Happy new year!

My new year’s resolution: Always wear clean underwear, just in case.

I wish you and yours a happy and healthy Christmas!

Here I am at the Old Orchard mall in the northern suburbs of Chicago.
I may be coming down with something…couldn’t sleep right last night
and I woke up all achey. Lesson learned: don’t mix beer and wine.

Still, this is a very nice outdoor mall. Its been years since I’ve
been here, but the crowds (right before Christmas) are manageable.
Probably not a good indicator for retailers.

The Sony store was pretty cool. They’ve got some really nice
ultraportable laptops on display. I’ll have to hit up Brookstone and
The Sharper Image on the way out- my kind of stores.

Just picked up my India Visa. I’m tentatively scheduled to visit our Bangalore office in March of 2008. That’s a long flight from Chicago.

I’ve struggled with my fear of flying for several years now; I’m not particularly excited about a ten hour flight followed by a twelve hour flight. I AM excited, however, to experience the culture in India.

I do have to point out something ironic. India visa applications are now handled by a company called Travisa. That’s right- the India consulate has outsourced visa applications to an American company.

I attended our company Christmas party last night at Dave & Buster’s. D&B’s is a chain restaurant scattered across the country that combines mediocre food with arcade games.

My previous memories of D&B’s were pretty poor. The last company I worked for had a party there. Let’s just say the “taco buffet” was really “hot Alpo and tortillas”. This time, we had the “Italian buffet”…which wasn’t that bad. Kinda tasted like wedding food, minus the chicken kievs.

We had a good time, in part due to the hard liquor available from the open bar. Personally, I don’t typically try to socialize outside of work with people I see at work. But last night, it was nice to be able to do so.

After complaining about not being able to find a copy of Guitar Hero III in a previous post, I finally scored! One of the local GameStops received three copies, and I scooped on up. I’m looking forward to jamming on some Kenny Loggins on Christmas Day!

Just completed a second playthrough of Mass Effect. Took about 27 hours (same as the first playthrough). I absolutely *loved* this game, and can’t wait for the next installment.