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                              /_/                  Student Edition


Welcome to Michael Victory's personal newsletter, Victory XP.  Hopefully it will
help me keep in touch with all my friends now that I live in Colorado.  Speaking
of which, let me update those of you that don't know what I have been up to.  I
work for Hewlett-Packard in Fort Collins Colorado as a microprocessor design
engineer.  In my spare time I play tennis, practice tae kwon do, cook a lot.
(Last night I made chicken fajitas for three friends of mine; two are Rice alums
(Sara Mac and Hilary Scott) and the third I met at HP (Lee Becker).)  I don't
live in an apartment; I rent two rooms in a house from another HP employee.  I
live very close to work and the house is really nice.  I have one other roommate
in addition to the owner, an HP employee that lives Chicago for three weeks of
each month and lives here for one week.  The first thing he says to me each time
he arrives is, "Have you installed Linux on one of your machines yet?"  That
nerdiness aside, he's actually a pretty cool guy.

WEATHER
So far the weather has been beautiful.  I arrived here in July and the weather
was nice, and even in mid November it's still nice.  My only complaint is the
lack of humidity which has been drying out my skin.

HOMECOMING
As many of you know I recently made my glorious return to Rice University on
Nov. 8-11.  Unfortunately I didn't get to see everyone I wanted to, but I still had a
lot of fun.  I didn't decide to go until the Sunday before, when I got cheap tickets
on priceline.com.  Next time I am going to plan better.  The Wiess play and Wiess
homecoming bbq were the only notable events I attended.  I wanted to see Pippen
too, but stupid priceline didn't get me to Houston early enough on Thursday.

BIG MIKE MONDAYS
There's really only one item at McDonald's that I like - the Big Mac.  And since
the McDonald's near my house sells them for 99 cents on Mondays I really can't
afford not to eat them.  I think I have eaten a Big Mac every Monday for the
past 9 weeks. Yes, I am a disgusting human being, but I'm looking to beef up.
Say it with me: "Beefcake!"

SOMETIMES I IMPRESS EVEN MYSELF
Ah yes, it would seem that once again I have beat the system. I bought a $50
gift certificate for myself for amazon.com, but I only paid $40 for it by using
a promotional code.  When I redeem the certificate, I intend to use another
promotional code for $10 off $50 or something like that.

CONTENT
Yep, there was very little content in this first issue, but depending on
feedback and whether I actually do anything interesting, I may increase that in
the future.  I'm trying to keep the newsletter brief enough and interesting
enough that you will actually read it.  You could say that I'm an ambitious man.