Christmas Eve evening was spent reinstalling an operating system on what became the kids computer. I finally managed to get Windows 98 installed correctly and working fine one it. Then I installed the Intel Microscope on it for Stacey to experiment with and that took a couple of hours of fine tuning to get it working correctly. Since the hardware on that machine is the minimum needed to handle the software for the microscope, I consider it a victory for me that it runs only needing a little tweaking now and then. They are both very happy with the computer now that ICQ is installed and working properly on it for Stephen and the microscope for Stacey.

Christmas Day dawned a little later than normal for us. Delanae got up and turned off Stacey's alarm which meant that she slept until we awakened her rather than being up at the crack of dawn (or before). We actually had to wake Stephen up this Christmas which meant he was the last one up. Santa was good to everyone with the kids favorite being the money their grandparents sent them. Delanae's favorite may be the Cuisinart Grind and Brew coffeemaker that we gave her although she really loves her new computer. My family surprised me with a Sony MS Walkman that is really cool. It is so light and sounds great. I had to install the software on Delanae's computer since my P-200 doesn't have enough horsepower to support it. I ripped a CD on the computer at 105kbps in less than thirty minutes and downloaded it to the Memory Stick in less than ten minutes so I was able to listen to the entire CD thirty minutes after choosing the one I wanted. In the past I have not run while listening to music or the radio, maybe that will change now. My favorite present,however, was the poem picked out by Stacey and framed by her. It was a tribute to her Dad and brought tears to mine and Delanae's eyes. Delanae said Stacey had to supervise every word put on the manuscript and make sure it was right and she picked out the frame herself. It will forever be displayed on my desk.

Later in the day, we enjoyed a wonderful meal prepared by Delanae. I told her that each holiday I don't think she can do better but she constantly amazes me. We then watched the Porland Trailblazers beat the Los Angeles Lakers; well, Delanae slept through the second half and I was setting up my MS Walkman software and downloading an update to it while the game was on but it was a great win for the Blazers. Since we adults were so stuffed, we just had dessert for dinner while Stephen made a great bonfire with all the empty boxes and gift wrapping. It was a perfect end to a great day.

Today is exchange day for everyone but me. Since I am off today, I get to be the one to ferry the kids around to exchange a Nintendo 64 game here and a guitar book there and probably to get their checks cashed also. Their mother usually gets to do this duty but it fell to me today since I am off. Maybe I will have another update later but don't count on it since I now have to, once again, share this second telephone line with another computer and a teenager's telephone.

Tonight was spent restoring Delanae's new system. While she was trying to print an album page last night her computer began acting strangely. She rebooted it and it told her that Windows was unable to read the registry and could not boot properly. She tried rebooting again and it booted into safe mode. Since it was very late when this happened, I did not attack the problem then but waited until tonight to work on it. First, I backed up her data onto a Zip Disk then used the registry restore feature of Windows ME. Her system is now back up and functioning normally except for the software for my Sony MS Walkman. That had to be reinstalled and now I have to rerip the CD again that I had done yesterday. The important thing is that her computer is functioning normally again. I don't know what happened but suspect that the program printing wrote to the registry. It won't do that again as I uninstalled that program and she will use a different one to create her album pages from now on. We think this program caused her old computer to page fault a lot too. It won't do that again. Once again I guess this proves that another Windows operating system does not protect its registry very well.

No Compaq iPaq yet! I am hoping it will come this week but there are only two days left in the week now. Tomorrow I am the inpatient hospital physician so must get to bed soon.

Tomorrow, I am back in the office again. Then, Saturday I will be in the urgent care clinic and on call Saturday night until 7 AM Sunday morning. I will then be off until Tuesday for the New Year's holiday.

Still no iPaq. I keep hoping it will come before next year but those hopes grow dimmer as we have only two delivery days left before next year. It appears that everyone wants one of these devices which means I may have to wait longer that I had thought. (Thanks to Frank and his PocketPCHow2.log for this link)

Tomorrow night I am on call after working all day in the urgent care clinic. There may or may not be a post tomorrow and if there is it will be short. One last thing, the iPaq watch continues with nothing sighted as yet. I guess I won't get it this year.