I’m not a Christian, or an adherent to any other major religion, but I want to wish a very merry Christmas to all who welcome it. Probably no posting tomorrow. Enjoy your gifts.

If this happened tonight, it would make things seem a lot more like Christmas around here (currently in the eighties and muggy, with a forecast low in the seventies tonight). The current weather forecast for south Florida for New Years Eve is temperatures below freezing. We’ll see if that forecast holds up over the week.

[Christmas Eve update]

D’oh!

I’d forgotten that I’d switched my weather forecaster temporarily to Atlanta. Forecast for Boca is low of fifty degrees on New Years Eve…

…with a coarse-toothed comb?

Just wondering.

Today’s Woot offering is pretty funny:

If the scientist is going to use a home entertainment projector for the head, which one would we prefer him to use?

Woot feels the answer might be the InFocus IN72 Home Entertainment Projector. First of all, just look at it. This thing has awesome robot head written all over it. Not since HAL has there been such a perfect anthropomorphic design, allowing you to choose between:

a) breaking the ranks of soldiers by causing them to flee before your electronic snarl as you march on your state capitol or the state capitol of others.
b) breaking the ranks of soldiers by inviting them to stop and enjoy high quality movies or television in your new living room theater.

Also, the thing has sold out already, and it’s not even 10 AM on the east coast.

This is old news, and pretty inside baseball for new blog readers, but I would never have guessed who Stephanie Dupont was.

Great stuff, Will. It was hilarious. And kudos to Brian Linse as well, for putting it together. And if you weren’t around, you might want to follow the link from his site to Stephanie’s archives before reading the denouement.

Go give your best wishes to the fun and funny Cathy Seipp (and her daughter Maia), who has a not-so-fun-and-funny problem–she has been fighting a long battle with lung cancer, but is still hanging in there, and still blogging.

Jane Galt writes about speed reading. I’m a fast reader also, and find it frustrating and painful to have to read something aloud–the baud rate is just too low.

Louise Riofrio has been providing a tour on her blog. Just keep scrolling.

Charles Johnson has a knack for taking pictures that remind me of when I wasn’t in Florida. I’ve seen this view many times on walks. In fact, for a time, I lived just a few blocks from where it was taken.

OK, you know those cheap Chinese icicle lights?

Does anyone understand enough about the circuitry to have an explanation as to why the first third of a string wouldn’t work, but the rest of it does? I look at the wiring, and there seems to be a lot more than necessary (sometimes four in the strand, sometimes three, sometimes two). What’s the deal?

I don’t want to spend a lot of time on it, because I can replace them for a few bucks, but if it’s something easy, it would be worth not having to run to Tarzhay for them.