| Thanksgiving Shennanigans

- Went to Santa Barbara to hang with da aunt, uncle, and cuz. While we were there, cuz took me on a 6.5 mile hike - 3.25 miles almost straight up. Brutal going up, but then coming down I think is what did my hips and feet in. Surprisingly, my muscles aren't all that fatigued it's my bum hip, foot, and ankles. Good times. I EARNED my treat!

- Forgot about the Steam sale until Friday and the only thing that appealed to me enough to pull the trigger was Modern Warfare 2 for 14.99. I already had some of the other games and I just can't justify spending more that $15 on any game anymore. I'm quite content playing radicool games from 3 years ago for $15. Although, waiting for Batman: Arkham City will be tough... I almost picked up Driver: SF for 24.99, then remembered that I have no time to play games anyway, let alone a driving game.

- Started a bad-ass online penetration testing (read: ethical hacking) class on Sunday. I fear that much of my time over the next 60 days will be spent stuffing my brain full of assembly code and Python for buffer overflow reverse shell scripts, but I would love to get in on some online gaming action. It's one thing to talk about security academically for my job, its another to actually perform the attacks we try to prevent - hopefully this class will give me a nice little edge and perspective in the field that makes me all that much more employable.

- At the very least, HP closes down for the week of the 26th - forcing all employees to take their vacation days and all contingent workers (i.e. contractors, i.e. me) to file for unemployment during that time. There is also talk of forcing a furlough on contractors starting the week of the 16th, so mucho unemployment is possibly in my future. Wylie is off from school starting that week so at least I will be around to watch him during that time and if we don't frustrate and annoy each other into oblivion due to lots of idle time together, it should be a nice little break. This COULD even be a great time for some AT members to visit Casa de Hess for a lil' vacation of their own?

- Tis the season for World of Warcraft again. I really think this might be the year I actually avoid jumping back in around the holidays, as is my tradition, simply because I have scheduled this class at the same time and would really be shooting myself in the foot if I dabbled with my seasonal WoW addiction. I guess the Greench is just going to have to get killed without me this time around, and Smokeywood Pastures will need another poor sap to make their FedEx quest runs for them (Mike? Denis?).