I'm sure others have bragged about their holiday hauls...

First off the ultimate gamer/geek desk toy...
Keurig Mini Brewer Coffeemaker, brews one cup of coffee, tea, or hot cocoa. Comes with a selection of coffee, tried the decaf sample last night... bleh... yuck... decaf sucks anyway. Tried a dark roast this morning... gotta get more.

2nd best...
GameStop gift card.

3rd best...
iTunes gift card.

And the rest...
2 pairs of sleep ware bottoms
2 dress shirts
6x pairs of socks not suitable for my comfy boots...
1 pair of leather/woolen gloves

And what I could have done without...
An overnight bout of holiday Chinese food inspired bathroom runs... (on the 24th)

So without seeing the two Transformers movies I decided to take a stroll down the action figures aisle of the local Valmar (Wal-Mart) toy department. Is it me or are materials used in the creation of toys getting cheaper and flimsier?

Anyway I spied right off the bat Arcee. Added to cart with a tub of kitty litter, and new light bulbs. Like hell I'll spend $9.96 for two indoor 60watt floodlight bulbs when I can get 3 florescent bulbs that do the same thing for $9.96. A tad bright though...

So armed with the instructions and Arcee out of the packaging I began transforming.

I must say the end result is a rather impressive heap of mangled plastic... I miss the days of old when it took no less than 7 seconds to transform Optimus Prime.

Two less than Nine!

So I updated my Alienware M17x with the Windows 7 upgrade that I received in the mail.

A wee bit of a learning curve with hybrid graphics... but as an update from Vista to Windows 7... things went rather smoothly. And got that nice performance boost to boot.

After getting to the first point where I could enter my key I ran into a black screen of nothingness and hard drive chuggingness. Windows 7 couldn't quite figure out which graphics mode to be in or which card to use. The 9400m or the GTX 260m? So I single fingered the system (press and hold the alien head on the keyboard to force the system to power off) and restarted into Windows 7. Same thing, so I hit the FN F7 key set (only works IF you didn't trash Vista completely and start from scratch) to force a mode change. After the second or third key press I got video.

Now if I can figure out if I can create a respawn disc from the system partition I'd be happy.

Just got an e-mail from SEGA about a limited time offer I've not shot in hell of getting into pre-demo release of a demo for Bayonetta. Each time I see or hear Bayonetta I think of Pia from the three Gunslinger Girl PS2 games where Pia shouts "HENRIETTA!!" when attacking.

Also I've no need to pre-play a demo of a game I've no interest in... So SEGA, stop sending these silly e-mails and get off your behinds and crank out new quests in PSU!

About 19 minutes ago I was RUDELY awaken by a wet sensation under the covers. No, not my fault entirely, but 10 years ago when a similar "accident" happened...

My beloved waterbed sprang a leak, at a time when there are no easily replaceable parts to be found at Wal-Mart or the closed down 8 years ago Waterbed Store about a 30 minute drive away.

Mine uses tubes, giving the bed a universal direction and offering somewhat easily controllable firmness/comfort by adding or removing water from the tubes.

So now I'm looking for something a bit different, or I might get lucky and be able to snag 4 new tubes which I last knew cost about $25 at Wal-Mart which would be cheaper than purchasing a new mattress entirely.