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Leading up to Christmas, there were times when I was really into the season and times when I wanted it to be over. Of course, the traveling was what I was dreading. I hate flying and driving gets old after a while.

I flew to Mississippi on the 23rd. This is the first time I’ve flown United. I had already made plans to fly to Jackson months before I knew everyone would be in Georgia for Christmas. I was going to cost around $1000 to change the flight to Atlanta, so I figured I would drive the rest of the way since I had already planned to rent a car. I spent the night in Jackson and drove to Decatur the next day. I had a blast in Georgia. I hadn’t seen my sister, brother-in-law, and niece in a little over 2 years and my mom since February. My niece is almost 3 now. She is adorable. I never got tired of her calling me “Uncle Will”. She wore me out a few times. I don’t see how parents do it. Seeing her joy at opening her gifts made me happy. It was great seeing everybody again and getting caught up.

The day after Christmas it was time to return to Portland. I drove back to the airport in Jackson. I ran into a high school classmate at the airport. Our plane was late leaving Jackson due to the plane arriving late in Jackson due to bad weather in Houston. I think we made up some time in the air, but it wasn’t enough. Between leaving late and being stuck waiting for a gate to open up after we landed, I missed my connection. I rushed through the airport as fast as I could. When I made it to the gate for my next flight and handed the lady my boarding pass, word came over the walkie that the door had closed. It was too late in the day for another flight. I was put on standby on the first flight out the next day. I didn’t like the fact that the customer service guy made it sound like it was my fault that I missed my connection. United put me up in a room in Houston, but I had to pay for most of it because my missed connection was caused by something beyond their control. This will probably be the last time I fly United, though other airlines would’ve probably done the same thing. I got a seat on that flight the next day and was glad when I finally made it home. Overall, a great Christmas, but I may be trying to convince everyone to come to Portland next year :).

What did I get this year?

• How to Be Black by Baratunde Thurston
• Super Fly on DVD
• Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert A. Heinlen
• A Best Buy gift card that I’ve already spent
• A nice shirt that I’ll probably wear on NYE
• The Bourne Legacy on blu-ray
• A Tardis cookie jar and Texas cookie cutter
• One gift that I still haven’t received yet

One benefit of working at home: It’s been about a month since I filled my gas tank and I still have a little under a quarter of a tank left.

One drawback of working at home: I’m going a little stir crazy. Other than trips to the gym and to the grocery store, I haven’t gotten out much lately. I’ve probably said this before, but this town is so boring. I’m glad to be leaving.

I think I’m going to the movies this weekend. Haywire looks really good and it’s getting good reviews. I’m interested in Red Tails as well. Watching the Golden Globes this past weekend made me realize that I slacked off on movies last year. That’s partially because a lot of movies I’m interested in don’t play in Starkville, but it’s also because it’s a lot easier and cheaper to stay home. Maybe I’ll go to Columbus and do some shopping as well.

Last Wednesday, I had a cold and took a day off work. I went to Walmart to get some medicine and get a copy of Attack the Block on blu-ray. Attack the Block is a British sci-fi film that a lot of geeks were going crazy about earlier this year. It never played here in Starkville. It came out on video last Tuesday. I shouldn’t have been surprised to discover that Walmart didn’t have the blu-ray and only a few copies of the DVD. I guess Walmart didn’t get many copies because people around here aren’t big on blu-rays or British sci-fi movies. They couldn’t have sold out in 1 day, could they? Grocery stores and drugstores do have some movies, but I doubt that they would have this one. Sam Goody, Blockbuster, and Movie Gallery have all closed. Redbox probably won’t have it for another 28 days if at all. I went home and ordered a copy from Amazon. I’m so tired of having to order everything I want online because Starkville doesn’t have any place that sells them. No real bookstore, music store, video store, electronic store, or clothing store. I don’t mind paying a slightly higher price than I would online if I can drive to a local store to get what I want.

It’s not just shopping that I can’t do in Starkville. When I needed surgery, I had to drive 2 hours and then drive back a week later when I was still recovering. When I was having trouble hearing in one ear, I had to drive 1 hour to Tupelo to see a specialist. When my doctor wanted me to get a spot on my skin checked out, I had to drive to Columbus and the earliest appointment I could get was over a month away. When one of my teeth was hanging loose and causing me a lot of pain, I had to wait a week before I could see a dentist. Since most medical services that are available in town are only open 8-5 on Monday – Friday, I have to take time away from work whenever I need to see anybody. Maybe I’m kidding myself to think it would be different in a bigger city.

I guess I’m just talking myself into leaving Starkville. I can think of many other reasons I don’t like this place anymore. I need to go. It might not be Austin like I had dreamed at one point, but that’s fine.

By the way, Attack the Block was really good! Check it out!

I’ve received several notices a few weeks ago saying that my personal information may have been or has been compromised by hackers. One was from Ohio State, one was from Best Buy, and one was from another company that I can’t remember right now.

This PlayStation Network intrusion that happened a week or so ago has me pissed off the most. Basically, the network was hacked and our customer data was obtained. Sony took the PSN down, began an investigation, and began rebuilding the system so it would be more secure. First I was just a little annoyed by not having access to the network. But I got mad when 6 days later Sony told us exactly what information was accessed: name, address, birth date, PSN ID, password, security question, email address, and possibly credit card number and expiration date. Somebody can do some damage with the information. And it was 6 days before we were told this. I understand that they took their time doing a forensic analysis and wanted to know for sure what damage had been done, but still. And why aren’t passwords encrypted??? At least we now know that credit card numbers were encrypted. They still don’t know if those were accessed. It would be nice to know which credit card I have on file with them, but there’s no way I can find out from them because the network is still down. I’ve heard that you can’t even call and find out. I feel sorry for their customer service representatives.

They’re expecting to have some services restored by May 3, which is about 2 weeks after it was taken down. I wonder if they’ll give a partial refund to us paying customers. I hope their improvements will make PSN more secure. I’m eager to get back on, remove my credit card information just to be safe, and start enjoying the service again.

I’ll start with my birthday the week before. I’d been saying all year that all I wanted for my birthday was TRON: Legacy, which came out on the same day. Well, I got it. I got off work early and drove down to Brandon to hang out with my friend John. It was good to catch up with him since I haven’t seen him much lately. We went out to eat, saw the movie, and got drunk afterwards. It was a blast. The hangover the next day wasn’t fun, however. It was only the 2nd time all year that I’d drank any alcohol. The last time was in Austin.

Christmas was good. It was hard to be away from my dog for 47 hours, but I enjoyed spending time with the family that was there. My sister and brother-in-law were stuck in Atlanta with the flu. My mom seems to be doing better, after being not-so-well for a couple of months. Thank goodness! There are some things she doesn’t remember, but otherwise she’s her normal self, which means she’s driving me crazy :).

I think I said this last year, but I do miss getting presents. I’m a little jealous of all the cool things I saw people getting on Twitter and Facebook. My sister and her family are the only ones who regularly get me gifts now, but they weren’t able to come. They’ll be mailing their presents later. I did take part in the Twitter Secret Santa that one of my Twitter friends organizes every year and I got an awesome Walking Dead t-shirt that I will be wearing during warmer months, if not before. I’m grateful for that. I will say that watching my cousin’s kids open their presents pretty much made up for any disappointment I had.

Even though it was an odd Christmas and disappointing in some ways, I think this was one of the best Christmas seasons I’ve had recently.

Scott Pilgrim is a series of 6 graphics novels written by Bryan Lee O’Malley. It’s a really fun series. Scott is a 23-year-old Canadian who is also the bass player in a band. He meets a woman, but in order to date her he has to defeat her 7 evil exes. I decided to read this after I saw the first preview for the movie adaptation Scott Pilgrim vs. the World a while back. Even seeing that preview didn’t prepare me for what I saw in these books. It was a lot of fun. The last volume came out last week. I think they’re each around 200 pages so even a slow reader like me could finish them quickly. I hope the movie is good. At least see the movie if you don’t want to read.

• Joe Abercrombie, The Blade Itself
• Joe Abercrombie, Before They Are Hanged
• Joe Abercrombie, Last Argument of Kings
• Go, Mutants: A Novel, Larry Doyle
• Serenity Found, Jane Espenson
• Incarceron, Catherine Fisher
• American Gods, Neil Gaiman
• The Law of Nines, Terry Goodkind
• The Associate, John Grisham
• The Fourth Hand, John Irving
• The Colorado Kid, Stephen King
• The Stormcaller, Tom Lloyd
• The Day Watch, Sergei Lukyanenko
• The Twilight Watch, Sergei Lukyanenko
• The Final Watch, Sergei Lukyanenko
• Busted Flush, George R.R. Martin
• Suicide Kings, George R.R. Martin
• Kraken, China Mieville
• The Final Crusade, Chaite Naasiri
• Scott Pilgrim, Vol. 1: Scott Pilgrim’s Precious Little Life, Bryan Lee O’Malley
• Scott Pilgrim, Vol. 2: Scott Pilgrim Versus The World, Bryan Lee O’Malley
• Scott Pilgrim, Vol. 3: Scott Pilgrim & the Infinite Sadness, Bryan Lee O’Malley
• Scott Pilgrim, Vol. 4: Scott Pilgrim Gets It Together, Bryan Lee O’Malley
• Scott Pilgrim, Vol. 5: Scott Pilgrim vs the Universe, Bryan Lee O’Malley
• Scott Pilgrim, Vol. 6: Scott Pilgrim’s Finest Hour, Bryan Lee O’Malley
• The Darker Mask, George Phillips
• The Final Empire, Brandon Sanderson
• The Well of Ascension, Brandon Sanderson
• The Hero of Ages, Brandon Sanderson
• Towers of Midnight, Brandon Sanderson
• Titus Andronicus, William Shakespeare
• Bitter Seeds, Ian Tregillis
• The Dragonbone Chair, Tad Williams
• Stone of Farewell, Tad Williams
• To Green Angel Tower, Tad Williams

2009 was a pretty good year.   It was much better than 2008, which was a shitty year for me.  I’m hoping for even better in 2010.  The only complaint about 2009 was that work got a little too crazy at times mostly due to outside factors.  I’m not going to complain too much, because crazy is better than boring.

I’ve probably given more to charity this year than all previous years combined.  I have given to:  Autism Speaks, The American Red Cross, The Humane Society, and The Andy Roddick Foundation.

I didn’t get a lot of electronic gadgets this year.  The biggest one I got was an iPhone.  It is the best gadget ever. 

The place I’m living in now was supposed to be short-term.  I should be out of here when my lease runs out in July.  I don’t like the place.  I don’t like the neighborhood.  I don’t like not having a fenced yard.  I’m going to start looking for something soon.

The decade is also ending tonight.  This decade I’ve had the best times of my life and the worst times of my life.  Of course, I’m looking to make things better in the next decade.

Right now I’m enjoying another quiet New Year’s Eve at home with the dog.  I’m finishing my Lord of the Rings re-watch today as is tradition.  I used to watch the New Year’s Eve stuff on TV, but not anymore.  Who knows what I’ll be doing tonight.  Maybe next year I’ll go out somewhere.

When I was in college I downloaded a lot of stuff from the Internet using file sharing programs. I hope that saying this here isn’t going to get me in any trouble 🙂 . I downloaded music that way if I wanted to get only one song instead of the full album. I downloaded movies and TV shows. I even downloaded games where you had to get 30-something zip files, unzip them all, and then run a program that would combine the pieces into 1 game.

Now that I have a full-time job and I’m making decent money, I don’t do that anymore. I don’t really have the time or patience. I don’t leave my computer running all the time. Even when I tried to leave it running more so that stuff could download, it would take days or even weeks for it to finish. Why wait hours for a TV show when I can pay $2 and download in less than half an hour or instantly if I’m streaming? Also, when I’m at work and a song pops into my head I’m not going to start up a file sharing program and look for it. I go to Amazon MP3 or iTunes and get it there. The only time I might make an exception is when I check all my legit sources (Amazon MP3, iTunes, Hulu, Netflix Watch Instantly, Xbox Live, DirecTV on Demand, etc) and still can’t find it. That’s pretty rare these days and if it’s a TV show I’ll delete as soon as I’m finished. I have reformed.

While I was in Jackson, I was thinking about some things I want to do in 2009. Maybe at the end of the year I’ll revisit the list and see how I did.

• I want to go somewhere, probably over the summer. This year I took time off from work mostly for emergencies and when I wasn’t feeling well, but I never took time off for a vacation. I think that was part of the reason why I felt burnt out the last part of the year.
• I want to watch all the DVDs in my collection that I haven’t seen plus the bonus features. I have so many DVDs that haven’t been opened. I want to go through all those this year. I’ve already done this for most of the TV shows I own, but not the movies. My collection is so small that I could probably do it this year.
• I want to finish watching Babylon 5. I bought season 1 last Christmas, but didn’t finish watching it until the summer. I watched all 7 seasons of Buffy in 2 months, so there’s no reason I can’t finish the other 4 seasons of B5 in 12 months.
• Once again I want to begin exercising again.
• I want to finish organizing my mp3 collection so they can go onto my iPod. For all the random mp3s I have collected over the years, I’ve been editing the ID3 information. Since I got my iPod in October, I’ve slowly made it to the Ls. This is annoying, but it’ll be worth it to me
• I want to reply to everyone that I’m following on Twitter. I follow a lot of people that I don’t ever talk to. I’m going to make an effort to talk to more of them.
• I want to start back cooking. I’m tired of eating at the same food places over and over again.

That’s all I can think of right now.

So The Wheel of Time is finally being made into movies. This isn’t as exciting to me as it would have been 5 or 6 years ago, but I’m still glad. I think The Eye of the World and the next 1 or 2 should get their own movies, but after that they should start combining books. In some of those later books, not much happens….

That’s probably why the one season per book TV show thing wouldn’t work like they’re doing with A Song of Ice and Fire and The Sword of Truth. Speaking of The Sword of Truth, its series starts up in November.