Once again we're at Pershing Square in Los Angeles for Christmas Eve.  This year the first with our baby son, Leo. Joining us, our friends Kristi and Kalmer and their daughters.

Or should I wait to get excited for Green Wednesday? Orange Thursday?

Ugh. We get it already, retailers want us to shop, and every single day from here on is a new 'color-event' day. Black Friday coming right after Thanksgiving was one thing, but now it's devolved to an every.freaking.day thing all the way to Christmas Eve. No, I take that back, right after New Years it'll start back up again with all the 'color-event' sales for everyone that didn't get what they wanted for Christmas. 

I can understand there might really be unheard of deals during an event that happens once a year and you had to wait in line since 4am before the store opened to get it. But how could these possibly be unheard of deals every.stinking.day? THEY AREN'T!

Someone told me today, breathlessly, how they got a 'Cyber Monday' (seriously??) deal on a 42" LED HDTV for a mere $699. I congratulated them and kept it to myself that 42" LED HDTVs of the same class generally run from $550 to $800. Paying $700 for one isn't a rip-off, but it's nothing you couldn't find during the colorless days of the year. 

Granted, Leila and I stood in line for a few festive hours during 'Grey Thursday', 2006. It was a lot of fun. If my Dad happens to read this- one of the 160GB hard drives I nabbed for $20 back then is hopefully still spinning away happily in your computer. 

I saw a related image today pointing out a very funny irony. Camp out in front of businesses as part of a political protest and cops are likely to show up, club you in the head, pepper spray you, and drag you off to jail. Camp out in front a business the day before 'Brown Tuesday' and it's "Welcome, brother! The more the merrier!"

Here’s the product, both in raw form and packaged for the mules to strap to their bodies…

Okay, it’s really just gingerbread made fresh in our kitchen by Leila and Katre, but its funny how it resembles a whole other type of enterprise.

In the latest chapter of the ongoing "Great Storage Conundrum", recently flooding in Thailand has literally crippled the world supply of hard drive storage. The largest manufacturers of hard drives operate in Thailand: Seagate, Western Digital and Toshiba.

Looked at drive prices recently?

If you can get a 1TB hard drive these days for less than $140-$150 bucks, do so. Consider that just two months ago, one could be had for a third of those prices.

The supply chain isn't expected to catch up until early next year, so more than ever, alternate backup is crucial.

I recommend singing up for an account on all forms of online storage. Currently, one can sign up for:

1. Dropbox – 2GB of storage free, accessible from your PC/Mac, iOS or Android device.

2. Sugarsync – 5GB storage free, accessible from your PC/Mac, iOS or Android device.

3. 4 Shared – 10GB storage free, accessible from your PC/Mac, iOS or Android device.

4. Box.com- If you're an iOS user (iPhone, iPad or iPod Touch) you can sign up for 50GB of free storage that's then accessible from anywhere. Granted, the online-only interface isn't great, but 50GB for free is silly to pass up.

5. Use online photo sites like snapfish.com, shutterfly.com, smugmug.com, etc. to not only print your digital photos, but store them securely online as well.

6. Use lulu.com and blurb.com to print hard copy of your important documents and photos.

7. Utilize cheap local storage options like USB flash drives to back up your most invaluable documents. Up to around 32GB, count on roughly $1 /GB, though prices vary either way.

8. Luckily DVD media is still very cheap and hard to beat. 4.2GB of storage per DVD for literally pennies. The downside is the time it takes to burn DVD media, and space requirements to store and catalog it.

Don't rely on just one backup for your most important photos and documents, use multiple online and local storage options. Above all, don't count on easily replacing your current hard drive(s) until mid-2012 without paying a small fortune.

It's been great having Leila's sister Katre and our niece Kadri visiting us from Estonia. Today, Leila, Katre and the kids went to Santa Monica and the Third Street Promenade. 

As it happened, the Estonia vs. Ireland soccer match was on TV at the local English Pub. No word if these two would have been carded or not. 

Leila and I are so excited that Leila's sister Katre will be coming to visit us starting tomorrow, bringing with her our little niece (and Leo's cousin) Kadri!

While Katre and Kadri are here, Leo will be in our room. On Sunday evening,  Leila and I moved his crib into our room and then rearranged Leo's room as the guest room. (His crib just barely wouldn't fit out the door of his room and into the hallway, so we had to take it apart to move it.)

We should be picking up Katre and Kadri at the airport tomorrow. We're both looking forward to having them here. It's been quite a few years since Katre last visited us with Artur and Iti Mina. (I think it was 2005).

When it comes to Halloween, they don't mess around in Santa Monica. Walking around the neighborhood our friends Kristi, Marcus and Jonathan live in, Leila, Leo and I saw some serious entries in what must be the "Best Damn Halloween Display Ever" contest. People have gone to great lengths to turn their homes and property into haunted mansions. Where else can you find a life-size grim reaper pumpkin carriage?

I predict that the above wicked witch- just off the public sidewalk- will likely give some unsuspecting midnight pedestrian either a serious case of the creeps, or a heart attack, one or the other.

I guess this marriage went beyond 'til Death Do us Part.'

Pretty much every house on the block was done up like these- it was quite spooktacular!

Apple's website today.

As I tech-junkie and avid partaker of the modern digital world, I just couldn't fail to mention Steve Job's passing. Admire him, loathe him, or don't even know who he was, any of us that use personal computers for entertainment, artwork, communication, etc. owe at least some small debt of gratitude to Steve Jobs' visionary genius. I believe he was akin to the Thomas Edison or Henry Ford of his time.

Many of the engineering and technology advances he envisioned and then pushed for -often stubbornly against armies of corporate naysayers, and over the battered husks of overworked developers- have in many ways changed the world, and impacted us all.

Personally, I find it impossible not to admire a guy who was instrumental in bringing forth the tools that make my own career possible. I've been earning a paycheck using a Macintosh for the past nineteen years. Without the Mac- the job I do, and much of the modern industry I work in couldn't exist. And without Steve Jobs, there was no Mac.

People forget that he originally fought so hard AGAINST APPLE to bring the Mac into existence, that Apple actually fired him after the fruits of his effort seemed to bomb at first. But he was right- the innovations of the Mac did represent the future.

And  PC users, every time you fire up Windows: you have Steve Jobs and the Macintosh to thank for the fact that today, ugly 8-bit white lettering on a black screen is what you quickly skip past at boot up- not the end result.

The near complete disappearance of the corner record store that sells music on physical media? That's thanks in large part the iPod, and iTunes music store, which is again thanks largely to Steve Jobs fighting an entire industry.

I for one don't miss the old music industry; self-destructing media (records, cassettes, even CDs) and being forced to pay too much for 12 crappy filler tracks to get one or two decent songs on an album. The iPod/iTunes revolution kicked the old record company model to the curb and forced them into the modern age where I can download the whole album if I choose, or if you're still pushing filler, just the one or two good tracks.

I was saddened to hear of Steve Job's passing, but in hindsight, many people figured it must be eminent following his stepping down at Apple. He was truly one of a kind.

Maybe I should stop blogging about this place. It's LA's best kept secret and I hope it stays that way! This weekend, Leila, Leo and I were once again at our favorite park in Los Angeles, Kenneth Hahn Recreation Area. There was perfect weather today, and the park features a gorgeous nearly 360 degree panoramic overlook of the city. We once again brought our little picnic tent and blankets and made 'camp' in an area called 'The Bowl', in the shade of several trees.

When we arrived at 12:00 noon, the park was completely empty. As luck would have it, few people seem to know about this place, and I should shut up about it, because I like it that way! We did invite our close friends Marcus and Kristi and their son Jonathan to join us, and it was great having their company. They also didn't know about the park before we told them about it.

As the day progressed, we saw probably 20 to 30 other people in the area we were in- the most "crowded" I've ever seen the place.

From( the customer is) not always right blog, true stories from video game retailers:

Grand Theft Innocence

Customer: “I’d like to buy this video game for my son.”

(I ring up Grand Theft Auto Vice City and looks at her 7 year old child.)

Me: “Ma’am, I’d like to advise you that this game is rated M for mature. It contains graphic vio–”

Customer: “Listen here, I know video games.”

Son: “Mommy I want it now!”

Me: “You don’t understand, it’s very–”

Customer: *yelling* “Are you going to sell me that game or not?!”

Me: “I will sell you the game, but you must understand that it’s not intended for children.”

Customer: “[Son] gets what he wants.”

(Three hours go by and I’m standing near the register. The same customer walks in looking exasperated.)

Customer: “I’d like to return this.”

Me: “Is there a problem with the disk? We can exchange the disk for free if there’s anything wrong with it.”

Customer: “No. It’s not that. I walked in on my son playing the game. I witnessed him stealing a car, driving up to a prostitute, having sex with her, and then running her over and then get out and collect the cash. When I asked him why he did this, he responded, ‘b**** ain’t gonna need that money, she’s dead!’”

What A Bad Decision Looks Like