---

    I did some clothes shopping today, at Target -- some new pants, a new belt, etc. I went across the street to Office Depot too. I got the paper cutter my neice wanted for her artwork; I also got a new desk lamp, power strip, picture frame, and some pens for myself. In the evening, I watched Sopranos but taped Bono on Larry King Live. I thought I had all the Topps autograph cards, but I realized belatedly that I'd overlooked one (Dominic Monaghan again). I found an auction on eBay and put a bid in. Coincidentally I got an e-mail about the seller of the Orlando Bloom card. She was upset about the comment I'd posted about the auction, expressing disappointment that the card I'd been sent was ot the one I'd bid on. Regardless, this was true, and I ended up having to scan the card and send her the image. Overnight, I finished up Attack of the Clones's second disc.

---

    There was sleety snow this morning, making the roads sloshy and messy. Ironically, the best roads were the industrial drives around our office building. Jeremy was not in today, since he'd be working Saturday. Reid, back from his vacation, had a rude awakening, since the top bank of monitors was wigging out this morning. He figured out that the box providing the on-screen audio display was actually the culprit. So he'd called over to the team that services the hardware, and the guy showed up soon after I did.
    Even though the vacation had flown by, it still seemed like a long time since we'd worked a regular day. Long enough I guess for me to screw up one of the virtual channel overrides. Jeremy called up, wondering about Wednesday. Dennis had told us it was the company Christmas party and he expected Reid and me to attend. Jeremy would therefore have to work my schedule. It was too bad the party was this early since a week later and I could've worn my new blazer.

---

    Last night's snow was already melting. I went to the post office to mail a money order for a Topps card. When I got to work I thought I'd struck the motherlode since there were four empty spaces right at the front of the lot. I noticed though that there were already two cars in a row parked, and I realized that the parking spaces must've been covered up this morning, revealing that everyone had parked a car-length off. So I parked in line with everyone else, even though they were now obviously wrong.
    I could've sworn Dennis had told us the company party was this week (both Jeremy and I thought so), but now we heard it was next week, on Tuesday. Fred, in San Diego, believed our computer may be crashing since we were running too many processes during our report searches. So he wanted me to contact him tonight, after programming, so we could shut some stuff down. I wasn't sure how this would help us, since it seemed to suggest we could only run reports after hours. Our air conditioning units were shrieking and rumbling so much Reid called up building services. I don't know who fixed them last time, but they'd done a half-assed job since the problem returned so soon. The usual guy showed up this afternoon, putting on new belts and telling us the other guys had put on the wrong sized air filters.
    I hung around an hour and a half later, but for no reason. Our reports failed no matter how few processes we had running. Fred expressed irritation that our reports were failing when we tried to save them while he'd been told we were having trouble running reports. Those are two different things, he stressed pettily; disregarding, apparently, all the months of calls we'd made where we'd specifically detailed our problems saving the tier 1 report.
    I got my card holders today, so I spent the evening transferring my Fellowship and Two Towers autographed cards from sleeves to holders.

---

    Reid was not in when I showed up. Jeremy explained how Reid was sick. He'd come in, but had felt so sick he'd gone back home. Reid insisted he'd be in tomorrow though, since there was a big high-profile special broadcast tomorrow -- one of the ones we'd worked so much on our database for.
    Fred's plan for today was for me to make a complete 8mm tape backup of our database, ship it to him, and he would load it onto his own computer to try and duplicate the problem. He would also be able to see if installing an upgrade would eliminate it. Fred dialed in, so he could remotely run the back-up. He called up afterward with some concerns about what he'd seen in our error logs. He asked me to stay after again tonight so we could run through some troubleshooting stuff.
    Complicating things further, our scheduling software was gummed up. It had fdorcved me to install some automated update last night and now the program was saying its version number did not match the database number. Now, whose fault was that?! Jeremy got one of the guys from Traffic to come over, since he knew the password to start a reinstall, but when the guy showed up the program had magically corrected itself. I stayed an hour later tonight. I got my DVD Planet order in tonight.

---

    The big special broadcast this morning had gone okay. Reid had shown up, but had gone back home right afterward. The second part of it would be starting shortly. Dennis had come in too, and he came in again for the afternoon show. Jeremy and I got a bunch of calls this time -- but only a couple were about that particular show. About a halfhour in, though, things quieted down and we felt safe that this showing would go smoothly too.

---

    Reid was again not in, so Jeremy and I had Taco Bell for Fast Food Friday. Back at home, The Two Towers soundtrack CD I'd ordered showed up tonight, five days early! I tried checking out their exclusive web site, but it was up-and-running yet.

---

    I spent the day putting up the Christmas tree. The ornaments could go on tomorrow, but for today I put the tree together and put all the lights up. I think I used 24 strings, which means the tree had at least 2400 lights on it. A new record.
    I hadn't heard about my blazer yet, and it certainly hadn't shown up. But I got a postcard today saying the blazer was out of stock! I should've been furious, but by now I was disgusted. The whole debacle was pathetic. I called up and canceled the damned order and certainly will not be doing any more business with Casual Male stores or Palm Beach suits -- if indeed they know how to do business.
    I was unable to open my Add/Remove Programs applet, strangely. I tried running all sorts of diagnostic utilities and checking Windows Update. I even rebooted into Windows 2000, wgere I removed several programs but not the one I really wanted to (the spyware-riddled iMesh). I was able to at least get to my Add/Remove list through Tweak UI. I watched my Monster's Ball rental overnight.

---

    I'd gotten Department 56 multi-light strings from Marshall Field's, so I finished up the Dickens Village today, lights and accessories and all. I couldn't login to the U2 SHN hub on Direct Connect, but it dawned on me I hadn't been to the Blood Red Sky site in a while. I downloaded one of U2's 2001 Washington DC shows. I finally figured out it was all because of the Style XP theme I was using. Once I reverted to a standard XP theme, I was able to open the Add/Remove window easily. The Sopranos' season finale was tonight; and Bravo had some kind of Lord of the Rings marathon tonight since Ian McKellen was guest on Inside the Actors Studio while Cate Blanchett was the subject of Bravo Profiles right afterward.

---

    We put the latest Bob T lists on hold since we had another special show imminent, with about four hundred receivers on a nine-page list. We split it up three ways. Jeremy was in today since he would be going to Toronto Friday. I talked Reid into switching shifts so I could leave early Friday for Guys' Shopping Night. Speaking of which, I would be working Jeremy's shift tomorrow, so I could leave for the company party.

---

    I worked Jeremy's shift today so I would be done in time to go to the company party. I got in later than expected, and was surprised to find the room empty and all the equipment off. Reid was evidently running late too. I found a website called Jig Zone which hosts personal photos I can use as online jigsaw puzzles. I was tempted to offer these through my site, but the site had too many pop-up ads. The Christmas party was at seven; I left at five, hoping to waste time at Best Buy. In what I thought was a clever idea, I'd brought my electric razor with me and I shaved in the car. I hoped to get a gift or two at Best Buy but the crowds were too great; they had all the customers in one line which reached practically to the back of the store. I took off and headed to that Italian restaurant for the party.

---

    I came home last night to discover my website was down again. I was seeing this error.

Forbidden

You don't have permission to access /weblog.php on this server.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Apache/1.3.26 Server at www.shortfatguy.com Port 80

It was the same way today. I sent out e-mails to my provider and made some calls, too, during the day. The site came back up around five in the evening. When I got home I found an e-mail from my provider saying "The Copyrighted UR concert needs to be taken offline immediately." Never having recorded a concert in Uruguay, I could only assume he meant the "U2" concert I had up for download from their last Palace appearance. It seemed bizarre this set of MP3s would have caused a problem, since U2 had openly allowed people to tape their shows on the last tour. But, I dutifully logged into my FTP -- and was shocked to find the U2 directorty had already been removed! This seriously pissed me off, since not only were the MP3s gone but so were all my HTML pages and image files. All had been deleted for me.

---

    Even thought it wasn't Friday, I brought Wendy's in. This was because I would be working the morning shift tomorrow. During the day I noticed my ID badge was missing. I had to have brought it though, since I was inside our room. I found it on the floor, and it had somehow come off my belt loop. Later in the evening, I was afraid i'd lost my pager too. It was at home though; I'd forgotten it, but it had taken most of the day to notice.

---

    I worked the early shift, so I could get out of work early and meet the guys for our Guys' Shopping Night. The festivities would begin around four, so I wouldn't miss much. I wouldn't be able to do too much partying since I'd have to come in on Saturday to work with Fred in upgrading one of our computers. Fred however called up and said the upgrade might not work. We wanted it since we hoped it correct a persistent error we were getting; but he had discovered he was able to recreate our error on his own test computer, even with the error. Later on, after more testing, Fred realized that the error was being caused by one particular listing in our database. Somehow this entry had some kind of flaw or illegal character in it, which was erroring out all our reports. We deleted the listing and recreated it, and the error went away.
    I brought my razor with me again, shaving in the car before I headed over to the party. It started out at the club on Middlebelt we lovingly refer to as "Breast Buy". I blew a quick eighty bucks and met two friendly girls named Sunshine and Shelby. We went over to Southland Mall at around six. At Ruby Tuesday's I had chicken fingers for dinner and we had some beers before going out shopping.

Unlike past years I did have to buy something. I got a gift certificate for my niece and I also got the U2 videos DVD and a couple books for myself.

---

    I tried to take some of the strain off my PHP homepage. I copied the older entries and turned them into plain old HTML archive pages. I also tweaked the homepage a bit, making the foodstrip on the left a little narrower. Late in the evening my Comcast cable modem went dead. It looked completely dead; I couldn't even get the power light to come on. I tried resetting it, I tried plugging it into a different outlet; but it looked totally dead. I gave up and watched Al Gore on SNL.

---

    My modem was showing signs of life at least in the morning. It spent a while trying to boot itself up, but eventually it stabilized and I was able to go online again. I went to the new Chinese buffet tonight (the one in Woodhaven). It held promise, but the food was not very good. Everything was bland and dry and chewy. Actually, it all tasted microwaved, like it had been made at some central plant and just shipped here to be warmed up. Before bed, I forced myself to watch Ebert & Roeper since I thought they were going to review Two Towers. Unfortunately, I'll have to force myself to watch it again next week.

---

    The garage door opener died today, so I had to leave it in manual mode. At work, there was still fall out from that big cluster a couple weeks ago. Among other things, they wanted us to wait till the evening to do the following day's schedule, so we'd be aware of any last-minute changes. I had a better idea, but I was not part of the meeting. My idea. If someone makes a last-minute change, they should -- maybe, just maybe -- TELL somebody. Why is it our responsibility to babysit everybody? Do they want us to wipe their asses and burp them too?
    Jeremy's fiancée Courtney was out trying to get tickets to tomorrow's midnight showing of The Two Towers. He wasn't sure how he could make it to work the next day, but he was still planning on going. I offered to work his shift for him. I hadn't planned on it, but in doing this I'd be done early enough to go see a matinee on Wednesday. It worked out perfectly -- except for the fact all the midnight shows appeared to be sold out. Her last chance was the Emagine theater in Novi. I went online to see if tickets were available, but they apparently don't sell them online...which might be the reason she was able to get some, at the box office. Since I was already online, I went ahead and bought my Wednesday afternoon tickets at the Star Taylor, just to be on the safe side. Besides, I'd never bought movie tickets online before.

---

    I left early to go to the Best Buy near work. I had three things to get so I braved the crowds and the long line. I brought a PlayStation game, a new phone, and a gift card. I was in line for twenty minutes. A few people showed up for a small meeting in our room, later, to discuss changes to our database. Dennis hung around afterward to officially announce that Jeremy had been hired full-time. Dennis admitted that Dave would have to be put on extended sick leave, but this allowed us to bring Jeremy on.

---

    I worked from eight to four today. The day was pretty quiet. Jeremy was mum on The Two Towers specifics. I'd already read a lot of spoilers but he didn't want to ruin any surprises. They let me go at three, so I got to the theater at three:thirty. Just like last year, while other theaters were crowded or sold out, the Star Taylor was pretty empty. I had trouble fishing my ticket out of the Moviefone box. I showed up early enough to get a nice seat in the middle.


My reaction to the movie was much as I had expected: the craft and spectacle was fantastic, but a lot of the plot changes were unnecessary.

---

    Reid called up to get out second Internet computer, the one I usually use, upgraded to Windows 2000. A guy named George showed up, but couldn't load the OS since he couldn't connect to the company network. He took our hard drive box with him so he could "stage" the computer at his cubicle. He came back later with Windows 2000 installed, but the computer still could not go online. George failed to care anymore, since it was four:o'clock and he could go. Reid was pissed, since he had stayed an extra hour. I tried to work on network settings in the evening. George wondered if the network card was bad, but it had worked fine yesterday. Our domain was wrong and our IP address was unfamiliar, but I couldn't remember what the old IP had been.
    I stopped at Meijer's on the way home to buy another gift card.

---

    Since Jeremy had needed to work Tuesday instead of going to the company party, Dennis offered to take him to lunch. Or...Dennis would buy us all pizzas. Unfortunately for Jeremy, Dennis had made this offer in front of us. I was willing to let Jeremy have his lunch, but instead he settled on letting us all have pizza.
    My computer was still offline, and in fact IT's repairs this morning just made it worse. They'd figured out that George had used the wrong version of Windows 2000 for us, since we're in a different building than he. Windows 2000 got reinstalled, but there was an obvious conflict since now we could not boot up the computer. We kept seeing an error that the operating system could not be found! The IT department could not be found either, since they'd all left around noon to start Christmas vacation early. We had to have the production department print up a schedule for us, since our copy of Xytech was dead and buried.
    It was hard to believe but both the US and Canada did not have any shows scheduled next week. It really looked like we'd have the entire week off. It was fantastic. It was, in fact, too good to be true. The other, smaller company we work with suddenly decided they wanted to run shows next week, so our vacation plans disintegrated before our eyes. At least they planned on only running for three days -- the 26th, 27th, and 30th -- so we decided to work one day each. That wasn't too bad.

---

    Usually, before Christmas, my brother goes to my Aunt Clare's house to make Italian sausages for Christmas breakfast. Unusually, I got to go. This was my first time witnessing this tradition. (Too bad I forgot to bring my camera.) Rick and my Uncle Jack have this down to a science, so there wasn't much for me to do but watch. My Aunt ordered pizza for dinner; and on the way home Rick chose to drive through the Festival of Lights display.
    Work still had its hooks in me though, since I had to go back at eleven PM for the annual shut-down. In the past this has been on Easter weekend, but that changed this year. Reid and I and Dennis came in (Jeremy couldn't stay since he had a birthday party to go to) to "gently" power down all the equipment and then wait around for Building Safety and the fire marshall to come by and check our CO₂. There were donuts and coffee, but they lost their appeal as the hours wore on. Amazingly, I did not get home till four:thirty in the morning!

---

    After such a late night, Sunday was pretty lazy. I got some presents wrapped. And I had to go back to work at six to help power everything back up. The power would be restored, so now we had to turn everything back on, boot everything back up, and make sure it was functional. We were delayed from the get-go since the building network was still down, which meant the ID badges would not open any doors, which meant we were locked out of our room. We hoped Dennis had a key still, but it turned out he'd forgotten his ID badge and couldn't even get in the building. He had to call Reid's cellphone. Eventually a security guy came by and let us in.
    I assumed powering everything back up would be quick and easy. I had naïfly forgotten about the encoder. It evidently resents being turned back on, since after we powered it up we went black on a few channels and had failures on several boards. We ended up staying till around midnight. We had to call our support company and order three new boards; since no one would be in, Reid had them sent to his house. I sped home and remarkably made it back in time to watch The Two Towers review on Ebert & Idiot.

---

    It seems strange that the day I finally got away from work would be a weekday. I did my last bit of shopping. I also had some packages show up in the mail -- including my ridiculously big and expensive Black Rider figure from Sideshow Weta (which was my present to myself). I watched some Christmas movies on TV and I did a bit of work on my DVD reviews.

---

    Luckily my last two boxes arrived today, Christmas Eve. I had completely forgotten about my plans to change the colors on my SFG homepage. I'd wanted to make it monochrome and had wanted to make the change on the first day of Winter. I was a couple days late and hurriedly tried to do the job now. I went with my mom and dad to the four:o'clock Christmas Vigil Mass at St Joe's. Afterward we went to Olive Garden for dinner. I watched my laserdiscs of George C Scott's Christmas Carol and The Muppet Christmas Carol. I was delighted to see it was snowing heavily. The ground was already covered, and we'd managed to get our White Christmas in under the wire.

---

    My mom and dad had their big Christmas breakfast at eleven. We opened gifts at twelve. And Christmas was over at noon. I got my PlayStation 2, which was cool. Getting a toy for Christmas made me feel like a kid again. The first guests showed up at around three. My dad carved the turkey after five and we ate around five:thirty. Mom's dinner was extremely good.

---

    My pager woke me up at ten:thirty. I called work and found out Jeremy had called me by mistake. The only channel with actual programming was the only channel to have gone out. I'd thought Reid would've put the new boards in Monday, but I found out he'd be going in tonight and swapping the boards after the last show.
    I went to my brother's house by way of Meijer's. I was able to get some PlayStation memory cards at Meijer's (as a PlayStation newbie I'd been unaware of how little comes with the game console). Rick was watching his new Fellowship of the Ring special edition. He told me the toy I'd bought for Jake (my youngest nephew) did not work well. Even worse, the battery compartment would get awfully warm. I'd bought the same thing for my godson Brian, so I'd probably have to send both back for a refund.
    I played The Two Towers game all afternoon. And I started watching my season six X-Files DVD box in the evening.

---

    Today was my one day to work. Yesterday had been so bad for Jeremy, I went in early in case I had trouble too. But Reid had installed the new boards and everything was working fine. My shift was quite long and boring. I only got a couple calls.
    I went to my Aunt Mary's in the evening. My cousin Meg and her family were visiting from Maryland.

---

    A dull uneventful day. Did a lot of stuff on the computer. Played some more Two Towers on the PlayStation. Watched some more episodes from The X-Files box.

---

    My sister-in-law Eileen had tried resurrecting the Cousins' Party after Christmas. Instead, she just had a small dinner of chili and sandwiches. My brother Rick drove us all up there. Before we ate, my brother Mark took us over to see cousin Tom's house. Tom had bought a house near downtown Plymouth and was pretty much redoing the entire insides. I assumed this was in hopes of reselling it; unfortunately the house was so tiny it looked like a little gingerbread house.

---

    Today felt too much like a weekend. In the afternoon I went to the Star Taylor to watch Catch Me If You Can. It was all right but rather lightweight. I got annoyed though at all the chattering and murmuring going on around me. It wasn't kids either -- it was senior citizens! They would not shut up! I guess they're so unsure of their eyesight or hearing that they have to reassure each other about what's going on on-screen. "Oh, he picked up a newspaper. He's driving now. Now he's in France." Yeah, thanks. But you know, the movie can tell its own story.
    I hadn't had time to get popcorn, so I bought a bag on the way out. I went across the street to Southland and sought out the videogame store we'd been to at Guys' Shopping Night. I bought the other Tolkien-inspired PlayStation game.

---

    I wasn't sure what I'd do for New Year's Eve but luckily Rick and Debby weren't doing much so I went over there again. They went out to dinner but then spent the night at home. My mom and dad were there too. Before I left I discovered I'd gotten a package in the mail. Amazingly, somehow, I'd been sent an actual DVD Oscar screener of Red Dragon! Not some Asian bootleg but an actual screener from Universal. It had come by way of my subscription to Film Score Monthly, but I'm not sure why. They couldn't have sent the DVD and the soundtrack CD to every subscriber, so I have no idea why I was singled out.
    At Rick's, my dad, parking his car, accidentally backed out of the driveway into the side of his grandson's girlfriend's car. He put a tiny dimple in her driver's side front fender, but it ruined the night for him since he fretted about how he'd tell them. As it got later I realized the battery in my camcorder was dead, so I drove home to get my charge adaptor. We welcomed 2003 with shrimp, chips, some card games, and some asti spumante. Back home, I stayed up till around four watching Red Dragon (which was better than expected) and some of my Fellowship extended edition.

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