So, after six years, the latest Matti P Aho family reunion is wrapping up. I figured I'd write a little blog post to describe the festivities from my perspective.

For those that don't know, Matti P Aho is my paternal great grandfather. Us Finns being a prolific lot who take the "be fruitful and multiply" thing a little overboard, over the course of six generations, there are now hundreds of Ahos spread around. To accommodate this multitude, a large venue is required (even though a lot of them didn't make it), so the tradition (thus far) has been to host the chaos at Franklin Pierce University, right here in Rindge. Having it in town is convenient for us =_=

The first reunion was held in 1994. The second was in 2004. The decision was made to switch to a five (rather than ten) year spacing, so the current reunion is taking place (as I type) in 2010. Wait, what? Isn't that six years? o_O Of course it is. It was also decided to change it to the years divisible by five. (Except, of course, those divisible by one hundred but not divisible by five hundred =_-)

So, the reunion is this weekend. However, for me, it started two weeks ago. I've been working (pourin' mud for Ji-Cal) on stay away (in Pittston PA), so I've only been around on the weekends. The Friday in question, I happened to see Amy's Facebook post stating that her kids (Chad and Laryn) had made it to NH. I mentioned this to Linden, my brother, and he said he was going over to Phillie's (my aunt) to see them. I tagged along and got very little sleep that weekend.

Next week it was back to work. When I rolled into town again, there where even more people in town. Once again I ended up over at Phillie's. This time I visited with some of Ruthie's (another aunt) daughters and assorted others. Of course, I got very little sleep that weekend too.

Then I had to get a bunch of information and photographs onto my laptop so I could make a veterans tribute slideshow for my Mother. During my free time at the hotel, I managed to get it put together. Then I got back into town early (late Thursday, by catching a ride with Adam Aho, my dad's first cousin). This gave me some time to put the finishing touches on the slideshow.

However, it wasn't finished. I kept getting more photos and info to add. Every time I thought it was done, more stuff needed adding. Then I had proof readings and test viewings.

Friday evening, the reunion officially started. This basically consisted of the first night of entertainment. Adam's comedy routine was the hilight of the night. Most of the other acts where kinda slow, but a classical music performance (which everyone else though was too long) was quite enjoyable. Me, Layton (my other brother), Linden, Elissa (Linden's fiancee), and Chelsey (my cousin), left early to go see a late showing of Inception. Which, by the way, is a phenomenal movie. Go see it.

Saturday morning we had to all get up early and put on our (color coded) tee shirts and assemble at the college for the aerial photo. The plan was to form a star shape. It was rather chaotic and I suspect it started to look more like an amoeba by the time everyone showed up. Then we got the news that Keene airport was fogged in and the fly over had been canceled. So we marched up onto the hill and Mary (yet another aunt) took some photos that way.

While standing there in the hot sun, I managed to get stung by a bee. Something had flown by my face and I just instinctively slapped it, only to get stung on the lip. Somehow the venom made my chapped lips hurt even more, while the sting itself wasn't so bad. Then we had some lunch (we had packed a cooler full of sandwich supplies) and I took some Diphenhydramine (Benadryl).

We went back home, so I could shower and work on the slideshow some more (it seemed to never end). As I was working on it, the drugs kicked in and I felt like I was exhausted, drunk, or both. We where skipping the sporting events, but there was one I wanted to see, so I packed my laptop up and we headed back.

The event in question was a variation on the Finnish Wife Carrying Race, the Blindfolded Married Couple Wheelbarrow Race. It was great fun to watch, but I was disappointed that Linden and Liss couldn't participate. (Apparently some stick-in-the-mud decided that they had to be married to race >_<)

Then I headed over the the field house to wrap up the veterans tribute. While there Denis and Judy (my uncle and aunt) and their girls where practicing a musical number. Somehow I ended up running the mix, with feedback from Eunie (yes, another aunt). I think we finally got it sounding pretty good.

The I volunteered to track down Layton's guitar so one of the girls could borrow it. I grabbed the guitar and finally wrapped up the slideshow. It took me forever to change the battery in it (it's a mic'ed acoustic). Then I was trying to tune it and broke two strings. I'd gotten one replaced and was trying to get the other one fixed when I was told that Judy was frantically looking for me. Then they ended up using Merle's (my first cousin) guitar anyway.

The entertainment that night was more engaging. The Hjalmar clan (me and mine) had quite the line up. There was "Finn" translation, a ballet dance (which also functioned as a prayer for healing), a song worthy of Simon's (from American Idol) worst dissing, a baton routine that resembled interperative dance, a southern white Christian rapper (I couldn't make this up if I tried), Denis and Judy's song, and a skit (which I somehow got roped into).

The other groups where good as well, with the skits being very funny and well done (ours was funny, but a little obtuse, and the costuming was slap-dash). The sound was terrible. The practice session I'd mixed sounded much better than the actual performance.

As things wound down (or was it up?), I meandered over to Phillie's again. Packed to the gills, there was quite a bit going on over there. Then I went home and slept on the couch ('cause my bro' is using my room). Once again, not enough sleep.

So, that brings us to now. I'm skipping church (9:30, are you crazy =_=) and writing a blog post. See youz guyz all later.

Well, I voted for Obama, but unless things change (and they could, the next presidential election is a ways off), I won't be doing so again. The first move he made that annoyed me was appointing Hilary Clinton as Secretary of State. I don't like her (and wouldn't have voted for her if she'd have won the Democratic nomination) and disagree with her foreign policy stance, but I understand it. Party loyalty and all that nonsense.

While people are up in arms (on both sides) about health care reform, that's not my issue. If anything, I feel the current proposals don't go far enough. But that's not what's got my goat.

No, what's pissed me off is that he signed into law a bill that banned my preferred brand of smokes, Djarum Blacks, and all other kreteks and other flavored cigs (except, of course, menthol, Barack smokes (or smoked) Kools). The bill in question was H.R. 1256 the so-called "Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act".

The bill in question was basically written by Philip Morris and it's "supposed" aim is to prevent the sale of cigarettes designed to appeal to underage smokers. This is an utter farce. Nearly every underage person I know that smokes preferes Marlboro Reds or another similar (unflavored) smoke. None of them smoke the more expensive brands banned by this law. (Either that, or they're too busy smoking pot to be affected by a change in the tobacco regulations.)

Indonesia is going to be taking action before the World Trade Organization, on the basis that the ban descriminates in favor of domestic US products (to the detriment of Indonesian kretek producers) and will probally win. However, this offers little real hope. The WTO has no teeth, and like any other WTO ruling we disagree with, it'll be ignored.

The only good point of this change is that cigarette regulation was transfered to the Food and Drug Administration, a move I've favored for years. Perhaps now we'll finally get ingredients listings for smokes and regulation of toxic tobacco adulterants. I guess even a toxic rain cloud has a silver lining.

However, that's not enough to sooth my ire. As of September 22nd, various types alternative smokes will be illegal. This even goes so far as to include herbal smokes that contain no tobacco whatsoever. Ironically, flavored cigars are not covered by the ban. (Cigars are subject to a lower tax rate as well.)

I, for one, plan on illegaly importing my Blacks (it's tax free and cheaper anyhow) and encourage anyone who likes a tasty smoke to do the same.

I haven't made as much progress on updating the website as I would like, because of bugs in my system. These bugs are pretty easy to track down, I know exactly what causes them, but they're difficult to fix. Basically what it comes down to is that the menu system is poorly designed. While it produces great looking results, it's internals are a big mess and it needs to be majorly refactored.

The reason I haven't gotten around to this is mostly laziness. The menus are the most complicated part of the code. They are also the part I had (and still have) the least experiance with. As a result, any number of stupid things happen when things aren't just right. Minor typos can lead to total server errors, deleting an item won't remove it's menu entry (and vice versa), and the way they're stored in the database is pretty silly. In short, it's a nightmare.

They worked (just barely) when all they had to do was the blog system, pretty much because it was all automated. The article system added support for manual menu entry creation, but didn't do it right. It's all my fault for not thinking ahead when I designed it in the first place. I'll fix it, but it could take a while. Untill then, no content importing is gonna happen ... sorry.

Well, it took a little longer than I though it would (mostly because I improved some other stuff as well), but the overhaul of Black Knight's 'blog' and 'article' systems is complete. The first evidence of that is the new "About Me" section.

I still haven't implemented permalinks properly yet, but I've been hacking for a couple of days straight, so I'm gonna hold off on that for now. It's the next item on my adgenda though.

Now all I have to do is import the content from the old site. That might take a while though, because I want to review and clean up the content while I'm at it. Some stuff will get cut and some new stuff will probably be added.

Well, I got distracted by a video game coding project of mine and, as such, am a bit behind schedule on getting the rest of my website moved over here. However, I have made some progress on updating the backend.

I've built a more generic article system by heavily refactoring the existing blog system (mostly chopping out blog specific stuff) and it's working pretty well so far. The menu stuff still needs a lot of work and there's a few loose ends to tie up, but things are moving along pretty swiftly. However, it's not on the live site yet.

The reason for that is that I'm planning on reworking the blog system to build off the generic article system. At the moment, there is a lot of duplicate code between the two, which I would like to eliminate. Once I get that done (should only be a day or two), it's only a matter of importing the contents of the old site.