Well, I started my full-time job this week...

I've been at work every morning since about 8, then everyone else (including my boss) shows up at 10 or 11 or so.

It's kinda boring. I'm supposed to be doing sysadmin and programming, but so far, I'm installing windows boxes (and I don't even have Admin privledges yet!)

I haven't been assigned any programming assignments/tasks, but I hope they assign me some soon, I'm sick of sitting in my office playing games....

Well, Christmas is over, then comes New Year's, and then another week of nothing to do until school starts again. I'm slightly bored already. I've been working on my needlework because I want to get it done, and it's letting me catch up on a lot of movies that I didn't get to see or rent for various reasons (mostly that Lethyos didn't want to see them). But I'm not getting anything done on the computer. There are a few projects that I'd like to start, but with the needlework as a distraction, I'm not getting much done. And I'm kinda tired of playing on the computer for a while. I carry a laptop in my backpack to every class, and usually use it, but over the break I don't want to. I just need to finish the needlework so I'll want to work on these projects.

Well, Lethyos and I upgraded his gateway/firewall, ender, to connect to my DSL modem last night. Went a lot smoother than my first attempt had. He's a big Debian fan, and I'm not. A while ago, I let him talk me into putting debian on my firewall, well, pppd was very broke and wouldn't update my firewall scripts or my dyndns hostname when the IP changed. I told him to fix it. He never did. So it's still broke, and I'm giving it to my mother tonight. But when we went to set up pppoe and ddclient on *his* gateway, everything works fine. Maybe Debian isn't so bad after all.. Other than the fact that if you install anything from source whatsoever, you're screwed. I have a really bad tendancy to install things from source.

Now I have a new firewall in my apartment in preparation for him moving in. Now we have to figure out how in the world we're going to partition our servers (we have 4 computers each).

Why is it that Christmas dinners always take more time and effort than planned?
I promised my mom that I'd make some of my homemade cinnamon rolls for dinner tommorrow (er... today), and it's taking freaking forever. Who has cinnamon rolls for Christmas dinner anyway? No, I didn't volunteer, I was asked... and of course, I said "yes, I'll do it". Now I'm regretting it... Mix the dough, let it rise, make rolls, let em rise, cook em, coat em...
Haven't even gotten to the coat em part yet.. I think I'll do that in the morning, maybe..
It's already 2am, and I was up at 10am to help mom do other things for dinner, and I've got to get up about 9 anyway to get to her house on time for dinner..
The whole family will be there, at least Lethyos will be there with me as well.

Well, it's official now.. Lethyos is moving in. Now my rent won't be so expensive :)
We told his mom, and mentioned it to my mom, but haven't told her that it's final yet. They pretty much said the same thing: "I don't approve, but you're going to do it whether we want you to or not"
This is going to be soo cool!

Lethyos and I got to see LOTR yesterday afternoon..
WOW!
Being a very long time fan of the books, I was expecting them to diverge from the story in some places (Tom Bombadil), but not in others (Merry and Pippin).

Overall, it was an awesome movie and well done. Much, Much better than the cartoons, but that's not saying much. I have bruise marks on my hands and arms from where Lethyos was holding on to me so tight during some of the tense spots. The scenery was fantastic... Hobbiton, Rivendell, Moria (Lorien strayed a lot from the description in the book, but it was still cool).

Now, some of my complaints.... these really don't matter, but they really bothered me:

1) Aragorn not wanting to take up his destiny? Where in the hell did they get that? In the books, he's been just waiting until the right time to come out of hiding. Hiding among his people in the north. There's no mention in the book about him not wanting to take up his kingship.

2) Merry and Pippin just "stumbling" on Frodo and Sam. The movie makes them seem like stupid hobbits that are always getting into trouble. Pippin was (in the books), but Merry wasn't.

3) Frodo leaving the shire immediately.. He waited around for Gandalf to return from Isengard, but left anyway when he didn't come. foreshadowing his capture by Saruman.

4) Arwen. Enough said... She has only the briefest mention in the books (and even th3en, only in the appendix) I can see why they put her in Glorfindel's place, but it still bothers me.

5) Tolkien can be accused of speeding up or slowing the story down in places (ie.. 50 years just go by, when he spends almost two chapters on one party). The movie tends to lengthen things out where Tolkien doesn't. Like the battle with the Troll. They don't kill the troll, Sam just hacks him once, then they all run... And that falling stair? when is that ever mentioned in the book, and the movie takes forever to show what's going on. I think the time should have been spent on more "important" things... (read: things that were actually in the book)

I won't argue with anyone that it was a fantastic movie, and that I did enter it with a very critical eye on how well it followed the story. I would definately go see it again (I think we are tommorrow actually), and maybe this time I won't feel so uncomfortable with it.