I can't believe this, but I'm having *fun* in school. For the next month and a half I'll have my life consumed by 40 pages of research papers (half over the Japanese surrender in WWII and the other half over the Patriot Act), and I actually have something to look forward to out of that: the second research paper. I just spent an hour and a half doing some preliminary reading on electronic surveillance in the Patriot Act thanks to the EFF and the stuff is *damn* fascinating. If any 'serious' topic is going to lead me astray from my senior thesis on video games, this will likely be it. I wouldn't mind doing this kind of stuff for a day job. It lets me throw together my legal side, my writing side, my techie side and my advocate side all at once. And I'm gonna make a killer presentation on all this stuff; I can already feel it.That said! The holiday season is coming up, which means several things:-Parties! I'm contemplating throwing one in a couple weeks while all my roommates are out of town. Anyone feel like showing up? =p-More Parties! But that's because it's my birthday. Mark December 10th on your calendars for a trip to Austin, because it'll be after classes are over and I'll be 21 and the times will be a-rockin'.-Blowing holiday money! I got invited back to Spain. Only problem? It's in February. I'm starting to seriously consider going anyway and ditching school for a good solid week to spend roughly 10 days in Madrid, so I can see some of that city while staying with natives for free and catching up on my beautiful Spanish babies. -Yet more travel! I've got a Plan2 friend named Taylor who's quite possibly the most outgoing dude I've ever met. After we bonded over I'm-not-quite-sure-what, he then approached me about his interest in games and we've thought about stuff like collaborating on theses and stuff. Just last week, though, he said he was going to volunteer for the GDC in April, because he's starting to take up a real interest in the development community. He invited me along for that too, and I'm finding it an invitation that's hard to turn down. A week in San Francisco in April amid some real developers and gamers, at a conference that'll be a really big deal since the next generation of consoles will have started [Xbox360 comes out this month, followed by Revolution next year and PS3 in 2007]. -Gaming? Mikey [my Halo-partner-in-crime roommate] and I officially retired from Halo 2 close to 2 months ago, and we've been frantically searching for a new addiction ever since. We've started picking up some single-player games from the last generation - he's playing Far Cry, and we're co-oping Doom3 slowly but surely. More on my gaming thoughts in a bit.