Eulogy

This started as some stories to share at the memorial, and became the eulogy. It was incredibly cathartic to write, and I hope it illustrates some aspect of my love for my late father.

My father was a great man. He was born to parents, who, at the time of his birth, were essentially homeless. They worked as farm help on the area farms and part of their pay was shelter. When Andersen's built their plant in Bayport, they were able to afford land there and build a home. My father lived on that land in that house, and then another, for his entire life.

He was raised by strict parents under hard conditions, but he was a loving man. Just not a subtle man. When I asked my father about matters of love in high school and specifically, of his and my mother's courtship, he told me I'd have to ask her, to which she related how he'd proposed to her. They were driving home, and he turned and said "All our friends think we should get married. So what do YOU think?" (Deadpan)Truly, a romantic man.

During his life, he held many jobs and wore many hats. From a busboy at the Lowel Inn in Bayport, a furniture mover, a police officer and traffic judge, Head Mechanic at Stillwater Country Club, and then later as a lawn mower, professionally at the Country Club and amateur at home.

He had his mischievous moments, like when we were children and he made us lunch or at the dinner table when we asked for something to drink, he'd chide us with "You want oil?" and we'd say "No, milk." and he's say "Well, what are you going to do with it?" and we'd say "drink it." and while giving it, he'd hover the jug over our heads and say, "Oh. Well, where do you want it? Poured on your head?" and we'd say "No, in a glass." This became such a ritual between us and him, that after a time, we would simply ask "Milk, to drink, in a glass, please." And remained that way until we'd gone to daycare and thoroughly confused our daycare provider, Jean Pritchard, with it. THEN he caught hell from my mom.

Being raised by A Norwegian father that had, himself, been adopted and raised by German parents, and a mother who was full German herself, his life was structured and rather strict by today's standards. He was taught a man shows his love by doing things, not words. But over the years my mother, my brother, and I softened him, and he learned that he could tell us how he loved us, and that would not make him weak. He still had issues with it, and every time he'd tell me the score of a sports game he'd seen the day before, knowing full well I'd seen it too, or told me a story that could have done with a copy editor thumb through, I knew it was because he loved me, and he wanted to share everything he could.

He was as much a child with his toys as we were with ours, his toys just happened to have a more destructive capability. If it wasn't a chainsaw, or a flamethrower to burn weeds, and melt ice off the driveway, it was a skidloader to move snow with. If only our neighborhood had more growing children, Oh, the forts they would have had each snowfall. They would be like snow KINGS! Along with that was the need to use those toys for everything, whether or not they were REALLY necessary. Not long ago, he saw a tree sprouting up beside the concrete of the garage's flooring. So OBVIOUSLY, he fired up the skidloader, wrapped a chain around that tree, and tried to use the bucket to yank it out. He accidentally tore a gash in the BRAND NEW siding of the garage. Needless to say, My mother was unimpressed. And to this day, that tree sprout still grows there. As if to say "That ALL you got?"

He loved technology, even if he didn't QUITE get it all the time. When I was a child we were unique that we had easy communication to someone driving around town from home because he had a CB radio in each of the family cars, and a base station in the house with a tower in the backyard. That love of technology continued, although tempered as it moved much faster than he could really keep up with. I became default tech support for my father over the years, and he would often pepper his dialogue with terms he knew were... MOSTLY correct. Once he was having problems with the house's wireless internet and called me from downstairs asking "Is your Google working up there?" and after he'd repeated that to various questions amounting to "What on earth are you talking about?" he stated "My Google downstairs is broke." which meant "The internet isn't connecting".

He had a quick and easy passing, like few who truly deserve them are afforded. But the heartache and longing remain, because although he is in a place where he knows neither want, nor pain. We grieve for the loss of times we thought we had yet to have together. Knowledge he had yet to share, and happiness he had yet to have with his family and friends. He is at peace, but we must remain and go on here. But he will never truly leave us, as no one ever really does, as long as they are remembered and loved, he will remain with me for my entire life. As the example of how to be a good man. He was my father, but he was also my friend. And he shall be missed as greatly as he was loved.

Donald Aderman April 30 1939 - June 19 2013

I need to remember this moment.

It was 5:05am, June 19th, 2013.

My cell phone had already rang through once. I had heard it, on the edge of waking but shrugged it off. The second time I was too awake to ignore it and knew it meant something bad. It was my mother's number, but Anne was on the other end when I picked up. I didn't try to feign that I wasn't sleeping like I usually do with a cheerful "Hey, what's up Mom?", all I said was "Hello?"

She asked if I was sitting or laying down.

I knew already.

"Just tell me, Anne."

My dad is dead. My mother was coming down, we needed to go to Regions. I said "Thank you." and she apologized and we hung up.

Over the next 20 minutes I got up, dressed, put on boots, and without trying, just grabbing what pants I had worn yesterday and fresh shirt and such, I dressed in 100% black.

I didn't realize I could move and dress while incapacitated by sobbing. Apparently I can.

All I kept saying is "No. No, no, no, no, no, no. This isn't it. This can't be it. He was supposed to get better. He was getting help." and everytime I held is back for a few moments I'd just scream "NO!" as loud and as long as I could on a breath.

It's so surreal. The world will continue on, it'll spin and people with move on, but my dad won't. He won't call me and tell me how the Wild did last night, whether I had already watched the game or not, I know that was his 1939 way of telling me he loved me.

Three days ago, he came down with a part to help fix my lawnmower and when it didn't work he couldn't verbalize what the next step in diagnosing the problem was. This really worried me so I told my mom to take him in, but he passed her stroke warning signs, could raise both arms above his head, stick out his tounge straight, and was coherent enough.

Then Monday he called to have me call the guy fixing my boat engine because he couldn't write down the numbers. He just couldn't make the numbers "work" so I immediately called my mom and told her she HAD to take him in. Lakeview Hospital checked him out, and after finding a shadow on his brain scan, transferred him to Reagents as "he was beyond their level of care".

Reagents diagnosed it as a clot and began treatment to dissipate it. He was supposed to be coming home today. His heart rate was a little weird this morning in the early hours and at 4:00am he complained about shortness of breath and was given an inhaler, at 4:20am he began having severe issues and at 4:45am he was gone.

I wept while I could, but as I do in times of crisis I shut off my emotions when my Mom arrived. We talked and she cried a bit on the way to the hospital. We met with the Doctor and nurse, both expressed how utterly shocked they were by his rapid downturn.

So here I sit. 7:24am.

Wearing a watch we gave him three days ago for Father's day.

I'm still so shell shocked. On the way out of the hospital, someone was chatting and they talked about what a beautiful day it was gonna be. I couldn't help but be kind of shocked, to me, this is the day my father died. That feels so wrong, so horrendously unfair. It should pour with rain and thunder should crack the skies and the world should shudder and quake and everyone should feel like it's momentous and noteworthy, but it's not to them. To them, it's just Wednesday.

(Console) War is Hell.

Since I actually have a keyboard full and proper, lemme rattle out some thoughts on the console war.

I spent the entire previous cycle, long as it was, on the 360 supplemented slightly by PC. The PS3 was an option several times, but from the start the (at the time, obscene) price was an issue, and over time there were enough issues with the way Sony handled their network (and it getting hacked), and the inhospitible climate they had cultivated on the hardware side that pushed many developers to the 360 as well. Only one or two exclusive titles interested me, but the CONSTANT updates taking HOURS to play every time you turned the system on was terrible.

Over that cycle we saw the 360 shift and change to suit it's users, but towards the end it felt like they were making more and more of a push away from the core gamer group that made them the top dog in the states. Knowing they could never win Japan, and were in for an uphill fight in Europe, it was strange to see the main thing on my friends list become Netflix. My 40+ friends list was rarely full and only about 7-8 core friends pop on, and most of those never game with me these days.

So we look forward and I'd expected to remain on a Microsoft console. Despite their push towards the non-gamer. Sony had to recover MASSIVE ground with the core gamers.

But then Sony held their press conference. And Wow. They hit every single button for the core gamers they had accidently cast into the 360's net. Indie dev support, self publishing, major studios signing on from the start, an unobtrusive update and download system. Not since the PS2 era has Sony enraptured the gamer.

And it became Microsoft's game to lose, and they DID. They knew they had the luxury of relaxing and waiting for E3 to push their gaming chops so they filled their announce conference with things for that non-gamer crowd they think is larger than gamers alone now. Forgetting that crowd was only brought into the fold by gamers bringing their console into their homes and exposing it to spouses and siblings and parents that would never have touched it before.

Then the coffin start getting nailed. restrictive DRM, 24 hour offline time before your games are USELESS, inability to loan a game at all to a friend, an always listening kinect sensor that was MANDATORY, and the botching of the talk about the loaned and used game systems they had acquiesced to so publishers would back them. I mean, think about it, EA announces "no more stupid online passes! we're good guys! we listened!" and then essentially blackmails Microsoft to do the dirty work for them.

And then the prices are announced, so now Sony has a $100 savings over a system it already outclassed in gamer specific angles. Sony's only drawback now, is that the PS+ service will be required this time around for online multiplayer, a move which, shocked absolutely NO-ONE, a service you want to be as reliable as possible is going to require a little money put into it by users to keep up. Look at the success the XBLA has enjoyed over the last 3 years.

So let's think about this...

PS4:

• Play offline for as long as you want 
• $49 PS+ service for Multiplayer (comes with 12 free games a year) 
• Crossplay mandatory for all games to the Vita. 
• NO OPPRESSIVE DRM 
• A much more accurate movement control, built into the controller 
• A much improved controller design, featuring larger grips, trigger shaped buttons, indented joysticks. 
• $399 price point 
• Trade in, loan, sell, share your physical games freely. 
• REGION FREE 

XBOX ONE:

• Connect every 24 hours or your game is useless. 
• $59 a year service for online Multiplayer (apparently free games now being added to that deal) 
• Day One download for all titles. 
• $499 price point 
• Trade in at select locations, sell a game to a friend on your friendslist who has been your friend over a month, and only once, then the game is LOCKED to that friend. 
• Slightly improved controller (i really haven't seen THAT much of a difference, it'll be a hands on to notice any advantages) 
• Region Locked. 
• MANDATORY Kinect, always listening, still rather inaccurate under certain conditions. 
• Halo 5 

There are things that are a deal breaker for me personally, but there are gonna be a LOT of people who don't care about those. They're gonna buy an Xbox and be pretty damn happy with it, but I am not one of those folks. I don't sell back games I buy, but I loan my games to friends and still want them back. I enjoy the hell out of many more Indie games than I do triple A titles, on any random month I will play 4-5 Indie games on PC and maybe buy a new triple A title every 2 or even 3 months. Sure I love Halo, but just like with the PS3 and MGS:4 and the Uncharted series, a few good games are NOT going to sell me what I see as a deeply flawed console.

*Salute*
Master Chief, I'll miss you.

So I had this weird dream...

So I had this dream I was reading a comic by Shen, The comic was a D&D styled adventure about two groups, one trying to make it’s way through a mountain ruins, the other trying to access the ruins themselves.

One group was very much Shen’s style of thin, kind of lanky characters, no real “fighter” style amongst them, but they relied on a lot of rogue and illusion spells to keep themselves safe.

The other was a sorceress (kind of on the dark side of magic) and two fighters who seemed to know each other but weren’t on great with each other. This party all came from an adjacent country that had supported an evil great wizard in a previous conflict quite a long while ago, the group also had a mysterious character who kept themself shrouded.

The two fighters know each other and the reluctant one decides to group up with the one he knows and the group because of a term that (in my dream) was something like “crenellation” which he didn’t really understand but had heard before.

The two groups met up because the “hero” group, for lack of a better term, was bickering amongst themselves when one of them noticed the oncoming group and right before they stumbled across them, cast invisibility and disappeared. He had referenced an illusion spell during the argument, but I didn’t think much of that.

The “evil” group is making the pilgrimage to the ruins because it’s the location of an artifact tied to the old ruler, it like many other parts of the evil one’s armor and weapons, were bound in spells by the great good wizard and left scattered in places of key importance in the world.

The evil group forces them along with them into the ruins when they get into one HUGE antechamber they strike up a light and there is a MASSIVE red dragon sleeping in the room. The evil group decide to use the red dragon to do their dirty work and leave the good group in the room and bar the door, to look for the artifact on their own.

In a twist, the red dragon slowly disapates and the missing mage from the good group walks out of where it had been and comments that he couldn’t have held that spell much longer and was glad it worked. It was a trick! I had completely forgotten about this mage and my mind was BLOWN reading this dream comic.

The other group begins to talk between the two fighters (and at this point I remember drawing a page from like a story book of the former big enemy guy, whose body apparently began to resemble black obsidian stone/crystal) and the fighter explained that “crenellation” was declared, giving amnesty to all exiled and defunct members of the region that had supported the evil wizard because he was in the process of returning to the world. The exiled fighter takes pause at this, and you kind of realize he will probably join the “good” group eventually.

The “evil” group’s sorceress finds the artifact and begins to try to breach the barrier surrounding it.

The robed shadowy figure of the evil group just ignores her, shoving her a little as it marches past and simply absorbs the purple magic shielded object into it’s abdomen and begins to grow from a shriveled weak looking person to a monster of obsidian, building around and shattering the containment spell it uses the armor piece within as it builds itself.

In some kind of mental draining on the sorceress it questions what she knows about the good wizard, and how, as he died with the evil one in the final battle, he was able to come back so soon and to such great prominence and regain his former strength. She doesn’t know, he asks her something along the lines of “why does no REGULAR person ever come back from the other side” and her response is that they’ve asked mystics and seers before and those on the other side say “it’s not that they cannot come back, it’s that they would not want to.”

At this point the being, whose size and mannerisms make it seem like quite a large person wearing obsidian armor, but his abdomen is missing where he pulled in the magic sealed armor, and is an upper body, and a pair of legs with no real connection except a small shard of obsidian that floats between the two, discards the sorceress as he’s drained her magic and life away in the process of questioning her.

He then summons a massive obsidian monster and he and the rest of the “evil” party begin to head back down the mountain to return to their lands, and it’s left as that the good party will assumedly fight the obsidian golem thing the evil sorcerer has left in the mountain ruins.

Top 10 Reasons you shouldn't read Internet Top 10 lists.

I try to be relaxed and understanding, but I'm prone to geeky "you're wrong!" and such now and then, but i'm really getting annoyed/sick of the lists i keep seeing. Take a TV show/comic/movie that's pretty universally liked and then make a top 10 list about how it's got bad moments. I just read one that was "the 10 worst episodes of Batman: the Animated series" and i nearly did a spit take.

You know what happens when I find myself watching one of the "bad" episodes of B:TAS? I thank the light that i found a good show on so i don't have to all the other dreck out there.

Beyond that, it seems like so many of the lists Cracked.com or other sites do are purely opinion. You're entitled to your opinion, but using that opinion as if it's self evident that it's factual is pretty presumptuous to say the least. And assuming everyone else is just nodding along at home with your list is hubris at an obvious level.

So basically, if you're gonna make a top 10 list, assume what you're actually doing is trying to convince other people that what you're putting out there is true, and not that you're the long prophecized geek messiah and your word is law for the rest of us.

*Salute*
I'm BATMAN!

MASS EFFECT 3 ENDING SPOILERS

SPOILERS FOR ME3, you've been warned.

I'm having kind of a hard time wrapping my head around the ending of ME3. I mean, I know what happened but that ending kind of came out of no-where and blindsided me. I made my choice, and I stand by it, but I was so utterly devastated by Shepard's death. And not because he's me, and i've been playing this character for three games now, through every moment. That's a part of my feelings but a small one. I'm sort of grieving for Liara and Shepard's children. Those little blue girls he'll never have now, and I am just devastated by their loss.

I've played my Shepard that he truly fell in love with Liara in ME1 and remained with her in ME2, that their relationship was a large part of the reason he had to save the universe, was to be with her. Hell, after Lair of the Shadowbroker when he reunites with her, he mentioned having children with her and i just sort of assumed Bioware inteded that to be a possible outcome.

So the moment I made my choice and sealed his fate. making all life in the universe both organic and synthetic, saving EDI, the geth, everyone... I thought I'd done something wrong. I immediately scoured the internet. Surely, there's an ending that feels right, and Shepard lives. My Shepard would never sacrifice the synthetics just for the chance at life.

But there isn't. There is no way to save them all, and have Shepard and Liara have that future with those children and just live their lives. And frankly, that is just heartbreaking to me.

The universe is saved for the billions of other lives, but there is a hole in it in the shape of a Hero.

/melodrama over. I think i'm gonna have a good well deserved cry.

Piracy.

Now that PIPA and SOPA are stopped and we're raising awareness of ACTA, i have to put forward a notion that may alienate alot of my "Digital Samurai" brethren, but here goes.

We need to stop pirating stuff.

I don't mean stop sharing information and dry up the well of the internet, but come on. You know downloading a program you enjoy using and is well done and giving nothing back to the creator is wrong. That is not debatable.

Sure, the way we interact and purchase things online needs to change. But all the rational people I know that have pirated anything and enjoyed it, have made efforts to compensate the parties responsible for what they enjoyed. For example, before it was released to the public I downloaded the soundtrack to the game Bastion, because i adored the music from the game so much. The moment that product became available on the amazonmp3 store, i bought it, because i loved it so much, i wanted to make sure i was not harming the creator of the thing I loved.

So maybe you'll make the argument you're pirating things you're not willing to pay for, to which I have to say, why are you pirating them if you're not happy enough with them to pay?

Then there is the concept that sharing is piracy. It's not. If I give you a song, and you give it to a person you know, and they pass it on, it takes quite a long chain to finally reach the numbers that piracy reaches in an hour, let alone a whole day.

However, the issue is not totally mapped out yet. There are some times when Piracy becomes shades of gray.

For example, Johnny has a cable subscription, but misses a show because he's at work, if he downloads a torrent of the episode he missed the next day, is this piracy? Why is it if he used a DVR or VHS to record the episode it wouldn't be piracy? This doesn't seem to make sense.

The issue still has to be argued and debated over, but we all need to seriously realize when you download a movie or an album with the express intent of circumventing payment to the creators of the content, that is wrong, and we know it is.

*Salute*
Download this song, Na, na, na, na, na-na-na-naaaaah...