The capabilities are great. . . I am now able to combine both my data assistant as well as my comm unit into one handy little device. Plus, the unit boasts several advanced communications features, allowing me to tap into the corporate email service as well as establishing a secure tunnel to perform remote management tasks. . . all without having to use a mobile command and control computing core!

All the nifty specs and datum can be found via Palm's marketing department as well as their website, so I won't go into them any further. But its great having the little device. I've spent the last two days configuring it (and mis-configuring it, much to my chargin), and I feel like I can do so much more with it in my possession now.

But with this acquisition, I am now in a indefinite spending freeze. Seems that I stepped a tad over my budget lately, so unless its a life or death scenario, I'm limiting myself to absolutely no purchases until my finances recover.

Showed up at work on Wedensday, except I was the only one in the shop, and there was probably only about half the number of people as usual. However, the CEO did indeed show up for work, so I guess it was good thing that I looked busy.

Yanyan's flight into Austin was delayed again and again, but at least she arrived without harm. We got home late, and subsequently was badly delayed leaving for Camelot Command.

The trip up was surprisingly uneventful, and my guess is that everyone did their travelling the day before, leaving the roads relatively sparse on Turkey day. We made it to our destination in record time, partially because the historical bottleneck at TX75 and IH635 was finally resolved with the completion of their damnable construction project. It looks horrendous, but at leaset it gets the job done in alleviating traffic. As soon as we finished docking at Camelot Command, I was immediately put to work in reviving Quincy V, who apparently suffered catastrophic failures from power fluctuations. The power supply has been secured since the failure, but it still needed some major software overhauls, which I was able to provide. Within a few hours Quincy V was up and running again, and was able to return to duty the next day.

Dinner on Turkey day was spent munching on lots of food, and watching Final Fantasy Advent Children with Yanyan. She never played any of the FF games, but did take an interest in their character designs. So I figured what the hell, feasting on lots of eye candy should be enough to gloss over the script which was in sore need of extra work.

From what I saw in the ads for Black Friday this year was very disappointing. So I was not totally disappointed when the alarm did not go off, and we didn't actually get out of bed until about 10AM. Resigned to the fact that all the good stuff (of which there was scant that caught my attention) was probably gone, I was not very disappointed when I left all the targeted stores empty-handed. My credit card thanked me for it though.

Before I actually left the base that morning, I got a surprise call from Blandy. Apparently his mother-in-law bought a house in the area, and he figured I'd be in the general vicinity due to the holidays. And since I was, we proceeded to make plans for a social gathering that evening.

Not too long after that call, Evil Twin then gave me a surprise call by reporting for duty at Freeport. Apparently he headed north as soon as he got off of his 24-hour shift on Thanksgiving, and arrived shortly before noon. However, supposedly his entire family took off without him for Fort Worth that morning, which brought about the expected pleasantries from him.

The afternoon was spent clearing out minor issues with the computing cores in Freeport, as well as scrounging about for some certificate frames. Apparently the ones I had been acquiring from Target for all my certifications are being discontinued. But I was able to find something close, and secured a few of them without giving a second thought. Unfortunately, they're not the exact same size, although the style was similar. I'll just have to figure something out for future certifications.

Friday night's entertainment took place at Dave & Busters, which is basically our usual haunt now after all these years. Much shooting and racing went on, as well as several mad DDR sessions. Good times were had by all, and we were totally exhaused when we got home.

We spent all the extra hours during those few days working on finalizing the historical documentation of the events that happened on July 30, 2005. Yanyan chose most of the content, and I had the job of putting everything together in a tasteful format. So for those of you who attended our special event on that day, the 2-disc Special Edition DVD set is now available for pre-order. It includes practically all the footage from July 30, as well as bonus footage from August 6, 2005. Included is also a full photo album of hundreds of pictures. Order yours today!

Advertising aside, we arrived back at Outpost Command V late on Saturday, spent Sunday cleaning up the place, and then took Yanyan to the airport on Sunday afternoon. Spent the rest of the time moping because my cabbit isn't with me anymore, and now wrapping up R&R to prep for work tomorrow.

Yesterday started with me working at the office as a support unit during the hiring event. Was great seeing some of the other field units as well as a reactivated member. Several people asked me if I was going to dinner with them, and I responded that I was instead going to be shooting people at that time.

Arrived at the field and started gearing up as the sun was setting. Fortunately I brought along a propane lantern, since the entire field was unlit. This hurt our night vision somewhat, but we managed to turn it down low to reduce the effects. Then the training began, and it was definitely interesting to see how different firefights in the night happens. . . when you can't see more than 20 feet in front of you. Several other troopers were equipped with various types of night-vision goggles, and their combat effectiveness were enhanced by several orders of magnitudes. All in all, it was a fairly instructive experience, until the cold front came in and froze all of our asses off.

Still working on some minor details on CCCCC.net. A couple of the servers still need to be re-aligned, but I can probably spare some cycles while I begin prepping for the next MCSE assault. Likewise, most of the record-keeping that have fallen on the wayside I'm catching up on, and with luck I should be completely caught up by tomorrow evening.

Will be going to CT's hiring weekend on Saturday. Afterwards I will be attending a extended night training session. . . in the freezing cold.

Sunday will be spent recuperating as well as attending Patrick's birthday dinner. Its been a while since I've seen the boy, so we'll see what he's been up to.

Enter Epimelites. . . a project that I started a little over a year ago, but had been stuck in alpha phase. . . until now. The bulk of the work has been done, and the database has been in place for months now. I trimmed off some extra hedges, as well as encoded some basic security features, and now its ready for prime-time beta!

Epimelites will replace the previous CCCCC.net Status page. Feel free to mosy on down there to take a look, and let me know what you think. I will be updating the database entries over the next few days to make it fully updated.

The new tactic proved to be very effective. The battle was over in less than thirty minutes. The results were dramatically different, since we took minimal casualties on the second attempt. My only regret was the loss we took when the trap was sprung on us during the initial attempt. It was a low blow tactic, and those who devised it should be tortured mercilessly for their immoral trends.

And with that, the final core MCSE fortress fell. I can finally see the light at the end of the tunnel after ten months in this lengthy and bloody campaign. All that is left is mop up duty on the final four MCSE depots, which we should be able to finish in good time. The idea hasn't really hit home yet. . . but I guess the campaign ribbons would look nice once HQ finishes issuing all the awards. My only hope is that all the sacrifices that have been made (and still to be made) are worth it. . . and I suppose that is something that only time will tell. . .

I left the troops to their celebration and retreated up north and spent the weekend with Yanyan. Its been several weeks since our last escapade, so it was nice to be able to spend time with her again. Her light cruiser needed some repairs in drydock while I was there, but we were able to make good the time we spent cooped up in her quarters.