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Complications from Diabetes

Last night my mother in law, Jo Ann Labonski, passed away in her sleep. It's sad, her husband Richard is sad, Bren's sad, the whole family is sad - and I'm mentally exhausted (we got the call at 4 am and raced to H.B.).
She was over for Thanksgiving last week and seemed OK (for her). She even went x-mas shopping with her daughters ALL DAY Friday. But that's expected I guess. One of the physical* stages of death is an apparent increase in energy, which is mainly due to the digestive system is shutting down. It often leaves family members confused saying things like "s/he was realy alert, I thought that the worst was behind us".

Growing up I based my impressions of what a mother in law would be like from watching copious amounts of television. I was certain that I was doomed to have Endora (from Bewitched) as my monster in law. About the only thing TV prepared me for was the big orangish-red hair and the thickly lined make up. She was a good person and she will be missed by all that knew her.

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The Plan, as I currently understand it...
The Rosary/wake/viewing is on Thursday afternoon/evening at Dilday Bros
The full catholic Funeral mass will be 10 am Friday morning at St. Bonaventure
And the "Internment" (since when is this the PC term? It sounds like what you do to unlawful combatants) will follow and is scheduled for 1:30 pm(?) at Riverside National Cemetery. Richard is a Vet and he get's a substantial discount - what is it with the Labonski's and coupons, discounts and freebes??
After all that, family and friends will be invited to my place in Yorba Linda (it's on the way back from Riverside off the 91) for grieving/socializing/snacking/depresionreception

Note to self: Invest in Kleenex, or similar brand, Facial Tissue

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*The physical stages of death and dying relate to the changes that the body undergoes as it is shutting down. This is not to be confused with the more popular 5 mental stages the mind goes thru when one learns of approching mortality.

Turkey Day - End

I'm surprised - I was certain that this year would be a repeat of last year. But everything went smoothly. I just wish I had my camera with me when the roasting pan holding the turkey boiled over and caught fire on the glowing red heating elements in the oven.
The question shouldn't be - "why did it boil over?", instead - it should possibly relate as to why they were trying to boil a turkey that is overflowing with stuffing. Luckily, a day later there have been no reports of food poisoning.

Turkey Day - Hour 10

The plan was that the in-laws would show up at 6am (just like they did last year) and pop a pre-stuffed turkey in the oven. Well - they showed up at 9:30am. Let me introduce you to the current cast of characters...
Bren - my wife
Jason - that's me!
Fiona - the dog
Rich - father in law
JoAnn - mother in law
Clorinda - sister in law
Briar - niece
Bren just took off for Marie Calenders to pick up some specialty pies with clorinda and briar - leaving me alone with rich. yay...

PIE!

Pumpkin Pie: CHECK
I was up late again preparing for Thursday's onslaught of the in-laws, this time it was the mass manufacture of delicious pumpkin pie. Mmmm.... pie......
Tonight, I may try again with the splenda pie ::shudder::
On the plus side, I may be able to FINALLY read some of the XDK stuff :) Tungsten is a god for convincing MS to let us in. Apparently some of our sdk's are competing technologies ;-)

BREAD!

On Thursday I'm hosting thanksgiving for the family. Or I should say that the in-laws are showing up at 6am to put a turkey in the the oven for a day of fun(?) and my part is to make the bread and pies. To that end, over the last few nights I've make 2 loafs zucchini bread, 2 loafs cranberry bread, 2 loafs apricot bread, and 4 loafs of pumpkin bread.
Tonight is pie night, and maybe - just maybe I'll get over my moral objections to cooking a low sugar pie with that "splenda sugar blend for baking" stuff. The "blend" is a 1/2c of real sugar that is laced with splenda so that it has the percieved sweetness of a full cup of sugar. Errrr - where am I supposed to get the missed volume that the sugar would provide? I guess I'll find out when I use it.

HL2 Steam - "wrong disc inserted"?

WTF? I thought that one of the finite beauties of Steam was that the CDKEY would be tied to a users account information so that the CD/CDKEY would no be usable by any other user - and remove the need for physical media.

Apparently that presumption is partially inaccurate.

The tieing of the CDKEY to a non-transferable user account DOES kill the second hand game market. But YOU STILL NEED DISC 1 if you want to play standard HL2 retail! [sarcasm]I wonder if steam purchasers need to wait until they get the game in the mail before they start playing?[/sarcasm]

Just because I did my part in keeping the capitalist marketplace alive and well by purchasing a product in a store whose sales tax will go into my community - why am I punished?

The steam customer support pages would seem to imply that you don't need the CD...
[snip]
Question
Can I use my Steam account on other computers?

Answer
Yes, you can use your Steam account on as many different computers as you like - but only one at a time!
For example, you could use your account on your work computer during the day, and on your home computer at night. On the weekend, you could even use it at a friend's house. Steam will automatically download all of your games to whatever computer you are currently logged in on, and your Friends list will be automatically duplicated on that machine.

[/snip]

HalfLife2 - Subscription Pending...

		Sure it's launch day, but it's been like this for a few hours now. And from what I can see in various game forums, I'm not the only one. This should teach me to avoid any game in the future that REQUIRES an internet connection to play the single player game. I can understand the paranoia that lead valve to take such draconian steps to copy protection, but come on - don't make your customers suffer.
		UPDATE: It looks like valve may be buckling under the pressure, image #2 shows that I can play "in the meantime"

TopStyle Pro and CSS

Well, I've revamped this page with CSS with the aid of TopStyle 3 Pro - before I was relying on tables to structure my page layout. Sure there are tables in the blog feed - but one thing at a time. I still have to focus on my day job after all.

Weddings can be fun (?)

Yesterday my house was used as a "staging area" for Bren's co-worker's wedding in the park. Yay? That means that the entire wedding party was at my house, all of the supplies, and all of the food that was using in the reception that immediately followed the wedding. How do you react when you go into your own bedroom (that you told people to stay out of because that's where you're keeping the dog) and walk in on people changing? Ugh.
Well, at least the 200 chairs in the garage are now gone.

TopStyle Pro

Wow, I just got a copy of TopStyle 3 Pro, and I must say that I'm impressed with all of it's functionality. I had been using TopStyle lite on and off for a while now whenever I needed to figure out some CSS oddity. But it's as if they are two separate categories of product - one a toy and the other a tool.
As I muck around with it - I'm sure there will be quite a bit of subtle improvements to this site.

Must.. Fight.. Urge.. to.. code.. unneeded.. interfaces..

Now that I (think that I) understand how to use the cabinet.dll's decompression interfaces - I can't help but think that it would be really handy to have an IStorage wrapper for cab files. Then expose the individual compressed files as IStreams. But that would take time - to much of it in fact if I want to get my current WORK project out the door. But I'm sure that within a week of coding and testing I could make a kick ass IStorage cabinet file wrapper with dual FDI/FCI support.
[voice="Capt. James Tiberius Kirk"]Must... Focus... On... Current... Task... (grunt noise) The lives of those little bars on the gantt chart are depending on me![/voice]

Back in OC

Well, I'm back home in southern california after spending a week with my dad as he goes thru all the prep work to get a new heart in the va health care system. It's nice to wear shorts again.
Bren tells me that the rest of the country is similar to SLC, I'm not sure if I _want_ to believe her ;-) Here's a short list of SLC observations from a beach bum like me after spending a week taking the bus/walking to the VA from my hotel in SLC...

1. Their daytime high is our nighttime low


2. Half the random conversations I overhear involved going to disneyland - DURRING THE SUMMER! Don't they know that February is the off season?


3. Their big Barnes and Noble book store feels a bit claustrophobic


4. Why the F*** are there seagulls so far inland? Yes, I know - it's the SALT lake - but it's still a bit distant to the sea


5. It's the beehive state - as in honeybees - not the hairdoo


6. Did not see a single mormon missionary in a white shirt and black slacks riding their bicycle around town


7. It's not all mormon! I saw a jewish comunity center, various varieties of chistian churches and a catholic high school bus.


8. Last week they had more smog than in LA! You don't know how many times I've heard people from across the country bitch and moan about the air in so-cal. Pfft!


9. Quite a bit more smokers


10. They have both a City Mayor and a County Mayor


11. Never ever get between a Vet and his or her flu shot


12. what looks like glass/ice chips/frost on the ground could be salt


13. I counted 2 hummers, 5 new BMW's, and 3 new Benz and two out of state license plates durring the ENTIRE week I was there. I could find more in the parking lot of my local grocery store in under 5 minutes


14. 1220 E. 2100 S. is their idea of a street address.


15. I overheard someone remarking "$700 a month?? That's more than a house payment!". It took all my strength not walk over and say "Excuse me, but I couldn't help but over hear that you consider $700 more than a house payment. Bite Me, my little home in OC is $$$$$$" and watch his jaw drop.


16. I had no idea you could hang a full size AC compressor from a bedroom window with wire. (I wish I had my camera out at the time)


17. Lawn Turf/Grass doesn't die when it freezes overnight

One SLC stereotype - shot to hell

Would you believe that there is a gideon bible in my Salt Lake City hotel room and NOT a book of mormon? Either this isn't a mormon town or the gideon's are more powerfull than the mob.