t a l l a p e

Okay, I’m not Jewish, the title of this post was just the most ridiculous thing that I could think of off the top of my head…

A rather massive catching-up post…

Tomorrow is final, once-and-for-all, quit day. That’s exciting. No more cheating, no more excuses.

It’s now the 27th of December, Christmas is over, family has gone back home, my sister is down in Florida with many cousins, enjoying the warm weather and partying hearty. All in all, a very nice couple of days.

I spent much of last week, along with a good portion of Christmas Eve, putting together my sister’s Christmas present. Basically, it was an external hard drive inside of the body of a teddy bear.

I started with a very large teddy bear, and slit the seam up his back. I pulled out most of the stuffing in the body, and put velcro along the edges of the seam so that it could be closed back up. A little bit of judicious box cutter work extended the seam down to his butt, so that there was a hole for the cables.

Step two was getting an external hard drive case (FireWire/USB 2), and a 200GB IDE hard drive. I modified the case a little bit, to split some power off to a fan. The drive got installed in the case, and then the case went inside of a tupperware container with pipe insulation isolating it from the sides. I cut out part of one end for the cables to extend through, and installed a PC case fan in the top (with a connector to the power extension out of the case.)

Finally, clothing for the bear: a t-shirt that reads “Blame My Sister” and another that says “My Brother is the Naughty One”. Good stuff.

Grace’s reaction was somewhere between amusement, shock, and just pure wonder at how odd her brother really is. This was not a run of the mill Christmas gift. But it worked out pretty well…

Mommy made her classic roast beef, Yorkshire pudding, and creamed onions, all of which turned out as well as they usually do. (Mom, that reminds me, you need to tell me where that creamed onion recipie came from, or just give it to me to post if it’s one of those “I don’t remember, it’s just in my head” things.)

Wonderful, all around.

Had a good Christmas night, too, and then slept in very late yesterday. Woke up late, watched a movie, hung at Diesel, basically jusy chilled out.

The best thing to come out of this Christmas season, for me, was a bit of financial security…that’s something I haven’t really had for a number of years. (Like, oh, say, ever, really.) But suddenly I find myself in a position where I can think about doing things like saving, I can think about whether I want to buy a car, or just up my 401k contribution a little more…it’s a wonderful feeling — and one that I’m experiencing for the first time. Savings? Good god, what an incredible idea…

Hope everyone else had a nice holiday season, and Jeff, thank you for not throwing the cat at a Santa.