Happy Friday!

Now that all the turkey sandwiches have been eaten, it's time for life to return to normal, so we can prepare for Christmas and New Year. We're preparing a trip to Europe for the holidays, travel has been booked, accommodations have been made, and now we're planning the most difficult part: the sightseeing.

This weekend, however, we have the usual plans, errands, groceries, gift shopping, DVR, and probably a quick trip to the movie theater to catch J. Edgar (Clint Eastwood movie about the FBI director, starring Leonardo DiCaprio).

We've been flipping through catalogs to shop for Christmas gifts, toys mainly, and it strikes me that I find most of the stuff boring, or simply not fun for more than a few minutes. We've come up with a few possibilities, but it has taken us a few dozen catalogs over the past month to even narrow it down to that. I must be getting picky in my old age ...

I haven't watched the newest Sons Of Anarchy yet. Turns out it's a two-parter, so I'm going to wait until next week so I can watch both episodes back to back. We did, however, check out House and Chuck.

Comedian Patrice O'Neal, who was recently on the Comedy Central roast of Charlie Sheen, died at age 41 after suffering a stroke last month, from which he apparently never fully recovered.

Not much going on at the moment. Been playing some Fallen Earth, helping one of my clan buddies grind. If that sounds boring, that's because it is. The only redeeming factor is that you can rush through the low-level quests rather quickly, and you get to stock up on low-level materials for crafting.

We watched some more Hawaii Five-0, The Sing-Off, and Once Upon A Time, but what I'm really looking forward to is tonight's episode of Sons of Anarchy, so we find out whether or not Opie hit the bull's-eye ...

Home again! The drive back was rather uneventful on our end, although the roads were packed and we got stuck in two traffic jams due to car accidents. Luckily, nothing appeared too serious; from what we saw, the people involved looked unharmed.

Today is Cyber Monday, so there might be some good deals online. Not really hunting for anything in particular. All I did over the weekend was buy some new sneakers, but I'll be keeping an eye out. You never know I might bump into a sale that's too good to pass up.

After our drive, we plopped on the couch and watched a few episodes of Hawaii Five-0, and the latest The Walking Dead (finally some closure!).

Thanksgiving weekend is almost over. After breakfast today, we're driving back home. As usual, as pleasant as this trip was, we're always glad to head back home.

Having done nothing but eat and shop for the past few days, my dinner was banana split ice cream. My rationale was that it's milk! Sister-in-law works at Haagen Dazs, so we get all the free ice cream we could want. Can't beat that!

While sitting around, we watched a few episodes of Person of Interest, the new Grimm series, as well as True Legend movie. Just catching up ...

Man, I ate so much turkey that I've been stuffed for hours, and I haven't even had dessert yet (cupcakes and eggnog cheesecake!). What a dilemma...

Didn't go out for any "deal" hunting, but the rest of the family is out and about hitting the various electronics and clothing stores. Maybe I'll scope out something later today, or wait until Cyber Monday, so I can check things from the comfort of my office without having to stand in line for hours.

What's up Ubisoft's ass these days? No Ghost Recon: Future Soldier or I Am Alive on PC, and execs blaming piracy. There are tons of PC titles that sell millions of copies such as Modern Warfare, Skyrim, Battlefield 3, not to mention indie gems like Minecraft, yet these guys make it sound like only Ubisoft titles get pirated. How about you first fix your crippling DRM issues and then do some research on what these other guys are doing that you can't get right?!

This is usually one of the busiest travel days of the year, but instead of our usual flying, we're meeting the in-laws halfway and are thus driving out for Thanksgiving. The good thing about the four-hour drive is that we pass by a Sonic, good old-fashioned hamburger drive-in, with waitresses on roller blades, like you see in the old '50s and '60s movies.

As you may have seen in a few of the news stories, Black Friday is upon us, so we'll be scoping out a few outlets to see if we can snag ourselves some good deals. I've promised myself not to buy any new computers or parts, but you never know. There just might be a sale going on that's just too good to pass up.

Tomorrow is Thanksgiving, so you can expect news to slow down for the rest of the week since lots of people will be traveling to meet up with friends and relatives. We'll be driving a few hours south to sister-in-law's place for the family gathering. We'll be stuffing the turkey and then stuffing ourselves. There's also promise of a BBQ, so that alone merits the trip.

We've been making good headway on the DVR, helped by the fact that a lot of the shows are going on winter hiatus. Last night, we watched Castle, NCIS and Sons of Anarchy, which had an expected (but still shocking) ending.

Time to charge the laptop and sync the iPod.

Bundled up in my cozy blankies, and I was out for the night ...

Apart from the crappy weather (it rained most of the time), we had a good weekend.

Ricky visited for a few days, which is always a good time. Baby back ribs and wine were on the menu, and they sure were tasty!

The Muppets movie was better than anticipated. We'll have a report on that later this week, so if you've been meaning to see it next weekend, keep an eye out in a few days.

Apart from that, we hunkered down and cleared through last week's Bones, Fringe, Homeland, Kitchen Nightmares and Once Upon A Time. Also watched the most recent The Walking Dead. We did well!

Tomorrow morning, we have an advance screening of The Muppets to attend. That's right, THOSE Muppets, the ones we've all watched on TV for years on end when we were kids. Now they're back! It could be good...

Yesterday, I spent most of the day with the fine Ubisoft  Montreal folks talking about Rainbow Six: Patriots. No hands-on time yet, but the developers walked us through a variety of single- and multiplayer locations. We'll have a few interviews coming up later, whenever the embargo lifts.

Apart from that, we watched some stuff on the DVR, a few episodes of Blue Bloods, and Burn Notice, but by the time we were done, four other shows had recorded. What's a couch potato to do?

Happy Friday!

Thanksgiving is upon us, and then Christmas and New Year are only a hop, skip and jump away. How this year has flown by ... again.

This weekend, our resident PHP/linux/Ruby on Rails guru will be staying over, so slather the baby back ribs with BBQ sauce and heat up the oven! It's time to pig out!

Watched the latest episode of Sons Of Anarchy last night, and from the looks of it, there might be a showdown coming up soon. Loved the Call of Duty reference, which was very apropos, and damn, stepping on landmines is NOT good for your health!

We just got back from our Cirque du Soleil TOTEM outing, and while the first half was great, the second part was totally weak. They apparently brought out all the good stuff in the beginning because during intermission, they were offering tickets at 50% off in case you wanted some friends to see this awesome show — not knowing the rest basically sucked. This was the second time we've seen a Cirque du Soleil performance, and both times were not really impressive.

No time for gaming or DVR watching today, so that means we'll have to redouble our efforts tomorrow.

Holy moly, that was quite the list of games that shipped yesterday.

I'm going to try out the new Need for Speed one of these days. I love racing games, but I totally suck at them. Checked out a little bit of Saints Row: The Third on Xbox 360 and liked it enough for me to go get it on PC so I can truly appreciate the game.

In the meantime, we seem to be stuck in LEGO Harry Potter Years 5-7 at 99.9% completion. There's 1 gold brick out of 200 that we simply can't seem to find! Damn frustrating!

Later today, we're heading out a bit earlier than usual to see Cirque du Soleil TOTEM, so that should be a good time.

Not much going on at the moment. Playing some Fallen Earth, Stronghold Kingdom, APB, Modern Warfare 3, Battlefield 3, as well as trying to finish up LEGO Harry Potter: Years 5-7.

On Monday and Tuesday nights, our DVR is very busy recording a bunch of shows, so we quickly scratched The Walking Dead and Blue Bloods off the list. Both good episodes ...

Some VERY exciting news on the music front. The original members of Black Sabbath (Ozzy Osbourne, Bill Ward, Tony Iommi and Geezer Butler) have confirmed they’re heading back into the studio to record an album of new material with producer Rick Rubin.

When do the tickets go on sale!!?!?!?!

We failed yesterday and didn't manage to keep up the pressure. We watched a few episodes of Hawaii Five-0 but then got distracted by that damn four-eyed sorcerer. We nearly completed LEGO Harry Potter Years 5-7 to completion, but didn't make headway on the DVR. We watched three episodes, but four new shows recorded in the meantime. Shame on us!

This week will see the release of another batch of high-profile games, such as: Assassin's Creed: Revelations, Airline Tycoon 2, Saints Row: The Third, Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom, Need for Speed: The Run, Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary, and Anno 2070, to name a few. Quite a diverse offering, so there should be something in there for everybody.

We did some serious watching yesterday and we plan to continue that streak today. We check out the latest episodes of Kitchen Nightmares, Bones, Psych, Fringe, Once Upon A Time, Castle, and apart from running some quick errands we got nothing better to do for the rest of the day.

To change the pace we did put some time into LEGO Harry Potter: Years 5-7, as well as some more L.A. Noire (on PC, duh!).

After a false start yesterday, I finally got L.A. Noire to work on the PC. Quite a few people must have had the same issue, as Rockstar put up a note about it on their support page, and the fix resolved my issue. Having never played the console edition, I've been eager to check it out since the PC version was announced, and it's quite impressive. The facial animations are amazing to watch, and even body language plays a role in the game as an interrogation feature. The game has a very cinematic feel and is probably one of the least action-packed titles Rockstar has released (apart from Table Tennis, I guess), but the engaging puzzle-solving makes up for it.

To change up the gaming pace, I mixed in some Modern Warfare 3 (running through the Special Ops missions) and Battlefield 3, as well as watching shows on the DVR (down 15%).

Today is Veterans/Remembrance Day, so not sure if news will be slow. If you see any veterans today, be sure to stop them and thank them for their service. Thanks to the current troops as well. We're waiting for your safe return this holiday season!

However, after the three pitchers of sangria we just had, there's no telling how we'll feel in the morning ...

I really need to figure out why it is that each time we crack open a bottle of wine, it makes me sleepy beyond control. We had company last night, made dinner, and had some wine, and sure enough, snooze fest all around ... again!

As if Battlefield 3, Modern Warfare 3 and L.A. Noire weren't enough to keep gamers busy, tomorrow is the launch of The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim (check the link for our review).

I was looking forward to Rockstar's latest masterpiece (where's my Red Dead Redemption, damnit?!), so I let it download on Steam overnight (a whopping 12 GB) only to find that Norton detects the game's ypatcher.exe as a virus and automatically deletes it. This makes the game not start at all. Lovely!