This Christmas was my last while living in Orillia. I visited Mom & Ross, Dad & Cathy, and my sisters of course. On Christmas Eve I went to a Christmas mass at a Catholic church with my dad and sisters. Christmas Eve is usually the only time I ever go to church, so every year it feels like deja vu. I wonder if Christmas is the only time my dad goes to church too? I am not Catholic. I was baptized Anglican (because I have a different biological father) which I hear is very similar. When I was younger we attended several churches before we found the one we liked the most: "Alliance Church". The preacher talked using conversation style and usually made the sermon interesting to listen to. Catholics have all kinds of rituals and the sermons put me to sleep.

Just before going to church I attended the Future Shop boxing day specials online (early access). They shut the site down all afternoon then opened it at 7:00 PM for browsing only. I opened the three items I wanted in separate tabs for quick access, then waited for 8:00 PM when the sale starts. In seconds I added the items to my shopping cart and was trying to check out. However, the site got so bogged down I had to give up by 8:15 PM to go to church. When I got back I found that they had shut the site down because of unanticipated volume (they should have been using Sun SPARC hardware :). Fortunately they reopened the site around 11:00 PM. The site put me in some queue when checking out because of the volume of users? I had to wait 45 minutes for my turn to check out!! I managed to snipe a Canon EOS Digital Rebel XT 8.0MP SLR digital camera for $399 before they sold out minutes later! All of the items I bought went sold out just minutes after I checked out. One of the other items was a 650V APC backup UPS for $39! They allowed only one per household so I went to the store on boxing day to pick up a second for my other computers. I saw some guy holding the wrong model (not on sale) so I told him. He didn't believe me so I reached down and snapped up the last one, then took off. While I was leaving I heard someone say "oh, he took the last one". muwahahah. While checking out I told the teller about my experiences purchasing the camera online. He was really upset because he wanted one too, and the shipment didn't arrive at our location for boxing day. He said some people were waiting outside since 3 AM for one of those cameras and were very upset. I'm glad I bought mine online!

The main items I got for Christmas from family are: Spring 2 Enterprise Applications (book), Struts 2 Web 2.0 projects (book), 1.5 KG of chocolates (you should see the size of one of the bars!), some wood and metal hand saws, some shirts, big flash light, key chain digital camera for the car (in case of car accidents), golf balls, and body spray. Thanks everyone!

During my week off I worked feverishly night and day reorganizing my home office. I went through my file cabinet and reorganized all of my files. I ended up shredding tons of useless stuff. I reorganized my server closet, removed a 5 port switch that was there because cables weren't long enough and replaced it with longer cables. I did so much in that room, it took days to complete. I won't be working from home until the move to Toronto, but at least now I know how it will look.

I rebalanced my RRSP portfolio this week. Hopefully I will see some improvement in the coming months. Also, I switched my cell phone from a Bell Mobility plan to Virgin Mobile. I don't use very many minutes per month, so pay-as-you-go is best for me. Bell doesn't sell minutes that don't expire for 365 days, but Virgin Mobile does. Bell charges ridiculous access fees and tower fees etc, but Virgin Mobile doesn't. Bell makes you pay extra for features like caller ID. Virgin Mobile gives you all features for free. Virgin Mobile runs on the Bell network so I know the coverage will be just as good, except I'll be saving hundreds of dollars per year. The only thing I don't like about Virgin Mobile is their phone system and website look like they are targeting 14 year olds. They call me "man" on the phone, use a lot of improper grammar, etc.

I have a few more things on my todo list. Hopefully I can get through them before work starts again:

• Wipe laptop and install Ubunut 7.10 on it. The upgrade from 7.04 failed, and now Thunderbird crashes all the time when I open it.
• Replace video card in Dell tower with one of my spares. The current one died months ago so I've been using my laptop instead. Update: It turns out the display cable was unplugged from behind the LCD panel :/
• Organize email. I'm really not looking forward to this -- over 3500 in my inbox. I think my new approach for 2008 will be to NOT look at emails as they arrive. Instead, I will open Thunderbird every hour or two when I have time to file all new emails into their proper locations. I think the problem has been emails arrive while I'm in the middle of something. I give them a quick look then back to work. Eventually enough have piled for me to give up on sorting them until the end of the year.
• Clean guest bedroom. James from IJW's BC office will be at IJW for a few days in January. He'll be staying in my guest room for those few days. Right now I've got a lot of cables and computer junk piled on the bed from my major office clean. I'll have to find a place for that junk.

By the time I get back to work at IJW, it won't feel like I had holidays because I've been doing so much work at home. Oh well, at least the work is finally getting done. I've been putting most of this off for a long time.