Thanksgiving Vacation

My vacation all plans collapsed all at the last moment; Tracy's great aunt passed away on Friday (she had been sick for a while and it was expected) so the trip to Europe has been postponed (Spring?) and Diana decided to cancel her trip down to Louisiana.  Tracy left for New Jersey on Tuesday so I have had a few day to myself (with Betty, of course).  It has been fairly therapeutic...

I have decided to work on meditation- before I get to old to be able to...  I found some interesting FLAC files for HoloSync- which (supposedly) can induce alpha brain wave patterns (and later 'lessons' progressing to theta and delta patterns) similar to those attained after years of deep meditation.  I had to convert the FLAC to lossless AAC so they will play on my iPod- so far they are fairly interesting.

Other things I have accomplished this vacation:

I fixed our gate:

I hung some curtain rods (for Tracy):

 

I installed a new webcam (to replace a crappy-ass X-10 camera):

I bought a new stereo receiver (an Onkyo SR-TX705):

I got a Christmas Tree:

I replaced my KVM:

(I got tired of waiting for Alurtek support to tell me if they can send me a v2 of the AKSUP02D KVM Switch so I now have an IOData GCS932U Micro DVI/USB KVM):

I cleaned up my desk:

In addition I also:

• Rebuilt my main PC- twice... I am now running Vista as my primary OS
• Rebuilt my Media PC- also running Vista
• Upgraded my Mac to OS X 10.5 (again)
• Fixed my X-10 setup so I can control the XMas tree and lights via timers
• Finished 'Portal' from the Orange Box
• Got 60 stars in Super Mario Galaxy (now I just have to finish the final level!)
• Got some of my xMas shopping started
• Spent 10+ hours re-organizing my photos in iPhoto
• Figured out how to make iTunes on my Mac store its music library on a network drive

I tried the 'Black Friday' crawl; I ended up buying some used DVDs at MovieStop and having lunch at Burger King.  Fry's: 100+ people deep in the check-out lines at 10:00am; BrandSmart: no place to part at 11:00am; BestBuy, MicroCenter and Target had crappy sales; and Wal-Mart- Wow; talk about a disaster area... 

One thing I thought was funny at WalMart was some woman bitching to her friend on her cell phone how someone else had hit her with their cart- but at the moment this woman was sitting behind her cart and parked broadside across the aisle- and in her 'distressed' condition was ignoring everyone that was trying to get around her... Some people just don't have a clue. 

Tomorrow's quest: hang the outside Christmas lights... This will take at least 2-3 hours- and hopefully it be above 40 degrees and not windy! If I have some time left over I will start decorating the tree!