Here's something a bit more light-hearted to check out, and its mercifully short too... go have a look and a good laugh

[link]

A couple days before xmas, Comcast (my bro-in-law's cable internet provider, from whom I leach my wireless) decided the hioliday would be a great time to upgrade all the lines in the city nearest me... which knocked out service to all the surrounding areas as well (great, since there had just been a few weeks of temporary outage while they upgraded lines in those outlying areas, mine included) and so my interenet disappeared...

At the same time, I found a virus on my computer, and it started acting really weird, even after cleaning the virus, so I thought perhaps that was why my wireless was not working... I tried using windows restore, the repair function from the re-install thing, and even doing a "dirty" re-install of XP (that's where you tell it to re-install OVER the already existing installation) but none of those things seemed to help, either all the strange behaviours, or the wireless (of course, I didn't know that Comcast was down...)

So I did a full re-install, formatting my C: drive and reinstalling from the ground up... unfortunately, the only copy of XP I have is the Upgrade version, which has none of the Service Packs included... and when you try to use that version on a wireless network using WPA Security settings, it can't connect. So I asked my bro-in-law to disable security until I could download all the service packs from MS... and when he disabled the security, somehow or other either the router went wacko on its own, or somebody hacked it, and set it to WEP security and neither of us knew the password it had then... so Bro-in-law had to reset the router...

and then he decides, without mentioning it to me, that he's going to re-arrange his computer room... and had the router off for like two weeks following New Years Day... and for the first week, he also had his answering machine turned off, and would not pick up the phone... so when I tried to call to ask what was up, I got nowhere... after a week of that, he finally turned the answering machine back on, so I left at least two messages begging him to PLEASE PLEASE tell me what was happening, even if he'd decided to cut me off, I just wanted to KNOW... still no replies...

Yesterday, finally, he got the router back up, and I was able to upgrade all my WinXP stuff. My email had over 2000 Spams and a couple hundred regular messages, dA had 377 deviations wating for me to view, 120 messages to read, and 2 notes... so I have been very very busy since yesterday trying to get caught up.

I also want to apologize, I didn't read all your journals.... I also did not reply to any favs I recieved in my abscense... but at least I went through all the comments and replies, and I DID look at all the new devs all my friends posted, and faved quite a few... I thinks that's a fair trade lol

I also had one bit of unexpected luck, I logged in to my SecondLife account and when I went to pay my rent on my current gallery there, I happened to glance at the top of the screen to see if I had any money (Linden Dollars) to actually PAY the rent, and saw 1151 lindens in my account! Somebody on SL had actually purchased "Hatred" which I had in my gallery as a "one of a kind" art piece (meaning I would sell it only once, and not even exhibit it myself once sold (I do that with some works, sell them only once for 1000 L$ while the stuff I sell multiple copies of go for from 100 L$ (normal art) to 300 L$ (for animated art)) so it was a big surprise to me to suddenly have all that money in my account... that's only the 3rd time I've sold a 1000L$ piece. (and it allowed me to pay 3 weeks rental and still have over 800L$ to spend or save towards the next few weeks rent...)

So, all in all, not the greatest holiday ever, but at least I survived it.

Earlier today I saw a new jurnal from one of my friends:

which said:

I'll start from the beginning..

Today I've got the message in french from one of our deviantart friend's wife.

I don't know french, so I used some stupid polish-french online translator.
That was the most silly translation I could have imagine, but I understood some scary words.
I used french-english translation and the information included "...I inform you of the death of my husband...".

I couldn't believe in what I am reading..
I wish it wasn't true, but after reading a couple of times the same words in many different translators, I realize, that it is true.

I feel horrible writting this, but I think all of You, who knew him, should know.

He was ONE OF US..



his last two deviations:
[link]
[link]







I still can't believe the message

So you can imagine I was shocked...

You see Kaleikonos was a friend of mine as well... in fact he often told me I was his first dA friend...

I knew he was not well, and I had some hints that what he had was cancer, and very bad, but was never sure.

I am so saddened by this, I will miss his wonderful work and his unfailing friendship.

I thought of putting a few thumbs of his work here, but instead I will ask all my friends to please, go and view his profile page, as a sign of respect and dA love for one of our own who has gone away...

Please drop by and look at

A great artist and a great friend