Christmas was early us this year as we worked around the best schedule for both Lauren and Matt to be there at the same time. It was a wonderful time and I wish it could have lasted longer. Lauren was able to visit for a few days before returning home to Memphis. She is in your last semester at school and so ready to get it over with. She has been looking at several prospective cities to call home when she start her new life as a working girl. Below is photo of the two of them.

Since our family Christmas events all occurred before Christmas due to scheduling and Atlanta was headed for chilling temperatures in the teens, we decided to head south. We flew down to Fort Myers, Florida and Canary Transportation drove us down to the Marriott Resort hotel on Marco Island about 1 hour south. What a great decision that turned out to be. The weather was sunny with 80 degree temperatures the entire time. Only one morning was cloudy but turned  into blue skies by 10:00 am.

The hotel is a large resort with two very large pools separated by one of two large room buildings. One of the pools is heated so we lived there, read, relaxed, talked and slept. We also maintain our exercise regime by working out in the fitness facility as well as a couple of walks. In the afternoon, we walked down to the shopping area on the bay (4+ miles round trip) to eat dinner and watch the sun set.

Of course you can't visit the Gulf and not walk on the beach (I think there is law against it) so we hiked in both directions. The beach was full of shells so unlike the Emerald Coastline at Destin (our beach home), you had to wear shoes unless you were a Marine or the Terminator looking for Sarah Conner. I was pretty sure I could see Key West from the south point.

A 2.5 mile walk got us to the bay area where we ate dinner next to the water.

The beach was very wide with lots of shells. You could not walk bare-foot without feeling some pain.

Getting ready to go out for dinner. The weather was great with temps around 70+ degrees every day.

The Need

If you have seen any of the movies in the "Fast and the Furious" series, then you aware of how street racers go to extreme and exotic techniques to trick-out their car to run faster and faster. Well it's no different for building a performance PC. Everything is about performance parts that take you to the next level. Just like the fast street racing cars, there's a whole industry that caters to gamers or multimedia techs wanting to build the next fastest system on the block. While I did not need or want the fastest system around, I wanted to ensure this system would be a capable for as long as possible.

My son gave me  a new game for the PC this Christmas titled Rainbow Six Vegas 2 from UBI. He knows I like first-person shooters, a genre of games where you basically run around and shoot bad guys. It's the closest I will ever get to being Jack Bauer and saving the world from evil. These types of games allow you to play for short periods of time and stop anytime reality sets in. I also enjoy playing online where you play either cooperatively with other live players or adversarial where live players go after each other. Regardless, it really is amazing that 5 to 10 people all in various locations around the world can play together in real-time in a very detailed and realistic 3-D world.   More...