Christmastime each year is an emotional conflict, a battle between the memories of the past and the hope for a new future. Christmas songs sometimes help and hurt, but today, I’m skipping my daily regimen of episodes of “24” while working. Instead it will be Pandora sending me Christmas variety and I’ll see how I end up by 5PM.

We’ll be spending the Christmas holiday with Tammy’s sister and her family this year, again braving the tundra that is Iowa in December. There’s really nothing quite like watching two adorable nieces open gifts and be beside themselves with joy.

Merry Christmas all!

I haven’t written much lately, mostly due to the fact it’s hard to find things to say without taking a lot of time to write. I’ll try to write a few small things each week and keep my few readers up to date.

I’ve been playing a lot of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 lately.  It’s a fun way to blow off steam and bleed stress at the end of the day.  Yesterday the MW2 “Stimulus Package” came out, a group of new multiplayer maps to explore.  I got the maps downloaded and installed without issue and played for about an hour.  It was certainly fun if not frustrating.  New maps mean new place to hide and I got wiped out plenty times when I forgot to check my corners.

I’ve hit level 64 and that opened up new weapons and challenges to make the final push to Commander.  After almost six months the game is still fun to play and I haven’t even tried the challenges or even a redo of the single player campaign.  This is going to make the upcoming Halo: Reach beta a tough choice–will I split my time?  Probably so.  I mean, it’s Halo and I’ve got a fond nostalgia for the game.

See you online!  My gamer tag is “houseofwarwick”.

Andy Ihnatko: “Apple sees its product line as a cast of characters, through which they tell a single story. If two products seem to do the same job, then one of them needs to go.”