Deo beat me too it in saying what I felt after having read only your first post Mouser, that you could have copied what you posted and read it at your Dad's funeral and it would have been one of the more succinct and eloquent eulogies that would ever have been heard (not that I have a habit of listening to them mind you ! but heard a few).
Lost my Dad in '91 and your words about a quiet, unassuming but very supportive man came through loud and clear for me. Unlike yours though, who seemed fascinated by random acts of kindness as well as the art of being alive, my Dad did have to put a padlock on his workshop until I learned not to leave his best tools outside gathering rust ! His support though, by age 12, had me building entirely on my own (no help from anyone) a 3 storey hut out of old car packing cases, that with corrugated iron and paint ended up waterproofed and SOLID (brick outhouses weren't built any stronger :) so my construction passed Dad's safety inspection with flying colours and remained on our family property until all of us kids had left home and Mum needed the land for something else (about 20 years ! Wow.)
The way you've written about him I know that to the day you die, he will not be forgotten, so ... despite your heavy heart and sadness at his passing... he too I feel sure would have felt that what you said, you said very well indeed.
While not entirely on-topic (but that's what being a member of DC does - it gives me links that stretch my mind and takes me to all sorts of informational gems), the way you wrote what you did prompts me to offer the following (because for those coders out there attempting or thinking of attempting coding interaction with the English langauge and it's forms of use this may prove insightful) because nearly all of us have some instinctive (some might say subconciously learned) knowledge of what words to use in our sentences but not why we choose the order that we use, and why is important when coding anything.
** As a 7-year-old boy, J.R.R. Tolkien wrote his first story. When his mother read it, she remarked that his reference to a “green great dragon” was a mistake. Instead, she said, he should have written “great green dragon.” Instinctively we agree with Tolkien’s mother. Yet I have to admit that, until reading Mark Forsyth’s “The Elements of Eloquence,” I had never paused to analyze with any precision the way in which we customarily sequence adjectives. Mr. Forsyth explains that, in English, adjectives follow the pattern opinion-size-age-shape-color-origin-material-purpose—“so you can have a lovely little old rectangular green French silver whittling knife. But if you mess with that word order in the slightest you’ll sound like a maniac.” **
Extracted from a review at :
http://www.wsj.com/articles/book-review-the-elements-of-eloquence-by-mark-forsyth-1414713336Be warned. There are nuggets of information like the above use of adjectives in that book which is written with good light humour but much of it is best left to academians. :) (Academians are academics who've gone nuts :) )