This is Hi-Fi

If anyone wants to get me this for xmas, please reconsider the fact that your presence is all I really need for holiday joy. Seriously. Don't do it.

Had lunch at NXNW today. Started drinking at 11:30AM. I guess that officially makes me a lush.

I just got back from the Alamo, where they showed Hush and Once More With Feeling, the Buffy Musical. One of the best TV episodes ever, let alone one of the best Buffy episodes, Hush showed critics that Buffy the Vampire Slayer was more than just some pointless high-school banter. They made an episode where about 50% of the show had no dialogue whatsoever. It was brilliant. The writers had a real knack for story-telling, something that is often missing from drivel such as Friends. OMWF was of course spectacular in it's own right.

With Buffy and Angel reaching their conclusion, Firefly was supposed to pick up the torch. Unfortunately, it was quickly axed after Fox execs basically ruined the show. They didn't show the original 2 hour opener, in favor of what was probably the worst episode in season one. I imagine that quite a few vieweres were turned off by Train Job and never came back to the space western. I guess now we have to wait for Firefly's return as Serenity.

Posting has been light, for good reason. For about the last week and a half, I've been suffering the effects of a cold, allergies, or both. It's amazing how much "stuff" can fit inside your head.

It's annoying because it's affecting my mood, my sleep patterns, and my energy levels. I sure hope I can kick this by Friday. I fly back to New Jersey on Friday, and I don't want to spend xmas being sick.

I'm watching MNF on HD, and Miami took a 3rd quarter lead on a rushing touchdown. No that wasn't a typo.

If Miami wins, I'm happy. If Miami loses, the race for draft status continues on. It's a win-win situation.

Of course, NE scores a TD before I can save the post, but that's OK. While we aren't even into the 4th quarter yet, I'm fairly happy with how we've played. Our defense looks stellar, Wes Walker and the return teams have been fantastic, and the offense has already scored 17 points. They already get an A for effort. I hope they don't make me eat my words.

They zoomed in on a fan in the stands, and you could tell he was wearing an Orange Ricky Williams jersey that was turned inside out. Awesome.

BTW, they've got the Dolphins cheerleaders in these outfits that look like big santa jackets. They're fantastic. I don't know why. They just are.

Miami overcame an 11 point 4th quarter deficit to pull of a victory against the 12-1 NE Patriots. Well, 12-2 now. Being 3-11, you've got to cheer when you can...

I f&*king hate Apple. I try to buy ONE thing, and they can't get my damn order right. I received an email saying that my order was confirmed. Then another email saying it will be shipped. And another saying it won't ship until xmas eve. Then I call and try to cancel and they tell me it's been shipped. Highly suspect. Bastards.

Found this on the Sports Guy's quote archives. Apologies to the female readers, but this is too funny:

"There are two ways to argue with a woman, and neither of them work."
-- Carlos Boozer after cancelling an interview with a Sports Illustrated reporter because his wife was expecting him home.

I don't even know what he means, but it's funny.

The December holiday season is time for many things. However, one of the newest and most time consuming rituals is playing tech support for the parentals. I'm in day 3 of my battle against some nasty virus/adware/spyware.

Anti-Virus + SpyBot + AdAware took care of a whole bunch of things.

I then won my battle with Trojan Downloader.Agent.P.5. When using AVG Free Edition on my parents' computer, it found the virus, but couldn't delete it. By scouring the internet and using a slight modification to documented techniques (renamed the dll in safe mode, then my AV software cleaned it out on reboot), I was able to dispatch this one.

Then I won against Kalvsys. I had to boot into safe mode and delete all the files out of my system32 directory.

Now I've got VX2 on my hands. This bugger is pretty damn hard to kill. AdAware didn't work, as it keeps coming back. The AdAware plugin doesn't work either.

At approximately 4AM EST on December 27th, the last of the viruses was eradicated...

I forgot to post, but we had a nice snowfall on Sunday night. Just enough snow to make shoveling fun, yet nowhere near enough to make it be real work. =)

As I said to my brother on the phone last night, I'm busy getting fed. Among other things, my dad picked up some lobster for dinner last night. Yummy. =)

As the matriarch of our house, mom was the one that made sure that we ate our vegetables, cleaned our room, and grew up to be seemingly respectable adults (the jury is still out). Oh, and on the side, she was a doctor that commuted over an hour each way, every day to put us through college. That doesn't leave a lot of time for hobbies.

That makes my mom the hardest person to shop for, in our family. Her main hobby has been completely oversaturated by gifts that she really doesn't need/want anything else in that category. However, since retiring, she spends a lot of time surfing the internet. Reading stories, doing investment research, sending email to friends and family, etc.

This year, we were going to get her DSL. After being pre-qualified, they sent out an installation kit that I promptly installed. Line filters were installed on every phone, answering machine, and DirecTV receiver. NIC cards were bought and installed. Ethernet was run and hooked up. Everything was ready for January 14th, when the service was to be turned on.

Then the Grinch came and stole Christmas. After being bounced around from orders to tech support to the cancellation department, I finally received an answer to why the order was cancelled. Apparently, there is a load coil that is disallowing the installation of DSL.

This is the same company that apparently charged my parents for touch tone phone service for over a year, even though they didn't have it. While I'm not alone, this doesn't make the situation any better. What do you expect from the bastards that would lay people off, 6 days before Christmas.

Time to start looking into Cable, Satellite, and Wireless.