Living

Those who know me pretty will know this piqued my interest in post-apocalyptic survival techniques:

Impressive, no? I doubt you or I could pull off making warm shelter in the same environment.

On December 22nd, as soon the time rolls from 2008-12-22 7:59 to 2008-12-22 08:00, our seven Blackboard application servers will be changed over to authenticate against LDAP instead of the standard Blackboard RDBMS (passwords stored in the Oracle database). This transition is not without issues, and this blog post will serve to inform FTRC members of several support scenarios and other important information on how to handle them. Support Personnel: Please be sure to read this post throughly, and feel free to ask questions in the comments.
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November 18th, 2008. 16:50 hours GMT-5. Some of his military friends will appreciate and probably remember Dad’s fascination with time and time keeping pieces. I think he’d appreciate me knowing the precise time of his death. This is going to be a long, long post. I promise if you read it all the way through will be glad you did. You will not want whatever minutes you spent reading this back. At this point I’m not sure I can finish writing everything I want to write in one setting, but I’m determined to do so. Oh 7 hours later… I’m done.

My father died holding my and my mother’s hands. At first he squeezed, or it felt like he squeezed; it was probably autonomic. I cannot think of a better way to go, than to have the two people who matter most to you holding your hands. I was in #arsclan (the “family room” for Arsclan) on my laptop, and my mother just said “Matthew!” in a rather urgent fashion; i dropped my laptop. My father held his hands up, and I held his right hand, and my mother had been holding his left for a long, long time. It was okay for him to go, and he should stop being such a tough, incredible, amazing man and just let go. He took one last deep breath, my mother said “There might be a another one of these”, but I knew this was it. I can’t put it into words yet, but I knew this gasp was the end. I wasn’t confident in it to say anything out loud or to my mom, but that was probably my mind fighting the fact my father was taking his last step; his foot hadn’t landed on the ground for the end of the step, but neither foot would leave the ground after this. I apologize for the very metaphorical explanation but, but that’s the only way I’ve got to explain that moment. The doctor (Dr. Nesbitt, we’ll come back to him & the hospice) knelt down and place his stethoscope on Dad’s chest and said “his heart his taking its last few beats.” I was glad I hadn’t said anything out loud, though my gut feeling had been 100% on this entire time. I held his hand. I think I said I love you, or maybe I just said it in my head. And that was it. I asked one of the nurses, with some sort of quick, awkward explanation to take a picture of his hands in ours. I sat back on the couch, sent a twitter (which didn’t get fucking delivered, GIANT FAIL WHALE) and dropped 3 lines into IRC; I forget exactly what I said, but it was along the lines of “my father has died.” I closed my laptop.

Some of you have my address. Don’t send flowers. I would rather the money go to the Gatehouse Hospice as a donation in the name of Dr. William H. Sprinsky. Without them I would have been even more of a mess. They were amazing, and Dr. Nesbitt should be commended repeatedly on what his hard work produced.

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Yesterday I said I’d try to write something everyday, and the funny thing is now writing is the only thing keeping me from losing my shit in its entirety.

I’m writing this sitting in the recliner at the surprisingly comfortable Gatehouse Hospice. To my right is Dr. William Harold Sprinsky, Born 6/26/1939. Externally he is placid. Inside, I don’t know. I’m probably right in guessing he’s anxious for it to all be over with. My gut tells me I am right.

He’s laying in the hospital bed next to me, breathing is almost metronome like, 3 seconds from in to out. I was going to go home. I was going to curl up and cry around my fat fuzzy dog who barks too much. I fetched Wegmans subs for dinner (OmNomNom!!!) and used the soporific effects of Ommegang’s Three Philosophers on my mother and myself. This place is amazingly warm and comforting, I can’t imagine being in a typical sterile hospital environment. It’s much easier to be peaceful and gain some perspective here.

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I’m not entirely sure why I’m writing this out, let alone posting it on the internet. There’s something about putting the thoughts inside my head into a more permanent form, and perhaps all this sharing will be therapeutic in some form or another. I’m not going to pull any punches, and I have a funny feeling that reading this may upset some of my friends… as for complete strangers, who cares?

It is a very good thing indeed that my mother is here doing pretty much all the care giving for my father. The hospice nurse is here once a day, but their ministrations are largely too short, at least to give my mother some relief. But that’s why I’m here. My mother asked me today “You’ve changed diaper on a baby, right?” — no, I have not. What this made me realize is that I am utterly unprepared to take care of my father. I am very glad my mother is the tough, positive woman that she is, and it’s amazing that she’s done this much for my father already.

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For those of you who didn’t know, my father was diagnosed with stage 4 pancreatic cancer back in May this year. I came home for a long weekend after I found the news, courtesy of a very understanding boss. It wasn’t long enough, and it was all so new that nothing was really different. His mind was still sharp as he hadn’t started chemo, and he as still doing things around the house himself. Move forward till now, he’s quiet, his logic is questionable (and my father is a very, very intelligent man) and his one concern is fighting it and staying alive. Now I’m home for two weeks, and spending lots of time with dad. The sad part is that he doesn’t want to go do anything, but he didn’t before he got sick. He lives all inside his own head, and it’s been that way for a long time. I can tell he’s only angry and scared not for the future but because of the loss of control he has over his own life, and the loss of energy.

Tuesday of this week, I accompanied him and my mother to Geisinger hospital in Danville, PA. These pictures are of a man with the stubbornness of 1000 mules and who does not know how to fail at anything. I am his son, these are my pictures.

View the entire set on Flickr.

Maybe it’s all the classical I’ve been listening to as of late, but this was absolutely hilarious and really brightened my morning. Borka Borka Bork.

The video pretty much explains everything…

And yes, I am breathing hard at the end of the video, deal with it. I’m a sysadmin, not an Olympic squirrel wrangler.

I wondered if I still had my knack for using Photoshop, and I knew there was much more to learn that I’d never picked up before. This week I read a lot of photoshop tutorials, but the most important thing I never learned to use before: Brushes. I have NO idea how I’ve missed out this feature, and this week I discovered a few tutorials/videos on how to make photoshop do all sorts of things with my Wacom tablet that my ex-wife got me so many years ago. I’d really not been utilizing it enough. Without further delay, though, I’ll get to the art:

Promotional Artwork for Arsclan.net Turkey Shoot 2008 (my favorite camping trip):

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