This is one of those posts that has been puttering around in the back of my head for a while now. Almost two months ago, we lost one of our friends. This is especially significant to our relatively small group of friends, because he was the first to go.
I've actually lost childhood friends before. My one time close friend Vincent, and my fair weather friend, but mostly enemy Tony. But they were friends, like most of them at the time, by default, proximity, and circumstance. You grew up together. And to be fair, at least one of those friends from that era, remains my best friend to this day. But I would say he's the exception. Ed was the first of my friends from the adult phase of my life. When adult decisions were made based on trust, interest, and compatibility. It was a friendship that lasted over 20 year, some rocky (particularly the last few) but all of them fulfilling.
What brought this to mind was what I miss about ed, our sharing of our eclectic interests. Though our tastes in most things, books, anime, music, movies, 
software, etc. was definitely different, our tolerance was very similar. This made sharing most things such as music, books, and ideas ideal as it was that wonderfull blend of the familiar and the new. Our tastes were close enough that we would end up expanding our somewhat familiar boundaries.
There were two thing I wanted to share with Ed, one right around the time he died and the second just a day or so ago. The first was nerdcore hip-hop. Being the geeks stat we are (Ed most geekiest of us all), this is something we both would have enjoyed tremendously. Though a lot of it is crap, at least when compared to actual hip-hop. A surprising amount of it is fairly witty and some of that is actually good hip-hop. In the witty column are songs such as Ascii Antics, Kill Dash Nine and Rock Out With Your Hawk Out. In the actually good song category are Mountain Kind, Top Secret, and Nursehellamentary. (If I can figure out a good way to do It I'll post my "ultimate Nerdcore" playlist.
The second thing is Elite Beat Agents for the DS. It's basically a rhythm game using the DS stylus to tap and slide your way through popular songs. Even thought the use cover artists, they're close enough to the original to work (at least for a DS game). I'm sure the musical selections would have kept us both entertained and competing till we completed the game.
It's these kind of little things which make friendships... the sharing of the small. I miss you.