Christmas was wonderful. Mom fixed a really great breakfast. We then opened our presents. I recorded the entire event on video. Later in the evening I recorded our Christmas dinner an our evening card game. We had a couple of retakes of Mom opening her last present … the tape ended just as the cover came off from this last gift. It was fun restaging the event and getting a surprised reaction. I typically record our family Christmas, and create a DVD production for play as we eat or Christmas dinner the next year. Since we are with Mom this year, I plan on sending copies to Mary (sister) and Tom (brother).

This year I will be creating the DVD on a new HP Pavilion zd8000. My previous DVD productions were done on a Macintosh, so this will really be a new experience with me. My first concern is what software to use. From what I know today, it looks like I will have to purchase something. First though I will Google for details.

Sandy won at cards again tonight. So sad …

Christmas Eve … Sandy and I went to church with Mom. There were some 1100 people in attendance. This was an opportunity for Mom to introduce me to all of her friends and her new pastor, Father Charles. I like him. He gave a very meaningful sermon and seems friendly. Early today Mom received a yellow rose floral arrangement from Father Charles. It was his way of thanking her for her help at the church. She was really surprised and pleased.

Mom opened a few gifts this evening. She wanted to be ready for her early call with Tom (my brother).

Played cards in the evening … Sandy won.

Today is my birthday. Received two very nice gifts. First was a set of glasses with a card design. These will be great for our Friday night card games with Bill & Bev. The second was a Logitech camera for my new laptop. It’s a great little camera … easy to install, works well, and is small for easy transport with the laptop.

Spent most of that day visiting with Mom and cruising the web. Later we played cards, and to my surprise I won. This means I am one game ahead of Sandy in our all time stats. I will enjoy this lead cause it won’t last long … she has a habit of winning this game. It’s only in Florida do I seem to hold my own. Mom made an angle food cake with a special pineapple frosting for my birthday cake. It was wonderful. All in all it was a really nice birthday.

Today we are off to Disney World. We started with Epcot then transferred to the Magic Kingdom then back to Epcot. Access to the parks has changed. They now check all backpacks, camera bags, and other carried items before you even get to the ticket counter. Then, as you go through the entry turnstile, they now have a finger print reader. This new system ties individuals to tickets to prevent lost tickets from being used by their finder. We found that it works when we changed parks. Sandy attempted to enter with my ticket and it refused her entry. Wonder if they do anything else with the data they collect.

We visited all our usual places … plus found a new ride, Soarin. No fast-pass tickets were available, so we waited in line for almost one hour. As we left we noticed the line was even longer. To me it looked like at least 1.5 hours long…

Next we strolled through the world pavilions stopping for perfume and wine in France, Tea in England, and Bratwurst, sauerkraut and beer in Germany. From there we took a boat ride and mono rail trip to the Magic Kingdom. Where we enjoyed the sights and a barbequed turkey leg. The Magic Kingdom was a madhouse … loads of kids. After a short stay we returned to Epcot. Sandy was a little under the weather about 6PM so we called it an early evening and returned home to Mom’s. After a little rest she felt much better. Overall we had a very good time. I think we might plan another trip for next week. While there we did check into the Disney Vacation Plan. I found it very appealing … if time permits we will attend their one hour tour and discussion of the plan.

Today was a lazy day. Spent the day visiting with Mom and enjoyed sampling all her Christmas treats. Of course we played cards till 2 AM. Some how, I managed to squeak out a victory in both games. This allowed me to tie Sandy with 13 wins each.

We did get out of the house for a few minutes to do some chores. The roads here in little Winter Haven, FL were grid locked with holiday shoppers. Seems like many people have moved into the area since we were last here, or maybe it’s just the season and everyone is out shopping. There is a lot of construction her so I suspect its just more people. You have got to wonder why people would move to a hurricane prone area of the country. It must be the beautiful weather.

Today we arrived at Mom’s. Our stop, last night was only 336 miles from her home. I am so very happy to see Mom. It’s been 18 months since our last visit and this will be the first time we visiting over the Christmas holidays. Mom’s house looks great … she painted it this summer. It smells wonderful, as she has prepared for Christmas with lots of cooking and baking. One of my favorite is beet soup and home made noodles, which she served this evening. As usual it was wonderful. After catching up on the latest news we played our first card game of Hand & Foot. Sandy won. She pulled ahead as our all time winner with a win total of 13 games to my 11 and Mom’s 4.

In June of 2003, I purchased a little notebook to record our score as we play each game and record win stats. It’s fun to look back at our previous games. Mom only plays during our visits. We play a little more often with family back in Phoenix.

The Verizon card works well. I have noticed that it has a tendency to stall during downloads that take more then a couple of minutes. It doesn’t happen every time … it’s a little annoying as I can’t download some of my favorite podcasts. However, email works great. Overall the product works for me.

Once again, we got back on the road at 7:00 AM, after a nice breakfast at the Holiday Inn. The weather was great, clear skies all day. Traffic overall was light. However, there is a real bottleneck in Beaumont, TX. The geniuses who plan road maintenance have shutdown all but one lane of I-10 east bound. This resulted in a 5 mile backup, and one hour delay. Because of this bottleneck we were only able to average 78 mph today. We are only 340 miles from Mom’s, so tomorrow will be a short driving day.

We stopped for the night in Marianna, FL at a Best Western Motel. Once again we are on the first floor. However, there is no noise from the unit above us. Have good internet tonight; two bars on the Verizon card. I did not try the card while we were on the road as I did all the driving today.

We finished the audio book The Children of Men by P.D. James. It turned out to be another very good book.

We got back on the road this morning about 7:00 AM, after a nice breakfast at the Holiday Inn. The weather was a little overcast but no rain. There was not much traffic, so were able to average 78 mph. For lunch we stopped at Cooper’s Barbeque. What a wonderful place. The first things you see upon entering are huge piles of pork ribs and thick chops, sausage and beef briskets. Sandy had the beef brisket sandwich; I had a pork chop and a small piece of sausage. The food was fantastic … only wish I had room for more. This is one place we must stop on the way home.

We arrived at our second stop about 5:30 PM Phoenix time. This time we are on the second floor and it’s much quieter. No internet tonight. The Verizon card can’t find a signal. Last night the signal was great. Tonight nothing; the phone service is also minimal. The service should be good tomorrow as we will be in Florida where Verizon coverage blankets the state. If possible I will try using the card while Sandy is driving.

We finished Alen Aldan’s audio book today. A great book once stated you don’t want to stop. Our second audio book is the Children of Men by P.D. James. So far it’s a little difficult to follow as the reader speaks with a heavy British accent.

We are off to Florida for Christmas with Mom. This year we decided to drive. In preparation, I downloaded 40 + hours of audio books from Audible. In addition to seeing some of the country we will catch up on our reading … well listening. We started late this morning 11:00 AM to our first planned stop in Las Cruces, NM. It took almost 6 hours to get here; a Holiday Inn Express. Wonder what the Express stands for? We have a very comfortable room. Only issue is that we are on the first floor and can hear the people above as they walk about. Sounds like a herd of elephants. They did have fresh warm cookies and coffee ready when we arrived. From Phoenix, we started listening to Alan Aldas new book, Never Stuff Your Dog. It’s the story of his life. So far it’s very good. His life as a young boy was wild as his parents were in show business. Sandy kept busy knitting a baby blanket for her sister’s new, very cute grandson. Her goal is to have it complete by the time we get to Mom’s. From there she will mail it off …

Today we ran into more traffic then I expected. The trip from Phoenix to Tucson was really slow. So much traffic and too many trucks. At one point we came to a complete stop in the middle of nowhere. As we screech to a stop the fourth car behind us rear ended the vehicle ahead of it. Because of the high speed it was bad. We could not see if anyone was hurt but the front end the car was badly smashed. For the next 40 miles we moved at no more then 20-30 miles an hour. South of Tucson things opened up and we were off. Set the cruise control to 80 mph and down to road we went. We only had to slow when encountering truckers pass other trucks. We did see a few that rode the left lane, making traffic pass on their right. These folks need to find another line of work …

Our next scheduled stop is Columbus, TX … some 750 miles away. It’s going to be a long day on the road with plenty of book listening time.

After much thought and evaluation I purchased an HP Pavilion zd8000 laptop. I really like this system. It has a very bright 17” screen and a great keyboard. It’s big enough to have a full keyboard with a number pad. It’s also a rotund 9+ lb. I purchased the system at Sam’s Club, my preferred provider … because of their 6 month return policy. I really wanted a new 17” Apple powerbook. The problem is, as a .NET developer its tough to work on a powerbook … Virtual PC is so … V E R Y S L O W. I have big hopes for the upcoming Intel machines. In the interim I’ll just use the HP.

The first thing I did with the new laptop was upgrade the operating system to XP Professional. In spite of this change SQL 2005 Express would not install. It continues to hang at the point of “Searching for IIS …” My search of the internet and Microsoft’s site revealed no information, workaround, or fix. Am I the only one having this problem? My work around was to install Personnel SQL Server 2000. Installing Visual Studio 2005 was a breeze. Just don’t let the installer attempt to install SQL 2005 Express. If you do, it will just hang the system.