I always enjoy this time of year. Despite the increase in traffic everywhere I go, I have great fun around Christmas. Last week I attended two Christmas parties, and my thanks go to KS-1 & his wife, and Jersey & Jill for being such wonderful hosts. I would have liked to do more myself for Christmas, like send out Christmas cards to my out-of-town friends and buy some more personalized gifts for people instead of handing out gift cards. But regardless of that, I've had a great week.
Now, my family celebrates the entirety of Christmas on Christmas Eve. It's the way my Dad was raised, so it's been our tradition as well. I went to my parent's house yesterday afternoon and we had a nice, quiet dinner. My Dad had requested we have roast turkey, just like on Thanksgiving, which ended up tasting perfect. Round that out with some home made sides and it was the perfect meal. Afterwards we opened gifts. I didn't ask for much this year, but I received a nice set of martini glasses from my sister and her family, and from my parents I got some newer clothes. I also received many gifts from my friends, among them being some DVDs, shirts, games and books. But the best part for me now is hanging out with family and friends.
Being Christmas Day today, I find myself not doing too much. I've been catching up reading some magazines (Maxim, Play, Newtype) and I plan on watching some DVDs today. Also need to finish up Darkwatch and play some more of Castlevania: Curse of Darkness.
Well, we're fast approaching the new year. I have some great hopes for next year, which I will expound upon at a later date. I hope everyone has had a Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, or Happy whatever you celebrate!
Sunday, December 25, 2005
Thursday, December 22, 2005
Why?
Why do such horrible things happen to some of the greatest people? At such a joyous time of year, sad news like this should never occur. My thoughts and prayers are with the Dungy family.
Saturday, December 17, 2005
Saturday, December 10, 2005
I could never be a spokesman for the beer industry ...
So, I was having a good week up until yesterday. This past Monday was my birthday, and from Sunday through Tuesday it was a pretty good week.
Sunday, my parents treated myself and X to brunch at The Oyster Catcher. Their brunch is absolutely exquisite. Plenty of food available, both hot and cold dishes, plus all the oysters one can eat. Now myself, I don't really care for oysters at all but X can only be described as the oyster's natural predator. The man usually has 5 dozen oysters plus about two plates full of the normal fare. I am waiting for the day when I see a Wanted poster up at the front door saying not to let X in for fear of him eating them out of business! Now, after brunch X and I went home and just chilled out watching the various NFL games that were on. Got a call from Badstar, and met up with him and some more friends who all wished me a Happy Birthday. We ended up going out to dinner and it was a pretty enjoyable evening.
Monday I pretty much did nothing. Received calls from my family, all wishing me well on my birthday. Also received calls and cards from my friends. Near the end of the day, my parents took me out to dinner and then I spent the evening with them.
I don't really ask for much on my birthday. As I have gotten older I have realized that all I really want to do on my birthday is spend some quality time with family and friends. My friends usually complain that they can never get me anything for my birthday, since I usually buy whatever I want for myself. The way I look at it, I tend to have eccentric (and sometimes expensive) tastes so if I see something I like I just go ahead and get it. All I want from my friends is to go out and have a good time with them, and maybe a gift card or something.
Now Tuesday was the start of my downfall for this week. I knew X was going to have a long day at work, so I figured it might be good to get as many people as I could out to a local bar here in Tampa, Bilmar Station. Bilmar Station has what they call "liter night", where all domestic and imported draft beer is sold by the liter at discounted prices. X, JerseyStrangler, Jill and myself all went out that evening and it was a fun night. We stayed out until about 23:00, then we all dispersed to get home and get some sleep. Now, I have a rather checkered history when it comes to beer. I can drink hard liquor as much as I want, but sometimes I can get sick off of one beer. It doesn't seem to matter how much I hydrate myself, and none of the normal hangover-prevention tricks seem to work for me either. Now, this problem doesn't happen all the time; it just seems like some days I just can't have beer. So, we went out to this bar for liter night, and I had about 1.5 liters of Spaten Oktoberfest. Thought I drank plenty of water to keep myself hydrated, and when I got home I took a multivitamin before going to bed. Wake up the next day, feeling nauseous and have a migraine. Called in to work, and tried to sleep it off (I had only gotten about 5 hours of sleep so far). Slept for a couple more hours, and now I'm feeling worse. I tried using the healing powers of the HD version of the Victoria's Secret Fashion Show, but even it's heavenly glow could do nothing to heal my body (but my soul was doing pretty good). Eventually, after about a full day of fitful rest and two prayers said to the porcelain god, I finally got whatever poison I had out of my system. The worst part about that day is I couldn't even work on some personal projects, since I couldn't do much more than read for short periods of time. I simply don't know what it is about beer that does this to me. I could have had only 1 pint, and I still would have gotten ill. But give me the same amount of liquor, and I'd probably only have had a slight headache the next day.
Well, I'm better now. Just wish this didn't make me feel like such a lightweight some times. Guess I'll stick to rum, whiskey and gin from now on.
Sunday, my parents treated myself and X to brunch at The Oyster Catcher. Their brunch is absolutely exquisite. Plenty of food available, both hot and cold dishes, plus all the oysters one can eat. Now myself, I don't really care for oysters at all but X can only be described as the oyster's natural predator. The man usually has 5 dozen oysters plus about two plates full of the normal fare. I am waiting for the day when I see a Wanted poster up at the front door saying not to let X in for fear of him eating them out of business! Now, after brunch X and I went home and just chilled out watching the various NFL games that were on. Got a call from Badstar, and met up with him and some more friends who all wished me a Happy Birthday. We ended up going out to dinner and it was a pretty enjoyable evening.
Monday I pretty much did nothing. Received calls from my family, all wishing me well on my birthday. Also received calls and cards from my friends. Near the end of the day, my parents took me out to dinner and then I spent the evening with them.
I don't really ask for much on my birthday. As I have gotten older I have realized that all I really want to do on my birthday is spend some quality time with family and friends. My friends usually complain that they can never get me anything for my birthday, since I usually buy whatever I want for myself. The way I look at it, I tend to have eccentric (and sometimes expensive) tastes so if I see something I like I just go ahead and get it. All I want from my friends is to go out and have a good time with them, and maybe a gift card or something.
Now Tuesday was the start of my downfall for this week. I knew X was going to have a long day at work, so I figured it might be good to get as many people as I could out to a local bar here in Tampa, Bilmar Station. Bilmar Station has what they call "liter night", where all domestic and imported draft beer is sold by the liter at discounted prices. X, JerseyStrangler, Jill and myself all went out that evening and it was a fun night. We stayed out until about 23:00, then we all dispersed to get home and get some sleep. Now, I have a rather checkered history when it comes to beer. I can drink hard liquor as much as I want, but sometimes I can get sick off of one beer. It doesn't seem to matter how much I hydrate myself, and none of the normal hangover-prevention tricks seem to work for me either. Now, this problem doesn't happen all the time; it just seems like some days I just can't have beer. So, we went out to this bar for liter night, and I had about 1.5 liters of Spaten Oktoberfest. Thought I drank plenty of water to keep myself hydrated, and when I got home I took a multivitamin before going to bed. Wake up the next day, feeling nauseous and have a migraine. Called in to work, and tried to sleep it off (I had only gotten about 5 hours of sleep so far). Slept for a couple more hours, and now I'm feeling worse. I tried using the healing powers of the HD version of the Victoria's Secret Fashion Show, but even it's heavenly glow could do nothing to heal my body (but my soul was doing pretty good). Eventually, after about a full day of fitful rest and two prayers said to the porcelain god, I finally got whatever poison I had out of my system. The worst part about that day is I couldn't even work on some personal projects, since I couldn't do much more than read for short periods of time. I simply don't know what it is about beer that does this to me. I could have had only 1 pint, and I still would have gotten ill. But give me the same amount of liquor, and I'd probably only have had a slight headache the next day.
Well, I'm better now. Just wish this didn't make me feel like such a lightweight some times. Guess I'll stick to rum, whiskey and gin from now on.
Friday, December 02, 2005
Why Dracos shouldn't fix his PC at 03:00
Happy to say I had a great time during this past holiday weekend. I absolutely stuffed myself on Thanksgiving, and had a wonderful time visiting my parents. Then this past Sunday we celebrated birthdays for X and EvilBadstar (X's was on the 27th and Badstar's was on the 29th). Once again, we had plenty of food and friends around to help celebrate and everyone had a great time. And Badstar is our Guitar Hero.
... Bah, I don't like how this post is going and quite frankly, it's too damn boring. In summary:
So overall it has been a pretty good week, omitting the normal work complaints. Unfortunately, I did have one problem that has taken most of my free time. Last Friday I came home to find that my main PC had lost its harddrive. Being a computer geek, I do not enjoy coming home and finding my computer on a DOS screen informing me that I need to remove or replace a non-system disk. I lost everything on that PC. And despite my efforts, there was no way to recover the data. On top of this, I was already experiencing problems with my monitor as it would like go blank even though a video signal was still present. So, after about 3 days worth of work and almost $600 worth of new equipment, I'm back up and running. Sad thing is, I knew this was coming because my now useless harddrive had been making "clicking" noises lately which usually indicates that it is about to fail. I had always planned to have two harddrives in my machine and set them up as a RAID 1 array. But I never got around to it and now I payed the price. It is taking a very long time for me to reinstall all my applications and data on the new harddrives ...
... Bah, I don't like how this post is going and quite frankly, it's too damn boring. In summary:
- Thanksgiving = good!
- Birthdays = good!
- PC blowing up = bad :(
- Crazy Japanese game. With video!
- Here is an incredible cause to support. If you have any extra money, I would hope that you can donate it. I know I will.
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