The Killing Joke

I don't know if you remember Diablo or not, but it's a game that several of us from gateway used to get to gether and play until the wee hours of the morning. Jason and I spent a lot of time in DiabloII / DiabloII Lord of Destruction when that came out also.
Well, Jason found a new game call Titan Quest that's very Diablo-like but the graphics are better. It has some it's own plusses and minuses as far as game features go, but they got it mostly right. I purchased it from amazon.com after visting with Jason about it at the Pheonix bar in Harrisburg. I was really tired that night, had been at Skelly's Pub since about 4:30, and went to the Pheonix around 9:00. Only thing I really remember is that Monty was there, there was a dog in the bar, and we talked about Titan Quest. I went home at 11 and died.
Anyway, I have the game now... and the expansion pack. Am just playing the normal game now and it's pretty good. If you like Diablo or DiabloII , you'd like it.

Posted by The Joker at 12:51 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Chris Loomis was supposed to be in town last weekend but I had to call him and tell him not to come. I got a call on Thursday morning that my grandpa had passed away, so I went to Pierre instead. It was nice to see my aunts and cousins, and my Mom and Dad. Too bad it wasn't under better circumstances.

My Mom is taking it pretty hard--understandably-- as her mom passed about a year and a half ago.

I was a pallbearer again. My mom really wanted me to be one and if that's what she wants, if it makes her feel better, I'm willing to do it. It's not a job that I wanted to become good at, but it seems like I've been getting a lot of practice. I don't know. I've been a pallbearer 5 times but 4 of them have been in the past year and a half.

I consider it an honor to help bring a loved one to their final rest. It certainly isn't has hard as all the planning and arranging that other people have had to do before the various funerals I've attended recently. I guess I'm just tired of the sadness. I've had enough funerals for a while, not that there's anything anyone can do about how many funerals a person has to go to or when they occur. I've noticed that I have other relatives that I've seen at these events that don't seem to have any "duties". They show up, visit with relatives that they haven't seen for a while, dress up on the day of, mumble through some songs, eat their Lutheran Hot Dish or the ham-on-a-buttered-dinner-roll sandwiches and go home. I sometimes think "that would be nice". Nice to not have to worry about showing up early or about getting instructions right, nice to sit with my family, nice to not have to worry about tripping/falling/dropping. (Believe me, it crosses your mind.) But it's also nice that my family knows I'll show up, they know that I'll listen to instructions and that I'll comport myself with decorum. They know that if they give me a difficult duty on a difficult day I'll stand up and do it for them. That's nice too.

Klemens Max Hlebanja was born in Stanley County, SD in 1917 to Austrian immigrants who had homesteaded west of Hayes, SD. I didn't know until last year that his first name was Klemens, which was his father's name. Everyone always called him Max. He liked to fly, hunt, fish and play practicle jokes on people. He always had a good story to tell.
One of my favorites:
When he was about 80, he was having a lot of trouble walking. He finally went to the doctor to get checked out. He told the doctor it was probably his right knee because he'd had pain in that knee for quite a while. The doctor told him it was probably his hip since he was kind getting on in years and hip joints tend to wear out, but the doc said they'd xray his hip and knee and see what they came up with.
A few days later, Max was back at the doctor's and the doc said "Well, Max, it is your hip and we'll have to schedule you for replacement surgery. But I have a question about your knee....there seems to be a bullet in it."
Grandpa replied, "Ooooohh?" He could say more with the word 'oh' than most people can with whole sentences. He started to laugh and said "I fogot all about that. When I was 16 I was practicing my quick draw and shot myself in the knee. I didn't want to get in trouble so I just wrapped it up and didn't tell anyone."
So when my grandpa had his hip replaced, they took what was left of the 60-odd year old bullet out of his knee too.
Grandpa thought that was hillarious.
I'll really miss him.

Posted by The Joker at 10:12 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I haven't seen Vista. I've had to help people with Vista over the phone but I haven't seen it. I shouldn't have to help people with Vista. What part of "It's not a supported operating system." and "Our products have not been tested on Vista." is so hard to understand?. And yet these same people are expected to know whether or not they should allow or deny every action they take in the O/S. Hey! Bill Gates!! If I didn't want to do it, I wouldn't have fuckin' clicked on it. Dumb ass!

It pisses me off that in order to "protect" us from "attack" they have totally turned off any freedom we may have had in the O/S and have added an additional layer checks to "protect the user from themselves". This is a total crock. I won't be buying a copy of this very soon. It combines the worst features of both political parties in an O/S that mimicks Homeland Security on many levels. It "sounds like a good idea", is overly cumbersome, has high overhead, tries to do so many things that it can do none of them well, and ultimately, it doesn't work.

Please remove your shoes and put all your liquids in 3oz containers before purchasing.

We should declare that spammers, hackers and virus makers are terrorists and get rid of some of them.

Posted by The Joker at 07:51 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)