My birthday has just passed in the last few days, leaving me in my early thirties, same as last year. My blog-o-matic also tells me this is my 399th post, and that's worth reflecting on, too.

I still don't know why I do this. I recently installed a page counter here at Wired Cola, and it tells me there are about 10-20 of you visiting on an average day. Welcome! That level of interest has convinced me of two things: this site is worthless, but amusing enough to my friends and family to continue. Enjoy!

What have I learned in my 30-ish years? Nothing really special. I'm a pretty happy guy, and the key to my happiness has probably been irrepressible optimism and enthusiasm, something which may or may not be genetic. Some people think I'm a pretty decent human being, and that has been a result of using my religion as a basic guide, and probably specifically the essential decency and politeness towards others which my mother and father taught me. I think politeness is an underrated social lubricant, especially in mixed company. In unmixed company, I tend towards Hitler jokes, which certainly suggests I should hang around in mixed company more.

Failings? I'm hard to live with. I'm lazy. I have such a problem with telling people what they want to hear and white lies that I made it my personal motto as a reminder: "honest in small things, honest in great things." It sounds better in the latin Luigi provided for me: verum de parvus, verum de magnus.

That's it for personal assessment. I've written nearly 400 posts to this blog, minus a few provided by my coauthors. Reading those is probably as good an insight as you're going to get, if you care.

Thank you for your indulgence. In the future, I hope Wired Cola will be less introspective and more devoted to finding interesting things to talk about.