Well, it’s another Christmas Day and it is no less exciting than last year. Last year we got robbed right before christmas which made things not so nice. This year on christmas eve we got to enjoy material issues. I went upstairs around 5pm to take a shower so I could go over to my parents place and do christmas everything. Unfortunately, there was no hot water. I found that rather strange that there was no hot water, so i went downstairs and talked to Keen and Paulie to see if anything was amiss – laundry, flushing toilets, running water, something. Well, nothing, they’re on the couch chilling. So I go into the kitchen to check the bathroom and I hear water running. Hmmm, no water running in the bathroom, no water running in the kitchen. Then I go into the laundry room to find our water pipes have bursted! Yay! Water like an inch deep in the laundry room. Luckily, my dad showed me how to do basic water pipe repair, so I give that a go this evening and see what I can do. If you’d like to watch or advise, give me a ring LOL. In terms of Christmas, everything is going swimmingly over here. Lots of presents, lots of family time (which is nice), lots of food, lots of people coming and going. It’s a good time. Oh, also went out the other night with Tore, Keen, Paulie, Sammi and her friend Katie. We invited Emily, but received no reply as to her plans. Anyways, it took forever to get to Phantom from the store, and by the time I got there, Sammi and Katie were on their way out the door. I got to speak to them for maybe 2 minutes before they split. So … since the women were gone, it was drinking time. After a feather-light three pints I was roasted – got a ride home from Paulie, then crashed out. Then woke up in the morning and went to Hooter’s for lunch, then the water-pipe issue above happened. Signing off from my parents wicked-fast P200-MMX + 14.4kbps!

Nick’s server, which hosts rand0m.org, got “hacked” by an automated script that was running around exploiting phpBB installations. It rewrote all the .html & .php files with a defacement notice. So I restored from a random backup. Thank god it didn’t fsck with the database. Speaking of the database, I was doing maintenance to get everything back up to snuff. With a mistype of only a few characters, I erased every comment newer than 08/03/2001. Yes, 3+ years of comments (almost 5000!), gone. Poof. I had a totally accidental backup right there though, so after 30 minutes of script writing, I reinserted all the comments back into the database. It took .89 seconds to insert 4,785 rows. GG Computers! One of the Air Conditioning units at ONS stopped working this morning around 2am. At 5:38am I started getting phone calls from our alerter thing every 10 minutes telling me that it was now 72 degrees. 73. 74. 74. 75. 76. 76. 76. 77 … eventually on up to 80/81, where it stuck. There isn’t shit I could do about it, though, as I am not an AC whizbang guy at all. Called in Olson Plumbing and heating to take a look. Turns out that one of the cooling fans on the roof died. This caused the refrigerant to not cool off, keeping the system high-pressure. This high-pressure status made the compressor cycle on and off 2 or 3 times a minute, each time with an audible “Bang/WhumWhumWhum”, as it would come on, check the pressure, turn off. Repeat. The HVAC guy removed the fan, discharged the refrigerant and piped #1 compressor into #2 compressor, so we’re doing OK – but we are waiting on a replacement cooling fan. I’m going to my ‘rents place for Christmas Eve. I bought them some hot shizzle. I wish I spent that much money on myself. Then Christmas Day, I’m supposed to go skiing? Or do dinner with my parents? I think my wallet will decide that one. Talked to SuperSammi last night – she’s in town for the holidays … and more! It’ll be nice to have another smart woman to spend time with. <3 smart chicks.

World of Warcraft has stolen my soul. It’s like crack, but cheaper. It’s like buttery goodness without the calories. It’s like hot steamy sex without the psycho bitch. I play all the time. I’ve been trying to ween myself off of it a little, though, because staying up until 6am playing is bad for Body/Mind/Work/Store/Everything. I ran into Janora Curtis from highschool yesterday. I was walking out of my building and there she was – I said hey, she said hey, and that was that. I still haven’t spoken to Tabitha H itz, who works at the starbucks @ austin bluffs and academy. I think that’s because I don’t want to talk to her. On that note, there are other people who are bound to be here in town for the holiday season, who I really value and like quite a bit, but I’m unsure of how much I want to see them. I have like 6 people who fall into that category. :-/ Steve came down this weekend bearing gifts – so I now have a box at home! It’s job: play World of Warcraft. Crack, I tell you! Anyways, it’s pretty decent athlonXP 2GHz, 9700pro, 768mb ram. I’m really thinking about buying an LCD to match it, because the monitor on there sucks a LOT. So yea, new box & WoW. We went out and saw Ocean’s Twelve, it was decent – nothing outstanding, and a lot of twist in it. Keen pointed out the very good style of the movie, with a lot of “real world” filming – not so many closeups, a lot of off-screen banter, a lot of … wow, almost indy filming style. But I’m not a movie critic in any way, so don’t bother posting about what a twit I am. Craigalito swung by ONS today, while en route to pueblo for a funeral for this grandmother, in his new Saab. It’s a 97 (???) something or other. All I know is that it’s 1) wicked nice (leather, sunroof, the works) and 2) wicked fast. Good Pick. I’m already envious 🙂 Condolensces about the death, congrats on the car. Ok, so I’m standing out by Craig’s car and the manager for the 11th floor of the Alamo (where I work) comes out and is chatting with us. She asks for a boost onto the ledge right there so she doesn’t have to walk around. After looking at her with a blank stare for a second, she puts her leg up for the boost and I put my hands on her butt and give her boost. She says thanks and starts walking away, and the first thing I say is “WOW that was uncomfortable. And awkward.” She’s like 45 and a total country girl, so I’m sure she didn’t care but I felt kinda weirded out. LOL 😀 And the Techy Stuff. We’re turning up BGP4 tonight on a couple new links here at ONS, which is hawt but makes for a late night, and I’m thinking about buying a LCD. Oh, and a car? iunno.

I went out to dinner with Laura the other night – she was in town from Boulder for Thanksgiving. We had a pretty good time, even though our time was short because Chili’s closed hella early. It was nice seeing her again 🙂 I posted the full story of The Lucky Sacajawea over in the articles section. Little peice of trivia about ol’ randal 😀 My truck is having issues tonight. On the way to the store it started doing this funny shimmy-shake thing, where once every couple seconds it will stutter, almost like it’s running over a peice of wood. It’s extremely disturbing, and I’m afraid I’ll be buying another car soon. I posted some topics on some forums and newsgroups, and everybody says to replace the fuel filter & pump before I do anything drastic, then check catalytic converter, brakes and vacuum lines. Oy. I’ll post with what I find out when I jump under it tomorrow morning. [b]Update – 12/5/04 @ 2:12p[/b] – Well, I replaced the fuel & air filter with no luck. Tried to tune out the carb and noticed that the mixture adjustment screw is missing (!!!!). Argh. Anyways, I then replaced the fuel pump which helped a LOT, but I was still getting some bucking at ~2500rpm in 4th and 5th. So just for the sake of it, I replaced my distributor cap & rotor, spark plugs and spark plug wires. My old spark plugs made me want to cry, they were in /horrible/ shape. Anyways, those last few tweaks made it run pretty well – enough that I drove it to the store (~10 miles). It’s running horrendously rich though, so it’s either time to rebuild the carb / get a new one, or think about ditching it for a new car.