Hellbent

My grandfather has Alzheimer's. This video, while perhaps entertaining, is also interesting if you consider that my grandfather has no short term memory for most everything that happens throughout the day, but he does seem to remember the cumulative effect of how he feels about how he is treated. In the video I am trying to get my grandfather to agree to let me help him change his diapers.

I went to amazon to buy an Oral-B Pro-Health Clinical Pro-Flex Toothbrush and couldn't for the life of me figure out how to check out so I figured I'd email them to complain and they wouldn't let me email them about the check out process! I was only allowed to call them to ask them about it, so I selected another issue that I was complaining about (even though it wasn't what I wanted to write them about). Here is the letter:

Wow Amazon, you are losing your way. Forcing me to call to make a complaint about the check out process? --not giving me the option to send an email to complain about the check out process because you want to convince me with your friendly service representatives that the new way is better? That's pretty annoying. But this isn't what I was writing to complain about. I seriously could not find the check out button. I had selected the item I wanted to purchase but all I could see was a barrage of annoying promotions. I'm not here to be manipulated into buying more things. I come to amazon to quickly and conveniently grab whatever I need and move on with my day, not be cajoled into furthering the over-the-top consumption of society. Now, due to Amazon's greed I will not buy anything from this website again. Good thing Amazon isn't the only place to buy things on the internet. I've been using Amazon for years to buy just about everything I want and need, but I'm more than happy to shop elsewhere.

The same thing happens in the auto industry. The business model is that the only way is up. There is no such thing as "Hey, we did it. Nothing to improve." Instead, the philosophy is that we have to keep improving, keep making things *better*, regardless of what is needed; keep expanding our inordinate market share. Well some things don't need improvement. Sometimes it's just best to leave things well enough alone. On Amazon it was you select the items you want to buy, then you're given two options, continue shopping or check out. What was wrong with that? How is this new system better where I'm enraged because I can't even buy the item I want? I'm tired of people trying to improve things to the point they break them. And then to be corralled like I'm cattle into buying more stuff: it's disgusting. Is the company not big enough? Is the world really not enough? I'll be shopping elsewhere. Good day.

I dreamt I was in a zombie apocalypse . At first, it was a play or something being acted out, and my friend was all made up and acting out someone who had become zombified or something, or was among zombies and trying not to get bit, but then a little later suddenly I was alone with like three other people and I was like where'd everyone go? and they were like "I think we're the only one's left, here". Apparently we were the sole survivors or everyone else had all taken off or zombified or what... no one knew. Strange, tho, there were no bodies or destruction. Just no other people or signs of life.

I became paranoid at this point: the three others I was with (and myself) were haggard and looked like we'd become zombies any moment. I kept checking around myself spinning around to see my back and saying "one of us is going to be next, it's just a matter of time". We started walking away from the hill where I grew up and soon encountered other people. Apparently things weren't quite as bad as we thought. They told us something or other about the 'plague' and seemed to have some pretty basic, but effective plan and resources. The first people we encountered had a camper and some basic medical supplies and reassured us and made us feel very encouraged. When we encountered them I had a moment of recall like "oh, of course! I totally forgot we were going to run into these people" as if I was in a movie I had watched before and just had forgotten how the plot went.

Later we were at a police station and a guy tried to steal some food or some supply of some kind and I at first half heartedly tried to stop him with this weird piece of equipment I had (it was like a hockey stick but padded with cloth or something). No one else noticed or cared about the thief so I nabbed him on the shoulder with the end of my clothed hockey stick and brought him back to the officers. Everyone was kinda like "dude, you didn't need to steal, we're all in this together--we gotta look out for each other, not take from one another". I can't remember what they did to him, whether they banished him from the camp or what. I don't think anything too terrible happened to him, tho.

I think there was more to the dream and it gets fuzzy. There was a road, not very big, kinda like those roads you see in the Tour De France, and a lot of people were hiking up it or something--like someone had figured out where to go, but me and the people I was with weren't really feeling this whole pilgrimage situation. I think we headed off by ourselves; actually I think we left with the people we first met with the camper. I think we went to another town or something. Things started to settle down, got more calm. I don't remember what else happened.

Was looking for my wallet in my bedroom which is a real mess. I found my doom2 manual, my doom manual and my doom 2 survival guide (items dating back to 1994). That was pretty exciting. I haven't looked at them yet, but it will be fun to reread them now. Maybe I'll find that bit about revenants brushing off demons and sending them on their way again that I had posted about quite some time ago. Oh, and shortly after I found my wallet.

is checking me out on OkCupid! Should I message her?

on GoodGame Empire.
http://empire.goodgamestudios.com/

Tis fun, and you can actually progress without buying any rubies! :)

So three years ago the most awsum cat came to the side door of our house on a most frigid winter night. After its rescuer went back to Germany I inherited the cat because no one else wanted him. Well, I don't know how the cat does it (sneaks cute pills at the clinic?) but it is just the most endearing creature I've ever had the privilege of knowing.

I moved into my Boss's guest room for a couple months while I was helping her on her Geobook. My friend James lives in the area so I offered him the privilege of caring for my cat for the interim since I couldn't bring it to my boss's. One weekend, my friend went back to Boston to visit his g/f. A snowstorm blew up and I had to go reskew kitty from James's garage, where he was staying when James would leave. My boss was nice enough to let me bring kitty over to her farm house (big land--kitty LOVES the outdoors). Boss immediately falls in love with kitty. She hopes I will give her kitty, and James hopes he'll get kitty. Boss states up front she wouldn't want to borrow kitty. She only wants him if I give him to her permanently. James says he'd be happy to take kitty for as long as I want, no commitments necessary. So I let James have kitty, until I find a living situation where I can have kitty, even though James's property isn't quite as awesome as boss's (still pretty great for kitty, tho). But that living situation never transpired, and James loves kitty a lot, naturally. Now he keeps saying kitty is his. I can't tell if he's messing around or not, but did he by ipso-defacto inherit my kitty because he's been caring for him for so long? He gave it its shots and other things. I wasn't keen on all that stuff, figuring kitty doesn't need that stuff, so I think he feels he takes better care of kitty furthering his claim to him.

Man, I wish I had brought my camera....
I mean, this thing was large. Certainly right up there with the largest. Maybe not quite the girth of the greatest, but healthy enough; but it was the length that was so impressive. Fully lodged it was, and yet still breaking above the surface of the water. That's something to write about: a birth of great magnificence. I stood over the monstrosity in awe, reflecting on whether I should go hurry and get my camera, but ultimately deciding against leaving the ghastly malfeasance unguarded even for a moment. One tidal tug would not be sufficient to rid the world of the living of such vile villainy.

At the breakfast table my dad's girlfriend calls and my dad answers and tells her she is on speaker phone.

Dad: "Say good morning, dad!"
Grandpa: "Hi, dad!"

Beat my score. This was my second attempt at playing the game and playing with a touchpad on a laptop (no mouse).

Well, that was an interesting evening. [Protected identity], [protected identity] and a third-party boozed it up in the Jacuzzi and [protected identity] had the brilliant idea of playing truth or Dare (you know, because it's not like they're professionals with doctors degrees or anything). So it wasn't long before [protected identity] was trapsing about naked flapping his uhh… Well… his Whiskey dick flapping in the breeze. Then [protected identity] was drunk enough to briefly show the goods for protected identitys bending over and pulling down her bikini bottoms.

I'm driving a car down to florida. The owner is paying me a measly $550. But I am going to see about ridesharing on the way down and buying a car down there for a friend who is a used car salesman and driving the bought car back. Hopefully that will work out and I'll make some money in the end.

Try this one, weird trick the firewood suppliers don't want you to know about :

In the last decade, Honda has been seemingly slipping, making questionable cars with questionable fuel economy compared to the golden era of Honda . They finally produce a car to make me fall in love with the company again but only release it in select cities and a limited number. It's just .. why....

I'd love a Prince of Persia feeling in atmosphere doom level made in honor of my agédness on Guy Fawkes Day.

General Rainbow Bacon had started one that was very promising which I hope maybe he'll finish :).



Something with some clever secret passageways and nooks and crannies to explore. Contrast from tight passageway to open to tight again is probably good (as well as low ceilings to high ceilings). Contrast is your friend.

I love GSTONE texture. I don't like marble, tho (because I had it as a default in DeepSea for a long time and it killed it for me. I also like the GRAY* textures (with gray4 being my least favorite for the same reason I don't like marble :p). I also like the various versions of the gray floor texture as seen in the above screenshot.

• Please, don't have the exit door locked by a key. :)
  
• Please, no instappear monsters or monsters that teleport in, unless it's setup as an ominous event (ie, E1M9, E3M5, or Map13 RL get).
  
• Secret areas that are built for their atmosphere more than for what they contain.
  
• Preponderance of rooms with high ceilings next to passageways or rooms with low ceilings.
  
• Doom 1 scale and style architecture / level of detail. :)

Well, I suppose I should live up to my title. Last weekend I went out on the town and did some dancing in the nightclub with my cane. Two lovelies started dancing with me a little and as the iron was hot for the striking as it were I came to realize that I had BO. I had forgotten to put on deodorant earlier in the day. So I hoofed it on over to the men's room, took a leak, washed my hands. But then I loaded up my hands with soap and went into the shitter. There I commenced to wash my armpits. But now I was faced with the conundrum of rinsing my armpits. I looked around the pooper-stall and sighed. I flushed the toilet and thought of how kitties are very cleanly animals and only drink the cleanest water. That's why you always see cats drinking from toilet bowls. Besides, the bathroom was busy and there was a towel guy in the bathroom so I couldn't exactly rinse in the sink....

A little later when Gangnam Style came on I asked a pretty girl who was sitting down if she'd like to dance. Shockingly her answer was no. So I gangnam styled it solo.

Later, after leaving the club without any numbers, I saw a super-stretch limo out in front of the club. I asked the pretty girl standing near the limo if she was riding in it and she said no. I decided to see if the door was locked and opened the limo door. It looked nice enough inside, but I closed the door again, figuring I shouldn't draw too much attention. The limo driver, I assume, told me not to touch the car. Shortly after, he opens the door and a bunch of people pile in, including the girl that just told me she wasn't going. I didn't ask if I could join the party. Later, a friendly enough guy asked me how my night was. I told him it was good enough and that I'm glad I didn't stay in line for the other club and had wised up to the fact that it was a gay club (given the number of dudes). He said that's nice, that he was at that club. Maybe halloween weekend will go a little better.

My brother's wedding hit all the right notes and all 'round tear ducts were in full pump mode. I decided to drive to NYC with Mom, sis and brother-in-law to see them off and, apparently, drive them to the airport, as well as catch up with some curly-locked Shinerocks. After some mighty delectable Maker's Mark whiskey hot chocolate, I crashed at Sol's place in Brooklyn and left in the morning so that I would be cutting it close, because where's the fun if there isn't a little risk and danger? Except, as I was getting ready to leave, I forgot that I had to go all the way up town, not just cross the water into Manhattan from Brooklyn Heights. So I scrambled my stuff together and started hobbling toward the station as fast as my cane abled body would move, downloading the NYC Subway app on my way, since iOS6 no longer has directions via public transport built in. The express (Green line number 5) to Manhattan turned out to have some issues, though, and the PA comes on alerting all the passengers that it will be suspended for an indefinite amount of time forcing me to hoof it several blocks to the Red express line (number 3) to the upper west side. I exit the station to see the Freedom Tower rising directly in front of me. My backpack is kinda heavy and the cane supported hobbling is severely hampered by the added weight to my otherwise light frame. I'm underground again and hear the train coming to a stop some distance away and so am racing down the stairs against a sea of exit-passengers. One man is headed toward me (I'm on the right side holding onto the right railing) so he's coming up on his left. I see he has no intention of getting out of my way and doesn't budge when I bark at him something to the effect "hey, dude, clearly I'm in some kind of rush here and I'm not exactly fit, so move". I think I actually said "Excuse me!" Damn New Yorkers, think they can just bully and hustle their way through a quasy-nimble cripple.

As I hit the landing the doors to the stopped train are still open. I amble over as fast as I can but they shut just as I approach them. Man, I've put in way too much effort to come this close only for the train to leave without me. I press my hands against the windows of the door and ... pull it open, somewhat to my surprise and pleasure. I jostle my way inside, ungainly, and hurriedly plop myself down in the first available seat, anxious to rest. I find myself seated among three very attractive young, professional ladies, two across from me and one next to me. They are completely non-plussed.

As the train is moving along I'm thinking if there is anything I might want to just double check. I look at the map--yep, red 3 line is express to Upper West Side. Nothing I need to double check with other passengers. All's good. A couple stops later, the lovelies leave and I hear the station announcement "Fulton" or "Wall St." Wait.. am I even going in the right direction? I ask the guy now to my left what direction this train is headed and he says downtown. AWWWWWWWSUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUMM!

In a quasi-panic I rush out of the train and head up the stairs, trying to figure out where I need to go to get the uptown train. I ask another guy at the top of the stairs and he directs me back down the stairs I just came up. Oh, look, there are two tracks running parallel to each other. One goes UP TOWN and the other DOWN. Novel, isn't it?

I get off the train around 10:10am at Broadway and W 86th St. I text sis if they can drive the car to me, as I'm feeling like a battered old man. "We haven't gotten dressed yet so come up to the apartment." Ever since my bro aptly tagged the absurdity of air travel with the line "hurry up and wait" I can't help but smile.



I also visited my artist friend. He makes wall hangings out of scrap pieces of wood. The works are flat one to two inches thick. They are not three dimensional in space. It just look that way.





Later we climbed a tower but there was something not quite right about the chocolate brownies we had eaten earlier and the tower started to become distorted:



Michael Zelehoski's latest tool is not a paintbrush or a stencil, or a even a chisel. It's a giant, 2500 pound table saw.

"this is the mother of all table saws, pretty much."



To see more of his art follow this link.

Here's a video on Mike's artistic process: http://player.vimeo.com/video/34932946

I hear there aren't any deer there.

http://www.exchile.com/TrekkingPatagoniaTorresDelPaine.html

... because I posted a video of my brother's first dance on his wife's FB wall. Naturally the video has already received a ton of hits. Except when you watch the video on youtube it there are dozens of doom videos as suggested related videos. :-[ So I went into my youtube account and privatized them all. Now there's only one suggested video of my cousin's parakeet. I can live with that.

ahh... *sigh* living in my private life.

my family think I'm crazy "You could have written a novel by now" all the time I spend on DW and playing doom and making maps. :( *sigh*

is the amount of two uncashed checks from a job I held in 2004. Gonna go to the bank and see what they have to say....

Nevermind, false alarm. They were direct deposited and the checks are just for my records. Damn it!

Oh boy, the time is rapidly approaching and my best man speech is rather inappropriate thus far. Asking the fine upstanding anti-bellends of DW to help steer me in the right direction!

Here's what I have so far:

Well, I think I've accumulated a few more gray hairs these last couple weeks preparing my words for this special occasion. Not very far behind my brother I'm afraid.

If Travis was the big man on campus in college, he's now the big kahuna, shaker and mover in Great Torrington. He has shown himself to be a natural born leader. In college, always the life of the party, he led the way to greater times in the dorm halls of Green Mountain College. But since those good ol' days, he has learned to take his love of playing and good times and turn them into a positive force in the community. A proponent of building local economy he has advocated for the use of Berkshares as a means to keep commerce within the community. Travis is about to share his life with a very special person and while sharing was never one of the character traits of his that I particularly remember as kids, I can now say he has been a big proponent of getting everyone in the community to share the road. If you're not one of the people he has gotten on a bicycle in the last several years (shame on you), maybe you are one of the people in your car shaking your fist at a pack of cyclists who have taken a rather liberal interpretation of the term 'share the road' and feel their healthy, human powered activity and power in numbers gives them a right to a rather healthy share. Now he gives what little free time he has when he's not at the shop making sure the Berkshire Bike and Board ship is sailing smoothly to do a radio show to further the cause for local community.

Travis has treated me like a little brother. [beat] As kids, I always looked up to him and saw him as a role model. He was popular, he was cool, and if I was able to follow him down the same ski slopes on vacations to Killington or Sugarloaf, I was never able to do it with the same panache and style, flying over the edge of what to me back then looked like sheer cliffs guising as ski slopes. That was just the way it was: little brother would never be as good as big brother. Travis is a common sense, nuts and bolts kind of guy, while I have always had my head in the clouds and not the firmest grasp on common sense, which, I see it now, is the reason I received so much brotherly love when we were growing up.

While he typically is the one who would get the bad rap for picking on me when we were kids, it wasn't always without warrant. I still feel bad about the time I kicked him in the shins with my ski boots on. I have no idea now why I would think that that was a fun way to get back at him for whatever brotherly bullying I felt he had committed against me at the time. But that's in the past. At some point in our storied relationship Travis decided being an [barely catch myself] a certain-sevel-letter-word, did not need to be synonymous with being cool. When this happy change took place, I cannot rightly say, (we're not talking decades ago, people, you know it was probably last month) but it bode well for me and it showed that Travis was finally maturing into the thoughtful, caring man we have all grown to love today. Thank God adolescence only lasts through one's twenties. As he's matured from a preppy punk into the fine, upstanding man he is today he now continually goes out of his way for me and looks out for me and I couldn't ask for more from a brother or a friend.

Melanie is no slouch either. Smart, hardworking and caring, Travis is lucky to have such a special person in his life. Few people have had the sort of life challenges to overcome that Melanie has had to face. She is a fighter. [I'll add more here later] Please raise your glasses to both having a long, healthy life full of playing and sharing.

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A and B are both true answers (and are the same person). Which is the best answer to give on the application? Here are my proposed answers:

A. Through the hiring manager
B. Through a friend
C. word of mouth...
D. other [please specify]

Thanks!

writing down dreams isn't easy due to their abstract nature. This dream takes place somewhere in the countryside.

I got caught up in some criminal activity. There were some other bad folk that I had to make dead if I was going to come out of the thing alive. There was a school or a community building of some kind that was, for some reason, densely packed with very old land mines from "the war". There was a nearby building across a field from the 'community building' (where all the people were, mostly young people--children). The nearby building was a warehouse type building with slabs of heavy marble. I guess the marble was valuable.

I had somehow got caught up in this thing involving some criminal, murderous-type folk. There were about five or so mob-type men competing for some kind of quasi-elaborate heist somehow involving the marble that would make them fairly wealthy but would involve the deaths of everyone else for it to work--not just each other, but the community building filled with people that was booby trapped with old landmines. No one living in the community knew the building was riddled with mines.

I'm trying to remember how I got caught up in the whole mess. Someone was helping me out, tho. The mob-men and I and the person helping me were at one point in the execution of the plan to get the marble were in a war zone at the 'community building'. I had no interest in getting involved in this war-scene that suddenly appeared like a timewarp into the past (but was in the present). I watched as people got shot, including the person that helped me pull the heist off. I sensed the chaos of the war-scene would work to my advantage. It was nighttime during the war-scene, because it would be less risky to pull the heist off at night. So I watched as people got shot in this firefight. Then the war-scene ended. In the chaos of the aftermath I was able to escape, or finish executing the plan, which I had little time to do. I think there were still three other mob-men that survived, tho, who I was competing with for my life and the paydirt (which was, I guess, some slaps of marble in the old, very large, dusty, dark barn-like warehouse). It was now or never.. it was me or them.

I did the final act to set the plan in motion. Everyone was asleep. It was late in the night. I don't know where the mob-men were. I think they were at a nearby place; I think at a low building with floursescent lights between the old warehouse and the 'community building' (that was booby-trapped with old mines). I set the mines so they would detonate in a few hours around at the crack of dawn when everyone was asleep. The other mob-men would be asleep as well at the 'community building'. Everyone tied to the heist would be obliterated and none of it would be tied back to me. I stole across the dark field back to the warehouse.. or my house.. and I may or may not have been accompanied by the person who had helped me do the heist.... I remember thinking 'the police will never get me, everyone (ie, the evidence of my being linked to it or their deaths) will be destroyed.

I think the next scene was at some kind of house party and an old friend of mine was there and I double crossed him. It was really cold and I didn't invite him to leave the party because of the big scandal/murder thing I was involved in. I was on the phone with someone (I think related to the heist) and I finished talking with them and told my friend I had to go and left him in the cold.

After everything was set, all that was to be done was to wait. In the last wee-hours of the night I was back at the warehouse to get the marble, but some other guy was trying to sneak it and I had I guess at that point forgotten what the purpose of the elaborate heist was--by the time I had set the landmines to kill everyone else--it was more about surviving being killed myself from the mob-men than it was to get the paydirt (which was slabs of marble). I started to help the kind of cloaked figure haul away some heavy slabs of marble, but then my dad and the other manager of the marble warehouse saw us and so I had to act like nothing was going on and stopped helping the guy take the marble. He went off with his marble and my marble was inside my dad's minivan on the floor. I was a little concerned my dad would see my marble. If he did, would he know what I was up to? That I was involved in some murderous scheme to get it? Perhaps because it was too far beyond what he'd ever think I could be caught up in or because he simply just wasn't paying attention or had his mind on something else, he didn't make the connection--or simply just didn't see the stolen marble at all.

I think I then went back to the very cold house where I had left my friend and some of his friends and other people were still milling about in the dregs of the party that was winding down (it was almost dawn). My friend was really cross with me (and maybe my sister was there for a brief moment). I think I tried to explain to him why I had to leave, but the whole scene was rather muddled. All I remember is my friend's cross face, my sister possibly being disapproving, and maybe even my friend's parents in some periphery faculty being surprised and disappointed as well.

I left my friend at the house again and I guess headed towards the 'community building'. The mines never detonated.

Dawn came and went and I went back to the 'community building' and school was in session there and 'the town' was busy and bustling--all the people were concentrated around this heavily booby-trapped building/town area.

I was a little nervous milling around the town--would the mines blow? Would they blow one by one or would they all blow at the same time? I saw in mind's eye the mines were sort of stagnating in thick, almost black, blood, like skulls stuck on spikes sticking out of the ground, but hidden beneath the town/community building. Were they sinking? It didn't look like they were going to blow, but they were weird. I think they were soaked in the blood from the war-zone earlier. Perhaps that's why they didn't detonate. I didn't say anything or do anything. I just kept milling about since everyone was busy bustling about getting on with their day. It was kind of like a turn of the century type scene at Plymouth Rock or something--it had a slight white-washed, bonnet, pilgrim innocence to it.

Even though it sort of occurred to me that I hadn't actually done anything criminal since the mines failed to detonate and that I could save myself from following through with this heinous crime, I felt like the act had been done, I had already committed the crime by setting the mines and stealing off in secret, even if it failed. And so I didn't back out of the evil-deed I had committed. I waited. For some reason leaving the town/building was not a good option, because then I'd lose sight of the other surviving mob-men that I had to make sure became dead. If I stayed milling around the town they would remain in the community building a non-threat to me. But if I left a safe distance to wait the eventual detonation of the bombs, they would somehow escape and be at large again and I'd be at their (lack of) mercy again.

When it became evident the bombs were never going to blow, I remember going back to the warehouse and milling about there. Everything sort of diffused (ie. the tension, the danger, and I guess the bombs). I then woke up.

There's probably other things I haven't recalled, but I will have to edit them in later if I remember anything else.