My XP finally crashed after a long time of being way too funky. I’m running on a Vista beta build 5728 at the moment, trying to get things to work till I get my hands on a working copy of a OS install disk. See if I can…uh…perfectly legally…get my hands on a Vista when it’s released to the public…

First flight’s tomorrow. 1400 hours.  Gotta dig up my pilot shirt and all…

More than 7 hours of flight, and about one hour waiting for my roomie to come and pick me up (Thank you Mick, now enjoy the fish I gave you) and I’m back at the ol’ comp back in the quiet Titusville (with only one driveby at the next complex)…

I miss the old place already.

Great rush to pack all the things I got around, heading to the airport in an hour. I’ll drop a line when I’m back in ol’ Titusville, FL. Take it easy.

Last few days have been a blast. I’ve met more friends in shorter time than I’ve done before, putting a pressure on using all my spare time here at home till I go back to Florida friday the 12th. Yesterday I went out with two dear friends of mine, Árni and Tanja, to this great thai food place down at the harbor, and let me tell you do not let the fact that the menu got pictures of the dishes discourage you or make you doubt the place, the food (and company) was great. Definaetly recommend it. It’s that small shack just across the street from ‘2 Fiskar’ but I can’t remember the name of the place. After that we enjoyed some Tekken 2 and Firefly. The day before was used in the movies with Halla, we saw Stranger than Fiction and it was allright. Good laughs and bit interesting plot but it could’ve been better. Then again most movies can.

Today was a bit more pressure. I started the day at noon by not realizing that I was supposed to give my father a ride to work, not until he spent at least 8 minutes waiting for noone, apperantly. After that I was picked up by John (which arrived before I returned) and hanged out at his place for few hours, giving him a lecture on my M3 mod chip for my Nintendo DS Lite, which he was really interested in, plus I tried out Rainbow 6: Vegas, that western game I can’t remember (something with a half-mexican guy and messed up priest) and Sam and Max. Being late for a small family dinner party, we were delayed by Eydís which needed a ride home (a pleasant delay might I add) and the fact that we had to scrape the ice off the inside of the windshield. We were satisfied about 15 mins into the ride, one bad heater in that ol’ thing he owns.

The dinner with the family was fairly smooth, just me, my parents, my bros son and my sisters two daughters, and the trio of youngsters kept trying to beat me up. And covering me with one of those really fuzzy shredding blankets…I’m still trying to clean my new black sweater. After they left I walked over to Gísli’s friend place which aint far away…Tommi was his name I think…real fan of japaneze culture I think, according to all the stuff in his room. Stole Gíslis pizza and watched the leaked 4 first eps of 24’s 6th season. Jack Bauer Goodness! DVD quality and all, most entertaining. I need to catch on with that, only seen first 3 series. After that, turned out that Gísli and Heiðar which was also there both needed a ride, so we wandered back to my place to see if we could borrow the parent’s jeep. On the way back we found my old 1996 Jeep Cherokee, the car I learned to drive on and kinda owned before I went to the US. My parents sold it to my sister when I moved to the US and she sold it to some guy that happened to live close to my parents. I don’t care what people say, that car was the best thing I’ve operated ever. I even gave it a name. Jeppersen. Hoping the owner wasen’t looking out the window at that moment, I was compelled to give the ol’ thing a hug. Very emotional.

We went to Gísli’s place, which just moved out from his dad and was very pleased with his new home. it was a garage changed into an apartment up in Breiðholt, so I was much surprised to find out it wasen’t in an apartment building but an individual house. Very clean and new, but filled with video games and consoles. Good stuff, we laughed a bit over  WWE vs Raw 2007 or whatever it was called, I played some Gears of War session in split screen co-op until the console froze up. Maybe 5 minutes into the game. After that me and heiðar headed home, but when we opened the front door we were greeted by snow. Almost classic x-mas movie snow, quiet and fluffy and all. Haven’t seen snow like that for years now. After dropping Heiðar off, which was down after his recent breakup with Halla, yet upbeat ’cause his actual flight training was kicking in, I almost managed to end up in the city pond, sliding on loose snow on some ice, finally stopped by the stepup of the sidewalk that seperated the pond and me, 90° left from my original heading. Screw that fancy ABS and pressure distribution or whatever it’s called on that fancy thing, give me a 5-speed and nailed tires and I’ll be fine. 4WD’d be nice, too, but the fancy jeep got that ever-running.

 Tomorrow is packed too. I’ll still got the afternoon open, but the late afternoon I’ll go bowling with my brother, a dinner with my sister after that and then I’ll go watch more firefly with Árni and Tanja. If it’ll continue to snow (it stopped right now) I might even be able to get some snowboard action before I leave. It’s been from -4°C down to -11°C (25° down to 12°F) last few days and the forecast isn’t changing till after I leave so who knows.

I’ll leave for the US late Friday afternoon. End of monster post.

Momofuku Ando, Father of the instant noodles is dead. He died of a heart attack, 96 years old.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/6237013.stm

My hat off for you, mister Ando, for all the meals you’ve served.

*goes back to munching his cup noodles*

In Iceland? Noooo! I started getting that “The back of my nose is fkn dry!” feeling the day before yesterday, and yesterday morning my throat was sore as hell. I recovered throughout the day and didn’t really feel anything when I woke up this morning. So All is semi-good.

I accidently hung up on Gallup just now. The atenna on my cell’s breaking so when I grap the phone to answer a call I sometimes manage to disconnect the caller. My phone is ancient, one of those ol’ blue Nokia ones with the grey ring around the ol’ small monocolor monitor…yeah. I need a new one. But not right now.

I wish you many epics and successful raids.

So New Years Eve was usual here, with the local population going nuts with fireworks of all kind. The resulting smoke lingered over the city for few hours, reducing visibility to hundreds of yards/meters. I wasen’t hit by any firework sharpnel at all this year, neither flairs or projectiles nor any falling plastic or wooden remains of “Big Boomer 3000!” or whatever we fired off.

We had a LAN party at the old library in Hafnarfjörður last weekend. It went fairly smoothly, with the exception that Reynir managed to trip off the security system in the middle of the night, waking me up. We told him he’d better call the security company to explain it was a mistake but he was positive that no such thing was needed for he turned the system off. Well, served him right when I sent the security staff that showed up half an hour later (and woke me up again) straight to him to clear things up. I didn’t really get much sleep that night so I had to ditch a new years eve party the following night. Stupid couch I picked to sleep on. It’s all its fault!

Again, happy 2007, 2007 people! 2007 has arrived! 2007!

The last few days surrounded by friends and hyped up kids have left me in no position to post here at all. We celebrated Xmas yesterday evening with mindless shredding of wrapping paper.

To summarize the things I got:

Remote Controlled helicopter that I can’t get to fly straight

Legal copy of Firefly

A real dartboard to replace the sorry excuse of a big toilet roll with numbers painted on its end that I bought in Walmart

Various garments with not-so-bold statements printed on it.

I take great pleasure from being with my friends again, and even if some are not currently in my area, I’ll meet ‘em again someday. Now, I’m being called by a 11 year old that demands to play a friendly game of poker.

I’ll be taking off for BIKF in Iceland in few hours now, and will land around 0610Z on the 21st. I have never been able to sleep in that flight but seeing how I stayed up all last night I say I’m bound to doze off at some stage. Even if I don’t, I have a backup plan in the form of hours worth of anime on my DS Lite.

I’ll leave Mick, my Irish roommate, behind as he’ll stay here over the holidays. The best x-mas gift I could find for him was a couple of patches of bubble wrap that came with some stuff I’m supposed to bring home. His joy knew no limits as I gave him a third sheet I stumbled upon just now. I think I’ll just give everyone I know some bubble wrap for x-mas. Seems like a thing everyone can enjoy.

Again, congratulations to Chris and Zoe which became parents last night. A healthy boy and his mother are doing well. Head over to their blogs linked below for pictures and such.

Anyways, I’m off, I’ve things to do before Mick drives me to the airport, and I’ll try to keep you people posted on my trip home, even if I meet the readers of this excuse for a blog on daily basis.

I urge everyone that have the slightest interest in the stuff I’m actually doing over here to read the latter paragraph of the post below and watch the video.

Last few days have been dull and uninteresting, really. I haven’t even flown for almost a week, spending days at the gym once in a while and watching anime. It’ll change soon though, I’ll be going back to Iceland over the holidays to meet the friends and family. For those that want to reach me, I’ll be landing the morning of the 21st. My cellphone should be on and running around noon so feel free to call or leave a message, I’ll get back to ya. Don’t be offended if I don’t answer though, it’s an overnight flight and I’ve never been able to sleep aboard Icelandair flights.

Right now I’m trying to find the best video format to run on my Nintendo DS Lite, so I’ll be able to enjoy some inflight entertainment.

Oh and big grats to my friend Chris in Seattle and his lady Zoe, at this moment they’re about to become parents. Last thing I heard from Chris he was about to take a nap, something I suspect he will not do for the next decade or so. Best wishes to the trio, and I do hope mother and baby will do well.