First off, I want to apologize to everyone I didn’t get a chance to talk to on Christmas. Let’s just say that it was so busy and hectic, that before I knew it, I was camping out on a living room floor in New Jersey for the night because I was way too tired to drive home.

The past 3 days have been like a whirlwind. Don’t get me wrong, thay have been great, I just have been on the go since Saturday morning.

Our Christmas was very kick ass. I would honestly have to say it was the best Christmas I have had in recent memory. I got tons of great presents, had plenty of good times, and didn’t gorge myself on food.

For a quick highlight, my 2 favorite presents this year was an awesome Batman Batarang money clip from Jess, and a 60gb black iPod video from my parents. I’m not saying these were the only kick ass gifts that I got — there were plenty of those — but these are the 2 that I loved the most.

Between the 2 of us, we now have tons of new DVDs to watch. Also, a note to you cat owners out there. The Roboraptor makes a most excellent cat toy. It may be a little pricy, but well worth it when it attacks the cats on its own!!

I’d love to post more, but I have to go and get ready for work. I’m off the next 2 days so I’ll try to do a better Christmas roundup then. Later…

Jess and I are about to head out for our Christmas Eve dinner of sushi, so I really don’t have too much time to write anything. So, I thought I would leave with a work of yesteryear. Merry Christmas everyone!!!!!

—- Originally Posted on December 23rd, 2004 —-

‘Twas The Twev Before Christmas

‘Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the house
Only one creature was stirring, in his hand, an optical mouse;

His rockets were launched, from his barrel with care,
In hopes that his enemy would soon disappear;

I grabbed the sniper rifles, and lay down in the nearest bed
While visions of head shot after head shot, danced in my head;

Terrorist in my scope, his ass I will cap;
I’ll drop him to the ground, for an eternal dirt nap;

When from my machine, there came such a clutter,
The Blue Screen Of Death?? Microsoft you mother fucker!!

Away went my game, in a bright blue flash,
I jumped out of my chair, my keyboard, did I almost smash.

I reset my box, to the kitchen I go
Maybe some snackage, will help soften the blow,

When, what to my wondering eyes should appear,
A bag of peanut M&Ms, a remnant of my EQ gaming gear,

I grab the bag, and return to my computer quick,
Time to connect, and get my EverQuest fix.

To the title screen I go, and sign in my Station name,
Now to pick a character, none of them, the same.

“Now, Kastigar! now, Dittka! now, Quincy and Gimlord!
On, Badashius! on, Jadzia! on, Treegan – all grab your sword!

Past the tunnel in EC! and in Kith we hug the wall!
To Misty Thicket! I hear the Halflings call!”

As dry leaves that before the wild hurricane fly,
If we agro the wrong mob, we shall quickly die,

So we head up to Halas, for some warm Barbarian brew,
Alcohol from a warrior race? Who would ever have a clue.

Belly to the bar, the bar keep somewhat aloof,
Looks to my Necromancer, and gives him the boot.

As he drew his staff, and I was turning around,
The bar got all quiet, not nearly a sound.

He was dressed all in red, from his head to his foot,
And his clothes were all tarnished with ashes and soot;

A bundle of bones he had flung on his back,
With a chant and a warm blue glow, empty was the sack.

His eyes – how they glowed! his scowl so scary!
He had conjured a skeleton, his pet, stood stationary.

From across the room, I heard the draw of a bow,
The Necro turned ‘round, ‘twas time for the show;

His scowl did lower, and he gritted his teeth,
A shot to the back, he did like the least.

He had a broad face and a little round belly,
The Neco quickly chanted, and turned him to jelly.

When from down the stairs, came a righteous High Elf;
Badashius just laughed, “I’ll handle this myself”;

A wink of his eye and a twist of his head,
Soon gave me to know, we all might soon be dead;

He spoke not a word, but went straight to his work,
The High Elf let lose with everything he had, man what a jerk!

The building to timbers, everything was hosed,
We all lay in the snow, looking around, partially froze;

The bar keep sprang up, and gave a whistle,
Soon we were all protected by a nice shield of thistle.

The High Elf did exclaim, as he ran out of sight,
“I pwned you all, now I’m logging off for the night!”

While waiting for something to download, I was fooling around on Google and found something pretty cool.

Go to Google and enter “twev1701″ into the seach box. (without quotes of course!) Then, click on the button that says “I’m Feeling Lucky” and look where it takes you. Pretty cool if you ask me!

I have found a new mail client that I really like, but, it’s lacking one component that I really do use alot. The client is called M2 and it’s part of the Opera browser. I have been using Opera for years, and have always thought it was a good browser…except for the $39.99 price tag that is. However, a few months ago they decided to stop charging for the browser and give it away as a free download. Now, anyone who knows me knows that I am a huge Firefox fan. That being said, I’m really starting to hate Firefox. The program itself is great, but it has a fierce memory leak that they don’t seem to want to fix. All you have to do is Google “firefox memory leak” to get a better idea about it, but to put it simply, when you have a bunch of tabs open, and then you close them, Firfox doesn’t let go of the memory it was using for those tabs, and then when you open a new tab, it grabs even more memory. So, in a typical night my Firfox maybe taking up 150+ mb of memory even when I may only have 2 tabs open. I’m not saying that I am going to ditch Firefox, but Opera is a great browser that has a great built in mail client. It is very tempting….

I’m going through a period right now where I am restless and need change. I’m not talking about anything major or life-changing, but rather what I do and what I use.

For example, right now I am looking around for a new email client. I have been using Thunderbird now for over a year now, and I’m getting sick of it. Sure, it’s a decent email client, but there are things about it that quite frankly, I can’t stand. First off, I think it takes up a rather large memory footprint. Sure, Outlook 2003 takes up 63.5mb of memory while Thunderbird 1.0.6 only takes up 24.2mb of memory, but Outlook also has a built in PIM. Looking back to my old email client Foxmail 5.0, it only takes up 11.4mb of memory. Between having to plan things out for the wedding, the computer business, and my personal life, I am seriously considering switching to Outlook 2003 (something I swore I would NEVER do) just for the simple fact I can sync everything with my Pocket PC. I used to send a hell of a lot of email to all my friends and family. In fact, I was just last night reading some old email from 2001 and laughing about it. Nowadays, I seem to never send email. In fact, since I switched to Thunderbird, it seems like I almost never send any email. Hell, back when I was using Foxmail, I think I sent out about 3-4 emails day to all of my friends. In fact, I think I kept in better contact with them through email then I did through IM. I miss that…

Another thing I’m looking to change is my Mac. I bought my Macintosh Classic II almost 3 years ago, and I really haven’t done much with it over the past 2 years. Sure, when I first got it I used it for all sorts of things, But it has literally sat here in the computer room just showing a fireworks screensaver for over a year now. In fact, the keyboard hasn’t been hooked up in months since I took out the air conditioner and knocked the keyboard over.

Another thing I am looking into right now is another free MMORPG. I have been playing Guild Wars on and off for a few months now, and I really like the game. But, as always with me, my attention spam seems to be somewhat limited. While sometimes I really get into the game and can’t stop playing, there are times that it has no appeal to me at all. These are usually the spells where I may go a month or two without ever loading it. After talking with Joel tonight, he told me that he started playing another free MMORPG called Conguest. I had heard about it, and installed it tonight. In fact, I’m downloading a nice 33mb update as I’m typing this post. It’s highly unlikley that I will be able to play tonight, but should be able to tomorrow before work. I really don’t see this has abandoning Guild Wars, but merely something to perhaps make me appreciate it even more. It’s a lot better then the alternative — EverQuest!!!

Probably the last thing that I really want to change is my reading habits–or lack thereof. I have tons of books that I bought because I wanted to read them, however, I never seem to find the time to sit down and actually read them. Or, if I do get a chance to read them, I get about 1/2 way through before somthing comes up, and I never get back to them. I’m not saying that I want to read a book a week, but maybe one a month would be nice.

I go through this type of phase every so often, and usually some small things will change enough to satifsy me. I wish I knew why I go through this, but alas, this may be just one of life’s not-so-great mysteries.

I know I haven’t posted in a while, and I while this is a post, it really has no substance at all. The past few nights Jess and I have been enjoying the Hoilday times, with Holiday movies, and some Holiday shopping. That, coupled with the fact that I have been playing Guild Wars again, makes time for posting very limited. Hopefully, I’ll post something more signifigant on Firday when I am off and finally done with all my Christmas shopping. Later…