Aha! A New Game is Available!

Often, while spending far to many hours playing video games, I hear grumblings (usually from the vicinity of the chair occupied by my wife) about something called "Real Life." I've often put off her grumblings, as I'm now nearing level 50, until I spotted this! My wife wasn't trying to get me to stop playing - she's been holding out on me on one of the most inclusive games of all time.

Hmmm...in a game like "Real Life," what occupation would you select? Astronaut? Fireman? Pilot? Geez...the possibilities seem endless.

My Roots

Some of you know that I did some genealogy work some time back on the McGlone family tree. I was able to track that ancestry back to Ireland, but I never put a lot of work into going beyond that. I never knoew a lot about my Grandma's (my dad's mom's) side of the family, but Kara went and talked to Grandma one day and filled in a bunch of the gaps.

Well, as it turns out, if you want to know about your history, there's really no need to do any research. You need only to have a website and a blog that appear in Google. ;) Once you've got those things, you can just sit back and wait for someone like Jennifer Lees to drop you a line and show you your entire family tree. Really, that's all it takes. :D

Anyway, Jennifer, as it turns out, is my fourth cousin and living in Pennsylvania. She has a great deal of genealogy information online, here. If you click on Outline Descendant Tree: Descendants of Nicolaus Steilen, and then go on to Page 3, I'm even in the tree. She's gone that far. There's so much information there, it's just nuts. She's really done a great job on this. A few pieces of information are incorrect (and I'll help her clear those things up), but, for the most part, the information is accurate and pretty complete.

She even told me the story of how Steilin's are related to Stilen's. So here's an excerpt from an e-mail she sent to me.

"I just wanted to tell you why your line is spelled Stilen and my line is spelled Steilen. You may already know this. Your great great grandfather, Johann/John Stilen (his picture is on my webpage), was in the military. The military mispelled his name as Stilen instead of Steilen. His name had to match the military records in order for him to collect his pension so he changed it to Stilen. Your great great grandfather and my great great grandfather, Jacob Sr., were brothers."

So, there you have it, some trivia that you never even knew you wanted to know. Now don't say I never gave you nothin'. ;) I wonder if something similar might explain the different spellings for McGlone/McClone/McGlure. Of course, that doesn't explain why my great, great, great grandmother, Mary McGlone (who came to the states from Ireland), has her named spelled as both McGlone and McClone on her gravestone. That I find to be very odd.

Anyway, while most of you probably found this post to be useless, my sister probably enjoyed it, so the rest of you can just suck it up. ;)

My Geekiness...Immortalized

Well, for those of you tracking my quest to become uber-geek, score one for the home team. After acting as "technical reviewer" for a Java book, I spotted that text at a book store and pages through it. Sure enough, there's my fat mug, immortalized in the introduction that no one reads. So, there you have it, my geekdom continues in a 1"x1" black and white photo in an obscure Java book.

Rawk!

Gorgeous Weather

I hope it's nice where you are because the weather is absolutely outstanding here. Even now, I wonder what it is I'm doing inside the house, writing this rare weekend update while it's so nice outside. Oddly enough, such nice weather has conveniently coincided with my lack of motivation, so Liz and I have been enjoying the weather and a lazy weekend at home. We took in some golf, a couple walks through the neighborhood, and, as usual, some video games with Nate.

While Liz has had the itch to get in the yard and do some work, I've managed to stifle my own urges. Not to say that I haven't done anything in the yard, yet - I have done some trimming, hauled some brush, and fertilized the yard with some yellow stuff that says it will get rid of crab grass.

Outside of the nice weather - there isn't a lot going on in this neck of the woods. I go to work every day (well, except for the weekends) and, when I come home, I try to do anything except more work. That probably doesn't bode well as I have a lot of work to do for the guys at Relion. I really should be tearing into it, but, when I come home from work, I don't really want to do more work. I imagine all of you out there know what I mean.

I guess this is the time at which I'd like to post a nice, witty, story. Unfortunately, I got nothin'. I guess I'll simply relate a "supposedly true" computer help desk story. I don't really know if this ever happened or not, but it's amazing some of the stuff that really comes up at a Help Desk. Anyway, here goes...

Customer: "Hi, good afternoon, this is Martha, I can't print Every time I
try, it says 'Can't find printer'. I've even lifted the printer and placed
it in front of the monitor, but the computer still says it can't find
it..."

Yeah, not so exciting, but, ah well. Have a good weekend, all (what's left of it, anwyay).

Sad News

So, another week, another blog entry. The big news this week? Well, one of the guys I played in the high school band with was murdered a week and a half ago. Nic was beaten to death by some guy who claims Nic was hitting on hit girlfriend. After a week and a half in intensive care, Nic passed away on Monday. I don't know. It's just hard to comprehend. I mean, depsite his lack of rhythym, the guy taught be a lot about playing drums in high school. It's just hard for me to believe that someone I know was killed.

Of course, lest we forget, Alf Block, who I used to run the tee-ball program with, is facing numerous sexual assault charges. It seems like every time I hear about it, more charges are coming out of the woodwork.

WTF, Mate?

Let me try to get away from the doom and gloom for a bit.

Last weekend, Liz and I were back in C-ville to visit friends and family. It was great to see everyone again - we hadn't seen anyone since Christmas.

I set up my old computer at my mom's place to replace her old 333 Mhz relic. That took most of Friday and Saturday morning but, for the most part, it was good to go by the time I left. We got to see my sister and husband for a while and played with Gavin a bit, too. Kara's getting big and, from the sounds of things, she's getting more tired and grumpier every day, which I suppose is normal if you got some yahoo doing the lambada in your belly. The good news is that everything seems to be going very well. Dad came over to Kara's for a while so we could visit. We had many pointless debates over politics, religion, and, mostly, the pros and cons of modern day salary caps.

We finished the weekend off with a stop at Nate's pad. There was plenty of video game playing, Family Guy watching, and bad food, to be had. It was joyous, as usual. In case you don't read Nate's blog (which you should - it's usually hilarious when he bothers to post to it), let me recap a wonderful story from the weekend.

We had gone out for some grub at a local bar and were sitting there, shootin' the breeze, when this funky anime-techno-pop song came on the radio. I recognized the song and got a stupid grin on my face and then started laughing. Bewildered, Liz and Nate stared at me as if my chicken sandwich had suddenly grown legs. So, then I had to recount my own story for them...

Some time ago, while surfing the internet, I found a post from some guy on some online forums talking about meeting people over the Internet and building relationships with them. In particular, meeting people online that you play video games with. I'm not sure who would think that an online video game is a good place to pick up chicks but, I suppose, there are those people. Well, one of the replies was that, whenever you see some hot chick in a video game and you're tempted to "cyber-hit" on her, keep in mind that the person at the keyboard could be this guy. The song playing in that video clip? Yeah, that's what was on the radio at the bar, bringing my lengthy and pointless story full circle.

Even as I write this, I have the video playing in another window and I can barely keep from laughing out loud. So, save this link in case you're ever having a bad day or just want to laugh at some poor sap.

So, let's see...any other news? Liz wanted a new cell phone so we went downtown this week and picked up new cell phones for the two of us. As much as I hate the things, I now have one. Of course, I've been putting it to good use. Nate and I find it amusing to taunt one another with text messages from time to time.

Anyway, that's enough of that. Catch y'all later.