And the band played on…

Arrangements have gone forward for my grandfather. He requested that there not be a service or anything so there won’t be anything official. He was cremated yesterday along with his masonic apron, his drum sticks (he was an accomplished drum player) and his custom carved cane. His ashes will be separated and placed at a small memorial behind my grandmothers church in Saugus as well as at the Perry family plot in Maine. Everyone is handling it as well as can be expected. Personally, I don’t deal well with death and I’d just like to not talk about it. That said, something about mentioning it is actually therapeutic. Go figure.

So, other topics.

Widgets. (Damn Matt, transition topics often?). I like’em. I’m putting the four most popular engines through their pases to see what I like best. Of course Mac users will recognize the term widgets from the always popular Mac program Konfabulator. Windows users will get their hands on The K soon. Not soon enough for me however. I’m currently running Samurize, AveDesk, Kapsules and Desktop X. As far as my money is concerned AveDesk and Kapsules are winning. Kaps are so super simple in terms of use and setup. I was running in a 5 minutes. Compare that to the 30+ minutes it took my to hand configure Samurize scripts. AveDesk I like because of it’s flexibility. It can really do just about anything and theres a fairly large number of people trying to develop for it. Add to that the fact that you can use ObjectDock, YzDock and MobyDock plugins THROUGH AveDesk and it’s usefulness just tripled.

So… who wants to write some widgets with me? I’ve got a laundry list of simple things I think could be useful and yet no one has developed yet. First up would be a BF1942 server watcher. How many of those things did we have for CS? How hard could it be to simply get the player list and scores. Hell, they’re listed on ServerSpy, AllSeeingEye AND GameSpy thingies. How hard could it be to grab some text from a website or a java-script? You tell me.

Oh well. Hey, I know I’ve mentioned this to Chip, but for any of my other PC Gaming buddies, if you’d like to give Battlefield a spin and you’d like an experienced “tour guide”, just let me know. There’s so many nuances to that game that it’s scary. For example, if you’re an Engineer class and you have land-mines, you can be running toward something, hit the “lay prone” button which will cause you to jump and slide forward on your stomach, and essentially “kick the mine” forward underneath things… like a tank for example. Since the mine is under the tank you obviously can’t see it. You’ve just “booby-trapped” that tank. The next enemy to hop in it will be toast as soon as they pull forward. That’s just one of the oh so fun things YOU can see on Matt’s Wild Battlefield Adventure Safari. Tickets on sale now!

A sad day

I don’t really know what to say. We all knew it was coming. Frank L Perry, my grandfather, passed away last night. There isn’t going to be a service or anything, and everyone tells me not to come home. I don’t really know what to think. All I know is that I was listening to DropKick and their version of “Amazing Grace” came on and I burst into tears. I guess that pretty much sums it up.

Can you trip on Claritin?

Seriously guys, I’m freaking out. I think I might have gotten some bad Claritin or something. It feels like I’m on X only without the “happy” part. I’m hyper, sweaty, jumpy, etc. I’m drinking water like crazy. A Claritin was the only thing I’ve taken in the past 24 hours. I’m actually surprised I’m typing in complete sentences. I’m so throwing out that box when I get home. It feels like I’ve had 2 or 3 Red Bulls back to back. My pulse isn’t racing though, so thats good. I just feel, well, hyper. I also didn’t sleep last night. I got maybe 20 minutes total. Maybe I’m so tired that I’m “punchy”. Who knows. It feels weird whatever it is. I’m going to go make myself a nice cup of Earl Gray now…

KMX go bye-bye?

I was thirsty and tired. What better to cure that than a tasty KMX. I went to 4 stores and found none. I figured it was a Texas thing… then I looked on Beverages-Direct. “No products available“. This isn’t a good sign. Is it dead and gone. Please say no…

Short and Sweet

I got FRAPS working perfectly last night. Sweet program.

Also, there’s a BF42 mod for BF:Vietnam. Very nifty indeed.

Speaking of which, I have a match tonight.

I’m hungry.

Garden State was fantastic. Lauren and I saw it last night. Enjoyed it.

I’ve become obsessed with my desktop wallpaper. I think it’s set to rotate at 2 minute intervals. That’s probably not healthy.

Later.