Dec 26 2022: Xmas Stuff

Christmas was a lot of fun this year. My uncle came down to visit, so it was just me,
my brother, my mom and my uncle. He's a professional chef and he made an amazing
turkey dinner for Christmas. Last night he started boiling the carcass, and today
he started making soup with the stock. We had it for dinner and it was AMAZING. So
now we have a bunch of amazing soup *and* a bunch of amazing leftovers.

My family went a bit nuts with stockings this year (especially my brother!). Not only
did we wake up to full stockings, each stocking had a paper bag beside it also filled
with treats! I got all sorts of chocolate & candies, a RasPi Pico W, some adorable
stuffed animals (a polar bear and a black cat -- my favourites), and a plethora of
other stuff. And that was before we even started opening gifts!

I was given some wonderful clothing -- some really nice long-sleeve shirts, pajamas,
and a new pair of slippers with memory foam... so comfortable! My old ones were really
beaten up and they went straight into the trash (I bought them at a thrift store, so
they had at least two useful lives). I got Metric's new album on vinyl, an Elenco
AM Radio kit (which I started building earlier, but will complete in the next day or
two when I find a good moment). 

I've also been spending more time playing with CP/M on my Altair 8800 clone computer.
It's a huge amount of fun and I really enjoy these early computing environments.
Comparing the environment available when the Altair launched (essentially only
Microsoft BASIC was available) with the flexibility and power of CP/M is very neat.
CP/M would have seemed infinitely powerful and customizable. All you need to do to
get it to boot on a new machine is hand-edit the assembly code and re-assemble it!
Heh, all joking aside, Gary Kildall did an amazing job on all the software he ever
made. I wish I had discovered DR-DOS a lot sooner when I was younger; I've been using
it on all my DOS-era stuff and it is just so much better than MS-DOS in every
conceivable way.

My brother's gift for me didn't arrive on time, but it will be here on Wednesday, I
hope. I really have no idea what it could be, but my mom hinted that I would be very
surprised, so I'm definitely looking forward to it! I also have to give my uncle his
main present, as it too didn't arrive on time. At least I had something for him
under the tree...

Anyway, things are okay right now. About to get ready for bed I think. Goodnight!