bros. announcing their full support of Blu-ray beginning in June 2008, this could be the smoking gun that puts the HD-DVD format out of its misery. Yet, the burning question does ask...what will those people who recently purchased the cheaper HD-DVD players do when there won't be as many movies coming out as 2008 and beyond progresses forward? I can only sit there and laugh at those unfortunate folks who didn't follow the old saying "you get what you pay for"...

With 2008 in full swing, I can't predict what I have planned for this year. The only thing I hope for is that I'll live as much as I can throughout the year as much as I've done in the past years gone by.