Our sad little Christmas tree makes its seventh annual visit to our home.

Given the way things are financially, especially with me changing jobs and going for longer than usual without a paycheck, there aren’t many presents under the tree. However, I am extremely thankful that I can put anything there at all. I know there are plenty of people who can’t say the same.

Captain America tirelessly guards the gifts.

Merry Christmas everyone, and happy holidays. Thank you for reading my ramblings all year and leaving your comments. I appreciate my long-time readers, and I’m happy to see some new names appear.

A couple of weeks ago I mentioned that I got a new job.

The warehouse that I now work in is just under 30 minutes away. Once I get comfortable with the location of speed traps and where the cops like to hide, I’m sure I’ll get that time down to 15 minutes.

I expected to sit down at my new desk and begin writing code right away, but they’ve got different plans for me. I will likely not be allowed to touch their system for two months! Instead, I will be moving from department to department, learning how everyone else interacts with the system I’ll be maintaining. I’ll be trained in each one like I was a new hire for that group, starting with Receiving. This is similar to Virilion’s orientation program, except that Tech For Less will have me work in each department for a week and have me write a report at the end of each week.

I made several laps through the warehouse, and I felt like a kid in a candy store. So. Many. Toys. Everywhere!

I was let go early, so the sun was still out on the way home. I took this video of my favorite part of the drive, seeing the mountains that make me feel so insignificant (in a good way):

You may hear me making silly noises and stupid comments in the background. Please ignore them. This is Titus Blvd, the lone road that leads to the village we live in on post. It is also the only place you can hit 40 MPH.

When Nadia and I are watching TV in the living room or at our computers or are otherwise occupied, the cats congregate on our bed. This guarantees that the bed will always be covered in hair and I will choke every night.

While watching 24: Redemption (I’m pretty happy this show is finally coming back on the air), I caught most of them on the bed again:

Using Windows Live Writer and Windows Live Photo together has made it much easier for me to post on a regular basis. I don’t need to fight with HTML anymore, I don’t need to manually upload or resize images, and I don’t have to manually add the bit of JavaScript needed to display the larger images in a pop-up window.

My next thing to do is to add video to my posts, as I did above. We’ll see if I can continue this trend.