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Merry Christmas
I'm off to visit the fam... I hope you all have the ability to spend the holidays
with the ones who mean the most to you: even if those are friends
like Solid Snake or Rikku, or actual family. Merry Christmas to you all,
if you made a good haul this year from the fatman, feel free to share.
Jake and the Fatman?
..that celebrates christmas!
- and wishes of peace, harmony and tolerance towards all that do not.
Have a nice year!
well in sweden we did the present unwrapping yesterday. so its all over now *pheew*
-- - e.m.p.t.y - --
Yes, it's been weird in Australia today... stinking hot, and some bushfires got started (deliberately) today unfortunately.
Hmmm... now *that's* something I can't blame on Microsoft.
6 t-shirts, 2 sweatshirts + caffeine cany from ThinkGeek
New PC next week!
I hope you all got something as great as i did...
merry xmas
That would be Santa Claus.
Off from work, that's for sure.
A working phone line (beware moving the week before christmas)
Internet Connectivity (ditto)
Laid
Over this stupid flu
Letter from Credit Card Companies saying "Hey, that's okay.. don't worry about that $15k you owe us, we'll call it even."
On the other hand, if I can get my ass up in 3 hours, my mom has invited me over for free food! Fuck socks, money, and cheap Walmart bullshit, I want turkey! To hell with Chef Boyardee for a day! woohoo!
Merry xmas to everyone!
If you were me, you'd be good lookin'. - six string samurai
New shirt, Adema's new CD, a Best Buy Gift Cert, and a tweed cap I've wanted all year. I can't complain.
:/
AND I got a turkey as a tip last night at work, along with $40 bucks. W00T!
Now if only I didn't have to work tonight...
Merry Christmas folks, hope it's a great holiday for everyone.
Christmas Eve dinner out: $250
/. at 5am on Christmas: worthless
12 beers: $50
Posting to
I got an Archos 6 Gig jukebox.
And DVDs of Bladerunner (Director's Cut, of course) and The Wall
Oh, and I'm hanging with my family, which is pretty damn cool (they're both geeks too!)
My Journal
I got my Christmas gift, they turned off my DirectTV. I called in, they said I was past due, damn NFL ticket is over, price jumped from 45 to 90 bux a month! Oh well, at least they turned the service back on.
Cant sleep, back to some more perl coding and watching sci-fi.
I bet it would be pretty hard to get modded "insightful" for a reply to this topic? This makes me sad. :( ;)
I got cash and clothes, btw. Merry Christmas.
Albuquerque PC
The moral of this story? Go to college.
> I hope you all have the ability to spend the holidays with the ones who mean the most to you:
:-) I'm about to leave to get together with the family, as most of us are, but I thought I'd give a big "Merry Non-Denominational Winter Vacation" to the whole /. community first.
:-(
> even if those are friends like Solid Snake or Rikku
Hmm. Does a bowl of Jell-O, a copy of *Divi Dead*, and a DVD of *Virtual Porn Sex with Asia* count? Hehe.
No, no sulking alone with masturbatory foods and computer games today.
That said, who here saw the Christmas episode of *Futurama* on Sunday, the one which the execs at Fox refused to air last year? Pretty hilarious. Pity what dicks the executives were in not showing it in the first place.
Merry Christmas!
Chasing Amy
(We all chase Amy...)
"The more corrupt the state, the more numerous the laws"-Tacitus
Let's not get fooled by the fanatic followers of Mr. Christ who are trying to pervert a perfectly fine pagan feast into some kind of superstitious x-tian celebration.
Happy Winter Solstice!
So my mother tells me that I shouldn't expect much for Christmas. This is fine, I guess I can understand if she leaves it at that, because they built a house and all that jazz. But then she gives her reason:
"The (new) pool table and basketball goal are your presents!"
I hate to mention it to her (no, I enjoyed it), but I live in flipping Ireland and the only time I get to play with the pool table is for the next two weeks of my vacation. And the basketball goal isn't here yet! So she got really mad at me for pointing that out as annoyingly as I did (I would much prefer honesty to excuses; if it's not my gift, don't 'give' it to me as a token gift).
That said, I still got three new shirts, a pair of trousers, some candy, and $150. Go me!
Merry christmas!
-knewter
I stole a car, got into a shootout with the police, ran over countless pedestrians, and flipped a semi in front of the police station.
Grand Theft Auto 3 for PS2. What a game!
The fatman generously provided me with a new Titanium PowerBook. Unfortunately, the fatman did his shopping before Apple changing to the combo (DVD & CDRW) drive, so just DVD for me.
Now, get off Slashdot and go spend time with your loved ones.
I was afaid she might think it was like getting her a bowling ball with my name on it but she dug it. Chicks *DO* dig linux.
We really need your help
http://www.gofundme.com/help-sherry
Really? What about all those atheists who were involved in either World War who "believed in freedom enough to die for it"? Or is it only people with a religious alignment (i.e. those who are courageous enough to make any decision) who are stupid for having ideals?
Get over it, man. An intelligent argument needs not this kind of banter.
MERRY CHRISTMAS!
Your Servant, B. Baggins
Despite plans to go to Amsterdam and Berlin for xmas/nye, I've ended up working, due to other staff being unavailable. I'm not bitter though :)
:) So now I get to work on it sitting here in a warm, stationary office, vs. on a bumpy train with a GSM modem.
I'm working on some code which should be very interesting in 4-6 months...bigger than HavenCo!
In conclusion - If Santa ever DID deliver presents on Christmas Eve, he's dead by now.
In a real emergency, we would have all fled in terror, and you would not have been notified.
A package of 12 pairs of black socks and 6 white undershirts, and my neighbor gave me a pII-400 128mb 20gb box which sounds cool except everything's integrated on the motherboard. Yay. Fuck christmas.
think for yourself, you won't like the results if others do it for you.
I got most of my thinkgeek wishlist. The eclipse light is awesome. I also love my Internet 2001 map. Anyone else get alot off stuff from thinkgeek?
Um, this is my sig.
So, my last-minute gift to him is a copy of the new OpenBSD 3.0.
I inscribed it:
Time since last remote root exploit:
OpenBSD: 4.5 years
Microsoft Windows: 4.5 days.
Merry Christmas! My condolences for you guys that have to work.
No, Thursday's out. How about never - is never good for you?
31st December is New Year's eve, which in fact is the time when people in Russia give each other presents.
X-mas is more of a religious thing there, like easter...
Since I never got around to ordering my college class ring, that's all I asked for this year.
;-)
The women of the family were extactic that I finally asked for something non-electronic/non-utilitarian! Anyway, it was put on order earlier in Dec and is not here yet. Johston's looks like they can use some help on taking orders too, but I got the customer copy of the order to hold until the ring arrives.
On the other hand, I got my son a copy of "The Federalist Papers" (along with other things), reversing his technique of giving me CDs that HE wants to hear
Merry Christmas and all of the other hollidays too!!!
Eve Fairbanks says I drive a hybrid!LOL
Santa's Rebuttal
NORTH POLE, SANTA'S VILLAGE - For Immediate Release
It has come to the attention of Santa's workshop that there have been disparaging remarks made in the press recently about Santa's very existence. Several key points are overlooked by this callous, amateurish, so-called study.
As was admitted by the skeptics, there is only a very small probability of finding a flying reindeer. That is precisely because they are all located at the Workshop. Your very argument against Santa is proof of his existence! As is widely known (Re: the excellent historical documentaries "Santa Claus is Coming to Town" and "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer") the flying reindeer are not a separate species, but were in fact given the power of flight due to eating magic acorns, which is passed on in their offspring.
A series of cascading assumptions have been relied upon to show the "impossibility" of delivering all presents in one Christmas. For example, there was assumed a uniform distribution of children across homes. Toronto/Yorkville, or NYC/SOHO, or other yuppie neighborhoods, have less than the average (and don't forget the DINK/SINK homes (Double Income No Kids, Single Income No Kids)), while the Catholic (the predominant Christian denomination) families with 10 children would skew that derived 15% of homes down a few percent.
You've also assumed that each home that has kids would have at least one good kid. Let us assure you that anti-selection applies, and homes with good kids tend to have more than their share of good kids? Still other single-child homes are notorious for spoiled "naughty" children and average 55% delivery on a good year. Let's drop that number of homes down a few more percent.
A simple history lesson reminds us that, the first major schism in the Church split the Eastern Churches, centered in Byzantium, from the Western, which remained centered in Rome, prior to the Gregorian correction to the Julian calendar. The Eastern "Orthodox" Churches do not recognize the Gregorian correction for liturgical events, and their Christmas is, as a result, several days after that of the Western Churches'. Thus, Santa's schedule is not as tight as previously indicated.
Santa does indeed FedEx a number of packages ahead of time, since he is not be able to fly into Air Force Bases, or into tower- controlled areas near airports. He's certainly not into dodging SCUD missiles over the no-fly zones in Iraq, so he uses DHL there. Subtract some more homes.
In regards to speed and time, we can't reveal all the details, but let us remind you of basic relativity theory: The faster you go, the slower time progresses. Do you think StarTrek came up with the idea of warp drive? So, if Santa could go faster than light, then he can easily visit all the good children which are not uniformly distributed by either concentration in each home or by number of children per household, and get home before he left so he can digest all those stale cookies and warm milk. (Has anyone thought of ice cubes?)
Aha, you say, Enterprise has matter-antimatter warp engines, Santa only has reindeer, where does he get the power to move that fast? The answer is right before your skeptical eyes! The lead pair of reindeer will absorb 14.3 quintillion joules of energy. Per second. Each. This is an ample supply of energy for the maneuvering, acceleration, etc., that would be required of the loaded sleigh. The reindeer don't evaporate or incinerate or get crushed because of this energy; they accelerate! What do you think they have antlers for, fighting over females? Think of antlers as furry shield generator arrays.
The issue of weight constraints and delivery methods also shows a shocking lack of knowledge of basic matter/energy relations and beginning quantum physics. (Picture a two dimensional complex function mapped to the surface of a sphere with approximately 9000 nodal surfaces, and 18 million regions of relatively high amplitude.) Assuming this is getting way ahead of most people's conceptual limits, we'll just say that Captain Kirk wasn't the first to say "beam me down." Transporters, replicators, and holo-projections have been standard equipment in some workshops and certain aerospace vehicle way before the 24th century.
If that's not enough, watch the news on the 24th at 11 o'clock. NORAD (one of the few government agencies with more than 3 initials in it's name and therefore more trustworthy than the rest) tracks Santa every year and displays radar shots of him approaching from the North Pole. They haven't bombarded him yet, so they must believe too, right?
We certainly hope this clears up any damage caused by the bad press. Santa dead, indeed--some people will twist any statistic model to "prove" their cynical theory.
Didn't CmdrTaco just say he was going out to visit the family? He is still posting stories! That guy has some serious dedication to this site if he is posting stories while visiting his family.
Not that I'm not grateful, I'm at work bored out of my mind... slashdot is great entertainment at [-1|nested]
Merry Christmas!!!
Merry christmas from Okinawa! Got some practical gifts from the woman and burnt a $20 phone card talking to her for 2 hours which was good enough for me. All my Okinawan friends had to work today, but they promise new years will make up for it.
To all my fellow Marines, Airmen, Soldiers and Sailors who also spent christmas with thier loved ones via phone or internet:
Semper Fidelis, Merry Christmas, and thanks for helping keep the world a safer place!
I've dirtied my hands writing poetry, for the sake of seduction; that is, for the sake of a useful cause. --Dostoevsky
Looking out my window, I see green grass. REALLY green, like it's spring. I live near Toronto, Canada.
We haven't had ANY snow this year, although everything to the north, south, east and west has gotten some. Maybe a few snowflakes a few days ago, but nothing that stayed on the ground for longer than a couple of hours. I don't even know if the snowthrower works yet (haven't started it up at all). Shovel hasn't left the wall yet. It's like we live in a bubble around here. Sorta throws the Canadian weather stereotypes in the trash, I suppose.
Merry Christmas to all!
You can accomplish anything you set your mind to. The impossible just takes a little longer.
My mother got into a car accident in march of this year and has been in therapy for chronic back damage , my step dad damaged the disks in his lower back. As such, both have been a little tight for money recently. So my gifts to them this year were:
(1) Fixing their car for them
(2) Lending them money for 3 months.
(3) A little P2-266 for step sister who has never owned a computer before. She almost hyper ventilated when she got it. Sometimes the joy is in seeing something I take for granted, like technology, even old technology, greatly appreciated by someone who is not surrounded by it 24/7.
(4) One of those green bankers lamps for my girlfriend, every time we watch Law and Order she comments on how cool those lamps look
No I didn't get much, I don't want much, if I need something in the world of tech, I buy it for myself. The gifts that mean most to me are the ones where the person gives you a unique gift based upon something you love.
Example, my girlfriend gave me National Geographics 100 Best Pictures of All Time and Gladiator on DVD. Not high in monetary value, but very high meaning for me.
My girlfriend was listening to me all year, and picked on up on stupid little comments I had made months ago! The listening is a gift I appreciate...it's just one of those things that keeps on giving all year long.
Christmas has taken on a new meaning for a lot of people.
No, I'm not talking about consumerism.
You dno't have to be celebrating any particular religious events, but it is a good time to get together with friends and family, and celebrate what _is_ important to you. Maybe you can call people you haven't talked to in a while, or apologize to someone you have been neglecting. Maybe you just want to feel good about something so you can make a donation, or think of a gift for something who needs it.
There's a lot to feel good about and celebrate besides a faith you may or may not partake in.
I got a Makita 14.4v cordless Drill. MMMmmm... power tools. Got anything I can screw?
Krispy Cream is people
A couple of years ago I ran across this song by Dar Williams called "Christians and Pagans". It's hilarious (+1) and insightful (+1), and it's been my favorite "Christmas" song ever since (except, perhaps, for John McCutcheon's "Christmas in the Trenches").
:). Plus, what's not to celebrate about the days getting longer.
So back in 1998 my brother and I started to throw "solstice" parties. We looked into various holiday and solstice traditions around the world. No real attempts at sorcery, bachannals, or blood, which I suppose some might expect. We wassail an apple tree, we make radish and butter carvings, we light and extinguish and light candles and talk about what we've done the last year and what we hope to do again. We have the "Urn of Fate" assign friends for the year. We sing "here comes the sun" and "christians and pagans". I'm sure any serious pagan would laugh at us, but it's our little chance to do things a little bit differently, remember there's other cultures and traditions in the world, and perhaps find magic/life/spirit in an unexpected place or two.
I'm still a reasonably solid Christian. OK, I occasionally go for bouts of rational agnosticism, but for the most part, I've found that Christianity as a spiritual practice seems to have something to it. So still I'm a little uncomfortable singing that line from Dar's song "sending hope for peace on earth to all their Gods and Goddesses". But I like this new tradition of looking at other traditions and fashioning new ones from it, and we're going to keep it up, as well as gathering on Christmas day and reading Luke 2 (stopping before we have to explain circumcision to the kids
Libertarianism is rich wolves and poor sheep playing gambler's ruin for dinner.
Oh well... :(
Being the way cool girlfriend that she is, my significant other got me an iPaq 3870. Somehow she just knew that I didn't spend enough time screwing around with linux on my desktop. Unfortunately, it's back ordered until January'ish. Anyone else have similar woes with their iPaq's? It's teasing to get a confirmation printout in your stocking.....
there are no stupid questions, but there are a lot of inquisitive idiots
Please accept with no obligation, implied or implicit, my best wishes for an environmentally conscious, socially responsible, low stress, non-addictive, gender neutral, celebration of the winter solstice holiday, practiced within the most enjoyable traditions of the religious persuasion of your choice, or secular practices of your choice, with respect for the religious/secular persuasions and/or traditions of others, or their choice not to practice religious or secular traditions at all; and a fiscally successful, personally fulfilling, and medically uncomplicated recognition of the onset of the generally accepted calendar year 2002, but not without due respect for the calendars of choice of other cultures, and without regard to the race, creed, color, age, physical ability, religious faith, choice of computer platform, or sexual preference of the wishes.
By accepting this greeting, you are accepting these terms. This greeting is subject to clarification or withdrawal. It is freely transferable with no alteration to the original greeting. It implies no promise by the wisher to actually implement any of the wishes for her/himself or others, and is void where prohibited by law, and is revocable at the sole discretion of the wisher. This wish is warranted to perform as expected within the usual application of good tidings for a period of one year, or until the issuance of a subsequent holiday greeting, whichever comes first, and warranty is limited to replacement of this wish or issuance of a new wish at the sole discretion of the wisher.
Error: PANTS NOT FOUND. Press <F1> to continue.
I shouldn't expect much for Christmas. This is fine, I guess I can understand if she leaves it at that, because they built a house and all that jazz.
OK
That said, I still got three new shirts, a pair of trousers, some candy, and $150. Go me!
What a selfish bastard you are, you dont think thats a lot? You are the kind of person that gives a bad name to americans!
- USB 100MB ZIP drive (Comes with Linux drivers
:)
- 100GB Western Digital HD, w/ 8 MB cache 7200rpm
- Kylix 2 professional. (For those that don't know, its Delphi 6 for Linux)
- 1GB RAM for my server
:)
- Bunch of other misc goodies
Merry Chirstmas!until (succeed) try { again(); }
You mean CowboyNeal?
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
- i sent my mom DHEA and a bunch of other bone-decay-and-other-menopause-symptoms-fighting dietary supplements which the french customs seized and are sending back to me. Next time i'll write "christmas candies" on the box. duh.
Dad gave me an iPod. sweet little toy. I had been wanting to buy one for myself, but was still on the fence. He read my mind.
Mom gave me a leather jacket! She pittied me when i showed up in Paris for the holiday in that dinky little jacket i wear in l.a. . Wait 'till my girl sees it when i get back huhuhuhu.
Extraordinary Vacations. Exceptional Prices
My wife gave me the best christmas ever, hopefully next year i'll be flying us to visit family
Hope everyone has a wonderful christmas!
Oh yea, and i got an xbox haha
now back to halo
Yes, for only $299. How nice. I bought 9 days too early. It would be nice if they would announce that stuff.
Christmas Eve I ran into a woman from high school that I hadn't seen in 10 years...hopefully I'll be hearing from her again soon :). On the other hand, after having been up for 24 hours building a new computer (my gift to myself) I make the luser mistake of *not* backing up my windows partition before re-installing Win98...at least all I lost where some not-so-important email addresses :|.
Well, guess what, I have just as big a problem with you "god" existing in the first place. Who created god? A meta-god?
A "meta-god" is beyond our scope. The Operating System is the creator of all, even if it is running in VMWare.
Actually, we are unionized. And the union gave us more of a bonus than my employer did - although we did have a free meat and cheese spread today. yum.
This year for Christmas I got:
1) An iBook.
2) A kidney stone.
*sigh*
As we know, Christmas is a holiday to celebrate the birth of Christ and the church made it dec 25th in order to usurp a pagan holiday.
However, Santas criteria is "Naughty" and "Nice", religion(for santa) doesn't enter into it.
know that I can quickly make up some numbers that show Santa needs to visit 100% of home with children, where at least one child is good.
If what I know about children is any indicator, then I can say Santa visits, at most, 1 child.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Why not just say that the god-which-is-not-meta is beyond our scope as well, and just be a nice agnostic like any sane person?
Any being able to house/create a universe probably has the ability interact with it as well, even on a high-level. If you were a master scientist creating a sim-world, surely you would not leave this out?
The "god-which-is-not-meta" is probably impossible to discern from the actual universe itself, since it would always interact with us _through_ it. If the root user needs to alter the state of an application, he interacts with the OS to do so. It would even make sense to simply say that for all intensive purposes, this "god" _is_ the universe. Living and breathing constitutes interacting with the universe, so I would conclude that this "god" is very much within our scope.
A greater question is whether or not "he" is a Miracle Worker, and would alter the rules and constants he originally decided upon. Since we have such a close tie to our universe, I simply cannot ignore the possibility.
Well, let's see:
That adds up to $250. No, that's not that much, for someone living in the civilised world. That's a fortnight's rent on a cheap single bedroom flat here in Denver. That's enough for two to go out to dinner three or four times.
But it's certainly appreciated--that was obvious from the poster's tone.