Staff Letters: Phil

...I've become your new god now!...

Happy New Year folks! Holy shit, 2008 is done! Eight Metallica shows, a new album, a new country, a new job, a new perspective, new friends, renewed old friendships, and probably even more! I can absolutely not believe 2008 is already gone. It seems like just yesterday I was announcing my new job and my move, and now I'm here and it's a new year.

I know that 2008 wasn't a great year for a lot of people. I'm thankful it treated me very well. I wish everyone a fantastic 2009 with all of the things you want from it.

Two more months since my last letter... I know, I still suck. But I'm making it up this time: there's a big IPOM announcement below.

In my October letter I mentioned I'd spent every spare second since moving into my new place in August actually trying to make my place livable. In early October I had a house-warming party to celebrate my new home and the fact that it was mostly functional.

In mid-October I was back in the states for a 7-week business trip. In addition to work and visiting Bay-area family keeping me quite busy, I also made it down to LA for two very short trips to visit some friends and old stomping grounds.
While in the states I managed to catch the first rehearsal show for the World Magnetic tour in San Francisco at Cow Palace. Thanks to our friends the Metallica Club for this amazing opportunity! It was an unbelievable show, and I'll try to get a review of it up soon. Being in a nearly empty arena with mostly friends of the bands, a few stars, and a few hundred lucky fans was a once-in-a-lifetime experience.

I've gone from being happy about Death Magnetic to fucking loving it. It's funny, I never realized how much driving while listening to an album helps me absorb it. When I got to the US and rented a car, it was the first time I'd had a chance to drive in 5 months, and I was excited to drive to the new Metallica album. I popped in the CD and it didn't leave the CD player until I returned the car 7 weeks later. I really love this album, and it's funny how much it's changed the scene. Every band has talked about how much they love it. I hear almost no negative things about it. And everytime I listen to it I just want to thrash around!

Anyway, I left the US on 12/3 and got back on 12/4. Re-acclimating to life over in Zurich has been a bit difficult, particular since the handful of friends I've made all left town for the holidays, but I'm looking forward to getting back to work this week and getting back into a schedule. I'm hoping to schedule a lot of travel over the next several months.

I want to say a huge thanks to my friends in the US who went out of their way to make sure they could see me even though my schedule was insane. My friends continue to prove to me that I have some of the best friends a guy could ask for. I love you all. My apologies to those I couldn't see.

The week before Christmas it snowed, and you can see pictures here. It snowed enough that we were able to build snowmen at work. Unfortunately, all the snow melted before Christmas and I didn't get a white Christmas, but it snowed again on New Year's Eve, and there's still quite a bit of it around. Having just been in the US, I wasn't able to go anywhere for the holidays, so I volunteered for oncall duty, and spent the holidays having a nice quiet time by myself.

With Metallica hitting European shores in February, it's bugging me I haven't scheduled any Metallica trips. It's much harder, admittedly to do that in Europe. I'm thinking though of picking a few cities I want to visit, and scheduling trips around the Metallica shows. Maybe hit Paris, Cologne, Milan, Rome... we'll see. I have tickets, of course, for Zurich (one of the only cities, and indeed countries, they're only playing 1 show in). We'll see. I have to say that missing the LA shows bummed me out. Especially since they got to hear Nightmare.

On an IPOM note, I'm happy to report that I just released the revamp of Reviews! It's taken a year of on-and-off work (especially with the move), because a lot of work went into making it stellar. It's fully searchable, has some pretty cool functionality. Let me know if you see any bugs.

Last time I mentioned the new Knight Rider show. There's been good and bad parts of the show, but I have to admit, they've kept me intrigued and had several homages to the original, which is great. I miss the "loner" aspect of the original, but so far I haven't written the show off.

I'm gonna try and keep these letters coming, and other updates as well. Stay tuned!

Phil

GOOD

Miranda
Seven weeks back in the US
Seeing my friends
In N Out
Jack in the Box
Mountain Dew
Taco Bell
Kraft Singles
Hot dog buns

BAD

Stores never being open in Zurich
Everything being tiny in Europe

BABES OF THE MONTH

Emily Deschanel

MOVIES

Dark Knight

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