New Year's Eve

We spent New Year's Eve over at our friend Jenn's place along with her other friends. It was fun, we watched the BBC show called Coupling until Dick Clark's New Years Rockin' Eve came on.

Christmas

We spent Christmas in Vallejo this year. I brought an old spare 20" TV that we had with us to hook up in my Dad's office, sine the TV in there would make a loud buzzing sound when there was a lot of white on the screen. On Saturday Mom, Treese, and I went to see Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol, and we all really enjoyed it. I wasn't a real big fan of the other ones, but this one was cool. Christmas was being hosted at my aunt's place, so we all headed over there for a delicious meal and the opening of presents. Auntie had me look at her computer since it had given the blue screen of death recently, along with some other popup notices. In the middle of updating their antivirus, the computer froze and I eventually just had to power it down. After that, it would constantly freeze within 10-20 seconds of booting into Windows, though booting into safe mode always seemed to work. What a pain! So I had to fix that, by completely removing the antivirus and cleaning the registry and then reinstalling the antivirus.

Motherboard

The motherboard I ordered for Ray's computer arrived today, so I installed that and got the computer up and running. Later in the evening we went to see a recital that Misty's daughter, Natalie, was in. It was cute. After that we headed over to Ray and Dawn's so I could give Ray his computer before we left for Christmas. After I got it all hooked up I noticed the temperature readings were really hot, and that led me to discover that the main fan wasn't working. So I took the side off and we positioned a desk fan towards its innards, and that actually seemed to work. At least now we know why the last motherboard got fried.

Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows

Yesterday we went over to our friends, Ray and Dawn, for dinner. They made Bangers & Mash which was absolutely delicious. We watched an old Saturday Night Live episode which predicted (correctly!) that Jimmy Fallon would host the 2011 Christmas episode. This morning we went to see Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows, which we both really enjoyed. Treese's friend Jenn met us there, and then later that evening we went over to her place as she was having a little get together celebrating her end of school.

Bathroom Shelf

Today we went to pick up a gray metal bathroom shelf that we found on Craigslist which we both really liked. Once we got it home I gave it a good cleaning and stuck it in the bathroom.

Real Hooks for Christmast Lights

Our friend Dawn stopped by today to drop off some hooks to attach Christmas lights along the rain gutters of the house. I had previously used makeshift hooks from Chritmas Tree ornament hooks. Not the best choice, but they worked if it wasn't to windy. The real hooks work way better! We also had the Charter Cable guy come out today to fix a problem we were having with our cable card where HBO and Cinemax channels would display nothing but a cable card information screen. All he did when he got here is call someone up and read him some of the numbers off of the screen. Really? And I couldn't have just done that?

Surround Sound

I finally got around to hooking up left and right surround speakers so that we could have 5.1 surround sound. I did it at night so haven't really gotten to experience it yet.

Darth Vader Blankets

Treese was gone when I woke up this morning. She was out with her friend at the new Twilight movie. I called Charter and got our rates reduced. In addition to reduced rates, the promotion they gave me included free HBO and Cinemax for a year. I'll take them if they're free but I wouldn't spend money on them. Treese and her friend went shopping after the movie, and she bought two really cool Darth Vader blankets which are large and very soft.