Hey guys! I'm finally 16 today! I have to wait until the 8th though to get my driver's license, since I didn't get my learner's permit until the 8th last year, and it's required for me to wait a year after I've had my permit to get my license. Oh well. The important thing is that I will have it before school starts back up for me on the 11th, so I'll be able to drive to school. I didn't get a car for my birthday; I wasn't expecting one, because my parents won't let me get a car until I've earned the rank of Eagle Scout, the highest rank in Boy Scouts (yes, I'm a Boy Scout. Laugh it up and make fun of me if you want.). This is pretty common for a lot of Scouts in my area, some parent had the idea to make an incentive of it so their kid wouldn't get lazy, and a lot of other parents copied them. It's no big deal though, because I already have my mom's old '98 Toyota Camry to drive in the mean time (she got a new car in February), and basically all I have left for completing my Eagle Scout rank is my Board of Review, and then I'm done.

Anyway, without further ado, here's what all I got for my birthday, all of these items were on my birthday list, so I'm pretty happy.

Valeo Pullup Bar - it has adjustable sliders that keeps the pressure on itself when put into a doorway; I need one of these to build up my arms and back because as a distance runner, I need to start doing some cross-training to stay in overall better shape rather than just my endurance
Forrest Gump DVD
Harold & Kumar go to White Castle DVD
ATI Radeon HD 3850 Video Card - Since my dad was building me basically a new computer because he wanted mine to be the same for the one he built for my brother, who just graduated college and has his own apartment now, he started upgrading all this stuff on my computer, and then this video card was just a birthday present for me. I originally asked for an Nvidia GeForce 9800 GTX, but my motherboard wouldn't support it because it used a PCI Express slot, whereas this one uses an AGP slot. It's basically the equivalent of it though.
Crysis - Of course, what good would an awesome new computer be without "system-hog" games to be played on it? Yeah, I look forward to playing this after my dad installs the operating system and other software on my new computer.

And I should be getting some money or gift cards in the mail from relatives sometime soon, so I'll probably buy a 360 game or a new PC game with that, maybe Assassin's Creed, Mass Effect, Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six Vegas 2, or World in Conflict or something.

Here's the specs on the upgrades from my old computer to my new one:

New Motherboard - not sure exactly what's better about it, my dad said it was more efficient or something
Hard Drive - 300 Gb, old one was 75 Gb
RAM - 4 Gb, used to have 2 Gb
CPU - Runs at 800 mHz, old one ran at 533 mHz
Power Supply - 650w, old one was 430w
Video Card - ATI Radeon HD 3850, the old one I had was an ATI Radeon 9800

So yeah, that's it! I'm going to see The Dark Knight again with my brother and dad (it's the only movie I've ever even CONSIDERED seeing a second time in theaters), and then later tonight, we're going to a Japanese steakhouse for dinner, coming home and eating some Banana Crunch Cake that my mom is making for me. So this is a pretty awesome birthday for me!