Offline Entry, Posted Jan 21, 2004
Christmas Eve we headed into work for a little bit so Michael could get some information he needed for the mortgage paperwork. We left there around 4, came back to Mom’s, and then headed out to Quakertown where Michael’s father’s side of the family was celebrating. I had a nice time, it was nice to meet more of the family, and they had yummie food. Every year they have a “seven fish” dinner on Christmas Eve, mmm fish! Since the purchase of the new home was so recent we were also able to tell everyone about it, everyone was quite happy for us. We stayed there until about 9:30, but before we left Michael’s grandfather showed us his wood shop when we asked. He built the garage tht it’s housed in, he also built his house! I was quite impressed with what a craftsman he was, his shop was beautiful, drawers of every size nut, bolt, and screw you could imagine, all carefully organized. And all sorts of tools, from tiny to huge. After exploring the wood shop he graciously offered to help us out with any repairs we might need in our new home. He’s a really wonderful man.
When we got home it was around 11, Mom suggested we open the gifts from her that night since Christmas would be so busy and she wanted us to be able to take our time and enjoy opening the presents. We recieved all sorts of wonderful gifts!
On Christmas we woke up around noon. Most of the afternoon Michael spent getting together more paperwork for the mortgage. By the later afternoon he had everything we needed and we decided to head over to his brother’s house. There we got to see his brother and his wife and some of her family, their children, Michael’s father and his girlfriend. Dinner was great, Michael’s brother fried a turkey, and it came out nice and juicy, they also had pasta, salad, bread, and a few other side dishes. Michael and I brought some Duvel beer, which was really yummie, even if no one else there was interested in drinking any of it. After dinner Michael’s father gave us a gift certificate to the Home Depot %) Woo more house stuff! He also looked over the inspection report (he has been doing construction and repairs for years) and gave us some advice and pointers as far as how to proceed and exactly what the issues with the house were, it was really nice to be informed of these things. He even offered to come down to see the house next month and take a look at it for us. Later Michael headed upstairs to do a bit of work on his brother’s computer, I stayed downstairs and played with his niece and nephew for a little while. I would have spent more time talking with the adults, but I’m just so shy! We left there a little after 9.
This is probably our most social Christmas yet %) Last year we stayed home together with our tree and small gifts for each other. Both routes definately have their merits, we’ll probably do a mixture of both next year, I want to spend a nice warm Christmas in my own house with a real Christmas tree and a nice warm fire in the fireplace, but it’ll also be nice to see some family.
I’m so happy we’re getting a house. And I keep thinking of things that I love about it. We got so lucky. There are all sorts of things we were willing to give up and we didn’t need to, we got a nice big driveway, a nice garage, a big wood-burning fireplace. I can’t wait to move in.
Yesterday was decent. I slept in again, but Michael got up a little earlier to head out to drop off papers to the Mortgage company, when he got home we decided to go for a drive. We
drove pretty far, eventually ending up near our new house, drove around the area a little to try and get a sense of the area. We did some walking around downtown Skippack, then headed to TGI Friday’s to get some food. It was a fun afternoon. We got home around 4 and Michael’s mother was leaving to go to her John’s place (her boyfriend) for the night, she mentioned that she’d be going up to the Poconos with him this weekend as well and offered to have us join them. How could we pass up a nice trip to the mountains to round off my Christmas holiday week? We couldn’t of course! So we’ll be heading up there this afternoon. It should just be a relaxing evening and night up there, tastey food and some beers with great scenery. We’ll probably drive back here sometime tomorrow afternoon or evening.
Hmm, I’m sitting here on the couch in the livingroom, I turned on one of those news channels, MSNBC, and I saw something quite disturbing a few minutes ago. They did a “quick headlines” segment, and of the top four stories, “Michael Jackson Speaks Out” got the most screentime. Now I realize that the celebrity stories, especially this one, are what get many people to stop surfing and watch these channels, but one of the other stories was about an earthquake in Iran that killed at least 20,000 people. 20,000 people dead, and people care more about a pedofile pop star? I fail to understand this. It’s so sad.
In the past couple weeks I’ve become more and more aware as to how bad the spam problem is in Windows. Back in 2001 when I used Windows full time the problem wasn’t that bad, popups were annoying, but not intolerable, the spyware existed, but you were aware that you were installing something when it hopped onto your computer. I didn’t even recommend that casual users, even on broadband, use software firewalls, the problems just didn’t warrent wasting the system resources on it. Today things are much different. Each time Michael has gone on one of his family member’s computers he has had to clean up all sorts of spyware and other sketchy programs. Even on dial-up! And installing this sort of spyware has become quite sinister, most recently I saw a windows messanger (the internal program, not the one you chat with your friends on) window pop up, and if you hit OK it’ll install something! And have you ever read the Terms and Conditions of these things? Always long, and by the end you pretty much give up any rights to anything on your computer. The most disturbing part is that even a smart person can fall into the habit of just clicking OK to every message that pops up in Windows, they often do look like legitimate updates. I learned recently that my grandparents down in Florida got rid of their computer because the spam, spyware, and all-around issues with running a Windows system were too much of a hassle. I understand that now. And it makes me angry! Even for a dial up connection you should probably run a firewall, and how would a normal person know that? How could they tell what is a good Windows firewall an what is just more spyware and spam? Hell, how I would I know without asking Windows techie friends of mine? Even much of the the stuff that AOL and MSN provide as a service to protect their customers is pretty bad.
I wish I could afford to buy everyone in my family a Mac or have the access to them that would allow me to administrate a linux install on a regular x86 box, I hate to lose touch with them because Windows is so prone to problems. And boo to all of you who say the linux desktop is not appropriate for non-gamers who don’t know much about computers, I think they are precisely the market we should be targeting. Most of my family just surfs the web, checks email, and chats on instant messangers (be it AOL, MSN, Yahoo!). All of these things have several solutions in linux-land! If I set most of them up with a Gentoo system running KDE most of them wouldn’t even be able to tell the difference, except for when they notice their computer isn’t being bogged down with popups, spam and spyware.
Well I guess I’m go
ing to go pack and overnight bag for our trip to the Poconos, and leave the computers at home! Yay! *wanders off*