Category Archives: The Universe

Life, The Universe, and Everything

On nice things

Let’s say your Father gave you a car. A really Nice, high-end car. Maybe a Bugatti, with leather interior, W16 engine that purrs like a kitten and delivers instant power. A RRRRRREEEAAAAllly sweet ride. Dad toses you the keys and says “it’s all yours!”.

Now, yeah, it’s your car, you can do what you want. But how do you think your Father is going to feel when he sees you scraping the paint off on guard rails, your rowdy friends on the hood holding on to the windshield wipers, the oil Way past time for a change, fast food bags and stale french fries all over the seats, engine miss-firing because of all the over-revving, the beer stains… Maybe you don’t care what Dad thinks, but, come on, couldn’t you do better? Wouldn’t that be respectful of your Father and what He gave you?

Suppose Dad didn’t just buy you the car, but made it Himself? Wouldn’t you feel just a bit bad about trashing it?

And God said, “Let Us make man in Our image, after Our likeness; and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.” – Genesis 1:26 (KJ21).

That sounds like we were handed the keys to a world. A RRRRRREEEAAAAllly nice high-end world. A world lushly upholstered with life that all works together like a well-tuned W16. Shouldn’t we be taking care of it? Keeping it clean? Keeping it running smoothly, as it was designed to run?

I was just out picking up garbage along a little ~0.5km stretch of lake shore.

Come on, can’t we do better?`

Vince Adametz, conclusion

I’m sorry the live stream didn’t work out, the videographer said they just couldn’t get the signal the needed out of where we were in the cemetery.

The recording is available for anyone who wants to see what went on. This will redirect to youtube:
https://my.anc.media/3ktdOpu

And, at this point, as they say, “mission accomplished.”

Arlington National Cemetery does something like (IIRC) 30 of these services per day, which necessitates a certain efficiency to keep things moving, however that efficiency does not impinge on the solemnity or dignity of these ceremonies in any way. At no point did anything seem rushed or like it was on a timeline. They do this Right. Everybody we encountered, from the guards checking IDs, people directing parking to the Honor Guard, Minister, and everyone else gave us complete respect and honor for our loved ones.

N.B. our videographer is not affiliated with Arlington National Cemetery. The Cemetery does not provide this service, nor do they even recommend videopgraphers.

Arlington live stream

For those who may wish to attend the ceremonies for my Parents at Arlington National Cemetery but are unable to Be There, we will have a live stream. You can test access and see a countdown at:
https://my.anc.media/3jb8GGb
This being the Washington ADIZ, sometimes the President or the Black helicopters cause communication interruptions, but we’ll do the best we can.
Ceremonies are scheduled for Tuesday, 2023-01-17, at 10:00 (am) EST.

Going to Arlington

My parents, Vincent Adametz, and his Wife, Margret, will be laid to rest together with military honors at Arlington National Cemetery, Arlington, VA, USA on January 17, 2023, at 10:00 EST. Anyone wishing to attend is welcome, just drop me an Email at the address on my About page so we’ll have a count. I intend to have a videographer make a recording of the event that I will share afterwards.

Arlington National Cemetery information: https://www.arlingtoncemetery.mil

My Dad’s first-hand account of his war experiences is available in the World War II section of the menu in the right.

What a year

I hope everyone is having a good Solstice, be it the Winter or Summer Solstice, depending on your half of the world.

It’s a bit hard to believe that it’s been a year now since my Dad passed away, and I am reminded of what I wrote then:

It’s very easy to see omens and portents in things are are probably coincidences, but sometimes doing that helps us see events in a constructive manner. My Dad passed away on the Winter Solstice (he didn’t mess with Christmas), our longest dark night of the year. It marks the beginning of winter, which is a hard time indeed for many, especially my wild familiars. But the lengthening daylight attests to the promise of a spring that will come, with it’s renewal and new life. We will have cold, dark days ahead as we come to terms with this, but we will emerge renewed, into the spring sunshine.

Somehow, right now, with all that’s been happening, it doesn’t feel like much renewal happened, but let’s remain hopeful. One thing about this world and nature is that she keeps trying. It’s an iterative process.

Regarding my Dad, I just heard back from Arlington National Cemetery about his eligibility to be interred there: YES. So we’ll be going to Arlington. If you want to be in on that and haven’t already heard from me, drop me an Email at the address on my About page. It’s going to be “months” before we even get to talk to someone about scheduling, so there’s time.

More on Fluffy

Fluffy had a home here,

and she still does:

Visitation by appointment please.

There’s one more story about Fluffy that needs to be told.

Many years ago now, at work we were putting our first web site up on the wild Internet. There were two groups of people involved with this.

There were the web site developers, sort of like the playwrights and scenery designers. They do all the stuff that you see when you visit a web site: the graphics, text, forms, etc…

The other group, mine, was the system administrators. We were charged with all the stuff you don’t see: making sure the sound and lighting work, the stage doesn’t creak, and making sure everyone comes in through the front entrance and no riff-raff slips in through the stage door.

Normally, for a web server, that stage door is blocked off from the street: you have to go in through the parking garage and through multiple security checkpoints to reach the stage door. You can’t just walk up to the door from the street.

Well, the developers wanted to be able to get in quickly and correct any problems with their web site, and so wanted to have access to that stage door from the street (Internet). The system administrators said that was a Really Bad Idea, because everyone would be trying to get in that door, trying all sorts of user IDs and passwords. A compromise was reached and we left that door accessible for just a few days, in case there were some early problems with the web site that needed to be corrected quickly.

But we watched that door carefully. If someone snuck in there, it would be game over. And as we expected, we saw people trying to log in to our web server with all sorts of known-powerful user IDs: system, admin, oracle, dba, fluffy, root, administrator… Wait… WHAT? Someone was trying to hack into our server with the user ID “fluffy”??

Fast forward to 2012. My Dad and I adopt a cat, whose name just happens to be Fluffy. That started the legend of the l33t hax0r (elite hacker, in the lingo) Fluffy.

Last year as fiber was being run down the road in front of the house, Fluffy watched the crews with great interest, no doubt eager for more bandwidth to support her hacks in to the NSA and Russia and who knows what else…..

After I began working from home due to the pandemic, Fluffy would sometimes come into my home office for something, and I’d have to explain (again) “Fluffy, I’m at work now, if you need something, you need to put in a help desk ticket.” Apparently she didn’t like our ticketing system any more than the rest of us, because she never did hack that system to enter any tickets. Not that I have any doubt that she could.

After the virtual remembrence

My Thanks to all who were able to attend. I hope this helped make this somber occasion a little less so.

For those who were unable to attend, or just want to watch again, I’ve posted the recording of the event on YouTube; you can view it here: https://youtu.be/CtuIIeV6ckQ

A couple things that were mentioned:

The first hand account of my Dad’s war experiences: https://wildcorvid.org/media/1941.pdf

The video of him telling stories at the Ford Elementary School in Laurens, SC: http://youtu.be/68HuZiPgVMw

I will inform everyone when we can get together for real for further remembering and the burial. Where is a bit of an open question right now. My Dad’s overriding wish is to be placed with his Wife, who is buried in St. Augustine, FL, however in later years he expressed an interest in going to a military cemetery. Maybe Arlington if he’s eligible, or maybe some place associated with the 3rd Infantry Division he served with, or Ft. Jackson SC where he did his basic training. Either way I’ll be making a trip to Florida. When is also an open question, depending on the course of the pandemic. Stay tuned.

Vince Adametz virtual remembrance, 2021-02-07

I’m going to [attempt to] host a virtual memorial/remembrance for my Dad on Sunday, February 7th, at 3:00pm EST (noon PST, 20:00 UTC, pick your time zone :)). I’ll be using zoom, which I hope will be easy for everyone to get into: you should be able to join right in your browser via a link I’ll provide; be prepared to tell your browser that it’s ok to use your camera and microphone, if you choose to appear or speak.

If you haven’t already gotten an Email from me, leave a reply here with your Email address (it won’t be shown publicly) and I’ll get you the information.

Please pass this along to anyone you know who might be interested, and if you know someone who may need a bit of technical help that you can provide, please do so.

Thank you, and I hope to see you all on the 7th.

Special delivery

Back before all heck broke loose on the world, I had tried to have my Dad over at the house for a day about once a month. We’d play some dominoes, do a small jigsaw puzzle, watch the birds and the deer, I’d cook something for dinner. When ideas were floated at my Dad’s assisted living home about how residents might be able to go out to visit family over the holidays, I started to think how that could work. One challenge would be transportation, as my Dad had started using a wheelchair.

Today the USPS solved that problem in a way that I would have preferred otherwise.

He’ll be here at the house, above the fireplace, until I can safely get him with Mom.

“Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.”

Vince Adametz, 1923 – 2020

My Dad, Vince Adametz, passed away on December 21, 2020, of COVID-19 complications, at the age of 97.5.

He was the best Dad I ever had (for the record, he was the only one, but that doesn’t change my feelings on the matter).

I remember all the times he left work to get me at school when I got ill. Helped me with school work. Kept me out of Trouble. All the things he taught me.

Some of those things he specifically taught me, like woodworking and how to fix up a house (a friend of mine once remarked that our house was always under construction), and how to be a good helper. Those skills have stayed with me even to this day.

Some things he taught by example. He and Mom always worked together around the house, did the shopping together, and my Dad never gave a thought to my Mom driving our pickup truck back in the 1970s when the idea of a woman driving a pickup truck would raise eyebrows all over town.

He got me my Big Break into IT. He was working for Digital Equipment Corporation, and would take me into the office on Sundays where I could play around with the computers. One day he showed me some paperwork he had to do that involved a number of calculations, and asked if the computer could do that. I wrote an application and my IT career took off.

He never talked much about his military experience until after the dedication of the World War II memorial. We watched that together on TV, and afterwards he began to tell his stories. I threatened to videotape him, but instead he wrote it all down. You can read ahout his exploits, in his own words, right here, and hear his own words in a presentation he made at a local elementary school in 2013 here. I was amazed by some of these stories. Here’s this parental figure, the one was making me do my homework and eat my vegetables, and now I learn, Wow! Running a flame thrower??? How Cool is that??

He often told the story of when he first went overseas to join the war in Europe. He was in Oran during Christmas, and went to Church Sunday, went to Midnight Mass, and then on Monday for Christmas Day. He, on his knees, prayed to God, “they gave me this rifle and said to kill or be killed, I don’t know where I’m going, watch over me, guide me”. You know, he spent 2 years in actual combat as an infantryman, one of those guys on the front lines in foxholes with a rifle and a helmet, and he got through all that with hardly a scratch. I observed that two significant medical advances became available right around the time he needed them; I do not consider that a coincidence. During some of the tough times I’d seen him through I pointed out that God has been taking care of him, and He ain’t gonna walk away now, and I believe God is still taking care of him. I hand over my caregiver role to Him.

In this time of pandemic, I was not able to visit him when he went to the hospital, but all the reports I got indicated that he was not in much pain, and the whole thing, from detection of symptoms to the end was less than 5 days. A Nurse, Jane, at the hospital was with him at the end.

I believe there is a plan behind everything that happens. I also believe that miracles do happen, but do not always serve a purpose that we can see, so maybe they don’t seem like much of a miracle. My Dad often talked about looking forward to the time when he would be united with Margaret, his beloved Wife, who he was true to all the way to today and beyond. Maybe the Christmas Miracle, on this Winter Solstice, is that he is now reunited with his beloved.

In significant ways he made things easy on the rest of us. He made his own decision to stop driving, for which I am forever grateful. Now another of his decisions is helping us even now. His wishes were to not have a funeral; his only desire is to be cremated and put with his Wife. Under the current circumstances, we will proceed with the cremation, but put everything else on hold. Once it becomes safe to travel and gather, we will have a memorial service and celebration. Watch this space.

He is missed by his three children, two grandchildren, godchild, and countless others.