Thursday December 26, 2002 at 02:12 pm

So I suppose I should talk about my Christmas back home, this may be short, but I doubt it.

Came home, met one of my mom’s friends, who thought I was someone else; this seems to be the case with everyone. Gave my mom her 3 DVD’s which one she already has John Q, High Crimes, and Left Behind II, I would have gotten the 1^st movie Left Behind – The Movie, but unfortunately Blockbuster was the only place where I could find them, and they only had the 2^nd movie. I told her she was getting the ghetto Christmas, because I didn’t wrap any of the gifts. I then handed by brother his 2 gifts; Mike Phillips – You Have Reached Mike Phillips, and Hidden Beach Unwrapped Volume 2, both of which I wanted for myself, especially since I have somehow lost my Mike Phillips Cd, but I suppose I’ll reacquire them all at a later date. I then gave my dad his gift and my brother and I then sat down to eat. Aaron, Brianna and I ended up leaving Phoenix, around 1:30 ish, so that put us in Sierra Vista a little after 4, leaving roughly 3 ½ hrs to enjoy the day, and then headed back by 8 that evening. Apparently my brother had arrived about 3 minutes before I did, and I had called my mom to tell her to go ahead and eat without me as we would be arriving later than anticipated. My mom then gave me the other gifts she had gotten in addition to the check her and my dad had sent earlier this week, to which I returned them back to her, as she must have been having a high school memory of me when I was slightly smaller, except for the one particular shirt, which I had already purchased last month. I told her to return them in exchange for some Tommy Hilfiger and Georgia Armani Cologne, and tossed them to my brother to see if he wanted them. I don’t know if he grabbed any of them or not.

You would think there would have been a few minutes of resting, which there was for everyone else, except for I, who had to remember how the DVD was connected through the VCR, and how to get everything to play correctly, this the TV has no audio and video inputs on the back, and only a coaxial jack. I told my mom to ditch the VCR and to go to Radio Shack and pick up an RF modulator to get the screen correct without using the VCR to try and filter out the Macromedia protection, currently any DVD played will go from light to dark in a 4 minute process throughout the entire movie, yes it’s quite annoying. After spending 20 minutes figuring out everything again, because apparently the instructions I had left there 6 months ago were somehow lost, a tried to sit down and actually watch one of the movie I had got my mom, wow who would have thought relaxing on Christmas day after a nice meal…”Negative Ghost Rider, the pattern is full”.

Taking queue from my obviously technical abilities, and especially since he couldn’t figure out after a month, my dad then tells me to make sure everything is working on his computer. So I go in my parent room, where the system is crammed next to the dresser and buried under miscellaneous papers, to which I immediately decide that there is no way in hell I was going to try and install a drive in those conditions and cramped quarters and drag it into the living room, to which at least then I can possibly have some visual entertainment. I would have tried watching the bits and pieces of the movie, if my dad hadn’t been sitting right next to me, hounding me every three seconds bantering…

“Turn on the light you can’t see anything”, Pay attention to what your doing”, “Stop trying to watch TV and finish what your doing”, and “See this is why people call you back, cuz you’re doing a half assed job”.

Now normally I would have retaliated with…

“You know you can always do this yourself”, or the classic, “If I’m doing such a half assed job then do it yourself, so I can watch TV.”

I opted, however for a more subtle yet very effective manner, to which hopefully would not lead to a huge catastrophic argument and thus pissing my mom off as well. No this time I choose to consolidate all response in one sentence and spoke calmly as I blindly reconnected the PSU cables.

“No I don’t need any light the cable only fit one way, and I am paying attention, otherwise I wouldn’t know that the cable fit only way thus I why I can pretty much do this in my sleep, and people don’t call me back for 2 reasons. The 1^st being because I tell those that criticize me while I’m working to shut the hell up so I can do my job, and explicitly advised them that if they don’t like they way I do it, then they are more than welcome to attempt it themselves, unassisted of course. The 2^nd reason is because once I fix a problem, that problem stays fixed unless they screw it up or the hardware fails.”

A mere moment of silence fell upon the room, as my brother gasped, as if I just done the unthinkable, and then my mom laughed “ Just blowing people’s hair back are we?”. To which my dad followed with “Alright smart ass, well see when it’s not working, and you know who I’m calling if it breaks”.

“Well if I wasn’t a smart ass I would be able to do this and everything else I can do, thus that would make me a dumb ass, and then who’s gunna fix it?”

By the time the conversation was over I had already installed the drive, re routed the wiring to allow easier access, and remounted the RAM in the correct slots, and repositioned the modem to a higher slot so it was easier to get to and would reduce the chances of static jumping off the carpet and shorting the whole damn thing out, all with minimal visual reference. Thinking I would have a few moments to get caught up with an apparent family tree my brother had done I jumped in on their conversation, which was quickly ended with my dad pestering me to test it so I could fix some more stuff. I checked the cables 1 last time and made sure all cards and Ram were seated correctly and closed up the case.

Squeezing it back into is makeshift home, I booted it to a surprisingly slow PII 400 MHz processor, reconfigured the BIOS, and rebooted the system found a dozen or so, files and programs loading that were for the most part useless and unused. I installed the CDRW software and made sure the drive was seen, and everything was working fine. Thinking I was done, I began to get up, but was adverted when my dad began the barrage of questions, about the 5^th one in I contemplated formatting everything, but then again that would take to much of my time, and leave little or none to relax and actually sit down, but decided to forgo the process and simply, streamline the system as much as possible, killing unused process form the registry and msconfig, and of course this include a crash course of the how to use Outlook Instead of Outlook Express, since I sent him the Office XP Cd a few months back to he could open Excel documents.

Several reboots later, and after reinstalling the dial networking components, as in the process of removing programs I for the most part destroyed the networking stack, everything was done, and most of all working, with the addition of VNC, as to avoid early morning wake up calls from him.

I then went back to rejoin my mom and brother, to find them already packing up leftovers, as usual he was claiming the majority, to which at this point I didn’t care, and opted to go look to see if I still had records stashed anywhere here, Unfortunately the 2 crates I located were covered with at least 100 spiders and dust/dirt and not even worth the attempt at reclaiming at the time, especially since I wasn’t driving my own car back and would be kinda rude to infest Aaron and Brianna’s car with the horde of arachnids who now claimed the vinyl as their home. By the time I got back in my brother had for the most part cleaned up, whatever my mom had not set aside for, which for the most part included cakes and cookies I probably won’t eat, but I’m sure Mike and Steve will appreciate those.

My brother seems to think his is better than mine, simply because it is low in calories and fat, however according to my mom, mine still states better, not to say his is bad, but he his is more of a traditional pumpkin pie and not the traditional Kennedy sweet potato pie. This of course lead to the health topic my brother seems to harp on everyone whose not in shape, of course after years of torment and hearing this same speech over and over again, I just don’t give shit anymore and let him know, he needs to get off high horse and stop judging people by how they look, and by who they are, and that he needs to make sure his closet is clean before trying to dig out everyone else’s. My mom simply looked at me and could tell the conversation was getting old fast, but to add insult to injury, I told him he either need to give me the $20.00 I spent on buying the blank CD’s for my dad on his behalf, or that he need to give up one of the CD’s I had gotten him. Of course before he could even say it, I mouthed the words “I’ll get you back next time to my mom, just has he was saying it”, to bad it doesn’t work that way, as I told him it wasn’t up for negotiations and grabbed the Hidden Beach Recordings CD’s and began packing it away, he didn’t like that and tossed the $20 in my direction to which I tossed the CD on the couch away from him, making him go across the room to get it.

Somewhere along the way, I found out I look almost exactly like one of my late cousin, who committed suicide a few years after my grandfather died, yet no one would tell me why, and simply left it at that, thought my dad said something about” that’s what happens when you love someone…..” he then drifted off into something else. I’m sure on day I’ll get the whole story, but at least now I know who this person is that ever since I can remember people have been saying I look like.

My mom had all the old photo albums out and I was about to sit and review some of the old pictures, when I realized it was now 10 after 8pm, so I gathered everything I had and called Aaron to find out his ETA, which was in less than 20 minutes, however my brother opted to drop me off, so I told him I’d come over there, to give them some more time to do what they needed to get done. At that point my mom hands me a huge shopping bag, and explained that for the past 6-7 years every time I had come down, I always left something behind, so she gathered it all up and finally put it in a bag, so she could give it all back to me, mainly so it would stop taking up space she needed. Since my dad has a scanner, one day I plan to scan all the images into digital format and make a family web page, but that’s likely not to happen for some time.

We said our goodbyes and told them I’d call when I got home, and loaded my brother new Saturn with our stuff, and drove over to Aaron’s parent where he dropped me off.

It’s funny how some things never change; I knocked once and walked in. I got caught up with his parents, and gave his dad some advice on what to do with his old computer, and then gave them a quick run down on what I had been up to. Their eyes kind of widen when I told them about how my car was stolen and everything associated with it. His dad’s one question to which left him astonished was, “Well after all that things had to have started to look up right?” I told him things are pretty much at the same spot where they left off. My life was reduced to the analogy of standing in water above your head, and having to jump up enough to grab a breath of air trough your nose, and with the addition to the University job as risen my height to standing in water to very base of my nose, and still having to jump up for air, when a waves comes along.

We loaded up the Civic and headed back around 9pm, and finally got back into Phoenix, at around 12:30am. Most of the trip I tried to get comfortable, but is hard to do when you have long legs in the back of a hatchback Civic, the rest of the time, I thought about how much things haven’t changed, but have. My mom was the only person to give me a gift this year, and this was the 1^st Christmas and the 1^st time I’ve ever gone back after moving that I haven’t gone to the mountains.

I unloaded and made a quick plate, and dumped my bags in my room. Mike got Splinter Cell as a gift as was trying to get past some level, at some point Sean called because he need a Phillips screwdriver to install a new hard drive and CDRW drive, so rolled over to assist and to give him some of the flyers to pass out, but I forgot the flyers, then helped him install the drive, actually just supervised if anything really, reminding him to check the drives jumpers, and then wiping out his BIOS settings. The previous owner of the board had set a password on the system and never removed it. Finished of the bottle of Crown Royal and Jack, and then rolled home.

The day after Christmas, usually the day when Aaron, Mike, and I would, sport all our new stuff, back in the day, I was awakened by a call from my dad telling me nothing was working, to which I spent the next 20 minutes troubleshooting things, to in the end simply reboot the system to resolve the problem. So if you want to know how I felt my Christmas was, derive it from what you’ve read, I’ll say this for sure, Christmas just doesn’t seem to be what it used to be, and hate to think it may never be again.