Still more pictures of the crazy people I work with, it’s hard to believe they’re mormons;

Screw Windows Vista, just how many times are you gonna follow these losers around the technology corner? Switch to Ubuntu Linux, its perfect, more stable, secure, easy to use with point and click apps just like windows, and its FREE!!! It finds my printers, my Ipod, plays my music, has filesharing, fast smooth DVD playing, and is immune to windows Viruses.

I just came back from a trip to Modesto California to attend my grandfathers funeral. He was best one of us, he was kind, gentle, soft-spoken and generous. My grandmother often mistook his gentleness for weakness, let’s all hope she learns a lesson from that. Things were bitter, it was not a happy reunion, it was only a few minutes after everyone had assembled in town before people started fighting about the will. Tempers flared and mean things were said, and everyone dreaded the funeral, thinking it would be unnecessarily drawn out and practiced with too many long-winded speakers. Donald (Dundee), my grandfathers adopted son, who is also a Chaplin, led the ceremonies and gave a very warm, accurate, and loving memory to my grandfather, everyone was pleased, there was crying, and laughter as we recalled the funny parts of his life, and the mutual feeling of animosity was temporarily lost, it even seemed for a while that my grandmother, who until now has announced her intention to interdict the will and keep the money for herself, seemed like she would be moved to generosity and honor my grandfathers wishes and take care of his children like he would have wanted. I wanted to speak at the funeral, but Donald had done such an eloquent job, that I felt nothing additional needed to be said. So I will share what I wanted to say here; My grandfather was an extraordinary man, thrifty, hard working, and determined. He knew no envy or need, he always had, or found a way to get the things he needed or wanted. It was not until now that I realized how well so many perfect attributes came together into one man. In addition to being determined and hard working, he was kind and gentle, which is a hard mix to find anywhere. I have often thought how perfectly the image of a janitor suited my grandfather, even though he was never a janitor, but he took care of things, he made things work right, both machines and people. Sometimes in life we are called upon to be gods janitor, and a lot of us fail miserably, but never him. One time I remember was particularly fitting of this, once when my grandfather was younger, he  got up before sunrise, as was his lifelong custom, and started his drive to work, he came to an intersection, and there was a car parked in front of him, running, but not moving. After a few long minutes my grandfather put his car in park, got out, and went up to see what was going on. The driver of the vehicle was dead drunk, parked at an intersection, with his car running, and his foot about to slip off the break. My grandfather put the mans car in park, scooted him over, and pulled the car over into a nearby parking lot, turned off the car, rolled up the windows, covered the man with his jacket, and locked the doors, and left the man to sleep it off. He had never met the man before, or after, but he took care of this perfect stranger, and I doubt the man ever knew that his life may have been saved by a total stranger. There are million ways this interchange could have gone, and in our modern world most of them would be bad, but my grandfather was made from different stuff, a valuable remnant of a different time. Everything good in me I have from him, and I’d be lucky if I wound up being half the man he was. I love you grandpa, you were always my hero, and I’m sorry I never told you so.

What the HELL is wrong with you people!!!!!!!!!!!

Well, New Years was awesome out here in vegas. I gave up smoking for my resolution, which has been hard, even with the patch. Mostly because I like to spend time at the computer, reading, writing, playing games, listening to music, and I love to smoke when doing those things, so it’s only hard when I’m at the compy. Maybe I should cut down on computer time for a while. I housesat for Linda and Hal, taking care of their three dogs, three cats, and one fish. Still enjoying my job, people are crazy there. We went to Hofbrau House to party, and my boss Harry had to get spanked for spilling his beer it was hilarious

I friggin love this show. Rome on HBO. It follows the story of two centurions, Lucias Vorenas and Titus Pullo set against some of the most historical changes to take place in the Roman Empire. Season One ended in catastrophe, of course, and for a while it looked like the show wouldn’t be picked up again, the sets and costumes are so amazing it can’t be cheap to produce. In season one Vorenas and Pullo make their way back to Rome, Pullo doesn’t have much to come back to, so he mostly clings to Vorenus who is a little on the uptight side of idealism. Vorenas is afraid to come back to his wife and family because he’s been away at war so long. He sees his wife holding a child, and in rage accuses her of being a whore, but she corrects him that this is his grand-daughter she is holding. He feels like and idiot and has an awkward reconcilliation. Despite the setback the love between Vorenas and his wife comes back into full bloom. All the while Julius Ceasar is taking over Rome with all the cunning, betrayal and intrique that that entails. Pullo spends most his days longing for a slave girl, being drunk and watching Vorenas’s back, but still manages to get himself into trouble and towards the end of the season is sentenced to execution. While at his execution he, being a first class centurion, slaughters most of the men who are supposed to execute him, but he finds himself running low on energy and reasons to fight, the sight of which actually stirs Vorenus to jump into the pit with his friend and fight off the last of the executioners, despite a commandment from the emporor to do no such thing. All Rome hails them as hero’s and symbols of brotherly love and they become so famous that even Ceasar cannot have them punished, so Ceasar, not wanting to appear weak, rewards them by making Vorenas a senator. The meteoric rise comes to a painful crash however as it comes to light that Vorenas’s wife lied to him that first day, that she thought her husband was dead, and had a child with another man, and that Titus Pullo found out about the affair and murdered the other man out of love and respect for Vorenas and his wife. Vorenas is confronted with this information, runs to confront his wife not sure if he will kill her or forgive her, Julius Ceasar gets ambushed, possibly leaving mark antony in charge of Rome, and Vorenas doesn’t get a chance to decide what he was going to do because the season closes with his wife throwing herself off a balcony in shame. good stuff.

Another week down, and Thanksgiving is coming soon. I got put in charge of making duplicate keys for my church, evidently some strange people have been coming around the church meeting and watching the children, asking for money etc. I watched Bride of Frankenstien this morning, great movie, it has so many powerful icons in it, and yet it seemed off center somehow, like they couldn’t decide if they wanted the monster to be hated or loved. The hermit scene is timeless. No matter how great and iconic, that was a crappy ending, the monster lets his creator escape with the love of his life while he destroys himself along with the Bride (who rejected him) and Dr. Protius, he screams “Go! Live!” to Dr. Frankenstien, and then throws the doomsday switch… Lame. I get Thursday and Friday off with pay, was thinking of going to Idaho to see Jeff, still not sure about that though, on many levels. I need to consider carefully though, I’m running out of friends pretty quickly now that I have kicked Kristin to the curb.

Well today we had a big office meeting in which our company instituted its new mandatory drug testing policy. I have nothing to worry about, I don’t even drink, but it still burns my ass on principle. They basically blackmail you into signing a piece of paper waiving all your rights as a citizen, that you will consent to any and all searches, and give all requested urine, hair, DNA, or whatever else samples at any time they want, or you lose your job because you MUST have something to hide.  I have nothing to hide, but I don’t like being compelled to give up any liberties I may have left. I think this leads to interesting social problem, namely that there are varying spheres of influence in America today, employers CAN compel their employees to give up any and all civil rights and the federal government wouldn’t be able to do anything about it, not that it would. If we suppose a conspiracy between all employers in America, that conspiracy would basically overrule the supreme court. If every employer made drug testing mandatory, we wouldn’t even need laws against drugs, the free market would have done the supreme courts work, and while this may sound like a fair and pleasing idea to some, society as a whole might suffer. To the religious right this seems like the just banding together to assert their will and take back their world, while others, like the youth and artists will see it simply as economic persecution. I have always believed that the mind is not a sufficient tool to comprehend the universe, and similarly law cannot completely provide for a society, because society has been saved so many times by those people who exist on it’s fringes. The open source movement has a somewhat similar analogy, about a decade ago a popular Internet browser deeded some of its code to the open source community as a publicity stunt, the open source community played with it, and produced a vastly superior product to the original browser, called fire-fox, which is rapidly becoming the most popular browser on the Internet. The similarity here is that the open source community is “fringe”, but free (as in free speech) and so the free people on the fringe saved the browser. It is exactly in this same way that society itself needs an open source, free, fringe-element, and economic or legal persecution or legislation can only serves to drive the fringe farther away. We need a dramatic re-assertion of human and individual rights in this country, we need to again learn to separate the private sphere from the business and economic, contrary to popular belief, its not always about the economy, not everything has a dollar value, and the best things in life are free.