I hope that everyone had a fun filled and enjoyable holiday.  Despite a cold that has drained my energy, I certainly did.  It was exhausting, because I technically had three Christmas’ to celebrate, but nonetheless very fulfilling.

Prior to Christmas, my roommates threw two Christmas parties, both of which were hugely successful.  The first one was for one of the guys that we know because he was heading out west for Christmas, and therefore would not be with us over the holidays.  The second one was in conjunction with one of my roommates Facebook groups.  I suppose it was more of a meet and greet, but given the holiday season a good excuse nonetheless to get together.  While I am not normally a fan of gatherings, it was a fun time to be had and I was actually somewhat social.

Christmas Eve was very busy.  I had to run to my parents house and grab the Christmas presents for the boys.  I store the presents there because I have absolutely no room where I currently am (yes, I desperately need more space, ergo moving may be a distinct possibility).  This year for Christmas, aside from a few nominal gifts that I put under the tree, I decided to get Myles and Chaz some Lego (actually Mega Bloks, but everyone understands Lego and both brands are completely interchangeable with one another).  I did it a bit different though.  I could have just bought a few sets and wrapped them up and stuck them under the tree, but I decided to build the sets first.  I had the Endeavour Space Shuttle, some tanks, the Polar Express, the Nimitz aircraft carrier, and a bunch of others.  To say Myles was surprised would be the understatement of the year.  Shock and awe.  This is one instance where a picture is worth 1000 words.

Unfortunately, you cannot see all of it, but you get the idea.  I did film it and will likely put the complete collection up onto YouTube and I will link to it from there.  All in all the boys had a great time.  Once Myles got over the shock, he helped me carry it all upstairs (as we had guests coming over to stay the night and they needed the basement to sleep).  Because I put so much time into building the sets, we had some discussions about glueing them together.  Personally, I do not support that idea because I think that it stifles creativity.  Building with Lego stimulates the mind, and if the kids break them (which they will), then they will learn more by fixing them (or innovating their own designs).

As for me, I got a very nice Kodak digital camera and a Western Digital Media Tank, both of which will be put to very good use.  I have never owned a digital camera.  I have borrowed one on the few occasions that I have needed it, but now I do not have to do that anymore!  I am getting into the habit of carrying it everywhere.  It is a Kodak 12.1 MP XE.  It is small, simple, and will do everything that I need.  I ordered a couple of memory cards for it from Future Shop (they had a Boxing Day sale and the 8 GB cards were only $19.99 each).  Those will arrive on the 30th of the month.

The Western Digital Network Media Tank is a cool little toy.  If you haven’t seen one yet, definately check them out.  You can have all your digital media on the network or a local hard disk and display it on the TV.  It offers gigabit lan, two USB ports, and the interface is relatively simple and easy to use.  The first time I saw is was when my buddy John bought one of these and brought it over.  After is was setup (which took less than five minutes), I was hooked.  I was very impressed, and I do not impress easy (as said many times by Jesse Ventura).  It is truly a geek product, but has obvious benefits for those who do not like to mess around with home theatre gear.  I will start to mess around with it after I get my primary machine settled (see below).

From there, I grabbed a shower and headed off to my parents house for Christmas Part Two.  It was very different and subdued this year as compared to recent years due to the fact that my brother was out west (he moved last spring due to work).  That made it very quiet, yet nonetheless enjoyable.  After all the pre-Christmas preparation and running around, then Christmas Part One (which, with two little boys is always a myriad of activity and excitement),  it was nice to settle down, eat some great food, and catch my breath.  I even managed to snap a few pictures with my new camera!

My third Christmas celebration of 2009 actually started on Boxing Day.  While I was tempted to try and brave the hordes out looking for bargains, I had more important priorities (although I did take a peek online and found a couple of decent ones, nothing really jumped out at me).  I went over to the girlfriends’ house to start our first (of many, with any luck) Christmas’ together.  There were a lot of gifts to open, and we had to stop twice to clean up the mess.  We took over 800 photos and filmed the entire thing, which I will make a DVD out of.  It took all day, after which we relaxed, sat back, looked at everything and said, “Holy shit, that was a lot.”  We wanted to do other things as well, but we just ran out of time.  That’s ok, and at around 4:00 in the morning I hauled my ass home.

I could easily make the case that 2009 has been my best holiday to date.

Needless to say, after going to bed around 6:00 am, I crashed hard.  However, I failed to take into consideration what all the running around would do to my rather out-of-shape body.  I was exhausted and literally spent the day in bed.  A day of rest and some chicken noodle soup works wonders though, and I was back in top form less than twelve hours later.

Now that we are officially past Christmas, I am taking the plunge and installing Windows 7 on my primary computer at home.  Everything has been wiped and it is a clean installation.  From what I have read online, Microsoft got it right with Windows 7.  It is fast, runs efficiently, and has none of the problems that plagued Vista.  On my computer, which has dual quad-core Xeon processors and twelve gigs of ram, it should run pretty good.  I had considered installing it on an SSD drive, but at almost five hundred dollars for a 64 GB drive, it is just not worth it at this time.  The difference in speed would have been significant, but I’m not a millionaire.  I also looked at picking up a Velociraptor, but the speed difference would have worked out to less than a ten percent increase over what I already own.  Again, but for different reasons, not worth the investment.

So here I sit…patiently waiting for Windows 7 to install.  Once it is done I will configure it, tweak it, find out all of its horrible little secrets…and I will post a followup with my thoughts as I load it down with software.