Christmas ended with a very nice surprise for me. Since my old laptop is old as shit and barely hanging on (besides needing yet another new hard drive put in it), I've been planning on skipping paying for the new hard drive in it and just build up some money and buy a new computer. Until then, I've been without a laptop or computer since September (other than at work).

Well, I now no longer am stuck just using my phone, as I got surprised with a Microsoft Surface 3 tablet for Christmas. So far after using it daily for the last 3 weeks, I'm loving it. Since it's basically a mini laptop computer, I'm able to install my typical programs that I had on my laptop and when I just want to use it as a tablet, switch it into tablet mode and use apps for stuff. It's gonna do very nicely replacing my old laptop until I eventually get the money around to buy a new one. Already bought a bluetooth mouse to use with it and have a bluetooth keyboard being delivered from Amazon tomorrow so I can start getting full, true PC functionality out of it.

I also got some books as well. Got a good two-part book set called Hitler's U-Boat War, detailing in extremely fine detail the entire history of the U-Boats, from World War I, to extreme detailed mission summaries of each and every U-Boat sortie during World War II. Close to 1,000 pages in each book.

Also got a copy of a really good book I read earlier this year, called The Admirals, detailing the entire lives (not only from birth, but also a brief background on parents and grandparents), the entire naval careers, and all the way through the deaths of Admirals Ernest J. King, William D. Leahy, Chester Nimitz and William Halsey, the only four men in US Naval history to ever hold the 5-star rank of Admiral of the Fleet. The effects they had in putting an end to the thinking that massive battleship battles were how wars still were to be fought, how submarines and aircraft carriers were the future of war, and how they affected decision making during the war and the outcome of the war itself by being able to sway FDR's thinking on strategy and mission planning.