Jon and I arrived at RIT a little while ago, and I am fairly unpacked…. Wish I had more time to acclimate here, but they have us back in classes tomorrow (and we couldn’t move back in until today).

Heading back to Rochester with Jon in an hour or so… I really don’t want to leave, nor do I want to go back to Rochester…. This is the final assault before I graduate… Sigh

It’s 01-01-01… It’s a binary year, enjoy it…

Not looking forward to going back to Rochester tomorrow… Perhaps it’s just me being bitchy, but I am so tired of being there…

I just made a Taylor Ham & Cheese sandwich, which is damn-difficult to find outside of Jersey (at least, a good one is hard to find).

Should I work on putting more information on my webpage, like bio info, links, and shiz? Does anyone actually care about me that much?

Wow…. Another year gone by… And more importantly, the last day on my “Pop-up Video” Day-by-Day Calendar that My Roommate, Jon Parise gave me last Christmas.

I think I remotely finished up my work on Drink for this break… I made quite a few improvements to it overall, allowing multiple client connections at a time, wrote a dirt-simple logging server so we can keep track of what’s going on, tested the latest beta TINI OS (which is way more stable). I am looking forward to getting back and hooking it up to the machine (but that’s the ONLY thing I am looking forward to back there).

Finished up the First season of the Sopranos last night, and I watched an Interview of the series creator that was on the last disc… It was 1:15h long! It was a pretty good interview though…

Chuck called me this morning, we are going to go get him another DVD or so after he runs some errands… He finally has the ability to play DVDs, and he only has one… He is thinking about Willy Wonka, which I think is a great idea… :P

I wouldn’t say we are trapped in the house, but the snow (which is currently about 16.5" deep) is definately good encouragement to stay inside… Luckily Santa Claus left me lots of movies and toys to play with… :P

I ventured out into the wild before to deploy our Snow Cat/Mow Cat, which is a graduated board (in the shape of a cat), which tells you how deep the snow is… Being that the forecast is saying that parts of Sussex County could see up to 30", it might come in handy!

Another thing that came in handy was my new jacket. It is a Columbia, and replaces my older Columbia, which was getting toward retirement… I got the Ice Dragon Parka, which is crazy-complicated, and has lots of goodies to keep snow out of my arms, chest, and crotch. It is super warm, and has a super-comfy fleece liner…. And it is completely waterproof… :P

This break, I had the opportunity to play some video games, but I noticed that my machine was locking up on occasion… It started frustrating me, so I decided to investigate… I installed the latest drivers yesterday, and it was still crashing today, so I cracked the case open…

The fan on my videocard decided to fill itself with dust and seize…. I took out the card, blew as much dust out of it as possible, and WD-40ed the fan, and it spins pretty well again…. Hopefully that was it..

I have been fighting a little cold since the first time I visited Chris’ house, I think I caught it from her mother… Nothing bad, but the phlegm factor is a little annoying today..

Yesterday, I spent alot of the day catching up on the First Season of The Sopranos. I got the DVD Box Set for Christmas, and it is beautiful (especially in Widescreen)…. I watched the first 8 episodes yesterday, and I hope to finish the remaining 5 before I leave.

I am supposed to meet up with an old friend who I haven’t seen in years today, since well-before I left for RIT… Should be fun..

Today was very productive for me…. I acquired a hub and some 10Base-T so I could start hacking on my TINI, and I did so. I upgraded the TINI OS to 1.02b3 (we are only using 1.01 in drink right now) for testing, and I had to hack the drink source to work on it, since there were some API changes. This version of the OS allegedely addressed the “Telnet Server dying randomly” bug, which will be a major benefit to drink. I fixed another bug in drink earlier tonight regarding refunds if the drop fails, and I am thinking of hacking on multiple client threads for the SundayServer if I really have lots of energy in a few minutes.. :)

After dinner, I headed over to Chris’ place to see her one last time before she returns to CA tomorrow morning…. It really bums me out that we are so seperated these days.. It really depresses me. You never really know how much someone means to you until they are gone. Chris isn’t exactly gone from my life, but I only get to see her every few months, it is really upsetting… She is probably my best friend, and I wish I could spend time with her without feeling that the clock is ticking…. Maybe after graduation..

Ok, now off to possibly work on drink, but maybe to just call it a night and crash… We will see how I feel when I reach my bedroom. :P

I had a great time today doin’ the family thing…. We got up at 6am, before my mother had to go to work, so we could have “Christmas Morning”… The family was really split as to whether or not to wake up early; I was teetering (I think our family tradition was neat, but no-one other than my father seemed to want to wake up at 6 to do it).

I am very thankful, I can’t think of another thing I could have received, and everyone I gave gifts to seemed to be very pleased. While some people criticze the gift-exchange part of this holiday, I think it gets too much flack…. Yes, we shouldn’t be so product-oriented, but it is a great feeling to give and to receive.

As far as the receiving end goes, I received many DVDs, a bunch of CDs I wanted (Including 3 Talking Heads discs), and a TINI Board, which has little practical justification for me, but it totally for fun. Regular readers know that the TINI is the basis for the new drink hardware, so it gives me a non-production platform to play on, and I also have a few other ideas for fun things to do with it… The only way to install software on it (other than the shell) is via FTP, so I need to go out tomorrow and score a hub or a crossover cable so I can start playing around with it in earnest.

I truly hope everyone had a wonderful day today, and if you didn’t… Drop me a line, maybe we can make up for it… I have a good deal of happiness to go around… :)

Just got back from the rellies a few minutes ago…. It wasn’t a bad time at all, but my back really started hurting sitting on the couch at our last stop… Fortunately, just as it started to get really bad, we needed to leave, so we coudl go home to drain our dog.

Merry Christmas to everyone, I will talk to y’all later tomorrow!