Today I turn thirty, which I feel is some sort of milestone. Dave Sweet would differ, as when he turned thirty he said something about it being an arbitrary number made up by the bourgeois upper-class to keep the proletariat masses in their place. Regardless, if it wasn't 30 then it would be some other number of special significance -- there would still be special birthdays. So I might as well think of this one being something to write about.

I asked Eric a few weeks ago if there's any point in life after 30, he being the oldest person in our group now that Billy moved to Iowa. He emphatically said yes, although maybe the new girl friend colored his reaction. At that point in time I wasn't so sure. Thirty years and I haven't done anything that I would call great, or even really cool. Never have written that best-selling video game or written a book or anything.

Usually I'm pretty content with my life. I know I'm not the best or greatest, but I'm ok at what I do and I enjoy it. Sometimes though you wonder what, if anything, you will leave behind. An accomplishment or achievement that will be remembered somewhere. With the rise of the Internet you can get that effect by doing lots of things and having your stuff copied around. But that's rather cheap and ephemeral to me, even if I do have my own web site.

So what do I have? Good friends, loving parents and siblings, challenging job, a relatively robust creative life. My health is ok, though I really need to look into taking better care of myself or I'll have a heart attack in a few years. No love in my life -- and I keep saying that it doesn't matter and sometimes I even believe it. Lots of junk, which I'm slowly starting to throw away now that I realize how little space I have left in my apartment.

Oh well, it's still a good life and it's all mine. As usual, I think people in general tend to look at the bad things in life and not notice all the good things. I'm never going to be x, y or z, but I will make my contributions to our society and I will enjoy my life.

I was looking through my high school year book a few nights ago. As I flipped the pages, it surprised me that I knew most of my senior classmates. I guess that shouldn't be remarkable, as there were less than 500 of us. Most of the hard working people were in the same classes so I saw them a lot and they got more pictures in the yearbook. I do regret some things, and if I had to do it all over again I would hope that I'd have the courage to have done a few things differently.

Strange about the kind of things that make you happy. There was a little birthday thing for Pick and I at work. I'm looking forward to having dinner with my sister -- we haven't done that in a while. I also want to go home and watch the Sacramento-Phoenix game and see the Kings their first playoff series since moving to Sacramento. I bought someone a plane ticket so that they could go to the last, great Xena convention that will ever be held. There's writing to do, a campaign to plan, and of course work.

It's a full life, filled with a bunch of little things that all add up to me. I'm pleased with Mac OS X, not having had to boot into Mac OS 9 for a like 10 days now. I almost got the native development environment half working. I can check out files and put them in a project and edit them. Can't compile successfully, can't run it natively, can't check in the files and not have it end up a mess. But hopefully in a week I will be totally Mac OS X native.

Last thoughts. Sometimes life is good, sometimes not so good. Either way you do have to live your life and make the best of it. Some people don't realize that and don't take responsibility. I realize that I could and still can make my life better. I'm not too sure if I will, but I won't rail against the fates for my shortcomings. I'm still having fun, so it's not time to give up just yet.