So I went to my Uncle Edward’s funeral this weekend. Got to see most of the family of course and hung out. It’s been a long while since I’ve

been to one. Uncle was a good person, always generous, always happy. I stayed with him a few times while I was in Michigan. Interestingly, he seemed to be remembered as a very frugal person, but I never thought of him that way. Of course it does make you ponder life and existence a little more than you normally would.

Am I doing enough to give back to my community? Is what I’m doing with my life worthwhile? It’s pretty hard to stack up to the accomplishments of others. I was reading this article on Stephen

Wolfram and lamenting the fact that I’ll just never be that smart. Is it ok to be satisfied with being who I am? I have to assume so,

otherwise billions of people would be suffering from severe depression and our suicide rate would be much higher. Is being complacent worse

than being realistic?

Also saw Ocean’s Eleven and Spiderman this weekend, both were very good.

Oh and everyone and their mother appears to be playing Morrowind. Not really my kinda game though.

My Uncle Edward died this weekend, condolences to his family. I’m going to the funeral. It will be the first one I’ve been to in recent memory. He had a long bout with stomach cancer.

We saw Star Wars Episode 2: Attack of the Clones. It was pretty good. Natalie Portman must’ve had 20-30 different costumes easily. The special effects were pretty amazing. But the acting, particularly Hayden Christensen, was mediocre at best. The love story elements were also pretty painful. But the history of the empire and storm troopers were well done. Also Yoda gave the most awesome ass kicking ever. In summary: acting bad, story and special fx good. They spent a lot of time paying tribute to older Star Wars movies with the obligatory appearance by C3P0 and R2D2, but I think those parts(especially the comedic ones) were a little bit overdone. Ah well, I’d give it a thumbs up still, but barely.

Also Mullholland Dr. makes absolutely no sense, I can’t even begin to get started on it. David Lynch makes some great visuals, the story is too convoluted to get past that.

We got back from a short vacation. Me and the family went to the south fork of the American River near Sacramento. It was pretty fun. I had a thought that I could quit my job, sell the house and just become a river raft guide for a few years. There’s something to be said for having a totally free life, with no cares or worries. And living cheaply is easy enough with that kind of lifestyle. So you can easily make it last for a long time. Maybe that’s wishful thinking, maybe it’s stupid, depends on your point of view. Working for a living and serving The Man is just not for everyone, but it does have its perks.

I’ve been swamped with work. Our Relationship Marketing product should be coming out soon and we’re in the last stages of development so we’ve been pretty busy doing that. It has a really pretty UI and is kinda of cool on the server side too. We’re also busy in meetings to help integrate our product with the new Cybrant technology that we bought. Cybrant is a medium sized company that does complex pricing and configuration. We bought them a few weeks ago and now we’re integrating it into our system. I’m not totally clear on how or why we did this still, but that’s probably why I’m just a lowly engineer.

My Linksys router died, so I had to replace it with a new one. The old one just got locked up permanently. I paid $180 for it two years ago and I bought the same model for $90 today. I could’ve upgraded to something similar with a Wireless Access Point for $180, but it didn’t seem worth it because I don’t have any wireless devices, I’ll always be able to add one later(and later is frequently cheaper the way computer prices drop). I also almost got a wireless keyboard and mouse and some wireless headphones, but I restrained myself.