Ah, Christmas is over. The 26th was my sister's birthday; had ice-cream cake and mexican hot chocolate. It was good. My grandparents leave tomorrow (or, rather, today) at 6:30 a.m. I said goodbye to them tonight b/c I don't want to get up before 9:00 a.m. during my break. Actually, come to think of it, I don't want to get up before 9:00 a.m. ever. Obviously, such a wish is futile, but whatever.

X-mas gift highlights: 100 48x CD-Rs (TDK), a new office chair, stereo, George Foreman grill, some cool Japanese posters/pictures, CD binders, Nikola Tesla books, nice cologne, popcorn popper, Paul Jardin watch. Gifts I gave: leather halter/leadrope set, watch, bracelet, Greenday CDs, subwoofer/speaker system, WWII book. I gave my sister DVDs for her birthday b/c my parents got her a DVD player for Christmas.

We usually open one gift on Christmas Eve... so on the 24th, I opened a brand new VHS tape rewinder. I was a little confused b/c I don't own any VHS tapes or a VCR. Turns out my sister was in a gift-wrapping frenzy and when my mom said "Everything in that pile is Hanky's," she wrapped a new component of my parents' entertainment center as well. It was kinda funny cuz I opened it and I was like "Oh... a VHS tape rewinder... umm... thanks." and my dad goes "Hah! Who gave you that?" I looked at the wrapping. "Um, you did."

There's another TCLP today. Looks like Beefy cancelled. He's going out of town tomorrow. I'm not going, as expected. For some reason, I feel little compulsion to revisit a place where forty-year old men have tantrums and call me really vulgar names. Hm. Besides, I can find more important things to spend $20 on.

In other news, the Bell's Palsy is getting a little better; I can move the left corner of my mouth (zygomaticus major) a bit. Keep doing the exercises. Maybe the swelling on ol' Cranial Nerve VII is going down. Still mostly deaf in the left ear, can't wink, etc. Ppl keep talking about my left side as if it's numb and I can't feel it... this is, of course, incorrect, but I've given up on setting them right. Anyway, things seem to be improving in this area.

Events of late: Jones and I watched Life of Brian the other night; Hanwool brought me California Rolls (yum); I saw LOTR:TTT with Hanwool on Monday; met Derek Watts (friend from grade school) at the mall, exchanged cell numbers; received my Michael Meyers Network+ guide last week; got two-thirds of the way through Sundiver — it's good, but not Nancy-Kress-good; bought Lady Cottington's Pressed Fairies Book and Startide Rising (2nd book in Brin's Uplift series).

That's all for now. Here's a picture of our Christmas tree.

Did I mention I'm going ocean-fishing with Hanwool and his dad in March? Ja. Hanwool asked if I wanted to go fishing with 'em tomorrow at Ice Harbor, but I declined on account of all the dritt I gotta do tomorrow. Apparently, Mr. Lee caught a 16-pound steel-head trout there the other day; if no one catches a bigger fish before the end of the month, he'll win $25. I'm not much of a fisherman (or, rather, I don't do it very often)... in fact, I've only caught one fish in my life — an eight-inch rainbow trout. Caught it at Conrad Meadows (my family used to go camping there in the summer).

Went to Barnes & Noble today. Got three books (shown below): Sundiver (David Brin), Probability Moon (Nancy Kress), and Hokusai, a collection of art by Katsushika Hokusai (1760 - 1849). Gonna start on Sundiver tonight. Apparently, Hokusai is the artist of this Japanese woodcut (Oban format) that'd I'd been trying to identify. The Great Wave at Kanawaga: It's one of my favorite peices (thumbnail below — click for full size picture). Anyway. Today's MP3: They Might Be Giants - Older.mp3 (1:57).

1280 x 887, JPG, 233 kB

Finished Legacy of Heorot last night around 3:20 a.m. Good book, but it sort of drops off at the end. I wonder if there are any more books on the colony on Tau Ceti Four... Anyway, I reserved Sundiver by David Brin at Barnes & Nobel. Gotta go pick that up when I get lunch. Sundiver, of course, is the first book of the Uplift series. Read some mixed reviews; they range from "Fabulous!" to "Hard to get through, but not a bad book."

Been fixing a machine for somebody that wanted Windows XP on it. I usually use Win 2000 cuz it's more efficient, easier to tweak, faster, etc. But using XP again is kinda making me want to go back... the next system I build (just need a Socket A mobo) will use XP Pro. I actually figured out that I can install XP Pro off two bad CDs if I just alternate them during the install. I have three XP CDs, but it looks like 2 is enough. Of course, I used the uxtheme patcher [uxthemepatcher1.zip; 16.9 kB] on this client's system (lets you use custom themes and visual styles in XP). Once again, TweakXP was invaluable in setting up the system. Well, got things to do; sayonara.

Huh, I guess quite a bit actually did happen. Um... oh, yeah, I'm getting cable internet access installed (right now the guys are s'posed to come out on the 27th, but I'm trying to get into an earlier slot). Gonna have the cable installed at my parents' house next door and either use the existing 300' CAT5 to run it to my router here, or set up some directional antennas and stuff using 802.11b. Probably go see a movie tomorrow; there's like three in theaters that I want to see. Ich werde ins kino gehen. Blah. Adjø.

It's been an entire week since my last update. Oops. Been very busy. Just gave a presentation on Computer Ethics and the Patriot Act for my MIS 350 lab. Went fairly well. Also wrote the term paper the PowerPoint pres. was based on yesterday/this morning. Eugh.

Thanksgiving was good. My grandparents didn't come up from Oregon after all. My grandpa didn't want to travel (doesn't like flying and prolly didn't want to drive 8 hours). Anyway, we went to my mom's friend's house (sort of my aunt; I call her mom 'Grandma Shortsle'). Had turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, two kinds of gravy, brussel sprouts (which I really like), homemade rolls, and some kind of Mandarin orange-mango-canteloupe-whipped cream dish. All really scrundelescent (a neologism from a SNL skit that my friends keep using). And, of course, there were pies. Pumpkin, pecan, chocolate-pecan, and chocolate-cream. Pictures below.

Went to TCLP. Battlefield 1942 and Counter-Strike were fun. Lots of smoke. For some reason, it was in the smoking section of the bingo hall. Stinging eyes, burning throat; not fun. Phill got headaches, and his step-mom from Brazil had a seizure and had to go to the hospital. Hanwool and I went with him to bring some sweat-pants to his dad (Hanwool drove; we were just glad to get out of the bingo hall/hotbox). I really hate smoking. Actually, I don't really care if ppl do it, so long as they don't do it around me for long periods of time. Heck, I can take 15 minutes of some filthy smoker easy. 17 hours of filthy smokers? No way. I probably won't go to the next TCLP — besides the smoking and rude, vulgar 40-year old losers, I only played like 3 hours of real games. So that works out to $6 per hour of gaming. Hm. And I had to haul 3 computers, a chair, 3 monitors, etc. etc. Too much work when I can just LAN at home when I feel like it. Organizational/setup-wise though, it was done pretty well ('cept the smoking). A few ppl unfairly criticized Mr. Vertz, who put the whole thing on and invested quite a bit of his personal time and money.

I saw Steven Tate at the event. We talked about system specs, our digital cameras, and our majors/certifications. I returned a bag to him I'd had since Christmas 2000 (we carpooled from WSU in Pullman and he forgot it). Heh. Drew and JD are going to go get their A+ cert.'s in the next 3 months or so. Prolly with Derrin (Darren?), whose borrowing my A+ manual right now. Ummm. That's all I have for now. Adjø!

I realize I haven't updated lately, but there hasn't been a whole lot going on. On Tuesday I got up at 7:45 a.m. (very early for me) to go to physical therapy at the Corrado building in Richland. Met a lady named Pam Phillips who examined my "asymmetry" (i.e., my face paralysis) and used a little device to shock the muscles on my left side. It feels kinda weird, except when used on the muscles around my nose... then, it hurts like crazy. Imagine sticking the outer edge of one of your nostrils into a electric fan. Now, repeat about 15 times. Right.

I have three more appointments to go to (including one tomorrow morning at 8:45 a.m.); she'll do the electro-shock on me, but she's teaching me how to do it myself, too. Here's how it works: you wet down two napkin-like pads, put one on a contact that you rest one forearm on and wrap the other around the tip of the device (which has a wire leading to the forearm-contact). You hold it like a gun, touch it to certain muscle points, and pull the trigger. It has a little dial that lets you control the power of the zap (power 1 to 5). Anyway, it's pretty hard to locate the points with the device, hence the training. At some point, I have to rent or buy the shock-device... $80/month to rent, $400 to buy. Yeesh. Kinda annoying when you consider that it's little more than some wire and a 9-volt battery.

Tuesday night, Phillip came over to return my A+ Certification book. He and I are going to go take the tests sometime this month or next (there's a testing center in Moses Lake). We hung out and watched Frasier (which was a little too dramatic for my tastes; comedies should stick to what their writers know best, IMHO).

Today, I scanned a bunch of pages from a recent Against the Grain (librarian newsletter) for some research for my COM 420 class (we don't have to go to class until Dec. 11 as long as we communicate through e-mail mailing lists). In the afternoon, I returned the newsletter to TommiAnn (classmate in ENG 356) and turned in my internet citations (MLA format) for the upcoming research paper. Then I drove home, stopped by the clinic, met Paul Hess's aunt (he and I were a grade apart at Tri-City Junior Academy), fixed a problem with the clinic's IS (estimates wouldn't print out; turned out the program is buggy concerning those templates, found a kludge that solved the prob.), and grabbed the FedEx package that came for me. It was, of course, the Magic cards Ryan, Aaron, and I had ordered. Woo.

So, Ryan came over, we built/updated our decks, and played Magic. My new blue Palinchron-Stroke of Genius-High Tide deck is awesome (some cards are pictured below). I think we must have played half a dozen games and his Elf deck only won once. Heh. I can't wait to test it against, say, Shea's Necropotence deck. Maybe even go toe-to-toe with JD's About-Face deck. Speaking of JD, I've been doing some stuff on that game we invented. It now relies on 2d6 rolls instead of 1d10 (allows us to use the natural bell-curve instead of artificially implementing one with more complex d10 tables). Also worked out some bugs with the crystal placement. Still have a problem concerning the connection of different player's roads. Anyway.

At 9:00 p.m. or so, Ryan and I went to Burger King. Hadn't eaten there in quite some time. We started to watch the Miss Congeneality DVD (Sandra Bullock movie) while we ate. Then Aaron showed up to collect his cards and pay me ($10 — now I can buy some more comics from Dan). I showed Aaron how well my new blue deck could beat Jonesy. I think he's afraid. Mu-ha-ha. Ryan gave me a Thanksgiving decoration (I didn't have any) and a Wizard magazine (he's nice). Wizard was more interesting than I thought it'd be. I'm no comic-afficianado, but there was some neat stuff in this issue. I must have the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. It looks so-o-o kewl. The Invisible Man, Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde, Captain Nemo, Mina Murray (former Dracula-victim), and Allan Quartermain team up to work for the British government in the late 1800's. At least, I'm pretty sure that's how it goes. At any rate, I'm gonna buy every one of 'em I can from Dan (at Infinite Frontiers) tomorrow (I think there's 6 of them out...).

That's all I've got for now. Long post. Well, adjø!