Well, this Thanksgiving was fairly decent, I suppose. After having had the turkey earlier with my family, none was really had on Thanksgiving. But, Chicago was quite awesome. It was quite cold, and there was some snow involved, but all of that went away later in the week when it rained like buckets.

The trip up there was fairly uneventful. I watched some Family Guy–gets better and better with each viewing, of course. I got quite bored, so I did a little rural wardriving in Indiana. I was surprised to find 78 wireless networks between Scottsburg, IN and Indianapolis. After passing through the city, I had about 173 found. Anyhoo, less than half of everything I found was WEP, and surprisingly 1/3 of them were 802.11g networks.

Anyhoo, most of this trip consisted of helping my aunt move out of her apartment. She is now in a nursing home. It was a pretty sad weekend; moving all of her stuff out, stuff that I remember from when I was a kid, left me with quite the bad feeling. My aunt was just about on the brink last spring when it was discovered she had cancer. She fought through it, though. She’s pretty healthy now for someone her age, except that she’s now confined to a wheelchair. Needless to say, she really needed to be in a nursing home. Still, it was just plain depressing. Seeing her relatively healthy, though, was definitely a huge frelling plus.

We went to the Museum of Science and Industry in-between all of the moving. It was quite nice; they have the Christmas exhibit on display now. Every year, they display Christmas trees from around the world. It’s one of my favorite recurring MSI exhibits. I’ll eventually get pics of it up on the site.

I did a little more wardriving on the way back. The state which had the least number of wireless networks within range of my lil wireless card was, oddly enough, Alabama *snicker* From the state line to exit 351 at Athens, there were only 7 wireless networks. Damn, I’m such a frickin nerd 😛

Anyhoo, that was my Thanksgiving.. I’ve been trying to recover sleep since, but you know how that can be 😉 I think I probably won’t be able to get it back until Christmas break (3 weeks away. w00t). And, even then, it’s off to Disney World and then most likely Colorado (w00t!!!!!).. Argh.. I’ve been procrastinating plane tix. I really do need to do some Travelocity-ing.. I hope I can still get something that remotely resembles a good deal..

Well, I get to go to Chicago in about 12 hours or so–actually more like 10. My family is going up there to visit family for Thanksgiving. It should be quite the groovy lil trip, although it’ll be a little strange since we usually go up there in the summer and all. There’ll be no Cubs games this time around. lol. I think I’ll survive.

I’ve left Penny uber amounts of food and water. I hope it’s enough, and that she doesn’t totally gorge herself while I’m gone. Hopefully, the only bad thing when I get back will be the litter box. The record for leaving her alone is 3 days. This will be about 4. I might leave the TV on to keep her company. hehe.

Anyhoo, the main reason we’re going up there is to help my aunt move out of her place–she’s moving into a nursing home. She had surgery over the summer. Even before that, though, I think it’s been exceedingly harder for her to take care of herself. I think we should all just stop getting old right now 😛 It’s a horrible practice that should be made illegal.

I hope everyone has an awesome Thanksgiving and safe travel! 🙂

Nothing much has really happened this week, which is definitely a semi-good thing. I was sick for the first half–I still am, but the pain killer and antibiotics are certainly making life much better.

I’m definitely going to catch up on some sleep this weekend, though–I’ve been scrambling, trying to get some software whipped up at work. I got most of the way there; my co-workers are helping me debug. The hardest thing to do as a programmer can be to debug your own code thoroughly. So, we usually debug each other’s apps, to get to things that we might miss on our own run-throughs.

Tonite, like every Friday, I feel like doing nothing but snoozing. lol. I must use my brain too much during the week, but of all days of the weekend, Friday nite is the worst. I’m always quite exhausted. Saturday & Saturday nite are almost always much better.

Speaking of which, there is a bachelor party for a friend tomorrow nite. w00t. This should be quite interesting; I’ve never been to one.

Half-Life 2 is SUCH a frickin awesome game. I don’t know where the plot ends, but I hope it isn’t anywhere soon. The game is sooooo saweet. It has a pretty good plot (albeit, plot is kind of hard to see in games many times I think because the player is so immersed in it). Of course, the uber awesomeness is the engine; the textures are massively saweet, movement is quite smooth, there is just about no mouse lag at all.. All-around, it is a pretty saweet game–I really do need to go get the first one and finish it.. I played a little bit of it, but didn’t finish. It’s too bad Valve hasn’t put out Half-Life: Source in stores. Anyhoo, I’m not so jealous of the Halo 2 crowd anymore, now that I have my own fixation. hehe.

So today was another one of those days where I was the only one I knew with a day off *sigh* Definitely no fun. I did play a little more Counter-Strike: Source, though 🙂 *drool* It is such a fun frickin game. Halo 2 no doubt blows in comparison 😉 hehe. I’m just saying that because I’m just a wee bit jealous that Halo 2 came out like a full 2 weeks before Half Life 2.

I also played a lil Call of Duty with my bro here. It was pretty niffty.. I whooped him, he whooped me. I’ll still always own him with Age of Empires, though 😉

Yassar Arafat died yesterday. I just hope that the Palestineans don’t substitute him for a whole bunch of terrorists.

In other news, tomorrow is Friday.. It’s weird, having an off-day in the middle of the week. But, being that tomorrow is the day after an off-day it’ll probably seem like a Monday. But, it’s not because the next day I’ll be able to sleep in as late as I did today. lol.

Saturday, is a football day. I’m going to play football for the first time in a long, long time. Matt Weber is getting married, and a cookout is being thrown for him.. Before the more than likely quite wild bachelor party after. lol. I literally haven’t played football since middle school. Hopefully, I won’t get too stomped. hehe.

Today is one of those eerie fall days where the sun is completely out–there’s not a cloud in the sky. It’s about 74 degrees and, of course, the weather can’t make up its mind about whether it should be 70-something or 50-something. It’s one of those curses of living in the south–erratic autumn weather. We’re just heading into the second tornado season of the year now, too, so I guess it’s kinda fitting.

The LAN yesterday was kewl, as always. I kicked a little butt, and also got my butt kicked a little. Most of our games are co-op, so it’s not like we’re whooping each other. The bots that come with most games today, though, have wonderful and challenging AI. Sometimes, it almost seems as though they can strategerize (hehe) as well as a human.

I started downloading Half Life 2 last night (and finished). I won’t be able to play it until the release date of the 13th, but it’s still kind of kewl to realize that I’ll be able to play it once the release date hits. I think it would be so frickin awesome if we could buy more games or software that way. Counter Strike: Source is already playable, and I played a little bit of it last night at the LAN. I’d almost say it’s more awesome than Raven Shield, but I’d have to play it a wee bit more.

Anyhoo, nothing much else is going down. Chilling around the parents’, as any usual Sunday. Downloading HL 2 onto my laptop as I sit here–I’m not sure how well it’ll run, though. Watching the movie Signs with my dad and bro.. To me, in many ways, I think this movie is probably M. Night Shyamalan’s best. I still need to go see The Incredibles–but, mostly for the Episode 3 trailer, of course 🙂

Episode III Trailer (pardon the slowness.. cable bandwidth sometimes does suck when it comes to web serving)

*drools in contentment*

So, I was in a news bubble from late sunday to early this morning. I really didn’t wanna experience the BS of all the media during the election. I wanted to vote and get it over with; I didn’t wanna hear any propaganda BS from the democrats or the republicans. It was pretty darn awesome.. I was in quite the happy place, not worrying about polls or political meandering through the real numbers.

President Bush actually won the popular vote this time around (51% or by around 3M votes) and, according to his unbiased campaign workers *snicker*, he may have won 286 electoral votes–to be decided, of course. Either way, right now he has 269 which is enough for a tie. If it ends at a tie, the vote will go to the House of Representatives.

I’m just glad it’s frickin over, that we most likely won’t have to wait and wait for recounts. It looks like the election was fairly decisive at this point.

Anyhoo, off to do the work thing.