Sorry for the interruption but I was out of town for most of the holiday (we left the 26th for Chicago, but thats a whole post on its own!). I did however, want to brag about some of the Christmas Gifts that blessed our house this season though.

Amy’s big gift this year is to have the Master Bath and Bedroom repainted. When we bought the house from her parents, we inherited the DEEP red color of the bath and bed room. Its a dark red (think maroon) that is hard to match colors with. Now we’re going for a lighter, beachier look and are painting them Beachnut (its a lowes color). The master bath is done (Amy found some Votive candle holders at a store in Nashville), next on to the bedroom!

Grace had a very Hannah Montanna Christmas. She got a Hannah Montanna Guitar Game (like Guitar Hero) that plugs in to the tv, a Hannah Costume, and doll. Its pretty cool and she likes pretending to be a rockstar. Maybe someday. I like playing her game (since I haven’t bought Guitar HEro World Tour yet) and she’s getting better at it.

Mose got a Trampoline. One of her favorite things to do is jump. We’d wake on Saturday mornings to the heavy thud of emma jumping up and down in our door way. Now she can do it all she wants and it doesn’t make the house shake. Its pretty cool and Grace and Emma take turns on it. Amy wanted to try it out, but its for people under 80 pounds (and neither of us meet that requirement!

The girls also got some tinkertoys, and some other little odds and ends that they like to play with, but the coolest by far is my Ultimate Wall-E Robot.

We saw the movie in the theaters and we’re big fans (mose loves him). We had seen the Ultimate Wall-e at the Disney Store but we weren’t going to get him because of the price tag. Needless to say, Santa found him on Sale and he was wrapped and under the tree for me on Christmas morning. He has fun dancing, chasing the dogs around and just exploring on his own. If you haven’t seen one yet, I’ll work on some video and see if I can get anything posted. Its pretty cool though and the way he can respond to voice commands or find his own way around the room is fairly smooth.

Was there one gift that you prized more than the others??

So in the wake of obtaining a Nokia e62 and an iPaq mobile PC, I decided it was finally time to learn how to rip dvd’s in to something I could take with me… and low and behold, LifeHacker came to the rescue again. However, I’ve made a couple of changes from their article (which was an awesome starting point).

As in the LH article, I too decided to use: DVD Decrypter to “decrypt” or rip the actual video and sound files from the dvd. However, unlike LH, I use pocketdivxencoder to encode the vob files in to avi’s that can be played on my laptop, phone or the pocket pc.

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Thats right, now you can be that awesome (yet geeky) guy who can get out of any situation. Well, at least you can have tissues where ever you go…

LifeHacker one of my favorite sites online, has a post today about making your own tissue dispenser out of a togo cup. Its a pretty cool article and a pretty good tip. You can leave it in your car’s cup holders and always have a tissue.

What are some things you’ve made on your own out of stuff you have laying around?