The benefit for Andrew was amazing. We raised over $4k that night. It was great to see everyone, it was a good time and, again, the money was raised. Andrew's funeral was a tear-jerker, as they tend to be. I've been to two funerals in my life of people that I knew well and I've come to the firm conclusion that no one ever looks right in a casket. By this, I mean that they never look the same. I'm not so sure that it's just the fact that they're not alive, I blame the pillow under the head. It seems to distort the jaw and neck. But that's neither here nor there.

Let's hit this in chronological order, shall we?

Before I get around to writing about the weekend, which included a family reunion, Vickie's birthday at a seriously creepy dinery and some hanging out with my brother, allow me to point you to a piece of the past.

A clip from Vickie's 16th birthday party (4.05MB)

I'm not going to hotlink this, so I'll just assume you know how to copy and paste into your address bar. This saves my server the thrashing and the caching.

Edit: Okay, I've hotlinked it.

But I don't wanna write an update!

Seriously, I'm just not in the mood to squeeze in an update here. I will say quickly the following things.

Harry Potter Book VI was awesome. If you haven't read it and want to avoid spoilers, don't read this paragraph. Seriously, I can't stand unannounced spoilers, so this is your warning. Snape? He's a good guy, doing things he doesn't want to do. He's under orders, but it ain't Voldemort's orders that lead the to 'big surprise'. I'm happy to expand on my theories in a conversation, but I'm just not in the mood to type about it now.

Friday after work was full of "the busy", as it is known. Shortly after getting home, Vickie took off for a meeting in her book club. I spent time burning a great many files to a DVD for Chris Woodall who would be showing up for a bit of collaborative work. Chris and I went over our ideas on the projects we work on, those being Sci-Fi Guys and Project Codename: Hello World, aka Fear My Codename. Ahem. So, Vickie comes home and we're off. Where are we off to?

So I wanted to leave the news that I'm engaged as the main news for a while... sheesh, you'd think I was holding kittens hostage. No, the fact is that I've been both busy and lazy, which is an amazing piece of hypocrisy that I suggest you all try out some time.

How have I been busy? Let me count the ways:

QDP DVD Projects

I've actually had QuentinBaker.com for a good deal of time now, using it for testing and whatnot, but the recent acquisition of the server it's on was enough of a push for me to start transferring everything to it. The Photo Album has been here for a while, so now I've gotten the rest of the stuff. If something's broken, let me know, I'll fix.

Yes, you should update your bookmarks. Now.

Okay, so it's been a long time since I've updated. Many, many things have been going on. Firstly, you should know that the plans for getting a new home have been put on hold until our credit clears up - that or until someone wants to buy us a house. We certainly don't have enough credit to pull it off ourselves.

When last I told you guys what was up, the thing that was up was my affection for videography and filmmaking. Well, my plate of projects grew full quickly. But first, during dinner last night I said the following, which was almost poetry:

For a word that describes a word's
propensity to sound like a sound,
onomatopoeia isn't.

Vickie and I got a chuckle out of that.