Well, the Christmas lights are up. I believe the count this year is 840 on the roof and 560 on the bushes, for a total of 1400 "cool white" LED lights. That doesn't count the lights on the tree in the lawn. I was playing some Borderlands last night, looking out the window whenever I saw some movement, and we stopped two cars.

If I really wanted to, I could wrap lights around the roof completely. That's one of the reasons I love the LEDs -- you can connect up to 29 strings of lights end-to-end, as opposed to 7 for the standard bulbs.

In other news, I'm on call this weekend. I am extremely happy that nobody called while I was on the roof -- I could only imagine the thoughts going through a customer's head if I had to tell them "hang on a second, I need to climb off the roof." It would be even worse if I slipped off the ladder and broke something, and then had to tell the customer I couldn't fix their problem on account of injury However, after all is said and done, I've had three calls so far: two were wrong numbers, and one was a customer with a genuine problem that I helped solve.

Thinking of putting up the tree today, but Julie is still asleep. I wonder how Daisy will react to the presence of the tree, as this is her first Christmas ... and I wonder if she will react to it differently when the lights are on.

Turkey day approaches rapidly. That means a 3-day work week followed by a four-day weekend of epic gluttony. I'm limiting myself to one day of epic gluttony this year, and will do my best to stay off the roads on Friday and Saturday. Sunday ... I don't think I'll have a choice, because that's when I'm hanging my Christmas lights.

See, I'm a firm believer in the fact that one should not skip holidays. Halloween isn't a real holiday, but there's a lot of "baggage" that goes along with it -- decorations and such. Thanksgiving is more of a holiday than Halloween because we actually get time off work for it, but for some reason American society seems to have forgotten about it. All we care about now is Halloween, Black Friday, and Christmas. This is evidenced by the fact that shops start putting up Christmas decorations before they take Halloween costumes and candy off the shelves.

In the past 4 hours I've heard the phrase "deep fried turkey" mentioned several times. While I'm a huge fan of the traditionally-prepared turkey (i.e. from the oven), this is something I would like to try. I highly doubt I'll be able to do so this year, but I'm hoping I can swing it next year. I'd have to do it in the driveway so I don't torch the house, but it sounds cool.

So ... on the subject of Sunday ... I have over 1000 "cool white" LED bulbs that belong on my house. The only way they will get up there is if I climb up on a ladder and hang them. I would like to try to put lights all the way around the roof this year, instead of only on the front. I think that'll cover it. At this point in my thought process I'm one step short of running out and getting a bunch of those "net" lighting kits that are normally used on bushes, and covering the entire roof in them. Griswold? YES!

I tried posting from the MyTouch last night but it appears that it didn't go through. I guess there's something about this site that mobile operating systems (at least, the non-Symbian ones) disagree with. I've tried on two different carriers' networks, 802.11g, and four different browsers, but have not had any luck with mobile posts.

I'm wondering if it's a problem with the web browsers on the devices, or with the operating systems themselves. It seems that they're just not able to stay logged into the session that's created when I sign into this site. I mean, they log in successfully and I can click the "Add Entry" button, but the post I create is simply lost and I get a "Login" link.

... so in the wake of the last post, I ended up obtaining a pair of T-Mobile MyTouches (hobbled HTC Magics to the rest of the world). They downloaded Android 1.6 overnight, and they're pretty sweet. I'm eagerly awaiting Android 2.0 with its improved Microsoft Exchange support ... and at that point I might consider getting ready of the BlackBerry Curve 8310. EDGE only? Slow, laggy OS? You can have it.

Julie got the red (Merlot) one, and I got the black one. I'm all over the customization options and was looking into rooting it, but I kind of like the Google apps it comes with. Julie likes hers as well, but she's not diving into all of the technical stuff the way I do.

Anyway ... they're good phones. Let's see how long they last.

I realize that the phrase in the subject line is generally posed as a question, but the way I said it when it happened, it sounded more like a statement.

When I got home this evening, I called Julie to let her know that I had gotten home (she was on the way as well). She picked up, but no voice went through ... so I hung up and dialed again. Didn't go through. Phone's screen went black. At that point, I uttered the phrase in the subject line. For one reason or another, my Nokia E51 is no longer able to turn on. It just sits there with a black screen, with the screen and keypad backlights glowing happily as if the phone were working. Of course, it isn't.

I would like to know why it is that phones don't last much longer than a year for me. It's not that I'm abusing them -- on the contrary, I baby the freaking things. This one doesn't even have a scratch on it. Yeah, it's covered in fingerprints ... but any phone that has been used for more than 5 minutes is.

I was digging around for a spare phone and unfortunately did not find the Nokia 8290 that I love so much, but I did find a Samsung N105. It comes from a time when phones were used to make and receive phone calls ... not to get on the Internet, or make videos, or take pictures. I guess I will have to make do with it until I can obtain a suitable replacement for the E51.