what are friendships?!

What are they, really? The moment to just celebrate a birthday? or to celebrate their wedding? or to really maintain them throughout our lives? Do our personal lives really drive us away from those people we met in the past? Being work, school, or whatever we are doing. Can we really put other things before friendship, other than family nothing is more important than family...

How much does it takes to just say "Hey how's it going?, what are you up to?, how are so an so?" I for one think it doesn't take much to just ask what are people up to, but at the same time I think others do think it takes too much. Up to some point I try to not keep in touch with some people, but my personal feelings and the way I just am don't let me do that. I like to keep in touch with my friends, hell I keep in touch with them more than my family. But I like to think and I think that my friends are my family!

Will finish with one request, this happened last night, it was my ex's birthday and no I did not forget. I mean could anyone really forget a birthday of someone they loved for 6 years? Could such a thing be possible even if something horrible happened between both, could such a thing really happen? This is what she wrote to me for the first time in what it's like 6 month,

11:21 PM Ex's-name: al parecer ya se te olvido mi cumpleaños
11:22 PM espero estes muy bien
saludos

How would you go about this?

Edit: Forgot to translate the quote above, "it seems that you have forgotten my birthday, hope you're doing good, greeting"

Software Developer as easy as 1-2-3

So, I'm making my rounds looking for stuff to read this morning and ever since we've been given .Net training at work I've been going to MSDN Home Page. Just to look at around and see what's new with .Net, tried to hold on learning .Net but guess I couldn't hold my ground more. Anyways, this shows what I've been saying and kinda puts down the Software industry at least for me. Check this page, a quote from the page

Tier 3 Lessons follow up on the skills learned in Tier 2. These lessons expand your knowledge of Windows and Web development with more advanced concepts such as data access and debugging. If you finish the Tier 3 lessons, Congratulations – you've graduated from the Beginner Developer Learning Center and can officially call yourself a Software Developer!

If I knew it would be this easy to be called a Software Developer I wouldn't have gone to college and spend all that time studying. Could it be I'm a bit disgruntled at this particular time? Could this be true Software Developer == Code Monkey in lay mans term?

The one thing that actually sucks is how much companies have invested in M$ that their technology is needed and how they are creating the names of jobs positions now a days. For example, yesterday I was having a conversation with a co-worker and it stunned me how he asked "So are you just studying for the heck of it or because you can find work with whatever you are studying?" This question kinda bugged me last night when I remembered it, I mean do I have to learn only M$ technologies everything else is just plainly garbage. This fella has been a M$ junkie for about 2 years now, well since I started working here. It annoyed me that I kept thinking of that conversation and looking at ways to answer or even validate my decision to study whatever I want to study. Still trying to keep that thought of whatever I like to learn is my business and no one else.

Oh, if you wish to waste some time watching a movie checkout "Idiocracy" with Luke Wilson, Maya Rudolph.