We put our Christmas tree up tonight! It’s an eight foot tree with 300 twinkling lights. The present under the tree on the far right is actually a water tank! It siphons water into the bowl at the base of the tree, meaning I don’t have to crawl under the tree with a watering can every day and get pine needles in my back!
Excuse the pun, but I just had to use the name “Wii” in a semi-clever way. Wii, er, we got up at 5:30am and got to our local Target a couple of minutes before 6 to find a line of roughly 30 people. After doing a count, we decided we were in with a good chance of getting one. At 7am they handed out tickets, and we were number 28 in line for 33 consoles in total! Once inside at 8am, we got the console, an extra wireless remote and “nunchuk” (the add-on analogue controller on a cord, connected to the wireless remote), Zelda, Call of Duty 3 and GT Pro Series. Now some pics:
The GT Pro Series game is cool because it comes with a steering wheel that the wireless remote fits into. Since the remote is motion sensitive, you drive by holding the wheel in front of you and turning! In Zelda, you can wave the wireless remote as your sword, and block attacks with the nunchuk as the shield. You can even fish with it!
Now please excuse me, I have games to play. 
Last year, much to Amber’s dismay, I started collecting old computers. After I collected four, I found I had enough parts to make one working one. My goal was to create a web server, or at least something resembling one.
It contains the motherboard from one PC (with an Athlon Thunderbird 1.2GHz), the memory from another, the hard drive from yet another, and one other computer kindly donated its case. The motherboard didn’t fit in the case properly, so I had to hack the back of the case a little so the connectors would poke through. The power supply didn’t work, but I discovered that there’s a line that is raised high when the power supply voltages reach their required levels, and for some reason, it never went high. I tested the outputs under load with a multimeter and they seemed spot-on, so I thought I’d connect that line to +5V. Bad move – I let out some of the magic smoke! After cutting the line and pulling just the motherboard’s half of it to 5V, the computer powered up!
The coolest thing about Franken-Puter is that it must be powered on with a screwdriver! Nothing makes you look more manly than powering on a server with a screwdriver. Trust me. The power button isn’t wired up – you have to remove the lid and short out the power terminals with the screwdriver or other conductive pokey object.
I also must thank Amber for her great artistic skills and giving Franken-Puter a brilliant personality! Notice the name tag. By the way, this site is hosted on Franken-Puter!