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.:Synth3t1c-X::XM4S 3D1T10N::::::::::::::::::::.
::"We've taken the 'Christ' out of Christmas."::

* Well it’s the day after Xmas, I’m at my Mom’s
* just hanging out with my cat. I was a bit worn
* by the time I got up here, and even more after
* very little sleep and a long day yesterday, but
* after a good sleep last night, I’m refreshed and
* content.
* I headed up here on Xmas eve about 1 or so. I
* got home from Nicole’s about 11, and realized I
* had a whole bunch more to do then I had previously
* realized (nothing out of the oridinary there).
* Fitzi was so glad to see me, I decided I couldn’t
* leave her for 3 days with no one else in the
* house. She’s always so mad at me when I go off for
* a couple of days. There’s the whole basement at
* my Mom’s for her to run around in, so it wouldn’t be
* too much of a bother to bring her.
* She didn’t really like the car at first, she mewed
* and meowed for at least the first half hour before
* she finally settled down at went to sleep on my lap.
* She’d get up after a while, walk around the car then
* come back. I only stopped once on the way and to make
* sure she didn’t get out, I put her back in the cage,
* then let her out again once we were off again. She
* got used to it quickly, wasn’t exactly happy, but
* curious at the blur of trees and cars with people
* that we’d pass by.
* Traffic was moving. I made the 206 mile journey in
* about 2 & 1/2 hours.
* Once I got to my Mom’s and unpacked, I attempted to
* find a hardware store that had silver paint to finish
* off the drive covers for the new computer I had built
* for the Nieces and Nephews (PII 350mhz, 225mb/RAM,
* running Fedora Linux, C3).
* No open stores were to be found after driving all
* over the local area, however my mom had a silver
* Sharpie that I was able to improvise with. It
* worked quite well, the drives matched the silver of
* the case perfectly. It was the X-Dream (CGSystems.biz)
* case exactly, only silver.
* I then had to go to my yearly church to see the pagent,
* only because a few of the nieces and nephews were in it
* and the oldest niece Elizabeth (16) was coordinating
* the whole thing. They sang “Away in a Manger” wrong.
* They sang the piano, not the vocal and it really bothered me.
* Other then that it was short enough where it wasn’t too bad.
* We then went to my sister’s for dinner, hung out for a bit,
* and went over to my Mom’s condo neighbor who was having a
* few people over. I had a few beers and we came back to Mom’s.
* She wrapped presents and I worked on the Linux machine. I
* had added another hard drive and I attempted to mount the
* 2nd hard drive to the /home directory so they’d have enough
* room to store some files as the main HD was filled (3.5
* out of 4 gig) with the OS. I then wrapped presents and
* went to bed.
* We woke early Xmas morning to snow on the ground. It had
* snowed a few inches overnight. It was all grass the day
* before, so it was great to have a white Xmas. We then
* proceeded (sleepily) to head over to my sister’s where
* all the kids had already started opening. I brought in
* the computer and attempted to set it all up. Wouldn’t you
* know it? It wouldn’t turn on. I got in my fix it mode
* and attempted to get it to boot up. It turned out I had
* changed the BIOS to boot on password, which means it should
* have started when someone typed “wake” on the keyboard.
* It sure wasn’t starting by the button on the front. I
* ended up clearing the CMOS & reset the BIOS settings. I left
* it off for a few minutes and after that it started right up.
* Yay! It was almost a complete dubachle.

The kids loved the lights and my sister’s husband was all for the open-source. He uses Linux at work, but I let them borrow my Linux cert book in case he wanted to look up how to do anything.
I got a few things, nothing earth-shaking, but my Mom gave me money for my pea-coat so that was a good (and big) present.
We headed back to Mom’s to get ready for the 14-deep dinner that was going on later that afternoon. This was the first Xmas my Mom was having at her own place in VT, so she was a bit flustered trying to get everything perfect, but once everyone got here they helped out and it went smoothly.
I spent a lot of time chilling in the basement, trying to keep the cat calm with all the noise and hullabaloo — my uncle bringing his little shi-tzu down to “play with the cat” didn’t help much… she was flustered for much of the night and didn’t really come out of the back room until everyone left.
I set up the laptop with NFSUnderground2 & the USB gamepad I picked up at the computer show for like $10 & the kids took turns driving all around the city waging war against “the evil taxis” trying to take them out ;p
I drank wine and relaxed, was beaten at chess twice in a row by my 11 year old nephew, mingled, and eventually we opened the 2nd round of presents as my brother didn’t go to my sister’s.
As it turns out I got a tool set exactly like the set that I didn’t want to give back to Scott. It had a tape measure, level, hammer, and all sorts of random household tool goodies. When he came to pick it up, I reluctantly recanted and wondered where I could pick up one like it. Then I get my own for Xmas!
So I’m just chillin out today, going to help my mom with her pictures on the computer a bit later, and maybe go snowboarding tomorrow. I just have to find a way to keep the bindings from popping up until I can get a new pair. I should have some sort of gift certificate waiting for me from my dad when I get home and I can get a pair that actually fits my feet.
It’s nice to have the kitty with me. I know she’s happy, I like having her here, and I don’t have to rush back quite so quickly. I plan on going home early on Tuesday. I’ll probably meet up with Dad some time before new years, and hopefully go bring them to see “The Polar Express 3D”.
So that’s it for this year, hope everyone had a
pleasant holiday!

.:::::::Merry Xmas everyone!::::::.
*~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~*