Today is Ash Wednesday, which marks the beginning of the Season of Lent. For Catholics like myself, Lent is a time of penance, reflection and fasting in preparation for Christ’s resurrection on Easter Sunday, which is only attained through redemption. Our foreheads will be marked with ashes in the sign of a cross to humble our hearts and remind us that life on Earth passes away. In Genesis 3:19, just after Eve has consumed the forbidden fruit in the Garden of Eden, God says to Adam:

“By the sweat of your face shall you get bread to eat, Until you return to the ground, from which you were taken; For you are dirt, and to dirt you shall return.”

The ashes we receive are made from the burning of the blessed palms used in the Palm Sunday celebration of the previous year. Ash Wednesday is a day of fasting, abstinence (from meat), and repentance. Catholics between the age of 18 and 59 are allowed only one full meal, which may be supplemented by two smaller meals that must not equal the amount of the full meal when combined. However, this is the bare minimum requirement and traditionally Catholics will perform a complete fast or a bread and water fast. Similar fasting is also required on Good Friday, and abstinence from meat is mandatory on all Fridays of Lent.

The Lent Season lasts 40 days from Ash Wednesday until Holy Saturday, Sundays do not count as days as they are reserved for the joyful celebration of the Resurrection. The 40 days symbolize the time that Jesus spent retreated in the wilderness, overcoming temptation and preparing for His ministry.

There are numerous Holy Days during Lent:

• Ash Wednesday - the first day of Lent
• Palm Sunday - the last Sunday of Lent, marks the beginning of Holy Week
• Spy Wednesday - the Wednesday during Holy Week, signifies the time Judas spent spying on Jesus before betraying him
• Maundy Thursday - the Thursday during Holy Week, commemorates the Last Supper
• Good Friday - the Friday during Holy Week, remembers Jesus’ crucifixion and burial

As Lent is a time to repent, Catholics generally are called to sacrifice something during this period. But it goes beyond this, it is more than just behaving in a certain manner for 40 days. Lent is about conversion and aligning our lives more closely to Jesus and His way of life. This means giving up sin in some form, and not just to abstain from sin during this period, but to reflect on it and root it out of our lives forever.

My Lenten promise this year is to give up sweets and soda, which can lead to gluttony, one of the seven deadly sins. Also, I will be making a more concerted effort to not argue with friends and family, and to be a more loving, kinder person to all. Jesus said “love your enemies, for even sinners love those who love them,” and I think if we all pondered these words and took them to heart the world would be a much happier and peaceful place.

In addition to my sacrifices I will also be undertaking additional things which require a stronger devotion to God and His only Son Jesus Christ, but those are more of a personal nature and I don’t care to write about them on here. Also, I will make a trip confession during Lent, which I think all Catholics should do during this time of year.

For more information, you can read about Ash Wednesday and Lent on Wikipedia. Also, you read the entire text of Pope Benedict XVI’s message for Lent 2007.

On Friday evening Carin and I stopped by the Garden State Plaza as she needed to buy a gift for a friends birthday party she was going to the following night, but I told her I would only go as long as I could make a pit stop at the Apple store. So at the mall on the way to the Apple store we stumble upon a Borders.

I try to peruse a Borders or Barnes and Noble whenever I come across one, and this case was no exception. Upon entering I immediately made a bee-line for the computer programming section, as has typically been my practice since I began visiting such places during junior college. I was looking for some sort of book about blog designing with Adobe Photoshop CS 2, but to my dismay couldn’t find anything worthy on the subject. So I abandoned that area and began looking for Carin, who had wondered off to do her own shopping (computer programming isn’t exactly her cup of tea).

Two aisles into my search I came across the foreign languages section. “(Insert Language Here) For Dummies” books were scattered all over the place. French, German, Italian, Spanish, every language you could ever want to learn, except Polish. There was, however, a small assortment of literature on this beast of a language I am attempting to assimilate.

Now, as I already have the Rosetta Stone package for beginning Polish, I wasn’t looking for a sort of slow and steady process. Rather, I figured it was probably a good idea for me to get to using some Polish words already in everyday life, so that while I am slowly learning the language in its entirety from the ground up I can simultaneously start interacting in Polish. The solution: Polish Phrasebook With Two-Way Dictionary from Lonely Planet publishing.

This is an amazing reference guide, made with the English speaking tourist in mind. The book is divided up into countless sections which cover aspects of daily life. In each section is a list of popular words and phrases that are applicable to whatever the topic. The words/phrases are listed in English on the left, then the phonetic in the middle to help English speakers pronounce it in Polish, then the correct Polish spelling on the right.

I’m very pleased with this book, and at $7.99 I think it was a steal of a deal. To end this post, I will illustrate an example of how the book works. This comes from one of the first sections in the book titled “Nationlities.” Remember the English / Phonetic / Polish format.

I’m from the United States. / yes-tem s zye-dno-cho-nih / Jestem z Zjednoczonych.

To commemorate President’s Day Engadget is running a “What tech would Presidents rock in 2007?” post. They have crafted an outline that takes a look at the 4 presidents of Mount Rushmore and speculates on what type of OS, computer, Media Player, HD Format, Carrier, Console, Vehicle, and Phone each would be rockin’ in 2007.

If you ask me Jefferson, the “hipster,” has it the best; although Roosevelt with the VoIP over neighborFI is pretty dee-zuhl.

A group of astronauts, scientists and engineers said over the weekend that an asteroid may come too close for comfort in the year 2036, and that the United Nations should take the lead in adopting a mission to deflect it. The asteroid, named Apophis by astronomers, has a 1 in 45,000 chance of hitting Earth on April 13, 2036. Former astronaut Rusty Schweickart says that although the odds of this particular asteroid striking the Earth are low, a recent congressional mandate given to NASA to expand its near-Earth asteroid tracking is expected to find hundreds or thousands of threatening space rocks in the near future.

“It’s not just Apophis we’re looking at. Every country is at risk. We need a set of general principles to deal with this issue.”

Schweickart says that the United Nations should draft procedures for identifying asteroid threats, as well as making decisions on if and when to take action against any prospective threats. The currently preferred consensus, which is seen as a more viable alternative than trying to “nuke” an asteroid, is to dispatch a spacecraft that would utilize a gravitational pull to try and alter the course of the asteroid away from Earth.

The “Gravity Tractor” could maintain a position in close proximity to the asteroid exerting a slow, steady tug. For an asteroid like Apophis, an estimated 460 feet long, 12 days of gravity-tugging would be required at an estimated cost of $300 million. Naturally, the sooner the execution of the mission the higher the chance of success.

NASA hasn’t commented officially on what the precise effect of a 460-foot asteroid striking the Earth would be, saying that they need to know material substance and trajectory before making any predictions. However, some independent assessments have said that an asteroid of this size could potentially wipe out an entire city or region.

Let me start off by saying its a rarity that I cook. I’m typically one to order delivery or go and pick something up except for special occasions (such as the $30 for 30 diet of rice and Ramen). However, there has been this recipe of a friend of mine that Carin and I have been dying to try our hands at: tuna tartare.

There’s not really much to say about the process of making it, we simply made a trip to the local grocery store for supplies then followed the instructions as laid out. In the end we came up with something that was not only edible but rather delicious:

For complete ingredient list and instructions visit Erika Strum’s tuna tartare recipe.

Beginning tomorrow, February 17th, FeedBurner members like myself will finally be able to see true subscription numbers from Google. The Google Reader team announced today that their crawler is now counting the number of Google users subscribed to a feed. This number will include subscribers from Google Reader itself as well as subscribers from Google’s Personalized Homepage, with the potential to include other Google products in the future. Up until this point, Google has only reported 1 subscriber, whether you had actually had 1 or 1,000 Google subscribers.

All I have to say about this is that its about time. I know for a fact that most of my subscribers (friends and co-workers at this point) use Google, either Reader of Personalized Homepage, so I am excited to see some accurately reported subscriber figures. Maybe I’ll even post them, provided they’re not too embarrassing.

I mentioned in comments of my introductory post about Yahoo Pipes that I would be creating a few of them to better illustrate some of the functionality that is possible. If you recall, my first Yahoo Pipe was a visualization of this blog in Flickr photos, specifically the recent entries in my RSS feed.

Today I have created another Yahoo Pipe to highlight a different kind of functionality. This would is a bit simpler to create than the last entry, yet it is just as useful if not more so. The Yahoo Pipe I have created is called Jon Holato in German. As you’re certainly aware, the internet is a global market with a global audience, and not everyone in the world speaks English. Today I’ll be showing you how to syndicate your site in German through Yahoo Pipes, for the benefit of all our friends in Germany. For the record I do not speak an inkling of German so everything you will see is straight from Yahoo Pipes.

This pipe is very simple as there are only two necessary steps to achieve of goal of syndicating in German. Step 1 is pulling in the data source that we want to turn into German. To accomplish this we simply need to use a Fetch pipe where we will copy and paste the link to our RSS feed. The pipe we’re using for step 2 is just the Babelfish operator, where we select a “from and to languages,” in this case I selected “English to German.” Once these two pipes are made just connect the Fetch to Babelfish and then connect Babelfish to Pipe Output and you’re done. If you’ve done this correctly your pipe should look as follows:

If this is how yours looks go ahead and run the pipe and check out your RSS feed in German.

Now you are syndicating in another language and are able to reach millions of potential customers. Recall that “Subscribe” drop down menu on the right-hand side of this output page.

In honor of my recently acquired iPod Nano, I figured it necessary imperative to post this picture I stumbled across this morning. The picture is from the most recent Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Edition and features model Marisa Miller wearing an iPod and only an iPod. No wonder she was #12 on AskMen.com’s Top 99 Women of 2007. Imagine how many products Apple would sell if they ran advertisements like this instead of the commercials with the Windows geek and Apple fanboy?

My Valentine’s Day festivities began at around 1:30pm yesterday. After finishing my half day of work, I departed for the closest general store, which is 1.5 miles away from my apartment. So, upon layering up and strapping on my waterproof hiking boots (recall that there was a blizzard yesterday), I headed out into a blanket of horizontal ice and snow on a mission in search of candles and rose pedals.

I arrived at the store in about 30 minutes. Typically, when the streets aren’t covered with 5 inches of snow topped with ice, this walk takes me approximately 15 minutes. Upon arrival I rummaged through the aisles in search of candles, knowing upon entering that the flowers were placed near the register counter. I stumbled across the candles in the middle of aisle 4, but not before my boots thudded around on the floor of the store like I was the guy Sylvester Stallone was going after in the beginning of Cobra. I purchased the items and began the trek back home which took an equivalent 30 minutes as the initial expedition.

When I got home the real fun began, as I had to setup my plan so that it would be perfectly executed. The plan, you may be wondering, was to blow Carin away with overwhelming romanticism and provide her with the best Valentine’s Day ever.

I had been planning to make a candlelit trail of rose pedals around my apartment that led to numerous items and ended at the grand finale, hence the need to trek through a blizzard to purchase candles and rose pedals. I bought 18 candles and a dozen pink roses to use for the pedals (I had already bought a dozen red roses the night before to give to her as normal flowers). When you open the door to enter my place the first thing you see are stairs, so I put two candles on the first step (one on each side), and then a candle on every 3rd step to the top of the staircase. At the top of the staircase were a dozen red roses.

After the roses the flower trail continued to the bottom of my TV stand, where there lay a small picture frame from Nieman Marcus. After that, the trail flipped back around onto a small table where my rice cooker typically stands, and here lay a card that I had written for her. Then the pedals continued down along the side of my apartment to a corner where all of my DJ equipment sits, and on top of one of my record cases sat a teddy bear with 3 velcro blocks that had interchangeable messages on each, and I had set the 3 blocks facing out to read “I love you.”

After the teddy bear the candles and flowers circled around the futon and ended up on the main coffee table, where I had covered the tables in rose pedals and had a bottle of wine, two wine glasses, and two bottles of mountain dew (our favorite drink). There was also one candle in front of a picture of the two of us, which was the second candle on the coffee table, thus signifying a hidden meaning. When she reaches the table she will see both candles and the wine and assume that is the end. However, the second candle signifies something additional, which is this case is her main gift that is lying under the table hidden from sight.

I was rushing up until the last second to get everything situated properly. Between cleaning my apartment, getting ready myself, and setting up the plan, time was definitely not on my side. Carin finally arrived and I was vehemently rushing to finish everything, literally sweating from running around trying to light all the candles before she walked in. I met her at the door just after I had finished lighting all the candles and everything was in place and I told her not to turn on any of the lights, “just follow the candles and rose pedals,” I told her.

She followed the course I had laid out exactly, and just as expected, she didn’t catch the significance of the very last candle on the coffee table. By the time she had reached the coffee table she was glowing with all of the goodies she had picked up along the way. We sat down on the futon and I began to open the wine while she opened her card. When I finished opening the wine and poured two glasses for us I looked over at her and she had just finished reading the card and was fighting back tears. Next she insisted that I open her gifts to me. I started by reading two cards from her, one funny, one cute. Then I opened up a bag and saw a pair of red Hershey’s Kisses silk boxers, my first ever pair of silk boxers and certainly fitting for the occasion. Next I opened up a medium-sized present and it was a “you & me” heart-shaped piggy bank. Carin and I have longed saved our spare change in a container laying around my apartment and she’s been saying for so long how we should get a piggy bank that we can both add to and save the money for a vacation. The piggy bank is a heart that splits in two with one half saying “you” and the other one saying “me.” A wonderful gift as it fulfills the V-Day requirement and a long-term goal of ours. The final gift I opened was a shocker. Upon picking it up I thought and said aloud, “well this is clearly cologne.” However, to my surprise I unsheathed the wrapping paper to reveal an iPod Nano, something I had been longing for since my 3-year-old iPod stopped working (after Carin dropped it) last November.

After I finished opening my gifts I went to grab the wine glasses for us and was just about to hand her a glass when I said “oh, wait, you missed something.” Of course I knew she would miss it, but I just thought I would be a little sneaky so I informed her of the significance of the second candle on the table and reached under the table to pull out her main gift: a heart necklace from David Yurman.

She opened it with the biggest smile I had ever seen come from her and it made me feel so good knowing she was so happy. After that we finished a bit more wine then had to leave for the restaurant, noticing that we were running a bid late due to all of the excitement.

We went to an Italian restaurant called Mezza Notte. I have no idea what that translates to, but the food was pretty good. I got the fried calamari appetizer, with the surf and turf (filet and lobster) for my main course. Carin got a mozzarella, tomato and onion platter for her appetizer, and the lobster ravioli for her main dish. Naturally we both shared with each other on all items. When dinner was finished we went back to my apartment to grab the bottle of wine and the goodies we had left behind then left for her place where we would be staying the night.

Upon arriving at her place we finished off the bottle of wine, played a little bit of Wii, and went to sleep to the sound of the wind howling. When I woke up this morning the wind was still howling, but I was delighted with the sight of a four-legged chihuahua.

All in all it was a pretty amazing Valentine’s Day, despite the blizzard, and I accomplished both of my goals as Carin’s romance-o-meter was overloaded yesterday and she confessed to having the best Valentine’s Day ever without question. And that’s how I showed my appreciation to the woman behind me kicking my butt to succeed in this world.

To all of my female readers: Happy Valentine’s Day. To all of my male readers: gird your wallets. OK seriously, just wanted to wish the many women who frequent here a Happy Valentine’s Day; may you be spoiled as much as my girlfriend Carin will be tonight.

And to the men here, if you have a significant other hopefully you have something planned if you care about maintaining your relationship, otherwise try to find someone to celebrate with tonight, even if it just a friend of the opposite sex, nobody wants to spend today totally alone.

I know many people dismiss today as a “Hallmark Holiday,” (myself included at times) and there is some truth to that, but its good to have a day where we can stop and appreciate our better halves. There’s a saying that goes something like: “behind every great man there’s a woman kicking his butt,” and believe it or not I think more often than not this can generally be accepted as true.

So men, here’s to showing our appreciation for the women who keep us in line…