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.

WOO HOO!!! It’s Halloween. That frickin’ rocks. Maybe it’s a southern bible belt thing, but they don’t trick-or-treat down here when Halloween is on a Sunday–they do it on a Saturday. When I lived in Chicago it didn’t seem like we ever skipped out on that stuff just because it was on a Sunday. I figure that it’s all in good fun, and has no real demonic meaning behind it.. So, let the kids have fun–whether it be on a Monday or a Sunday.

I’m watching Clash of the Titans with my dad right now. It’s one of those fun movies from the late 70s. The storyline is somewhat trite, and the soundtrack is clearly of the 70s, but it’s one of those stories that grows on you–maybe it’s because I remember watching it as a kid. It’s kind of the same thing with The Martian Chronicles (Rock Hudson, late 70s).

Star Trek Season Two and SG:1 Season Seven are out on DVD. Geepers, I’m starting to fall behind on those releases 😉 Actually, the later I wait, the better the deals I get on eBay for them. There’s really no use in buying it for $100-125 retail when I could get it at $65-75 overstock. Thank goodness for eBay; it makes Trekkies happy 🙂

The election is Tuesday. I just want it all to be over, no matter which way it goes. There’s this small period every four years where the country goes crazy over ideology and the cable news networks can do nothing but watch shady polls all day. The only polls that matter are the ones at the end of Tuesday. Personally, I wouldn’t mind party deadlock in the House and Senate.. That would keep government out of our frickin hair and pocket books–sometimes the government goes too far. They’re not the answer to everything.

LAN next weekend *gurgles happily* It’s a bit of a birthday party this time around for one of them. No new games have really come out since.. I’m still waiting for someone to come out with a good multiplayer co-op mod for Doom 3. It better be frickin soon–too lazy to code one myself 🙂 Although I certainly wouldn’t mind coding a few mods for Half Life 2.

There was a pretty nifty eclipse last nite, for those of you who went to bed early. I almost thought we were going to miss it because of all of the clouds that had been overhead all day. But, about when the eclipse began, the heavens opened up to show us a very red moon. It was quite uber spectacular.

Nothing much has been going down. I can’t believe it’s almost Halloween already. This year is very much flying by. Next thing I know, the Cubbies will be in the midst of spring training and Episode III will be hitting theatres *drool*

The Boston Red Sox won the World Series last night, clinching the frickin’ series in 4 games. If the Cubbies had been there, I know they would’ve put up much more of a fight. I would’ve watched the game, but was too busy whoopin’ my brother in Call of Duty 🙂 Truth be told, he normally whoops me, but I somehow busted out the whoopin’ stick on him last night. I’ll still always whoop his butt at Age of Empires 🙂

I went with a few buds to the Renaissance Fair in Florence today. It was quite a nice time. It sorta reminded me of DragonCon, with a different breed of nerd; instead of looking to the future, the focus was to the past. And, of course, there were dealers out the yin yang just as there are at D*C. After watching that episode of Home Movies a couple of years back, I couldn’t help but look over my shoulder waiting for the sci-fi convention to come invade 🙂

After that, I went back to play some games–just a wee bit of UT2004. Refreshing to have a nice lil 21st century bout on the LAN after going back to the days of armor and broad swords.

Tonite, I went with my brother and dad up to Monte Santo. David Levy gave a talk at the planetarium on his experiences with amateur astronomy and his discovery of comets, such as Shoemaker-Levy 9, which slammed into Jupiter in 1994 in 20 or so fragmented pieces. It’s amazing to me, the energy released by such an event; thousands upon thousands of nuclear weapons–around one Hiroshima bomb per second going off with each impact. It was a really nice nite.. Unfortunately, go figure; being Astronomy Day, it was totally cloudy and rainy.. So, no observing *sigh*

I was thinking.. I haven’t had an astro log in quite a long time. Perhaps I will put one on my website–I was thinking of making a whole new LJ for it, but perhaps just making it on my own–storing entries on my own server in a DB or XML file–complete with comments. I don’t know.. A little weekend pet project to be pondering and programming. I’m glad that my hobby of computers just happens to also be my job; it definitely makes life and work much kewler. Plus, I can tie in my love of astronomy into my love of computers, as well..

I’m so glad I live in the 21st century.