Christmas Presents
1. Computer. Kind of a gift to the whole family. Moving up from a Pentium 2 to a Pentium 4, but still with Windows 98 (as longas we can stand it).
Our monitor was dying--turning faded yellow--and there was a fan in the computer making a lot of noise. When my brother visited in the summer, he said the noise was probably the video card fan, and we would benefit from more computing power, and a bigger monitor. In fact he tried to load a game--the new version of MYST--which he was willing to make a gift to our son. Even after a lot of emptying memory, and even buying and installing a bit more memory, no dice.
So now we have 40 GB of memory, a bigger monitor, some nice speakers. The text in documents such as this is a bit fuzzy; maybe I have to De Gauss, or something? Still, a big improvement for about $550 with all taxes.
I've installed some no cost or low cost firewall and virus protection software. The guy who sold us the outfit also sold us a disc with the new Norton, but we discovered, as we have discovered before, that the new Norton doesn't work with Windows 98.
2. Books. Reagan "in private" by Jim Kuhn--one of the advance people in Reagan's first term, and Executive Assistant in the second term. A gift from my son. Not terribly informative--you might expect to read more about the nuts and bolts of politics than you do. Basically hero-worshipping. The most interesting moments have to do with "which big shots are nice to the little people, and which are not." Reagan always was. If he had a criticism, he could deliver it very sternly, but this happened seldom, never with a loss of temper, and there were many more occasions when he took adversity with a smile, and treated everyone like a gentleman no matter what. Jimmy Carter after the Sadat funeral? Bad. John Connally? Bad.
Also a Stanley Coren book on dogs. Also I borrowed Lou Cannon on Reagan from the library, and I started Dune. Lots of reading to do; and, er, papers to grade.
3. Music. Some CDs I asked for: Charley Brown Christmas (Vince Guaraldi), Fred Eaglesmith ("Dusty," supposedly a tribute to Dusty Springfield and Jimmy Webb; sounds like country folk to me); Brian Setzer Orchestra; and a trumpet player my wife heard on Oprah--Chris Botti. Very nice. I got my wife some CDs thinking, ahem, I might like them. We both like Amy Sky very much.
Our son got Seinfeld, the first couple of seasons. I'm not that big a fan, but I can enjoy the highlights. (I think in the special on the show, Larry David was the funniest). He and I have watched some Fawlty Towers together. Maybe we'll get a chance to see some Blackadder.
We ate turkey both Christmas and Boxing Day. I got compliments for my mashed potatoes and pan gravy; on the second day I made up some fresh potatoes. Most of our relatives are out West, so Christmas is very quiet. We're having a few people over on New Year's Eve; I'm going to make chicken pesto lasagna.
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