Hence, the first message on the Internet was "Lo!."        - Leonard Kleinrock

The glorious internet was invented at UCLA where I went for my degree in computer engineering.  There are three other claims for the invention, but this isn't important.  What is important is the message!  ...Lo!  ... ;)

Below is Dr Kleinrock's brief description of the first attempt at sending a message from UCLA to Stanford.

"From now on, I want you all to call me Loretta." - Stan, 32AD

Too much sorrow, need humor now!

...I don't know where people find these pictures, but I suspect they are using PhotoShop. 

When you make friends with Russians, you become very close friends.  When you are invited to eat dinner in the home, you are then considered family.  If you ask for anything, even the furniture or refrigerator, it is yours.  I know these qualities from experience.

Russian families are very close, with multiple generations often living together as has been tradition for hundreds of years.

The dinner table will never be the same, Anatoliy!

Death seems to be stalking ;(

One of my best friends in the world lost his grandfather today.

Just two weeks ago I began committing Russian vocabulary to memory for family members.  I wanted to impress Toly and his family when I visited next.

In particular, I memorized "дедушка" (dedushka, grandfather).  Now, sadly, I will not get to use this word.

I'm telling you, there are some really weird coincidences happening to me...

...I've been invited to this year's AnimEX Festival at the University of Teesside.  I'm giving a workshop on deathmatch level design.  In preparation, I was drafting some PowerPoint slides.

The only significant thing I've done in level designing is HIPDM1, the first suspended platform deathmatch level, made for our Quake1 add-on pack Scourge of Armagon.

HIPDM1, aka Edge Of Oblivion, was not the original name for the level.  The original name was YES because the level was inspired by Roger Dean's artwork, especially his album cover work for one of my two favorite bands, ...YES.  The name was out-voted by the rest of the lads, which I begrudge even more so as time goes by.

I remember I was thinking about very natural-looking platforms and water below and a cool skybox.  Foolish me, forgetting the blocky limitations of the tech, and framerate issues forcing me to have only a super-stretched black textured sky box.

So I'm thinking about all this while I'm making my PowerPoint slides, and I even had the thought "It would be cool to meet Roger Dean someday to tell him what an influence he had on my life, both as a fan and professionally.".  That was yesterday...

...today, I go to the AnimEX webpage and start checking the list of other speakers.  You know, look for friends and such.  Who's on the list?  ...fucking Roger Dean!  He's giving a talk, which I would presume will include his current project, the movie "Floating Islands".

I make notes on Post-Its of stuff to write about on the webpage.  The Post-It sitting right in front of me, written yesterday, reads - "YES   Roger Dean   HIPDM1".  I shit you not.  The coincidences are just weird lately!

Went to a funeral today...

...a good friend of mine lost his father this week.  I left the ceremony early because I hate to cry in front of people.  When I cry, I cry, and I lose all control.  I can't seem to have that in public.  Funerals are so sad.  I'm a devote atheist...

...but I think even for those that have a heaven and a hereafter, there is no greater pain than losing someone close.  The loved one is gone for good, and gone forever, ...at least as far as this reality is concerned.

I lost my father more than 5 years ago, ...more than 5 years, yet there isn't a single week that goes by that I don't think about him and feel an intense lose.  It is painful, always, and even the happy memories of dad are sad.

This sadness lunges upon me from everywhere. too.  So many small pricks open gaping wounds. 

As time goes by, the frequency of these attacks decreases slowly, but their amplitude remains as sharp.  Same for my little brother, and he's been gone for 26 years.  I miss you too, Charlie ;(

My thoughts today have been centered on my friend.  He is only now starting this life-long trail of sad memory ambushes.

"If you spend your time growing attached to things, you spend the rest of your days grieving." - Robert Rebadow, 65R814

Death makes me want to avoid getting attached to anything, ...everything,  ...like the pet that would give me a dozen years of pleasure and joy, but I know would also eventually leave me with this lingering and lasting sorrow after it dies.  The remaining forever of sadness far outweighs the opening years of pleasure and joy.  Maybe this is just me.

I'm really drunk right now, ...really, really drunk.  Alcohol and sorrow seem to be soul mates.  I searched for dad online and found...

Robert H. Gray Memorial Lectures at the University of Connecticut

The first honoree was Maurice Sendak back in September 2004 who wrote "Where The Wild Things Are".  Seems very fitting right now.

I miss my dad, ...and I miss my little brother, too, ...and I hope for you, Chris, it is somehow better over the years to come.

Funny picture, but not such a funny time to be in Moscow!  Wow, it's like -30ºC (-20ºF), ...in the day!  We, on the other hand, are having an unusually warm winter.

I tell myself I want to meet this General Winter and the Snow Maiden, but maybe I'm wrong ;)

Thanks for picture, Jeka! 

I've NEVER asked for charity or donations or any sort of help... ...but PLEASE, buy as many copies of SiN Emergence as you can afford! I'm going back to Russia this year, if that isn't obvious, and I want to spend a good month there this time.  There are so many things I haven't done...

...like Anya (above)!  ...and Dasha, ...and Katya, and...

I'm already shopping ;)  My friends ended up telling me where they found Alisa during my last trip to Moscow.

She's from a webpage called Public House.  If you go to this glorious city, and you're inclined to meet a Russian woman under these circumstances, ...THIS is the place to go!

I know this is a little perverted, ...buying an education abroad (pun intended), ...and even a little sad, ...flying halfway around the world, ...but it makes me happy and I deserve it!  ... ;)

These are cool, too, ...I think.  Russian building blocks.

I don't know why this is so funny to me, but it makes me laugh...

...I bought children's letter blocks (in Russian) and the first word I spelled was "Levelord", of course.  Now I have to buy another set of blocks because the first set is on display on my shelves at home.

Yes, yes, ...that's an ammo crate behind the blocks!  I have almost a dozen of them!

I'm a level designer, my house is my primary level, and it just feels empty with no crates!

Actually, Winchester Fire Arms is from New Haven and I collect shit from New Haven.  Many, many great things were created in New Haven.

Perhaps we should tally a list of all great things from the Elm City and post it.

As long as we're talking about coloring with crayons (we were, just down below there), I thought this might be cool to share...

...I bought the DVD set for "Lost In Space" and watched Season 1 over the holidays.  My two favorite robots guard my desk as I type!

I remember like it was yesterday.  I can see the backyard, and Kevin and Donald there with me.  1965 was the summer between 1^st and 2^nd grades for me. 

What I remember most was being torn between wanting so desperately for time to pass quickly so I could watch the show, but also realizing that this meant the summer would be over and I'd be back in school.

That year, I drew this picture for a class project.

You Star Wars kids have no idea what you missed ;)

There must be more accurate estimations than "random"...

...I've been interested in genes and heredity since I was in high school.  Now I'm even more interested as I wonder about potential possession of Russian blood.

Most of us are familiar with the simple concepts of sexual reproduction.  Each individual has two sets of homogenous chromosomes in every cell.  Humans have 23 chromosomes comprised of 46 paired chromatids.  23 come from one's mother, and 23 from one's father.  When a sex cell is formed (gamete: sperm, egg), these pairs split in half to form haploid reproduction cells.  These cells from the parents then join together to form an offspring with a new set of diploid pairs.

That is, the red set from the person's mother splits off to make one gamete, and the blue set from the person's father makes the other.  This is not true, though, as each side may receive a "random" chromatid from either parental option.

So, it is incorrect to say I am 1/16th Russian, ...or is it?

If n is 3, then there are 8 possibilities.

The haploid number for humans is 23, ...resulting in 8,388,608 (2²³) different combinations.

However, the frequency and tendency of siblings to look so similar seems to indicate that this is not at all randomness.  Some sort of over-ruling dominance/submission or pattern seems to be at play.

Offspring tend to look like one parent or the other, or they look like a combination of the two, but too often the siblings themselves can be immediately identified as coming from the same breeding combination.  Whether looking at the phenotype or the genotype, there seems to be a set of focusing rules when mating two individuals.

I can't seem to find any sort of numbers indicating just how random this "random" process is. The likelihood of the 8,388,608 human possibilities forming such a narrow set as the similar siblings we often see, seems strange to me.

Are there tendencies for pairings during meiosis?  ...and do these tendencies represent specific patterns among certain gene pools and/or individuals?  I mean, do Northern Europeans experience more combinations than Southern Africans?  Did my parents (both Northern Europeans) experience more combinations than my childhood neighbors (again, both Europeans)?  Would my brother and his wife experience more than me and my wife?

There must be numbers somewhere!

It gets more complicated, too...

...there's a process called cross-over where homologous chromatids (two chromatids make a chromosome, the X-shaped gene things: one chromatid from Mom, and one from Dad, and the pair makes me).  Before the chromatids even split apart to make the gamete, an exchange of various sections (again with the "random") of genetic code occurs between the maternal and paternal (my grandparents) chromatids of the individual (my parents).

To reword,  ...the resulting chromatid, which will constitute its part in the final sex cell, will have genetic material from both the parent's mother and the parent's father.  Even if I knew which chromatid I got from my Mom (her father's or her mother's) for a specific chromosome pair, it itself would be a mix of her parent's parents, ...but how much of a "mix".

As is the same with "random" reproduction, there are no numbers to reflect how much cross-over typically occurs and whether this varies between specific gene pools and/or individuals.

I've looked everywhere, and asked a few doctor friends, but I can't find an answer.  Do both of these processes mean that my inheritance is truly a mishmash of my grandparents genes, or can my traits be more or less traced up one branch of my family tree?

Forgot to mention, mainly because we tend to take the little things for granted...

...at the L5 Party we had the Hooter's Girls bar tend and the Dallas Police running security.

THAT is cool!

...and THIS is cool!

Rob got me this coloring book for my birthday last November.  He also had the girls at Hooter's pick a page and color it...

...I was touched!

I was hoping that they'd used water colors mixed with authentic fluids, because that just makes sense...

...but they used crayons instead ;)

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