And I thought Legos were cool. Check this out: Create your own corporate labyrinth with The Cubes. Read about ‘em, then buy ‘em.

The holiday season has come and gone, and while the money’s still a little tight, I decided to commit to buy a few things with some money I’d saved up for the purpose combined with some gift certificates and other money I got for Christmas.

First on the list, I special ordered (from Magnolia Audio/Video) the Bose Acoustimass 16 series 6.1 speaker system. They said it’d take a couple of weeks to get here, so it’s not in place yet, but I’m very anxious. It’s on the way.

Then I took an iTunes gift card I got from my mom and I’ve been getting songs and stuff. That’s fun, and I can see where it would become addictive. Like, it’s “only a dollar” for a song, but I could easily nickel-and-dime myself to death. The only downside is the stupid 128kbps sample rate; all of my stuff is 256kbps AAC, and if I’m buying songs where I’ll never have the original CD to resample, I’d at least like a really high quality digital file.

Of course, in the purchasing of songs I realized that there were a couple of CDs I wanted, and I haven’t bought a CD in a long time, so I ordered Bobby Brown’s Greatest Hits and the new Avril Lavigne album, Under My Skin. Both are excellent and have been rocking my iPod since.

I had bought a shirt for Jenn for Christmas but I got her the wrong size, so I gave that one to my sister and Jenn decided she wanted a The Cheat shirt instead, so I got her that. While I was there, I got myself a copy of the first 100 Strong Bad Emails DVD set. How could I pass?

And, of course, I got a GameCube for Christmas, and it came with a gift certificate for $15 off a game, so I went to the local Target and picked up Pac Man Fever and Mario Golf: Toadstool Tour. Both are fun, and Jenn and I regularly compete at golf. Neither of us are all that good, but it’s a lot of fun.

In other news, it was my friend Stuart’s birthday yesterday, so we took him out to lunch at work, and tonight we’re going Cosmic Bowling. Should be fun.

The new version, which requires CodeRush 1.1.8 / DXCore 1.1.10, has been released and provides the following updates:

Added support for ECMA “block” tag.

Added support for “obsolete” tag.

Added support for use of “style” and “align” attribute on “para” and “note” tags.

Fixed issue where code and other text containing encoded XML entities would not properly render.

Fixed placeholder support for “include” tag at top level of documentation.

Added language word expansions when using “<see langword=”*” />” tags.

Fixed issue where empty tags might potentially render twice (“<br />” would become “<br><br>”).

Go get it!

Saw The Aviator this weekend, the movie about Howard Hughes.

The story takes you from Hughes’s childhood through the flight of the Spruce Goose (which now resides in my home state of Oregon). I won’t get too much into the story, since it is a biopic, but it is a fascinating trip.

I wasn’t too hopeful considering I’m not a big Leo DiCaprio fan, but Howard Hughes is a very intriguing figure to me. By the end of the movie, DiCaprio was Howard Hughes. Not to mention Cate Blanchett does a great job as Katharine Hepburn, and how can you deny the draw of Kate Beckinsale as Ava Gardner?

The cool thing is, this movie was good from any standpoint you take: historian, aviation fan, or drama lover. There’s something for everyone here. A great historic story, some wonderful airplane history and information, and a beautiful story.

The effects were also well done; seeing them build and fly the Spruce Goose was almost like being there. I’ve never actually seen it in real life; seeing as how it’s local, I am now absolutely convinced I need to visit.

Check it out; this one’s well worth the money to see, and with the size of the plane Hughes built, how can you not see it on the big screen?

All email has been read and action is now being taken to control all damage done in my absence. I should know better than to leave for longer than two days.