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I've had this in my mind for almost a week now. Last Wednesday, Kurt Vonnegut died. I'm not often saddened by the death of a celebrity, none of great importance to myself have passed recently. When I read the news, I first wondered if it was his cigarettes that finally did him in. He viewed it as a classy way to commit suicide. He never expected to live as long as he did, I think a bit of me never expected him to die. I read other people's thoughts and opinions on his life and work. One of my favorite comments: "This is the first time I have ever entered my password and seen a row of tiny little assholes." There were of course, plenty of quotes from the man himself. "We are here to help each other through this thing, whatever it is." "We had a memorial service for Isaac [Asimov] a few years back, and I spoke and said at one point, 'Isaac is up in heaven now.' It was the funniest thing I could have said to an audience of humanists. I rolled them in the aisles. It was several minutes before order could be restored. And if I should ever die, God forbid, I hope you will say, 'Kurt is up in heaven now.' That's my favorite joke." And some wonderful stories as well "I saw Vonnegut once, when I lived in Chicago. He was on a signing tour for Palm Sunday. I waited in line for hours at a Kroch & Brentano's to have him sign my first edition of Breakfast of Champions. The woman in front of me in line had a baby and a toddler in one of those double strollers. When she got to the head of the line, he looked at her stroller and said that he'd always wanted to borrow one baby and a double stroller and go to a playground in a park. Once there, he wanted to pretend to look for the "missing" child. After every parent and nanny there had become absorbed in helping him search and call for the non-existent toddler, he would turn to them, say "oh well, I still have this one" and walk off." Many people said he changed their lives, I know he's certainly affected mine. One person's comment really stuck out at me though, they said that Kurt's writings had made high school more bearable, and while I didn't discover him until college, he certainly helped me through some tough times. Goodbye luck mud. So it goes.

Get rid of the Windows Update restart nag.

The amount of money raised to build this monument to ignorance is astonishing.

Mystery solved I guess. I am a little curious as to what screenname got mixed up for mine, but oh well.

I received a message yesterday on AIM, here it is AIM pages? WTF? I think, but proceed to check it out. (The link by the way is to Beatboxing flute Inspector Gadget Remix) Who the devil is that? Quick Robin, to the Google search box! Flickr account, Last.fm account, not really much here. Oh look some cached post. Hmm, went to Waubonsee, I don't even know where that is. Going to NIU, I know at most a few people there, and I don't even talk to them. Whatever connection exists here, it must be tenuous at best. I don't know who you are mystery person, (well I mean, I know your name, but I don't know who you are) and I don't know why you would have added me as a buddy (on AIM pages of all things), but I've added you to my AIM list, and I'm going to find out.

"I don't know how a man decides what's right for his own life."

A lot of people set New Year's resolutions, not many keep them. I started thinking if I should set some of my own, I know I could get into better shape. But I thought about it more, and a resolution, or even a set of resolutions isn't enough. I'm setting up for a New Year's Revolution. Change comes from within.

Forever ago, Teri and I went on vacation, we may have taken a picture of something we didn't buy you, take a look here.

I have my Wii, my Wii number is 4411 2391 8779 1510.

Saturday night slash Sunday morning, I waited with Vance outside the Toys ? Us in Joliet to pre-order a Wii. While we didn't get there until about 1:30 am, the line started at 3pm Saturday. They were rumored to have 7 PS3 orders, by 6 pm the line was already longer than that for people waiting for PS3s. Around 6am the manager came around to announce that they had "less than 10 PS3 pre-orders" and "over 15 Wii pre-orders." (Side note here, what's the plural of Wii? Wiis? Wiii? or is like sheep, and you can have a whole pile of wii?)

The most surprising thing was the lady who arrived some time before Vance and I, she was waiting for some new version of Elmo. Only a few people showed up early for Elmo, mostly women as opposed to the majority of men waiting for the game systems. Most of the Elmoers only got there shortly before the store opened.

Around 7-7:30 the manager came out again and announced that there were only 7 PS3s, 6 premium and 1 normal or whatever they're calling it. Several people behind us left shortly after this. They had 18 Wii which was about how long line was at the time. He also clarified that you could only pre-order the PS3 OR the Wii, not both. They would also be limiting orders to one per household, and would be checking ID. This worried us a bit, since Vance doesn't have any ID. The manager came back out at 8 and handed out the PS3 tickets, and the Wii tickets, (I think I was 3 or 4 for the Wii, a couple people picking up Wii since the PS3 was unavailable.) We explained that Vance didn't have any ID, the manager took a bit of a pause since he obviously didn't want to be a complete ass to people that had been sitting out in the cold for several hours. He told Vance to hold on and proceeded to hand out tickets to the remainder of the line, having a few left over he handed one to Vance. Our victory was secure. Once tickets we handed out, the camp dispersed, taking chairs and blankets back to cars.

The Elmoers began to arrive in force around now. Although I guess Mattel is working hard to prevent the shortage, since they had over 100 in stock (140? 160? some insanely large number). They formed a line on the opposite side of the door.

As the PS3/Wii line reformed there were a few newcomers scattered in various locations, including a lady that proceeded to complain about not having a tickets because she was in between people that did (Vance and myself being behind her). She came with us into the store, and was nearly successful in purchasing a ticket from a fellow camper. He changed his mind though, seeking $50 for his valuable time (about minimum wage, as he had been in line longer than we had), she had a maximum offer of $25. Vance and I paid for our pre-orders, and left for breakfast, set to return on the 19th and obtain our wares.