We are here to celebrate the life of William Patrick Arpin.

Bill was born the eldest son to his grateful parents at Saint Luke’s Hospital in New Hartford, New York (Utica area) on June 27, 1971. He grew up in Sheridan, Arkansas, and graduated from Sheridan High School in 1989. He graduated from the University of Tulsa in Oklahoma in 1994 with a bachelor’s degree in Electrical Engineering. He was a very caring, loving and devoted husband, father, brother, son and friend. He enjoyed spending time with his family and friends. He had a deep love of animals and was the proud owner of several dogs, cats, snakes, iguanas, gerbils, parakeets and Sam the turtle. He met the love of his life, Pam, on May 26, 2006. They were happily married on February 24, 2007.

Bill is survived by his loving wife, Pamela of Irving TX; Pam’s sons, James and Benjamin ; Pam’s daughter Madelynne ; his parents Helen and Gary of DeQueen, AR; his brother, Daniel of Albuquerque, NM; his paternal Grandfather, John of Cocoa Beach Florida; his Maternal Grandmother, Edna e of Stamford, NY as well as many cousins, aunts, uncles, and hosts of friends.

My name is Ryan. I am a friend of Bills. What you may not know is that I am a minister. I married Bill and Pam and our friends Eric and Tracey. Bill’s Family asked if I would say a few words today.

I thought I would start off by telling you how I met Bill. After I started thinking about it though, I can’t actually pin down the exact way that Bill and I met. We had a lot of friends in common and Bill and I just started being friends. And that’s how Bill was. If he knew you, you were his friend.

When I think back on the friends that we had back in college there were two or three groups of people that all kind of knew each other but everyone knew Bill. And Bill was that way no matter where he was.

After College We both worked at the same company in Tulsa. And I knew the people I worked with, but everyone knew Bill.

Even in the online games we would played together, he was friends with everyone. I’ve been getting messages from people who only new Bill online saying how much he will be missed.

Another thing about Bill was always he was always there to help whenever anyone needed it.

One time Bill and I were coming out of the engineering building at TU. And we saw our friend Layle working on his car. He was replacing the battery. Bill and helped him get it hooked up but somehow we had done it wrong. The battery cables burst into flames. I remember my dad saying that if you hooked up a battery wrong that it would explode , so I dove behind the car as did Layle. I turned around to see Bill grab a srewdriver and flip the battery cables off the battery. He then looked at us us disapprovingly and said "Thanks Guys." (If you know Bill you know ecactly the look I'm talking about.)

Bill had a very big heart, and he opened it to everyone. When Pam and Bill got together there was never any question that James, Ben and Maddy were a part of his family. Bill just wouldn’t have had it any other way.

James wrote a message to Pam and thought I would share it with you.

“I honestly have one important rule in my life, and that is that everything happens for a reason. Whether it be losing a game, being late for work, or even tripping over a rock. It all happens for a reason. In my opinion, Bill had completed his life. After Pam came along, he had wife that he loved, a couple of kids to take care of and have fun with, and some great times. Bill had fun the last couple of years and you can think about that whenever you miss him.
He's in a better place now. One without stupid drivers.”

Thank You

Program

Slideshow

I bought Fallout 3 last week, right before I left for Florida. I only got to play it about 5 minutes before heading to the airport. I played it quite a bit this past weekend though. Its great. It really is a true sequel to the original two games with updated technology. It also HUGE. The strategy guide is over 600 pages. I played it all weekend and only did the very first part of the main story quest. You can literally just wander around the wasteland exploring.

I'd like it if the skills mattered a little more. The science skill allows you to hack computers but having a high science skill doesn't make the hard computers any easier. I really liked the way it was done in Bioshock. The hard computers were still hard but if you had a high hacking skill you got bonuses to make it easier.

Okay last thing Ken Hite, in his blog listed the westerns he thought everyone should see to be "Literate" in the western as a genre. Not necessarily the 10 best movies just the 10 movies that best represent the genre. I need to see some of these.

The Four Gospels:

High Noon (Fred Zinnemann, 1952)
Shane (George Stevens, 1953)
The Searchers (John Ford, 1956)
The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (John Ford, 1962)

The Two Commentaries:

Rio Bravo (Howard Hawks' 1959 response to High Noon)
Unforgiven (Clint Eastwood's 1992 response to Shane)

The Two Heresies:

The Wild Bunch (Sam Peckinpah, 1969)
The Outlaw Josey Wales (Clint Eastwood, 1976)

The Epistle From The Virtuous Pagan Samurai:

The Magnificent Seven (John Sturges, 1960)

The Weird, Hallucinatory Apocalypse:

The Good, the Bad & the Ugly (Sergio Leone, 1967)

Wednesday I was over and Khuul's working to repair the hole I had to cut in the wall last week so the drain pipe could be fixed. Repairing the hole was actually quite easy, unfortunatley removing the toilet and then putting it back was not easy. I had to disconnect and reconnect the bolts 3 times before they would "catch" and hold the toilet in place. I swear I could build a toilet out of component parts at this point.

Not much else last week except I spent a lot of time playing Fable 2. It's pretty good, but has some annoying features. Like once you get popular the townspeople pretty much mob you anytime you walk in town. Maybe that's just because I'm trying to play a "good" character. I'm sure if I burninated a few villagers they wouldn't do that so much.

Elanna is out of town right now. She's back home in OK visiting family and friends for a week and attending her high school reunion.

We id a short 20 mile bike ride on Saturday around the airport access road. It really wore me out. I can't believe I'm losing my cycling endurance already. That may have been our last ride of the season as well since it looks like it will turn cold later this week.

I went to see Religulous Saturday, the Bill Mahr movie/documentary about religion. Its far from fairand its not really meant to be, it's meant to be entertaining. I think the un-intended consequence that the movie really showed was that many of the people Bill was trying to get "riled-up" were actually very patient with him and tried to answer his questions about religion. Anyway as a movie or a documentary it wasn't all that compelling. The questions he was asking aren't anything you couldn't get from a freshman level comparative religion course.

After not a small amount of searching I found this website on the State of Texas web page.

Who represents me?

It lets you put in your address and shows you who is currently representing you at the State and National level. For Grapevine,TX it gave this:

National Senators
Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison
Senator John Cornyn

National Representative
Congressional District 24
Congressman Kenny Marchant

Texas State Senator
Senate District 12
Senator Jane Nelson

Texas State Representative
House District 98
Representative Vicki Truitt

Now that's just for my areas of Texas of course. Interesting note, everyone above is a Republican,(big surprise) but Vicki Truitt doesn't mention that on her webpage. I really had to dig to find out that Vicki Truitt is a Republican.

The house and senate are still wrangling over the bailout. Most of the folks around here seem to think its a bad idea. I think that's just a emotional response to the fact we are rescuing the goofballs who got us into this mess in the first place. I don't think the bailout is a good solution but right now it's the only one that will work. Otherwise, we are looking at some hard times coming up and a real risk that the economy will not recover for a while.

Elanna and I haven't been up to too much latley. We went for a ride last weekend that was supposed to be a 44 mile ride but turned out to be much longer. About 30 miles in we came to a intersection where there had been a huge wreck. One car had t-boned another one. There were 4 helicopters there. That ended up causing us to go out of our way about 6 miles and then somehow the route ended up being 2 miles longer than what it was mapped out to be, so we ended up doing about 52 miles. That's the longest I've ridden since the MS-150 in May and probably the longest ride Elanna has done ever. Whew! We were pretty tired the next day and just lounged around the house.

Yesterday was our 2nd Anniversary! We went out to a very nice restaurant called Boi Na Braza. It's a Brazilian Steakhouse like Texas De Brazil. I think we both agree that Texas De Brazil is a little better but Boi Na Braza has the advantage of being 3 minutes from our house. :)

Happy anniversary one more time sweetie!

The hurricane came and went here in North Texas without too much disruption. Nothing like what happened down south. Elanna and I a bike ride this past Saturday and it sprinkled on us most of the time and then really started pouring down on us the last few miles. The ride was to support disabled veterans and an Apache helicopter took off and flew over as we started the ride. That was very cool. I never realized how big those things were. Bane got some pictures of it, I'll have to try and get them up here in a few days. Other than the ride we didn't do too much else this past weekend. We did get the last 15 or so boxes unpacked, so I guess we are FINALLY moved in to the new house.

The big news this week is that Elanna's six-month contract job that has lasted for over two years is ow coming to an end. The company she works for has to get rid of all their contractors so her contract is ending, eventhough they would really like her to stay. That means some belt tightening on our part. We ran up some credit card debt when we moved into the new house so we have to manage those payments a little more carefully now and stop using our other credit cards so we don't run up anymore debt. It would have been nice if they could have waited a few months to end her contract but of course we can't control that.

We are doing a 40 mile bike ride this weekend. It's right next door in Southlake, so we don't even have to get up a 5am this time. Hopefully the hurricane will wait till we are done to dump rain on us.

After lunch, I headed to the store to buy stuff for the annual room party while Elanna went to see James Marsters. The panel sounded very cool fro what she said. I think we'll have to check out Torchwood now. Next we had a whirlwind of panels, going to the Firefly panel and then the BSG panel. The firefly crew is always a great panel. Nathan Fillion and Alan Tudyk were giving away prizes for people who asked questions. Nathan Fillion even gave away his custom license plate that said "My other car is Serenity."
The BSG panel was great as well. It was very cool to see Edward James Olmos, who had never been to a convention before.

After that we wisely decided to skip the SG-1 panel, as we were getting "panel-fatigue" and headed to the room to get set up for the Stonecutters induction party!

In case you haven't read my past Dragoncon entries, my friends and I dress up as the Stonecutters from the Simpsons. It's great fun and we are recognized by lots of people.

Saturday morning started off with the Dragoncon parade. Well for some of us, some of the group opted to "watch it from their room" and recover from the night before. The parade was great. After that we made the long trek over to hotel #4 (the convention is spread over 4 massive hotels) to take in the MST3K Panel. It was fun and apparently the MST3K guys are doing new movie riffs again under the name Cinematic Titanic. Which I need to check out.

Afterwards we spent some time in the dealers room and I bought some cool goggles for my next years steampunk costume. I am excited that more people are interested in steampunk! I was convinced I was the only one. There were tons of cool steampunk costumes and even a steampunk panel. I hope there are more next year. ( I heard the panel was standing room only.)

Then we headed over to the Star Trek Panel with Avery Brooks, Michael Dorn, and Cirroc Lofton. I never find the Star Trek panels to be as good as the others but it was great to see the actors in person.

Saturday night was the Stonecutters gathering! Fifteen of us this year! It was a blast. We even got a picture taken with Simpson's writer Don Payne.

Saturday night was even busier because after walking around as the stonecutters for roughly 4 hours we then changed clothes and headed out to the Cruxshadws concert. They were great as always. I might have enjoyed it more had I not had an aching back and feet from being a stonecutter but it was still great.

Needless to say by Sunday I was approaching "wiped out" but I was not to be deterred. We first headed over to see Anne McCaffery, Elanna's favorite author. All I have to say is that some people are WAY too into Dragonriders of Pern. Also Anne is 82 and really can't participate as well as she once could. Still they had some interesting stories. After that we did a "full run" through the dealers rooms and really wore ourselves down. We then retired to have dinner with local friends and hang out with the group Sunday evening. Everyone in our group had some really great costumes, but I'll save that for later post.

Monday we slept in, or at least tried to, hit the dealers room one more time and headed out. Nearly the entire Dallas crew was on the sme flight back so we got to hang out with everyone for a little longer.

Whew. Okay tomorrow or maybe Friday I'll try and post some costume pics.

I worked up a schedule of stuff Ellanna and I want to do. I doubt we'll make it to everything. The stuff in bold are the things we really want to try and make it to.

Friday
1pm - Spike Hyatt Centennial 2-3

2:30 - An Hour in the Firefly 'Verse" Hyatt Regency VI-VII. Nathan Fillion, Alan Tudyk

4pm BSG Cast - Marriott Atrium
4pm - Avery Brooks and Michael Dorn - Sheraton Grand

5:30 pm Stargate Cast - Marriott Atrium

7pm TJ's Panel - Cherokee- Hilton

11:30 PM Buffy Once More with Feeling - Sheraton Grand

Midnight Abney Park Hyatt Centennial II-III

Saturday
10 AM Parade
1pm Stargate Cast - Marriott Atrium

4pm Avery Brooks Michael Dorn - Marriot Atrium

5:30 - BSG Cast Marriott Atrium
5:30- Katherine Kurtz Hyatt Fairlie
5:30 Firefly Cast - Hyatt Cent II-III

7pm TJ's Panel - Cherokee- Hyatt

Midnight Cruxshadows Hilton Centennial II-III

Sunday
11:30 AM Anne Mcaffery Hyatt Hanover C-E
1 pm BSG Cast w/o Edward James Olmos Marriott Atrium
2:30 Firefly Cast - Marriot Atrium
11:30 PM Dr. Horrible Sing A Long Hilton Rockdale

Monday

10 am Edward James Olmos - Hyatt Centennial II-III