Happy New Year’s Eve! Another year has come and gone. Can you believe that it is almost 2003? Of course everyone says that every year and it gets to be a little bit less amazing every time that you hear it and pretty soon it is amazing that it is ONLY 2003. I am sure that you all know what I mean. But it is hard to believe that all of that Y2K crap was THREE years ago. And it is hard to believe that this is the third “Llama Rama Luau” being hyped on SGL. Can you believe that I have sat down and told you all about my life practically every day for the last three years? Pretty weird, I know. But not nearly as weird as the fact that you are all still reading this. But cool! I hope to see everyone tonight. This is our big chance for everyone to all get together – even our Canadians who arrived last night. It looks like the turn-out is going to be excellent this year (but John and Michelle had to cancel on us because Michelle’s sister JUST had her first baby and they are all busy with the new little one so we are very sad that they won’t be making it but we do want to send them all a big congratulations.)
Some of you may have noticed all of the content that suddenly appeared on the site yesterday. I have been out of town for almost three weeks and I am doing what I can to keep everyone up to date with the highlights but I have been pretty much out of touch (and unreachable as many of you have noticed) but I am back now and hopefully will remain so for at least a week. I will be trying hard to keep the site up to date in the coming year (do I hear a resolution coming on?) If you notice a [BACK DATED] on some days, those are days that I have gone back and filled in the info for. So look for those to see things that you might have missed even if you check the site everyday. (Update from June, 2006: The Back Dated tags were removed as they no longer made sense in the context of the site. Basically all updates since a few days before Christmas were written a week later.)
The last couple of days, I have been playing Max Payne on my serious gaming machine and it is pretty cool. Not something that I usually get into (much more of a Josh game) but I am having a good time with it. A nice diversion. The graphics are still amazing. In fact, I almost need a faster machine. How depressing is that. Soon enough I will have one (I hope 🙂 Actually, I have other toys on my agenda first that don’t cost as much as a new top end video gaming machine. I want an IBM PowerPC based Linux and MorphOS machine (I am literally saving my pennies to get one – I hope I can save enough) and I am currently building a new Pentium III machine. I wouldn’t normally go through the hassle of building a PIII machine but I already had all of the parts except the motherboard and the graphics cards and I found an awesome deal on a genuine Intel MoBo and I picked up a GeForce 4 MX card for it so I have a pretty nice set up. Only a 10GB Hard drive for now but 384MB PC133. So, overall, not too shabby. It is going to be my test computer to put all kinds of weird operating systems on just to try them out. I am also going to use it as a dedicated DVD and television machines hooked to the new flat panel monitor in the middle of my three desks as a kind of room entertainment system.
Dominica has been playing her new Game Boy Advance a lot and yesterday she managed to beat (yes, already) Harry Potter: The Chamber of Secrets. She loves being able to sit in her closet/office and play games on her GBA. Luckily she got a 4 way connector for Christmas and she, Loopy, Bob and I all have GBAs so we can hook them all together to play games. Too bad we don’t have any games that let us do that!
It started raining late last night and it was still raining this morning. Hopefully the temperature won’t drop and freeze the roads before the party. If it stays warm like this, travelling will be really good. Two years ago almost no one was able to make it because the roads were so bad.