I have to go out tomorrow morning and get the fixin’s for egg rolls. We have gotten together with good friends for the past several years for New Year’s Eve and cooked Chinese (I make a mean Cashew Chicken, for anyone who is interested) and I have made up the egg rolls ahead of time and then just reheated them that evening. I am going to try to cut back on the amount as it was too much last year and we had way too many leftovers. Looks like it’s going to be another good New Year’s Eve, though!

I guess the field at Boise State has been the center of an environmentalist controversy for a while. The artificial turf color is blue, matching the blue and orange of the Boise State Broncos team colors. It seems that migrating birds have seen the field and thought it was a small lake and tried to land there – they ended up head-over-heels; some of the birds have even died due to injuries acquired by their misjudgement on landing. Well, the environmentalists want Boise State to change the turf color – never mind who will fund the color change. (I guess these are the ones Rush Limbaugh talks about when he says environmentalist wackos?) The alumni association (who would likely foot the bill on any color change) likes the colors as they match the Broncos team colors and it shows school spirit. It doesn’t look like the color will change in the near future as the field is still fairly new and the turf in good condition. Right now that is at an impasse.

Iowa State plays Boise State tomorrow in the Crucial.com Humanitarian Bowl. All I gotta say is: “Kill ‘em, Cyclones; but do it in a humane fashion!”

Been a busy couple of days. Also, I have been a bit under the weather – not been sleeping right. Got Bree’s parts in and found they don’t fit as I thought they would so I ordered a new case for her. It won’t be here for about a week, though. The rest of the stuff seems to work great, just doesn’t fit in her case.

I did come out of this with a lower priced case site than I had before. The jury is still out on the cases, but the delivered price for a micro-tower with a 300 watt power supply of less than $27 is appealing. If it is delivered in good shape and as advertised, I’ll post the site. In the mean time, I will keep my fingers crossed.

Well, I think I goofed, but I don’t know how. Bree brought her computer home for me to put Windows 2000 on it; it locks occasionally when she is using it and Win2k is more stable than the Win98 that she has on it now.

I think I outsmarted myself as I figured I’d clean out the inside of the case. Hey – I put her system together and I know my way around the inside of a computer case pretty well as it is how I make my living. There was a lot of dust, so I took a can of air and blew out all the dust. When I brought it back in to my work area and booted it – BAM! – no boot, only an overheated lockup. How could it overheat WITHOUT the dust? OY!

To make a long story short, I have ordered a replacement motherboard and processor from Computer Geeks and hope to have it here tomorrow afternoon. The tracking number on UPS says it will be here Monday, but it arrived in Des Moines this afternoon, so I am hopeful that it will be tomorrow.

Christmas Day has come and gone. Got some really cool presents (no, not the Steve Martin presents of an electric dog polisher, fur sink or gasoline-powered turtleneck sweater!) but some really good ones. LOTS of M&M’s, a dark chocolate orange, some flannel boxer pants, a nice polo shirt, and of course the perfunctory socks and underwear (a stocking stuffer since I was a kid). Our biggest present was the futon that is in my wife’s office, which is Bree’s old bedroom.

Went to my brother Howie’s for Christmas Day lunch and ate WAY TOO MUCH. There was turkey, mashed potatoes, dressing, green bean casserole, creamed corn casserole, jello and assorted pies; not to mention the cheese, meat and crackers beforehand. Also played some cards – cribbage mostly, but I think others were playing hearts. I also thoroughly enjoyed myself playing with my 4-year-old nephew Nicolas. All afternoon I just pretended to watch TV with my eyes shut.

I hope everyone else had as good a day as I did.

I think I am going to go back to looking at Blog, a freeware Windows-based blogging system so I don’t have to rely on Blogger.com. Once I get that working, I hope to eventually put up my own web server and make my postings there. Hey – Machlink gives me 20 Meg (or 50 Meg depending upon who you talk to) but I want to control my system. I guess maybe I’m just a control freak. Or maybe it is a knee-jerk reaction to the fact that Machlink was down for about two days and then used a week-old backup for my blog. UGH!

WOO-HOO! Off of work until January 2! We have Dec 24th, 25th, 31st and Jan 1st as company holidays. I took Dec 26th, 27th and 30th as vacation. That means not going to work for 8 days. (I will be on call and checking emails and voicemails regularly, though)

I’ll get to spend some quality time with my kids. Ought to be good. We will also clean up the house after Christmas (UGH!). All in all I am looking forward to SLEEPING IN! Bill’s Motto: “Mornings were made to stay up until, not to get up for.”

Went to see “Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers” today. One word: WOW! With the introduction of some new characters and reuniting of old ones, the second movie in the trilogy held true to the book trilogy much like the first movie. Of course, there are some things that just can’t be done in a movie that are easily covered in a book and vice versa. But the movie was as true to the book as a movie can be – granted it has been over 10 years since I had read the book.

I won’t divulge more than the trailers have shown, but I will say that the principal actors once again did a great job. Elijah Wood (from nearby Cedar Rapids, Iowa) as Frodo Baggins – you can literally feel the pain and the weight of the ring as the movie moved on. Sean Astin as Sam Gamgee does a great job as a trusted and faithful friend to Frodo; he can see what the ring is doing to his friend but can do nothing to help. Viggo Mortensen was a wise choice for Aragorn; he portrays the valor of kings and the human capacity for self-doubt quite well in this one. Ian McKellen as Gandalf (of course he makes a comeback – what good wizard could not?) is amazing and proves once again that he is one of the best actors of our time. Orlando Bloom as Legolas and John Rhys-Davies as Gimli are great – I remembered the “contest” they had at Helm’s Deep to see who could kill the most orcs, adding a bit of comic relief to a grim part of the tale. Dominic Monaghan as Merry and Billy Boyd as Pippin play somewhat smaller roles here but still have a part to play in the movie other than orc bait. Christopher Lee as Saruman once again shows he can play the “good guy gone bad” with the best of them. This movie also introduces us to Bernard Hill as Theoden, King of Rohan; Brad Dourif as Grima Wormtongue, aid to Theoden but actually ally of Saruman; and Miranda Otto as Eowyn, neice of Theoden (who seems to have feelings for Aragorn immediately – kind of like my wife!).

Once again special effects, especially computer generated and enhanced special effects, are of great aid to the movie. The list of computer generated characters is quite impressive. It must have taken a lot of hours to perfect the images we see on the screen. We actually meet Gollum (Smeagol), voiced by Andy Serkis. Also, the Nazgul are riding dragons instead of their black horses. We meet the Ents, a race of Treeherders. We also first see Wargs, a kind of wolf/hog/horse that orcs ride into battle. To say that special effects dominated the movie would not be right; the acting was top-notch. However, without the special effects the movie would not have been as close to the book as it might have been otherwise. I have seen the animated version and it was pretty lame compared to this. I have seen many movies recently where the action and effects are the movie (The Scorpion King comes to mind) and the acting is barely high-school quality. This movie does not fall into that category.

All in all the story is magnificently told and true to the book. So far, Peter Jackson is true to the J.R.R Tolkien fantasy novels as anyone could hope for. I am already looking forward to the final of the trilogy – Lord of the Rings, The Return of the King. I give this movie a 9.

Haven’t posted in two days – been pretty busy at work and the kids just got home, so I haven’t had a lot of free time. Also I have worked on a co-worker’s home PC, which took a couple of hours.

We had the Jones family Christmas Part One today. I say Part One as my in-laws are divorced so we get together with the parents separately. Sounds like we are having the Jones family Christmas Part Two on Jan 5. We also have the Hilton family Christmas Parts One and Two since my folks are divorced as well. The Hilton family Christmas Part One will be Christmas day, hosted by Howie and Vickie. We haven’t set any plans for the Hilton family Christmas Part Two. All the family gatherings lead to a lot of overeating during the holiday season for me!

Today was with Paul (my father-in-law) and Janice. Good spread – as usual for all our holiday gatherings. I ate way too much. But a good time was had by all as it should be when you get together with family on a holiday. The only bad part about the whole thing is the three hour drive to get there and the return trip – makes for a long day.

The kids will be home tomorrow! Bree will be home in the early afternoon and Zach will be home later. The start of the holiday season is upon us. I still have some presents to wrap and put under the tree. Casey has tomorrow off and is going shopping with Norma. She said she will pick up some wrapping paper then. I have four presents to wrap, but I should be able to get that done before Wednesday!

Well, maybe I’m going to have to back up my blog on my ISP’s server. They have been down since Tuesday afternoon. Jeez, you’d think if they were running Sun stations (which they are) they’d have at least one spare machine or at least a decent backup. They restored back to December 3; luckily Blogger kept a record of my entries, so all I had to do was republish the archives and then reset the files I had changed since then.