Friday High Fives (01/13/06)

This week's five items, ideas, and individuals that I am thankful for, appreciate, or admire.

Chili
An excellent dish this time of year and so tasty when done well. There are a million different ways to make it so you will never have to get bored with it. My favorites include Turkey Chipotle Chili and Em-dina's secret family recipe.

Three Day Weekends
This year the company I work for is aligning their corporate-wide holidays to match the Federal Government's holidays. This means we get MLK day off on Monday. This day will be used wisely to remember and reflect upon a man's tireless fight for civil rights (and to nurse a hangover from celebrating a Bears win on Sunday).

Panasonic DVP642

This $60 DVD player plays Divx files perfectly and unshackles me from my under powered laptop which chokes on video decoding and my recently departed desktop. Having the ability to play divx files is awesome and lets me keep up on shows I like.

iTunes Library Updater
I am constantly adding to my digital music collection and use iTunes to manage it. This Windows-only utility was exactly what I was looking for to help me keep my collection which is stored on my file server in sync with iTunes. It takes a little while to process large collections but automatically updates your library culling the entries that have been removed or moved and adding any new music it finds in the locations you specified. Very cool.

A.Y.C.D.

The All-You-Can-Drink is the perfect way for young urbanites to drink like kings on a pauper's budget. They are a perfect way to spice up the otherwise dreary post-holiday/pre-opening day doldrums that descend on our fair city every year. Like all things awesome, these come with some drawbacks such as: temporary blindness (usually around the 12-15 drink), you may get drungry, and you could possibly transform into drunkzilla. However, the AYCD doesn't always turn out that way. If you're lucky on some nights you can take the beer taxi back to your place and pull a drunk monkey on your girlfriend. Your mileage may vary.

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