I finished up my parents' Christmas newsletter today.  In case you're interested, I made a .pdf file of it that you can download below.  I used Microsoft Publisher 2000 and Photoshop to do the whole thing in a little over an hour.  My mom wrote it, so you can blame anything that sounds too cheesy on her.  I just typed it in and did the layout. 

We've done something similar to this for almost the last ten years, except for the Christmas that my sister had her cancer surgery (which is also mentioned in this year's letter).  In case you don't feel like downloading the file, she's been cancer-free for six years now, and there's a picture of her in there, to show you what she looks like now.

I rather enjoy desktop publishing, I did quite a bit of it in high school, when I was on the yearbook staff.  Back then, we had to use Publish It! on the Macintosh, and our fastest machine was an LC, if I remember correctly.  Yes, we also had to walk uphill both ways to school, barefoot, and floppy disks cost at least a dollar each...

If you're interested, there's the low quality .pdf file available here, weighing in at 331K.  Or, if you're on a broadband connectiong, get the high quality version (suitable for printing and framing!) here, it's about 8MB. You'll need the free Adobe Acrobat Reader, if you haven't downloaded it already.

I try to be a reasonable tech support person.  I don't retreat to the "we don't support that" excuse very often.  However, there are days when I cling to it like a lifeline.  Today is one of those days.

A certain faculty member decided to blow away the installation of Windows NT 4.0 that we'd set up on his computer, and took it upon himself to install Windows Millennium Edition.  Now he's having lots of problems.  He wants me to fix them.  There is not, and will not be, a single Windows Me computer that I'll support here at work, and I made that very clear to him this morning, as has my co-worker in the past.  He can't systematically ignore our advice, and then expect us to bail him out when he screws something up.

I was nice enough to offer to put Windows NT back on it for him, or Windows 2000, whichever he'd prefer, but he'd like to tinker with it some more.  I'm guessing he'll have given up by Monday...