Well, winter is here. Break out your booties, folks. It's freakin' freezing outside.

<Office News>We finally moved out to the West End. It's amazing how many logistal challenges a company faces when moving offices. Particularly in our case, as we didn't have any infrastructure, phones, computers, chairs, office supplies, etc. I was psyched to see a red Swingline stapler on my desk after Suzi returned from one of many trips to Sam's Club. Things are finally settling in. I've been the I.T. guy, getting all the new office computers spun up and configured (which sucked without Internet access) and we finally got T-1 connectivity the day before we left for the Orlando conference.

The convention was HUGE. 25,000 attendees were slated to arrive sometime between Friday night and Saturday. We were just one of 550 vendors with a booth set up. I worked my ass off down there, but had a terrific time doing that. Who would have thought I'd like selling so much?</Office News>

My hotel room backed up to Downtown Disney. I walked into the LEGO shop and bought more baseplates for my next project (which I'll start sometime soon). I could see EPCOT and the Magic Kingdom from my room, which was a real treat around 10pm when the fireworks went off in both parks at the same time.

I could go on and on about the weekend, but I think I'll save that for the work blog sometime. There's too much other stuff to catch up on.

<Politics>My voting experience went pretty well- a few people I had talked to were in line for hours trying to vote. I arrived at 10am, (assuming I'd miss the pre-workday crowd) and walked right up to the table, got my ballot and was out of there within 10 minutes. It went pretty smoothly. My guy won too, which was nice. I'm sure if you're a Kerry fan, you were not happy about the results of the election, because most Kerry fans aren't really fans of Kerry- just not fans of Bush. Either way, I was happy. Presidents can get so much more done when they don't have to worry about pandering to parties to get re-elected. Now Bush doesn't have to worry about that, and a productive 4 years will help.

Some folks are starting to make waves about repealing the rules that require a president to be born in America. They've got Arnold Schwarzenegger pegged to be the president for '08, but I don't know if I see that happening. Either way, I'd vote for him. --especially if he goes against Hillary Clinton.</Politics>

Blogging hasn't been in my life very much recently. I've been working long hours and class took all the rest of my free time away. I hate to admit this, but now I'm just really looking forward to having this degree behind me. Before, it was an educational experience. Now it just feels like I'm taking a big painful dump and just want it to be over with.

<Geek News>I made a bold move last night. Something I'd been meaning to do. I cancelled my OLM service at long last. When asked why, I explained that their billing sucks. "We're working on that" was the reply, but I told him it was LONG overdue (they've been requiring faxed credit cards and snail-mailed checks since I joined back in 2000, and probably longer than that.) So farewell, OLM. I have a much more stable server now, thanks to Jeff. Very soon, I'll get Gallery working and will be able to say farewell to ImageStation too.</Geek News>

Last night was Christmas night for me. I got a fire going in the fireplace, turned on the Christmas music, tossed on my santa hat and set up the tree. There's never enough time to enjoy the season, if you ask me, so I'm getting started somewhat early this year. It was a lot of fun. I crashed on the couch around 1am to a glowing fire in the fireplace, and slept soundly through this morning.