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Stole this from the signature of a poster on an aviation board:

Calling an illegal alien an undocumented worker is like calling a burglar an “undocumented houseguest”

Off to England for Christmas on Thursday (unless someone cancels the flight again!), can’t guarantee any more posts until the New Year. So, let me wish you all a very merry Christmas and keep up the good work for 2006.

So I have this sexy new iPod and not enough content for it – what to do? Grab podcasts!! And in my search for entertainment I found a series of podcasts from the very funny Ricky Gervais, he of The Office fame (the original funny one, not to be confused with the lame NBC version). Anyway, look it up in iTunes or go straight to the source for the first two episodes.

I don’t often go to the Company all-hands meetings but yesterday’s fell before the Xmas party tonight and there were strong rumours that there would be “holiday cheer”. Last year we got a nice digital camera so I was definitely going.

Its been a great year for the Company and it turned out to be a great meeting! They tried to trick us by giving us all cheap toys (I got a yo-yo) but later they followed that with a Sirius car radio kit, and then a home install kit too. Finally the founder said “and I hear these iPod things are neat” and gave everybody a 60Gb video iPod! Hot dangity! There is a Santa and this year he came early.

Those of you with way too much time on your hands may remember some posts last year about a credit card of mine being used to rack up $6000 from Neiman Marcus, including getting the billing address changed without my authorisation.

Well, this week I noticed two charges at a 7/11 that I’ve never been too, on the same day, for a total of $300 (thats a lot of slurpees!). And since then there has been a $5 charge for an AT&T collect call. So the card has been cancelled, not liable for the charges etc. End of story I thought.

But… I go online to check the seat assignments for our trip to England next week and find they are CANCELLED!!! Wtf?? I call up and they tell me that someone called them on Dec 12th and told them to cancel the flights. After a long spell on hold they were able to reinstate the booking (but without seat assignments) but who the hell did that? And why?? I don’t really think AA believed that I never called which I understand as the alternative explanation makes no sense, but I sure as hell didn’t cancel them. I’m just glad I spotted it before we showed up at the check in desk. Holy crap, batman.

Managed to celebrate my big 4-0 yesterday with some style, started Tuesday afternoon by flying myself and a friend to Laughlin, NV for a night’s gambling and drinking. Mark taught me how to play craps and I think we must have been at the tables for several hours and, best of all, I came out ahead $60 and a bellyful of free beer. A couple of drinks at midnight to celebrate my birthday’s arrival and then we hit the Pai Gow Poker table as Mark said it was an easy game with a lot of free drinks available. Well, it is easy because you can just put your cards on the table face-up and let the dealer make your move for you and, because you tend to push quite often, you do spend a lot of time at the table quaffing the free beverages.

Had some fun getting out of Laughlin the following morning thanks to 30mph winds but once above the valley floor it was smooth all the way back to San Diego. Came to work for a couple of hours to tell our tales and then I left for home and a little birthday celebration with the US side of the family.

My father-in-law barbecues the most delicious ribs on the planet (the secret is the salt!) and they certainly were A+ last night. Some champagne, ice cream and a few gifts rounded out the night before crashing into bed.

All in all, a pretty good two day celebration. And to my readers: I understand the mail is slow this time of year so I’m not bothered that I haven’t received your cards and gifts yet.

Today was the draw for the World Cup Finals being held in Germany next year. England are in Group B with Paraguay, Trinidad & Tobago and Sweden. Of course all games at this level are difficult (and any game involving England is ten times more difficult than it needs to be) but one would expect us to have a very good chance of progressing to the next round. You can see the rest of the groups here at the BBC.

I’ve blogged before about winning the office (American) football pool despite being totally clueless (and disinterested) in the game. Imagine the disgust of my poolies this week then when I not only won the pool for a second time but I also went perfecto – all 16 winners forecast correctly. Sadly there was no extra prize for the being the first person in the group to achieve this feat but the look of upset on the faces of the, ahem, experts was maybe reward enough.

Been hearing this a lot on XM Radio and it has gotten under my skin: this week’s single is Ben Moody (featuring Anastacia) with Everything Burns.

If you like single of the week choices, check out Josh of the ever changing domain name who, somewhat oddly, is giving a single of the week every week.

I’ve upgraded WordPress to v1.5.2 – if you find anything that doesn’t work, please leave me a comment or send me an email. Ta muchly.