Thank you New York Giants! It's as good as you can get to the Steelers winning SB XL :)

Even though brocolli is good for you, it's not for me.

Attention Retailers:

It is not Christmas.

It is not Thanksgiving.

It's barely Halloween.

So stop playing farking Christmas music in your stores in OCTOBER!

Hope everyone is having a good Fourth. We sure are!

A note to everyone doing web forms that do email address validitiy checks: Having a '+' in the username is VALID. For example bma+spam@thunderkeys.net is a validly formed email address. Don't make me hate you by having your web form tell me otherwise.

Or better yet, just use the Email::Valid perl module.

I tweaked the picture gallery stuff a bit today to base it off of Stephen's version of my gallery code, which doesn't use a database backend. Should make doing new updates a little easier :) All of the old links should still work, but let me know if you run into any problems.

Finally, we get some real, honest-to-god snow. It started out as a 'wintery mix' but now it's just pure big-flake goodness, great for packing too. Weatherman was saying earlier we could get 3-6" before it's said and done...

I took a few pictures already.

I've cut over to a new server today. Everything seems to be working, but let me know if you discover any issues with the site.

And what better way to start it off with some delicious Indian food that I haven't had in months. We took a gamble that the food would still be hot after the 35 minute journey from Centreville to our house. Absence does indeed make the heart (and belly) grow fonder.

Christmas day has come and gone once again. It hasn't felt as Christmas-y this year to me for some reason, probably because it's been so freaking warm the past month with not even a glimmer of any snow. We got to actually sleep in on Christmas - I woke up around 7:30 or so and played some Madden, then the boys woke up and had breakfast and played for a while. We didn't get around to actually opening any presents until nearly noon.

Apparently we were all good little boys and girls judging by the stuff Santa left. Alex was much more interested in ripping opening packages than last year. The downside there is many more of his packages this time around were either wrapped in the Cursed Metal Twist-Ties(tm) or the Cursed Blisterpak(tm). I despise these things (especially blisterpaks - not only are they good at keeping thieves out of packages, but also people who purchased them! :P) Aaron got mostly new clothes, some college fund donations and a couple toys.

It was good seeing some family come down, including my Grandma and Aunt Jane. I didn't get to see Aaron most of the day as he was being hoarded by the family, but that's ok. :)

As for me, I got a new 30 gig iPod with video from my lovely wife. Also a TON of Steelers stuff (hammer, pens, keyring, polo shirt, steering wheel cover, hammock). Too bad they won't make the playoffs after all :( As a family present we also got a new digital camera, a Canon Powershot SD600. It's really nice, and hopefully it'll encourage us to put up photos more often. :)

The new job has been going well. It's been an adjustment as I've been used to the slow periods around Christmas during my time at AOL; here it's just the opposite - lots of stuff going on right before the new year. My computer (finally) showed up this past Thursday, which is a godsend after having to deal with a loaner laptop that I had no priveleges to install software on. I'm used to taking the week between Christmas and New Year's off, so this three day weekend will be a nice respite to relax and enjoy time with the family.

Hope you all have a safe and happy New Year's!