Christmas!!

Merry Christmas all; and Happy Holidays to those that do not officially celebrate Christmas!  :o)

I got some awesome gifts from my roommates; they did get me the Toshiba HD A3 HD DVD Player- along with a Canon Monopod, a Frank Zappa CD and many 'stocking stuffers' (such as Office Space box of flair, a Simpsons' Pizza Cuter, 'Flippin Sweet' lip balm, pop rocks, incense and many other such items).

The roommates seemed to like their gifts as well; I think I did pretty good at picking them out (I actually have one more gift to get- but the roommates surprised me and we opened gifts on the eve of Christmas Eve as Diana was not going to be around on Christmas day!)

For myself I also bought a Canon 40D and it is fracking awesome!  I got a new camera bag and I kept my EF24-110 IS lens as my walk-about lens.  I also kept my EF75-200 lens, but I will probably replace it with an IS version sometime before Dragon*Con.

I also picked up a Sony Reader (the PRS-500) as the new model is out and the old units are at closeout prices ($200 for the reader, $16 for the charging stand- down from $300 and $50, respectively).  There was even the demo model on sale for $150 (with a charging stand!) but it looked kind of funky with the screen refresh... 

The PRS-500 is pretty cool and fairly readable in bright light but it absolutely sucks with PDF Files!  It renders the PDF exactly the same as it would on a computer screen- but the screen is a 4 color grayscale 600x800 6" screen (with no options for zoom!) I will probably return it as it really sucks for reading PDF files- maybe I will get an Asus Eee PC when they go in stock at BestBuy...

The included Sony software is Ok- after updates- but still lacks support for LIT and other type files.  I found LIBPRS500 which acts as a decent Sony software replacement- it it crashes a lot during eBook conversion (on both Vista and OS X 10.5!)...

One thing that stuck we as odd during the last few days of xMas shopping were some places (namely MicroCenter) had gift suggestions with Mail in rebates (MIR)...  So if I give a gift to someone I either have to rip off the UPC tag before I send it (and look like I bought a returned/closeout item) or tell them to hold onto the box when they open their gift (and look like a cheap-ass as I need the box for a rebate)- WTF were they thinking with having MIR with xMas gifts