For the past couple weeks I've thought, "Man, I've got to post an update to the site," but honestly, I just couldn't bring myself to do it. I've got things I want to gripe about, such as when Vickie and I went to see The Mist with Robert and Nichole. Here's a tip for you: don't watch it, it will make you hate humanity and you will be pissed about the ending, whether you've read the book or not, you will be pissed.

Anyway, I figured I'd slip in an update just before the end of the year. My daughter, the lovely Elizabeth is known around the house as Bibbles. I gave her this name shortly after she was born (I've called her mom Bibs for the past few years, so Bibbles was a natural extension). This name lends itself to a lot of wordplay. We pack the Bibbles in a Bibble Bundle when we leave the house, and sometimes when she'd got a toy stuff in her mouth she will leak Bibble Dribble all over them, and sometimes she blows Bibble Bubbles while shouting her Bibble Babble. In short, she's our happy Ibble Dibble Bibble Baby, and she's a very happy Bibbles, but I'm afraid it's going to be her undoing. You see, she's five months old now, can almost sit up and has just started rolling over. She doesn't so much coo at her toys as most babies do, but shouts. When she's very happy and a toy is lodged nicely between her toothless gums she begins top shout and yell. We'd come running from across the house to see what was wrong, but no, she's just shouting. A couple weeks ago she learned to shout while inhaling and did it nonstop for a few days - it was like a tiny Ring Wraith was lose in the house, hunting the One Ring (of Plastic Keys). Her jovial attitude is going to be her undoing, because she is very happy, very easy to get to smile and gets very excited when her daddy babbles back at her in a high-pitched voice (often singing about his Ibble Dibble Bibble) - so excited that her short little arms and legs go kicking and whipping - but she doesn't laugh. She has laughed in the past, exactly two times, but those short, sweet moments were months ago. I fear that she is a deadly combination of her father who is very quick to laugh and easily amused, and her mother who has never been able to really laugh. Vickie laughs, of course, but she laughs silently, almost suffocating. I'm afraid that the Bibbles, being so easily amused will one day build up so much happy and excitement that she will explode, a tiny Bibble Bomb waiting to go off.

So. 2007. Got a new home, got a new car, got a new baby, filed bankruptcy and was then immediately set upon by every creditor/debtor/asshole that knew I couldn't run anymore. Christmas was going to be stark but a nice bonus went a long way towards saving Christmas for the family - and then Dad stepped in. I have no idea how much the man spent on the kids but all of them ended the night with an assortment of gifts that absolutely made Christmas for them. I bought CJ a new computer which we'll be building together and his father got him an XBox 360, but he has not put down the Nintendo DS that Dad got him in seven days. Tori got a bunch of Barbie dolls and furniture for them and was immediately given something to put them in: a four-foot doll house. Vickie and I each got new coats - mine was a bit large so we went to Burlington Coat Factory and there it was.... wait, let me set this up for you.

I wanted Vickie with me to help me pick out a coat because my fashion sense is... well, have you ever seen me before? Okay. So on a rare morning/afternoon we have together (since we both work opposite days) we headed north on the day after Christmas to the Tri-County mall (area). It was a grueling drive with the Bibbles and Tori in tow through traffic composed of Christmas Buckeyes. (Ohio drivers are typically stupid, but they save up the best of their stupid for the month of December). We got to the Burlington Coat Factory and after waiting in line to get credit we went up to look at the coats - now remember, the reason we did all this torture (kids in care, I-75, December, long lines) was so that Vickie could help me pick out a coat - and there it was. It's the exact same style coat I wore in high school. I was in love and didn't hesitate to buy it (losing Vickie and the kids for 20 minutes because the toy section was right next to the men's coats). Granted, it's a little too large (the reason I returned the first one!) but it's the exact same style I used to wear. I love my new coat and have decided to retire the cow hide (my old leather trench coat) to be pulled out for special occasions such as motorcycle rides or armor against an attacking mob.

Okay, let's talk tech - you people not interested in computer or television shit can skip this paragraph. I want to tell you about The Maestro. Maestro is the computer connected to my HDTV and it's running a program called Media Portal. The case for the Maestro is a squarish case with blue lights on the front, designed to look nice on the entertainment center. I've got an nVidia HDTV compatible card in it that, shock of shocks, just plain works with my TV when connected by component cables at a beautiful 1688x1066 resolution. Further accessories for the Maestro include a Microsoft MCE remote (which has been hacked to use standard signals which were then learned by my universal remote, which means that I still only need one remote control for everything) and (courtesy of Robin this Chrismas) an XBox360 controller and receiver which means that any XBox controller can sync with the Maestro and become a new controller. Why gamepads? The Maestro has an emulator plugin installed that allows me to play all NES, SNES and Genesis games, each of which has been painstakingly configured to work with the XBox controllers and run at full screen with the proper aspect ratio. The TVSeries plugin scans through my video folders and finds television episodes, grabs information about them along with screenshots and presents them in a menu system that keeps track of which ones you've sent. BitTorrent is set up to automatically download television shows within a few hours of their broadcast so that the shows appear on the Maestro ready to watch. CJ is especially fond of Freakazoid and Mythbusters while I watch episodes of Good Eats with reckless abandon; Vickie enjoys Reaper and the IT Crowd and I've got the entire first season of Dora the Explorer for Tori to load up at a moment's notice. This is where its at, folks. Even buying a full season DVD of a show doesn't compare to the ease of use and flexibility of having a computer as your entertainment hub. You can expect a five-year-old to open a DVD case, insert it and navigate a menu to load an episode, but I can hand the remote to Tori and within 30 seconds she's loaded a Dora episode that she hasn't seen (episode titles turn green when they've been watched). Add to that the DVD player functionality, music/mp3 player, picture browser connected to our entire library of five years of pictures, weather forecasts and maps on demand... and that's just what I've got set up now. Voice activation is on my table of things to complete ("Maestro, play album Master of Puppets" or "Maestro, what time is it?", and yes, these commands are built in and easily possible). Since the entire application is open source and coded in C# I can quickly create my own plugins - just last week I spent two hours online reading information on how CallerID works and how I'd work in a plugin for it when I found out that it was already created and I only needed to configure it - when people call the house a bubble appears on the TV saying that we have an incoming call from 8595551234 - if I create an image called 8595551234.jpg then it will display that picture with the message, probably your face, so even Tori can understand who's calling without needed into read the words. Sadly, my receiver is dying. Yes, my beautiful, uber, megasweet 7.1 Surround receiver has developed a buzzing sound in all channels, so it's back to the TV for audio. Ugh. If you know anyone who's good with electronics and stereos, send me their info! On the plus side, I don't use my DVD player anymore since the Maestro does all I need there. And when I do eventually break down and buy an HD TV Card for the Maestro it will be the only thing that feeds video to the TV (as well as record shows for us, pause live TV and become a complete PVR.) Folks, you simply must marvel at my awesome TV experience.

Now if only I could get broadband back - I used to have it, through Sprint, a very satisfying cellular broadband connection. Unfortunately, we decided to scale back our spending last month. (Okay, so we didn't make the decision, Sprint did, but we agree with it!) Paying over $250 per month for three cell phones and a broadband card just didn't seem like a good idea. I'm going to have a long talk with Sprint to see how badly they want our business - we've spent a month without cell phones and, you know what, it really wasn't that bad.

Okay, I think that should satisfy you guys. Yeah, I've only posted like four or five entries throughout all of 2007. I've been running this site (in one form or another) for a decade now, even more if you want to go back to my student webpage back when I was at NKU, so maybe I'm allowed to take a year off.

Happy New Year everyone!

LAST MINUTE UPDATE - I knew Vickie couldn't make it through an entire year without getting locked out of the house! Thanks for not letting me down, Sweetie!!!