I wish for a new, perfect keyboard. I just can't find the right one. The new Microsoft X6 keyboard comes close to what I want but looks just wrong and doesn't feed quite right (I've fiddled with it in a store) http://www.microsoft.com/hardware/gaming/productdetails.aspx?pid=102  Maybe I'll just have to wait until those OLED keyboards where each key is a screen becomes cheap enough.

I also want a simple foot pedal for the computer that can easily be used as a hotkey (modifier) in autohotkey scripts. Used in the right way it could provide ergonomic relief from being stuck in the one-hand-on-keyboard-one-hand-of-mouse position all the time.

1. Bake some cookies that you can easily customize the shape of (like thin gingerbread cookies). Make a custom cookie for each person in the shape of some object that reminds you of that person. So if one of them is a pro bowler, make a round cookie and add three dots of icing (to depict the holes). And so on for the other persons.

2. Write a fun quiz to play when you all get together. There are many ready-to-use quiz questions to be found on the web already. Mix in some questions that relates to the people that will be present or other persons you all know. This can be very entertaining if you can think of some funny (but not awkward) details that perhaps not everyone will right away know or remember ("what animal was uncle Edward bitten by in the summer of 1978? A: snake, B: donkey, C: shark"). This can generate many laughs and stories. After you've run through the quiz, hand out a small, symbolic price to the winner.

I like many of the changes to VLC this fall.

But 0.9.8a has a new bug: the fullscreen view now forces itself onto the primary monitor. It should (as in previous versions) display the fullscreen video on the screen that the minimized VLC window resides in.

Another "bug" or at least annoyance: VLC doesn't remember what installation options the user checked/unchecked during last reinstall. For example, it always defaults to making itself default player for all video file types. It should instead remember whatever choices the user made on last install. 

<offtopic rant> I guess that's a problem for installers in general. I bet most programs have, for any new version of the program, more people doing re-installs/upgrades than fresh installs. Still, the installations dialogs often assume that the user installs for the first time. Firefox is even worse in this regard due to add-on upgrade notifications. I go through a 10 second, 3-5 click process on the first firefox startup almost every day. I would love some way to just silently autoinstall all noscript updates for instance...</offtopic rant>