I am spending my time off playing with the mini-Elbeno and relaxing. He got Simon (the light/sound sequence game) for Xmas and one of our favourite games is now “extreme” Simon. This involves me trying to actually play Simon while he tries to get it, clambers all over me (with little regard for his or my safety), and generally attempts to press the wrong buttons deliberately. Our record is a sequence length somewhere around 12.
Otherwise we had a quiet Yule, with just a few presents between me and the wife and many for the young chap. I got Mrs Elbeno a few things from her Amazon wishlist, a Slanket and The Beatles in Mono.
I got some new pyjamas, New Super Mario Bros. Wii, a Dilbert desk calendar, three seasons of The Universe on DVD, and the following books of geekery:
- One Hundred Essential Things You Didn’t Know You Didn’t Know: Math Explains Your World by John D. Barrow
- Impossible?: Surprising Solutions to Counterintuitiv​e Conundrums by Julian Havil
- Design Concepts in Programming Languages by Franklyn A. Turbak
- Concepts, Techniques, and Models of Computer Programming by Peter Van-Roy
- Everything and More: A Compact History of Infinity by David Foster Wallace
I also got a dark Chocolate Orange in my stocking. Excellent.
In other news, Mrs. Elbeno’s laptop started to exhibit graphical corruption on Saturday night which was looking like a RAM or video card failure. Bluescreens everywhere, corruption even in the boot screens, and inability to boot except in safe mode. So we went to Fry’s yesterday and she got a spiffy new laptop. At least the drive on the old one is still good so no data loss.