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    Finally saw American Movie last night, after hearing much about it. It was a lot of fun and a nice slice of life. It's easy to make fun of protagonist Mark Borchardt for being quixotic and a bit of a loser, but as I was watching it I had to remind myself at least he's doing something. His mad dream is to make a movie -- and he's shown making it. He scrounges up the funds, he corrals his friends, he actually puts a movie together. You have to respect that. How many times have I envisioned helming some great project...and just left it at that. But Borchardt took his daydream and made it real, if only within his limited means.
    Pretty inspirational, I must say. But sure to be ignored, nonetheless. I'm much to sedentary to go charging at obstacles. Anyway, I lost a little respect for Borchardt when I found out he paids child support for three kids. I'd think when you've sired a family, your own dreams have to come second. (Of course, that's easy for me to say.)
    P.S. Internet access has been restored, here at work.

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    Today was mainly spent putting the Christmas lights up outside. For some reason we're using all white lights, even though I've always prefered multicolored -- and despite the fact the houses on either side use all white lights too! As usual we had to redo plenty of it because a string of lights would go out (would die on the vine, you might say); and, inevitably, although it looked okay when I premiered it in the evening, a good half of the display went out a short while later.
    Spent the evening going through a lot of computer files and burning them to CDR; as well as listening to (and broadcasting) Dido and Charlotte Church.
    Ren Radio appears to be better in idea then execution, since I haven't heard much I liked although I have a great interest in old music. It at least spurred me into resurrecting my old online station, Short Fat Guy Radio. I can't get SHOUTcast to work and Live365 requires a clunky interface, so I've gone back to myCaster. I can't really broadcast until the evenings, because of my job, but I can still program the occasional special broadcast on the weekends.

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    Spent most of the day putting up the Christmas tree, single-handedly bringing up all the stuff from the crawlspace and putting the lights on our tree. The ornaments are the work of other hands. Every year I am amazed at the resourcefulness of inanimate objects. A string of lights will latch onto anything -- a table leg, the lever of a reclining chair, your heels, other strings -- anything, but the branch you want it to.
    By the way, we have 1600 lights on our tree, a house record. I should put up some pictures, and turn this diary multimedia.

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    While skimming through my Entertainment Weekly I was amused by their review of some Christmas compilation featuring stars of NBC series. They described "Coventry Carol", performed here by ER's Alex Kingson, as "odd" and "medieval-sounding". This is akin to calling Entertainment Weekly "stimulating" and "magazine-like".
    More troubling though was an article about an upcoming Fox series called Love Cruise, which seems like a cross between Survivor and The Dating Game. What bothers me is not that our innate voyeurism is bring TV to newer lows, it's the fact the series takes place on the Windjammer ship Mandalay -- which means if the series is at all popular, we can watch Windjammer Barefoot Cruise rates skyrocket and my chances of another cruise disappear.

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    Discovered to my surprise that there's a U2 concert on radio tonight, originating from New York. I spent almost all day trying to track down what station, here in Detroit, might be broadcasting it. Which leads to me to today's gripe. Why isn't there something like a Radio Guide, like there is a TV Guide? It seems like it should be fairy simple for one of our local papers to publish a Radio page (in print or online), advertising big specials like this, or programs with topics of interest, or celebrity phone interviews or something. Why do I have to wade through search engine after search engine trying to find the individual web sites of the few (and growing fewer) Detroit radio stations which might possibly broadcast this concert -- only to find they're more interested in advertising what bars their DJs will be appearing at or what events they're sponsoring rather than what material they might actually be airing?!
    I guess, since I have an existing web site, I could volunteer to try and list upcoming radio shows -- except for one thing: I hate Detroit radio. I have actively avoided it for years. And evidently they don't want me back.

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    Barely got an entry in for today since I got distracted and sidetracked. I've been tossing about the idea of putting together a computer game, so I ended up spending most of the day looking over compiling and editing software. I'd already tested a few programs earlier, but for some reason I suddenly became re-energized this evening. I have a strong feeling very little will come of this, however. I'll probably end up frustrated since my goals will be beyond my execution, and this project will get shelved like all my other whims.

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    Finally got a chance to check out the infamous Jump the Shark page this morning. I was shocked to find The Simpsons as falling under the "Never Jumped" category. I can't believe my fellow TV viewers are so brainwashed as to not be able to come up with any instance of a Simpsons episode being bad or going too far. As far as the last two or three seasons go, that description pretty much fits every episode. The show has deteriorated into a wallowing mess, throwing characterization aside in a desperate grab for any kind of punchline, pop reference, movie parody, or guest star cameo. This devolution is perfectly illustrated in patriarch Homer Simpson, who started out as a well-meaning lovable doofus but has since become a blithering, psycopathic, homicidal, brain-dead jackass. My favorite character has become, literally, the show's punching bag...and exhibits the mental deficiencies to prove it.
    That this show has been left on the air to rot before our eyes is irritating, that the show is continually lauded as the best thing on television is disturbing. This topic really needs a lot more detail, so I could mention particular shows that "Jumped the Shark" (Skinner revealed to be an impostor, Bart mooning Australians, George Bush moving across the street, Springfield suddenly developing a huge mountain or being relocated to the ocean, Homer killing Maude Flanders). It should probably require its own substantive article on my TV page. But then again, screw it. The show's writers obviously don't care. Why should I?

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    Looking forward tonight to the first of our seasonal traditions: the Guys' Shopping Night. On the second Friday in December all us guys meet up at Southland Mall for our night of Christmas shopping. The activities begin at Ruby Tuesday's (which used to be McBob's), followed by several hours of preparation. Eventually we force ourselves out into the Mall for some token shopping, usually around fifteen minutes before the stores close. The event organizers claim this year's Shopping Night is our fifteenth annual. When it first started, some of the Guys had only just married their wives, so a big present during one early year was musical panties from the lingerie section on Hudson's second floor. (They played Jingle Bells.) But, my, how things change. The following year the wives were asking for flannel nightgowns. Ah, c'est l'amour! i got a big kick out of that.
    I'd love to sneak out of work early, since I'm scheduled to work til nine. But I doubt I'll be able to get away with it. I was also a bit unnerved after reading the rather pointed horoscope showing up on my pager: "Don't attempt anything out of the ordinary."

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    Stayed out too late Friday night. Spent a few uneventful hours at work, then went to a friend's house for a small Christmas get-together. A pleasant day, but I really needed to make time for a nap.
    Incidentally, I managed to hear Tuesday's U2 concert on radio. I uncovered what station was carrying it (CIMX, 88.7FM, "89X" out of Windsor). But then I forgot about U2's appearance tonight on Saturday Night Live! What a nondo. I managed to catch their second song, at my friend's house, but I forgot to set my VCR at home. Also, I bumped into that coworker again a couple days ago, the one who was applying for a job in my building. She got the job.

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    This is more like it. A nice relaxing lazy day. Spent most of the morning making a compilation CD of favorite Christmas songs. Did some work on the web site, watched Chicken Run, took some pictures of the house. Tomorrow might be interesting since they're predicting over a half a foot of snow.

     

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    Right after I took the picture below, the top third of the tree all went out!
    It started snowing today right before I left for work. A thin wet drizzly snow, but constant. Roads were sloppy. The only problem I had was the sharp turn from the Southfield Freeway onto eastbound Michigan Avenue. My car fishtailed a bit. I looked into my rearview mirror to see if there might be someone behind me, laughing -- but that guy was up on the shoulder!
    My boss was off work for most of last week, have developed problems with his eye. He was back in this morning though. I guess his eye actually swelled internally. His doctors have no explanation for it, and still attribute all the pain to a migraine. His boss called up around one:thirty and informed us most everyone in the building was being sent home because of the bad driving conditions. I, however, having the late shift, had to stick around for the rest of the day. It was a long and lonely seven hours. Driving home was not as bad as I'd feared; I didn't realize how bad the roads were til I got home and found my driveway was a sheet of ice.
    Got my new SFG sweater when I got home, though.

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    The icy rains encrusted all the tree branches and all the strings of Christmas lights. The sun was strong this morning, so everything sparkled and gleamed. It was quite pretty and I couldn't resist taking photos before I left for work. I guess a lot of people took the day off, since the parking lot was empty and for the third day in a row I got a really good spot.

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    Well, it looks like the election cluster is finally over. I can't say I expected it to end differently, but I sure would've liked to have seen it end better. The Supreme Court's "decision", for lack of a better term, seems about as half-assed as everything else in this election. As someone noted elsewhere, the Supreme Court couldn't make up its mind and simply chose to let the clock run out. But at least it's over, and we can get on to our next national travesty.
    (But then again, a photo like this, courtesy of a link from Yahoo! Internet Life, puts all this silliness in perspective...
http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/)

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    A fairly uneventful day. I stopped using eBay for about a week but now I'm back on it. It dawned on me I could use it to look for some of the old toys I used to play with. Just seeing pictures of them again was fun -- especially since buying them looks way too expensive. I love online shopping: I've pretty much gotten everyone's present and have hardly entered a store.
    My local ABC affiliate, WXYZ, once again pre-empted Whose Line is It Anyway? tonight. To add insult to injury, they let the 8:00 rerun air but pre-empted the new show. I sent them the de rigueur nasty e-mail.

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    My bosses took pity on me, letting me come in late today, to make up for my solo stint on Monday. I took advantage of the time by Christmas shopping. The hopes that the malls might be less crowded on a weekday were unfounded. Still, I got almost all my presents bought. And I capped the afternoon off by becoming a traffc hazard. The snow banks were so high I turned into the wrong lane and accientally left the parking lot by way of the entrance.

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    You'd think a whole day off would provide lots of time for productive work. Looking back on the day, I can't even remember how it was spent. I spent the morning on a scheme to encode all my U2 CDs and CD singles onto a CDR (but I kind of doubt I'll go through with it), I took a nice nap in the afternoon, and my brother and his family stopped by this evening. I guess that's it.

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    Man, where did the day go? I woke up early enough, but the day ended without my having accomplished much. Some auctions of interest ended today on eBay; I got shut out on almost every one of them. The site was so slow that auctions would end while I was still trying to load the Bid Now pages!
    Barnes & Noble lost some of my business too. I tried to order some CDs from them, but their online store appeared to be offline all day. Every time I'd click on the Add to Cart button I'd get an error saying the page was inaccessible. Not quite the sharpest business move a week before Chrismas, folks.

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    I got to see the infamous Star Wars Holiday Special today...or at least half of it, which was about all I could stand. It originally aired in 1978 on CBS, but I missed it. And I still continue that great tradition of forgetting when things are on TV.
    Yes, the show is as bad as I'd been told. An incredibly slow-moving and uneventful two hours, which, now that I think of it, scarily presages all the worst parts of Return of the Jedi. It's been said George Lucas has disavowed the production, claiming he had nothing to do with it and would love to destroy all existing copies. But I have a sneaking suspicion the show was his baby from beginning to end, just like his other winners like Howard the Duck and Radioland Murders, or just like like that wondrous creation known as our buddy Jar Jar. And George's plea of innocence is simply more of his revisionist history: "No, it was supposed to start as Episode Four", "No, Greedo shot first", "No, Leia was always Luke's sister", "No, it was never going to be called Revenge of the Jedi". In short, the same mind-set that created the Special Editions.
    Yeah, sure, George, whatever you say. But his less than stellar success with Phantom Menace suggests that Star Wars and Empire Strikes Back may have been flukes. And it's tempting to single out the Star Wars Holiday Special as being the point where it all went wrong.

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    An extremely quiet day at work today. Not one single call. That means no unsatisfied customers, but it was tough trying to look busy all day.
    I rushed home to partake in an online chat with an old coworker of mine and one of my favorite people. Sadly, we only got a couple sentences out before she lost her connection. I at least made the most of the remaining time by finally wrapping some presents.

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    Either I've finished shopping or I'm finished with shopping. I managed to visit a department store this morning before work, desperately searching for something for my parents. After about five minutes I was ready to take my own life! Women seem to thrive on shopping, so I guess my complaints are just a guy thing. But I swear, I've had it. I can't stand it when people walk slowly down the middle of the aisle, preventing anyone from passing them -- or worse, they suddenly stop in midstep as if uncontrollably transfixed by their surroundings. Or women who use their baby strollers like offensive weapons, ambushing you from the side. All I can say is: thank God for online shopping.
    Then again, disregard everything I've said because I'm a moron. I was so eager to be on time for last night's online chat that I accidentally left my laptop in my car overnight -- in single-degree temperatures! (Thankfully it recovered well, as evidenced by the fact I am able to upload this.)

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    Man, it's startling how cold it's been these last couple nights, when I leave work. It's downright arctic. The snows have been continuing, but only yesterday's was in any way picturesque. Mostly it's been sleety drizzly snows. But at least it's pretty certain we're to have a white Christmas, something Michiganders haven't had in a long time. This is like Christmases when I was a kid!
This just in!
(Well, yes, diaries aren't known for news updates, but this was originally published on my homepage.)
George W Bush comes clean in this heretofore unknown outtake from his December 13th speech.

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    The day was not quite as quiet as I would've expected for the last day before the big holiday break. There were a few calls, but nothing major. My coworker, though, discovered some big hardware failure when this morning. It's bizarre how all the equipment knows when there's a big vacation coming, so it can start acting up and force you to come in our your days off. This was just as true at my old cable job.
    One nice part was that I was allowed to leave early, at around six. I was surprised how unprepared for rush hour traffic I've become. I'm used to just sitting back and practically relaxing during my 9:00 PM drive. But now I had to sit up and drive defensively, keeping an eye on the wild drivers around me, having to dodge around cars broken down in the right lane, and keeping and eye out for police. At least I got to listen to NPR's All Things Considered again, which I haven't had the chance to hear since June.

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    The eve of Christmas Eve. Had to go in to work for a couple hours, but not as long as I'd expected. I planned to do a few things over the upcoming Christmas break, and managed to get a couple of them done already when I got home. Gosh, who knows what more I could do now! I might even do some actual upgrades around the site! Finished the day off with dinner in a Chinese restaurant -- just like in A Christmas Story, a movie which I used to really like (mainly since my nephew John looks just like Ralphie), but now can hardly bear to watch (since TNT has shown it way too many times).

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    Christmas Eve. I actually got mail delivery today! I guess it was Priority Mail, so it got delivered on a Sunday. A shame they went through all that trouble for a package that was simply another eBay purchase and had nothing to do with Christmas presents.
    We actually braved some stores today. All our shopping is done, but we still had to pick up a few foodstuffs for tomorrow's big meals. Surprisingly, the supermarket wasn't too bad. It was crowded, for sure, but the lines moved quickly. I got some work done yesterday but next to nothing today. Church at four:thirty. Went to Olive Garden afterward, which took a bit too long especially since our waitress didn't even know our table was hers. Rule to live by: "Never tell the help you're in a hurry. It doesn't work."
    An aunt and uncle came over for their traditional Christmas Eve visit. They just left, and I'm stuffed on cookies and chips and cashews. Now's the time for the clean-up, and then off to bed to wait for Santa.

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    Oy, what a Christmas! I put on so much weight I need help reaching the keyboard.
    The festivities began around ten:thirty, when my brother's family came over for breakfast. We exchanged gifts right around noon. We closed the blinds so we could videotape, and ended up completely missing today's solar eclipse! Everybody seemed pretty happy with their gifts, with only a couple potential returns.
    I guess my brother's sons woke the house up at five:thirty this morning to open their gifts. Then they went back to bed at seven:thirty! So after we opened our gifts here, most everybody wound up taking naps again.

My older brother showed up with his family around three:thirty. Dinner was turkey along with a stuffed pork roast (prepared to a Food TV recipe from Sarah Moulton). Thankfully, there were no Unfortunate Turkey Mishaps (UTMs), like at Thanksgiving. (Though I guess we did eat later than expected, again; but I didn't notice.)

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    The aftermath of Christmas:

    For a couple days before Christmas we babysat my nephew's new "Wet Pet" Siamese fighting fish. You might even have seen him live on my homepage webcam. I got so attached to watching him swim around while I typed and while I listened to MP3s that, having given him away, I had to go to Southland Mall today to get my own fishy fish!

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    I grew brave enought to risk going to Best Buy to return a pair of Koss radio headphones. They weren't defective, they just weren't the desired style. The return went fairly well (especially since the package was unopened), but was complicated when I wasted time waiting in the wrong line. Afterward I went across to Fairlane Mall to look for some Harry Potter sweatshirts at the Warner Brothers store. I didn't find any I liked however. Either the designs are lacking or the good ones were bought before the holiday.
    I thought yesterday's headache was just because I was going around without my glasses. But it has continued and has been joined by a tummy ache. I hope I'm not coming down with something.
    By the way, here are photos of our two fish. The one on the left is my nephew Jake's fish, which started out being called Symie and then became Maurice (?!) and is now Merlin. And on the right is my own fishy fish.

    

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    Tonight is our "Cousins' Party". Our extended family is so huge we've had to splinter off into groups to celebrate the holiday. My aunts and uncles have a "grown up" dinner, and their children have their own party. However, the festive mood is tempered by an unexpected passing. My fishy fish has died already, not even making it to his third night in my den. I guess he succumbed to the disease known by the satisfyingly straight-forward term "ick".

    Oh fishy fish, we hardly knew ye. (Incidentally, the above photo is not quite so morbid as it looks. The fish is not dead yet here, but he's definitely not feeling well.)
    (P.S. I already went back to "Wet Pets" in Southland Mall and got a new one.)

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    I can't believe how quickly these days have gone. A whole week off from work seemed a long time, but now it's over already. I still have three days off, but two of them are Saturday and Sunday and they don't count. Had a fairly uneventful day and just came back from a visit to my older brother's house, for dinner. Snow is falling again, so the drive there and back was pretty long and slow.
    In fish news, we discovered our second fish's cube didn't have any snails to keep it clean, so we went back to Wet Pets again, for the third time in four days.

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    Man, how can a day disappear so quickly? I don't remember doing anything today, yet the day flew by. I worked on the computer, we went to church, we watched Fantasia 2000 in the evening, and suddenly the day is over. At least I found out about New Year's plans tomorrow. Nothing big, but at least it's something.

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    Finally got around to working on some web projects, but still don't have anything to show for it. Maybe soon. Hadn't heard from anyone about any Millennium parties tonight, so thought I might end up ringing in the New Year a bit quieter than desired. Ended up at my brother's house, with our parents and his in-laws. It was nice, but was disappointed that no Star Child or monoliths made an appearance. Too bad. Maybe soon.

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