I'm wireless now. I set up a Linksys wireless G router at the condo. It's pretty cool to watch streaming video completely untethered at broadband speed. I went downstairs to test the connection from the farthest distances to the access point. It worked smashingly. I could do laundry and bid on eBay or shower and listen to music. I know...thrilling. However, considering that, three short weeks ago, I was still using dial up with only a work computer at home, I'm fairly excited about all of the new technology. In addition to the wireless router, we now have a cable modem, a personal notebook, a digital camera, and an iPod. (Yes, we catapulted into the 21st century, all at once, at Christmas.) I plan to add other hardware to the router (like a printer) and network my work notebook through it, too. My company is okay with people networking the firm notebooks through personal wireless networks, but we have to follow a bunch of guidelines, which is fine and understandable. They also won't supply hardware so I'll have to buy a wireless network card for the work machine. No biggie.

In addition to goofing around with wireless internet access, I've been playing a lot with my other fairly new toy, the Xbox. My wife (fiancee, at the time) surprised me with one for my last birthday. Because my job requires me to travel a lot, I took it from Chicago to San Francisco, where I had a corporate apartment. The Xbox was used a good amount in SF because it was a good way to relax after work and before going to bed, and there were too many things to do at home in Chicago to justify playing video games. Well, the Xbox is back in Chicago now because my SF-based project was cancelled abruptly by my client's board of directors. This wasn't a shocking turn of events under their current economic circumstances, but I had only four days to move out of an apartment where I resided for nearly one and half years. Some may think "big deal," but I had to do all that while working a full day and without any forewarning. I was stressed, and it was hectic; but, it all worked out in the end. A few boxes were shipped, but most of my stuff, including the Xbox, made the journey with me from SFO to ORD.

Back to the Xbox, I love it. I have about a dozen games now and don't have any favorites. I just grab whatever strikes me at the moment. Recently, I've been playing Halo, Enter the Matrix, and Soul Cailber II. I'm no good at any of them, but it's a lot of fun none-the-less. I even bought a couple of games that I thought my wife would like, Simpson's Road Rage and The Sims, hoping that she'd be interested in playing. Not the case. I thought maybe that she and I could play the way that my high school friends, my brother, and I used to play Contra and Blades of Steel on Nintendo after school. Again, not the case. Oh well, it's a great distraction, especially for a thirty-year old man who continues to tap into his adolescence. That and baseball cards fuel my post-teen engine, but I'll get into the baseball card infatuation at a later date.