Christmas Roundup 2006

Well, I’m back from New Orleans. Christmas was a blast, and I got *a lot* of great stuff, but most notably, my lovely wife kept her eyes open and secured me a Nintendo Wii. I was so psyched to play it, and I am actually sore from it right now, no kidding.

The thing about the Wii is this: it’s really really FUN. It’s so different from playing a game while sitting down. Playing the games, moving around, designing a Mii — even watching other people play it is fun. It’s just fun. There’s no better word.

New Orleans is… well… what I expected. Much of the city is mostly back to normal, although traffic is crazy on the West Bank since much of the eastern part of the city is honestly unchanged since Katrina. It’s pretty amazing and eye-opening to see parts of the city worse off today than they were a year ago. Parts of the city are literally abandoned.

It was also great to see the in-laws. They once again received us openly and we had a great, relaxing time. They fed us well, kept us warm, and gave us another great Christmas.

I also missed quite an active week at OSNews, where Thom was able to anger Aaron Siego of KDE fame, and then backtrack a bit to clarify. I find myself often disagreeing with Thom, sometimes infuriatingly so (esp. with regard to his hard line politics and his anti-Isreal views). This time, I once again disagree with him. But what makes the world go round and the reason I haven’t slammed down my hands and flat out quit OSNews is because Thom at least has the guts to say what he thinks. The discussion is generally worthwhile. And though the criticisms that Thom uses OSNews like his own blog and that the staff is generally uninformed and unskilled is often tossed around, what appears on OSNews is much better than the tech alternatives, which is almost exclusively recycled and rehashed link soup. Slashdot rarely features originals, and digg *never* does. At least OSNews gets people talking. And although you may not agree with Thom’s or Eugenia’s viewpoint, there is always good conversation. I’m going to pick up the specifics of the article in my next entry.