As a birthday present to myself, I spoke with a friend at Microsoft, and bought a new copy of Windows XP Professional SP2 via employee discount (if you haven’t heard about this… the general rule of thumb is that you pay roughly 10% of the retail cost on any program they offer… so a $300 program is $30. Hella handy if you know someone who works there). I think most of you already know where I’m going with this: as of today, I’m now dualbooting on my MacBook Pro… it’s a 120gb drive, split 85/35 (Mac/Windows). I’ve only just barely finished installing all the updates that have accrued since the version pressed to disk, along with a few basics (Firefox, various media players). Once I have free time again, I’m planning to install a some things:

• Unreal Tournament 2004 (so I can do some mod and level work… it’s worth pointing out that the Mac port of UT2k4 doesn’t come with UnrealEd)
• Half-Life 2 (also for access to the modding and level building capabilities…)
• Anarchy Online (I’m using a free account, and like logging in every once in a while)
• Final Fantasy XI (I have an account there, including monthly fee, but have been out of town so much and busy when I AM here that I simply haven’t even had a chance to log in for probably a month and a half or two months… hoping to correct that this way)
• XNA (I received a beta and demo disk while at GDC, figure it might be worth checking out)

It’s worth noting that I MAY also pick up Oblivion at some point, at which point that’d be going on there as well. That’s a big if, though; until I actually land a job, I need to watch my spending. As far as games go, there are a slew out there that I’d like to pick up, but simply can’t justify right now, especially since I have TWO pay-per-month games on my roster right now (FFXI and World of Warcraft… which I’ll continue to play on the Mac side). I may end up finally dropping FFXI, but I’ve been holding out mostly to see what they do with the expansion that is coming out shortly.

My birthday weekend I spent in Providence, not doing a whole heck of a lot. It was a work weekend for both Erica and I (not that I actually got much done *cough*), and then my actual birthday I spent driving back north to Vermont (but not without getting a parking ticket in Providence), followed by dinner with my parents. I was hoping to hang out with folks in the Upper Valley for a while after dinner, but by then I was completely wiped out, and instead opted to drive home and head to bed. I’m now officially in my mid-20s (25), and I’m simultaneously struck by the wide variety of things I’ve seen and done, and how few things I have to actually show for it.