At the end of 2005, I opened up my "Absence and Vacation Form" at the office, with plans to take the week after Christmas off. To my chagrin, the dates were nearly identical, and all I had to do was change 2004 to 2005. I somehow managed not to take any time off through the entire year, and now I'm more than maxed out. We have a cap of 40 days, and I was all the way up to 53, before taking 2 days and 2 floating holidays.

It doesn't make sense to keep putting work ahead of everything else, so we're going to change that in 2006 - starting with going to Spring Training and seeing the A's in Arizona this March. And we'll find more excuses to take time off. I even thought about asking to work 4-day weeks all year, and ditching all Fridays. I've got enough days saved up, I could actually do that. We'll see.

E-Trade is telling me I have a lot more cash now than how I started the day. Following up on my note this morning on exiting Salesforce.com (CRM), I saw the mid-day spike in Apple (AAPL) take the shares up to record heights, above the $80 level. While I'm unlikely to be out of AAPL for long, as it's a habit that's hard to break, it made sense to take profits above $81, and we did. So we're out. We'll see over time if that was a smart move or not, but I can't argue with making money.

I haven't yet seen the MacWorld Webcast, but as with every year, there were some surprises, and some rumors went wholly unfulfilled. iWeb - a new software tool to manage Web pages and blogs, was introduced as part of iLife 2006, which was no surprise, and Intel made its way into Macs for the first time - again not a surprise. But while those came through, there were expectations for new iPod shuffles (didn't happen) and the introduction of an Apple line of plasma TVs. That too was nowhere to be seen.

While the new "MacBook Pro" (who names these things?) is interesting, one must note it is the first iteration, and things will only get faster from here. I've had just about enough of being User 1.0.

Now on to fulfill my geekly duty and watch the webcast.

On Saturday, a relative and I got into a discussion around the stock market. I told him that I'd had some good success in 2005 (as many did) by following the fundamentals - buying low and selling high. I only invest in those companies who I believe aren't fully valued, or have unique services. In 2005, I got lucky with Apple, Google, Baidu, Rackable, Transmeta and other tech stocks. That happens to be a market I know. But I also know when to get out.

Saturday, he kept telling me that profits only mattered after you sold a stock, not in a one-day bump. Of course they do! But I already knew that. Just this morning, after holding Salesforce.com (CRM) for only a week, I sold it for a 10-15% profit. Now I have cash in the account again and can decide where to go next. That's how the market works. Just don't tell me my cash doesn't do any good if it's not invested.