Post-Christmas Musings

Helluva end-of-the-year present Indonesia got, huh? And the people that are supposed to know about these things have been saying for a long time that the east coast of the US is overdue for another major earthquake. Yes, you heard that right, "east coast" and "another major earthquake." I can't remember the date off-hand (and I'm too lazy to go look it up right now), but I believe it was sometime in the mid-nineteenth century. I'm probably wrong, though, as I have a mind like a sieve most days. I believe the fault line is located somewhere around Tennessee.
I can't get over the force of the tsumani -- the map of Indonesia has been redrawn, as someone else said; and it disrupted the rotation of the earth! Apparently the world is now a second ahead of all the clocks in the world. I guess that hobbyist that build the super-accurate meson clocks is going to have to do a lot of adjusting now. (I told you before, google it for yourself -- I'm still too lazy to write in links. Someday maybe I'll do better.)
Christmas at our house was pretty good... I finally broke down and gave more money to the Antichr--er, Microsoft and bought The Kid an XBox. However, by the time I gave in and decided to do it, they were pretty much impossible to find. I finally found one on the web, but by that time it was impossible to get it there by Christmas day. Today the nice UPS man came by the house and dropped it off, though, and The Kid happily grabbed his copy of Halo 2 and started blasting aliens for the rest of the afternoon.
Speaking of games, we have fallen prey to another of those accursed CCGs -- this one is called "Pirates of the Spanish Main" and is by WizKids Games . It's way cool, though -- each pack of cards contains (among other things) two little paper models of sailing ships you punch out and assemble. You set up a game on the table, and push your little ships around, fighting other ships and exploring islands to bring back "treasure". The Kid is ready to spend a goodly chunk of his Christmas money buying up packs in search of the five-masted killer ships -- so far my wife and I have all of those and he's way jealous. We're planning to spread our addiction to the wife's old college chums next, by mailing them a few packs of cards for a belated Christmas gift