Happy Turkey Day to everyone.

I will be celebrating with family and hope you have a very nice time and can reflect on all the things you can be thankful for.

And to those friends I haven't chatted with since Monday, that's because I had a computer hardware crash. It had been having trouble logging in and staying connected to the internet. I thought it was a DSL issue. Turns out it was the harddrive itself. Good news was I took it to the Mac Store yesterday. Bad news was they had to wipe out my HD. Bad news was that I didn't have the start up CD's.

THANKFUL: Good news was that I got support and help at the Apple Store because I had purchased AppleCare. Good news was that I had TimeMachine and my Omega drive recreated my entire computer up until it crashed. So it's running better than ever, and I'm glad that none of my files were lost or corrupted.

So basically I was only inconvenienced for the one day...... I highly recommended backing up everything, and getting a warranty extension policy.

HAPPY THANKSGIVING!!!

I just want to say, "Happy Birthday johnwallaby!"
I hope you are enjoying a great weekend.

I have a few of the snow trooper photos from the Snow Fest at Lake Forest.

If anyone wants to see to see the costume, just leave me a reply here or send me your e-mail or use IM and I'll send them out

It was a fun event and the staff made the whole day enjoyable for us, too!.

I had a great time yesterday in San Diego. I went down Wednesday night as I was celebrating a friend's birthday near LAX, and we had a very early arrival time for the parade in San Diego on Thursday morning. So I went down Wednesday night, and was ready and well relaxed. Besides, the traffic in San Diego was getting very heavy for the parade and bowl game by about 8AM. And I was already downtown by 7:30AM.

The parade was great... as you can see us in the parade.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=isTWzZXt8Mg

I'm the Red Imperial Guard behind Darth Vader. I had a lot of fun watching the parade viewers reacting to our characters. I did get called the "Emperor" by one not so knowledgeable parade announce. However, on the video, they called one of the characters Hans Sola....

Then we went to lunch at this terrific Greek restaurant in the SeaPort Village. It took me over 4 hours to drive back from San Diego to my place. It's usually under a 3 hour drive. However, I was in no rush.... arrived back home just in time for dinner.

Before I left for the party, I had been bidding on a Royal Guard helmet on e-bay. I left a proxy that was almost double my last bid, and I was surprised that I won it without using the proxy bids. So the price was almost $50 less than I paid for my other helmet. Since these are hard to find, I was really glad to get that news. I didn't have access to the internet, even with my laptop, and the auction closed at 1AM on Wednesday/Thursday before the parade.

All in all it was a great day!

Here is a link to the OC Register. The reporter and photographer came by and did great coverage of the event. If you click on the one photo on the front page, there are more photos from the appearance.

http://www.ocregister.com/news/orange-santa-kids-1948036-children-county

And  the photos that were taken for the 501st gallery are here, too:

http://picasaweb.google.com/armyscout/HyperbaricAutism

I had a great time and everyone was totally professional. From the Center's staff, volunteers, patients, and our own So Cal Garrison troops. I'm the thin Imperial Royal Guard. WOW, never thought I would be saying that....

This one is worth doing every year, even if it is an hour and a half drive from my house. With traffic, it took me over 2 hours to get back home.