Brian's World

Post Christmas

Whew, the bulk of the holidays are over with. Christmas is done, my brothers birthday is done, all thats left is New Years and Katie’s Birthday.. which I just forgot about… hrm, I guess I can’t say whew then.. disregard.

So yea, I’m not uber pleased with my gifts this year. I’m never super-satisfied.. but this year I think I was more disappointed then most. I didn’t even get some of the “usual” gifts I get every year that I was counting on… like gloves. I typically get 1 pair of gloves for Christmas.. this year, the year I’ve lost one of my gloves.. would be the year I don’t get any. I got a few gift cards. I don’t like getting multiple gift cards to the same place for the same amount. Instead of getting me 2 $5 gift cards to KFC.. I would like 1 $10 one [KFC is expensive for fast food around here at least.. so $10 won’t cut it for 2 ppl, they average more like $7 per person I find]. I got a vest, some slippers [I refuse to wear slippers], 2 pairs of new fancy socks [I bought ~10 this summer so I had enough], a box of cookies, and a new necktie. I do like the necktie, nothing fancy.. just red and blue diagonal stripes. I would have liked to get a gift or 2 that took batteries or plugs or something that requires assembly.. Katie pulled through in that category with an iFish.. I’ll explain later.

I feel like I need to make up for this by buying myself something. I know that this is likely a waste of my money and guilt induced shopping, but I spent a lot of time picking out gifts mom, dad, and kevin might enjoy and the fact that they did little to return that effort frustrates me. So here are my choices:

1. LCD Monitor – Right now I have a 17 inch LCD for my desktop thing but since I have more computers and more stuff going on I could justify getting another one, possibly larger. This would require a new graphics card for my desktop, which only has the built in one for now
2. Xbox 360 – If one more person gets Halo 3 besides me I am going to.. idk what. My 8 year old cousin got it for Xmas for Pete’s sake! He probably hasn’t even played Halo 1 or Halo 2. I played those games through high school, used Xbconnect to play Halo 1 online and Xbox Live for Halo 2. No one can understand my thoughts to the Xbox 360 but its sufficient to say I spent several months doing work regarding it… and I don’t have one. Yes, my time for gaming is limited and I rarely do play games, but idk.
3. GPS – I wouldn’t get one of those car ones or one of those computer only ones, I would likely get a handheld one that can work while hiking. It would have to interface to a computer to serve as a computer one, for directions and stuff. My idea is that a computer one is great if you have a computer.. which you can while driving and stuff.. but its more difficult when hiking. So I would get one to satisfy the base case that can extrapolate from there.
4. eeePC or something like that – While I’m not a Vista hater, I do dislike waiting several minutes for my laptop to boot. I honestly don’t need the processing power packed inside for most of what I do on a computer.. like check email, calendar, etc. I’m not so sure because I know there might be some neat phones out when my contract comes up [Aprilish] and I wouldn’t want to get anything that will get replaced quickly. Idk

I do not know what to do. I make sufficient funds over the summer, and I will likely be making a few dollars this break so who knows. I am a huge supporter of saving money and all that stuff, but its always hard for me to judge when I should stop saving for a moment. The stupid tux place was closed on Wednesdays so I have to go tomorrow to rent a tux for Cotillion.

My facebook application is very near release, I’m complete with the major features for now.. I think I have one more checkbox to add.. maybe. It will require a slightly different implementation for scalability reasons but it shouldn’t be terribly hard. I will most certainly blog so you all know to add it as an awsome app.