I Push Buttons

Perspective On Osama's Death

2011-05-02T09:15:00.000-04:00

So we managed to kill one man after ten years. Great job, America. How many innocent people died in order to do that?

Praise God? Did your God smile upon the killing of women and children and thousands of our soldiers in our inept attempts to find one man who was basically nothing but a figurehead? Osama was a sick, invalid old man dying of kidney failure. He hasn't been the problem for years. I understand his death may feel like a great feat for some of you and may bring closure to others, but having seen this tragedy unfold from the beginning, I can tell you that it is way too little and way too late.

But go ahead and praise Jesus granting you victory in your holy crusade while you dance in the streets, conveniently ignoring how much it makes you look like the radical Muslims doing the exact same thing whenever they win some kind of minor victory. The killing of another is not something to celebrate, and I can guarantee you that Jesus is not celebrating with you. The day of celebration will be when our last soldier comes home to American soil, and we are no longer sending our fathers and sons to die in some desert half a world away.

This is an empty victory. Some perspective for your day.

Year In Review: 2010

2011-01-02T22:12:00.000-05:00

1. What did you do in 2010 that you'd never done before? Competed in and finished a sprint triathlon; went on a cruise and to some new countries: St Maarten and Haiti.

2. Did you keep your new years' resolutions, and will you make more for next year? I made a couple of resolutions last year. The first was to write a new story on Ficly every day for a year. I did pretty well for a couple of months, but eventually I just couldn't make the time. My other was to read the entire New Testament, and I didn't make it through that for various reasons.

3. Did anyone close to you give birth? Eric and Carly had Cassidy, Jeremy and Ashley had Arwyn, Adam and Kristen had Connor, and Aseer and Celina had Josiah. That's a lot of babies!

4. Did anyone close to you die? Not this year.

5. What countries did you visit? On our cruise, we went to Haiti and St. Maarten, plus Puerto Rico, which might as well be another country. It was the best vacation ever!

6. What would you like to have in 2011 that you lacked in 2010? A gaming computer. Which I got. Booyah! I would also like to have options for my morning commute.

7. What date from 2010 will remain etched upon your memory, and why? October 13th, the day I left my 20s behind.

8. What was your biggest achievement of the year? Is turning 30 an achievement? If not, I would have to say deploying the new version of our site at work and taking over technical development for another at the same time.

9. What was your biggest failure? I've put some weight back on, but not too much. I blame the construction at my gym which has eliminated half the parking so that I can't even get in half the time.

10. Did you suffer illness or injury? I had the worst stomach virus I've ever had in my life in April, along with Courtney and a bunch of our friends. That was not fun at all.

11. What was the best thing you bought? My new gaming computer! It is ridiculously fast.

12. Whose behavior merited celebration? Jon Stewart. You know you're doing something correct when both the right and the left don't like you.

13. Whose behavior made you appalled and depressed? Congress. Again. I keep trying to vote these morons out, but most of the rest of my state is too ignorant and/or apathetic to see what is happening.

14. Where did most of your money go? Savings

15. What did you get really, really, really excited about? Our cruise and my new gaming computer!

16. What song will always remind you of 2010? Pretty much anything by Jupiter Sunrise, who Courtney introduced me to.

17. Compared to this time last year, are you:
i. happier or sadder? The same
ii. thinner or fatter? Thinner still, I think
iii. richer or poorer? Richer

18. What do you wish you'd done more of? Writing

19. What do you wish you'd done less of? Looking for a parking space at the gym.

20. How will you be spending Christmas? We spent Christmas at Courtney's mom's and had a very nice time.

21. How will you be spending New Year's Eve? I helped Derrick install a light in his basement, and then we had a party!

22. Did you discover any great new websites in 2010? I just started using Google Reader at the end of this year. I love it. In terms of actual content, Scenes From A Multi-Verse is a hilarious new online comic.

23. How many weddings? My friend and co-worker Jeff got married in July, and Courtney's dad's cousin got married in September.

24. What was your favorite TV program? Stargate: Universe. Which they've canceled. :(

25. Do you hate anyone now that you didn't hate this time last year? I don't think so.

26. What was the best book you read? A Storm of Swords by George R. R. Martin

27. What was your greatest musical discovery? Jupiter Sunrise

28. What did you want and get? A new gaming computer! Finally!

30. What was your favorite film of this year? Inception, by far. Christopher Nolan is fast becoming one of my favorite writers and directors.

31. What did you do on your birthday, and how old were you? I turned the big three-oh this year. We didn't really do anything on my birthday, but the cruise a few days later was part of the celebration.

32. What one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying? Not losing an enormous amount of value in our condo.

33. How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2010? Same as always.

34. What kept you sane? Lack of things to drive me insane.

35. Which celebrity/public figure did you fancy the most? Scarlett Johansson

36. What political issue stirred you the most? The TSA is destroying travel in this country.

37. Who did you miss? My family.

38. Who were the best new people you met? Chris and Victoria. We had a blast on the cruise!

39. Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2010: Life is a gift. You don't have to understand it. Just make the most of it.

40. Quote a song lyric that sums up your year: "Oh, if we had the power to trap anything that could hurt a human being inside a jar. We'd send it far from Earth and watch it explode in the sun to the cheers of everyone. But, alas, that can't be done." - Jupiter Sunrise, Arthur Nix

The Month Of The Technology Upgrade

2010-12-06T21:21:00.000-05:00

I wasn't planning on doing any of these things this year, but events transpired to force me into several technology upgrades. The first is that the check engine light came on one day in Courtney's Focus. She took it in to Midas to see what the problem was, and they couldn't even get the car's computer to respond when they hooked theirs up to get an error code. That immediately gave me a bad feeling, which was confirmed when C took the car to the dealership, and they said it would be about $2k to fix the computer and replace the timing belt that also happened to be dying. That was over half the value of the car, so we traded it in and bought her a 2011 Focus.

We decided to go with another Focus for several reasons: 1) Her first Focus had over 150,000 miles on it and had been a very reliable little car. 2) We didn't have to bail Ford out during the recession, and I believe a company like that deserves my support over one we had to hand millions of dollars to so they could keep afloat. 3) The new Focus had Ford's Sync system. After playing with this a little bit, I have to say that I'm very impressed. Nothing makes me feel like I'm living in the future more than dictating to the car what I want it to do. Voice recognition has come a long way.

Speaking of voice recognition, that happens to be a feature of technology upgrade #2: my new Droid X. I've wanted a smart-phone for a while, but we weren't going to get them until we were able to switch to FiOS and lower our monthly telecommunications bill to make it a budget neutral purchase. Well, last month someone posted a link on twitter to wireless.amazon.com where we could purchase new Droid Xs for $70 each. That is a ridiculously cheap price for this phone, which retails at $560. We just couldn't pass it up.

We ordered our phones, and Amazon informed us that they were back-ordered into January. We would have been content to wait until then, but they arrived about a week later. I love the new phone, especially the voice recognition system. I can tell it to send Courtney a text message and then dictate the message to it. It's really pretty amazing. It also pairs up with the new car through Bluetooth, so you can make and receive calls through the car's speaker system, as well as have the car read any text messages to you. I can't get over how ridiculously awesome all of this is.

The third technology upgrade I have made is the purchase of a new computer. My gaming computer died back in January, and I have been without one since. I wasn't planning on being able to get a new one until next year, but around Thanksgiving I found out that I would be getting a pretty sizable year end bonus! This is a surprise because my company stopped doing regular bonuses a few years ago. Once I learned that I would be getting one again, I started to plan out what I would buy, and I placed the order last weekend. It should be shipping out tonight or tomorrow, so hopefully I will have it this weekend. For the curious, I got an Intel Core i7 950 3GHz processor, 6GB RAM, and a Radeon 5970 video card. It should be beastly enough to last a long time before having to upgrade again.

And that sums up the month of the technology upgrade!

Living The Cruise Life At Home

2010-10-26T20:35:00.000-04:00

On Sunday, we got back from a most awesome cruise vacation. I wish all of you could take a trip like that. Unfortunately, that is not possible. In an effort to help as many of you experience "Cruise Life" as possible, I have put together the following tips:

1) Living on the ocean. Buy a houseboat and live on it. If this is not an option, move near water. In a pinch, flood your neighborhood by strategically destroying a dam or redirecting a major waterway.

2) Daily restaurant style meal service. Hire a chef to cook your food and a waitress to bring it to your table. Alternatively, get a talented mail-order bride and use the green card as leverage for this service. If you are currently married, this item should already be covered.

3) Waking up in a new city each day. This can be accomplished in a couple ways. If you're a sleep walker, it's just a small step to sleep driving. I suggest going to sleep with your keys in your hand to help you get started. You will still drive better than 90% of the people on the roads, so you don't have to worry about being pulled over. You can also stay up really late, catch the earliest red-eye, and sleep on the plane. You will wake up in a new city when the plane lands.

4) Bill shock. Use your credit card like you would a sea pass. Make all purchases with it; do not accept any receipts. Freak out when your final bill is delivered to you at the end of the month. Note: Some of you may not notice a difference between this and your typical financial practices.

Following these tips will help you enjoy some of what we were able to live at sea in the past week. If all goes well, you will be able to savor part of a fantastic cruise vacation in the privacy of your own home. Happy sailing!

Warrenton Triathlon

2010-09-25T11:39:00.003-04:00

"A blog post?! I thought this blog was dead?" you say. Well, it was, and I have brought it back from the dead. It is now undead. Paladins now receive an attack bonus against trolls on this blog.

Last weekend I participated in my first triathlon with Courtney, who was participating in her second. (I would have done the one she did back in June, but the registration filled up really fast, and then fifty people didn't show up on race day. I was very annoyed.) The Warrenton Triathlon took place at the Warrenton Athletic and Recreation Facility (or WARF) on Waterloo road, and we stayed at my aunt and uncle's place in Haymarket so that we wouldn't have to get up an hour earlier to drive there from Gaithersburg.

The race was a 300 yard (Meter? I saw different numbers in different places. It's almost always meters, but for some reason this was advertised in yards.) swim, an 11 mile bike, and a 5k run. As sprint triathlons go, it's probably middle of the pack in terms of distance, so it should have been a pretty good race to participate in for my first triathlon.

However, I knew as soon as I saw how the swim was set up that the swim portion would be a disaster, and it was. They took over six lanes of the indoor pool at the facility, and everyone had to swim a lap in each lane, ducking under the rope to move to the next. That doesn't sound bad until you learn that they started racers every ten seconds, and the lanes are only two persons wide, so you can't really pass anyone. Not only that, but each racer had the responsibility of estimating their swim time to determine swimming order, and I'm sure 80% of the people did not do it properly.

When I got in the pool and started the swim, it was like swimming in the ocean. I was number 140, so there were at least 30 to 40 other people in the pool at the same time as me, and everyone's strokes and kicks made the pool water extremely choppy. This gave an advantage to those who started in front, now that I think about it. By the end of my swim, there were six of us lined up head to toe trying to finish the last half of the last lap. We couldn't pass because there were people coming at us on the other side of the lane, so we just swam as fast as the guy at the front of the line.

Basically, whoever designed this swim is an idiot. I was forced to swim faster than I wanted to because I felt bad holding up people behind me (who obviously did not time their swim with a stopwatch like I did). I had planned to do the swim in seven to eight minutes, and I did it in 5:29. This, of course, made me very tired coming out of the pool. I took a little extra time during the first transition, trying to catch my breath. I had to dry my feet off and put on socks and shoes, my basketball jersey, my camelbak, my helmet, and my glasses. I made it out of the transition area in 2:05.

The bike had us coming out of the pool facility onto 211, the beginning of which is some rolling hills. Since the swim wore me out so much, it took more energy than it should have for me to do these first hills. Also, my bike is not the best for racing; more on that later. By the time I got to the long, extended hills in the middle, I was dead, and I had to stop and walk midway up a couple of them. A few people passed me at this point, but I passed most of them later on in the bike, once my legs were fully in bike mode. By the end of the bike, I was feeling good and ready to run the 5k. I finished the bike in 53:19, which is near the bottom of the men's group. This is not unexpected, since I had to stop and walk in a couple of places.

My second transition was lightning fast. I ran in, put my bike on the rack, and ran out. It was 42 seconds long, the number on my basketball jersey I was wearing that day. I was the eighteenth fastest person in transition two.

As I ran out of the transition area, I realized I was not in as great a shape for the run as I thought. I wasn't tired, but my back muscles were killing me. Like I mentioned before, I don't have the greatest bike for racing. It's not a mountain bike, but it only has seven gears, and the handle bars are horizontal, so I can't lean over and take pressure off of my back muscles. As I started to run, my back muscles were just throbbing. I made it maybe a half mile before I had to walk and stretch them until the pain subsided.

After that, I thought I would be fine for the rest of the run. I was wrong. See, I thought I had been doing well keeping hydrated on the bike. When I checked my camelbak after the race was over, I realized that it was still 3/4 full. I had drunk only ten fluid ounces since the start of the race... So, it should come as no surprise that in mile two of the run BOTH of my quads cramped up at the same time. This, of course, happened while I was on the opposite side of the track from the water table. Go me. I immediately stopped and stretched them, and I had to walk the next half mile or so to the water table to get some hydration. It took a while for the water to take effect, so I was only able to run out the last three tenths of a mile or so, but I was able to do that at basically a full sprint, resulting in this photo (may not show up in Facebook, but it's my profile picture):

Despite all of these problems, I finished the 5k in 38:45 and had a total race time of 1:40:18. Going into this race, my personal goals were a must finish of under two hours and a like to finish goal of under 1h 45m. I beat my main goal by almost five minutes, even with the problems I had. This leads me to believe that what I am doing in my training is correct, and that I could have a really great final time in my next race if I change some things:

1) If the next swim is done in the way the Warrenton race organized it, I will place myself further back in the group. I am a strong swimmer, but that setup was horrible and cost me a lot of energy. I would rather swim at a slower pace and have the energy to make up time on the bike and run.

2) I need to force myself to drink more on the bike. I think I may need to switch to a water bottle for this, so I can see exactly how much I have consumed. The camelbak is convenient, but psychologically I am fooling myself into thinking I am drinking more than I really am.

3) I need to upgrade my bike or get a new one. If I keep the bike I have, I will get new handlebars, and I also plan to get new pedals with shoes that clip on. The bike I have now doesn't even have straps on the pedals, so my pedaling is very inefficient.

I think that if I can change those things up, I will be in great shape for my next race. We are done with races for 2010, but we are planning on doing a couple in 2011, giving me all winter to train. I've started lifting weights again, with a main goal of building more arm and shoulder muscle for the swim portion of the race. If I can make it so that I don't have to kick as much, that will make the transition to the bike all the better in my next event.

Spiders

2010-07-02T15:21:00.000-04:00

Spiders are persistent little fellows. At least once a week, either Courtney or myself will walk into the bathroom, and a spider will be perched in the exact same corner that we always find them in, behind the shower head. If I find it, extermination takes place quickly and silently. If Courtney finds it, extermination takes place quickly but with significantly more noise as she yells for me to come kill it.

The cats are completely useless. I'm pretty sure that they are extorting protection payments from the spiders in exchange for not destroying them. Oh sure, they'll make a show of batting a spider around and roughing it up if we place them right in front of one, but I've never seen them actually kill one. Yes, there's definitely some kind of racketeering going on in our home. I may have to bug (HA!) the place.

Aside from the obvious protection from local wildlife, part of me wonders why the spiders keep coming back. It's just so futile. They know they're going to die, right?

Or do they? Maybe there is a more sinister force at work here: real estate. There's probably some spider real estate agent making a fortune off of repeatedly selling our bathroom to buyers ignorant of the current state of the market. I imagine it goes something like this:

SCENE

SETTING: R. ACK NID REAL ESTATE, INC. MR. NID SITS BEHIND HIS DESK CHEWING AN UNLIT CIGAR. A BLUETOOTH HEADSET RESTS ON HIS HEAD, DESPITE THE FACT THAT SPIDERS CANNOT HEAR. AUDIENCE SHOULD IMMEDIATELY GET THE IMPRESSION THAT THIS SPIDER IS A TOTAL DOUCHE. ENTER CREE P. CRAWLY, STAGE LEFT.

MR. CRAWLY: Hello.

MR. NID, CURTLY THROUGH HIS CIGAR: Yeah, what do you want?

MR. CRAWLY: I... I'm looking to buy my first place. I was hoping you'd be able to help me.

MR. NID IMMEDIATELY WARMS, STANDS UP AND REMOVES HIS CIGAR. HE SHAKES MR. CRAWLY'S LEGS IN AN OVERENTHUSIASTIC GREETING.

MR. NID: Oh, you're looking to BUY! Well, you've come to the right place! Yes, sir!

MR. CRAWLY SMILES SHEEPISHLY.

MR. CRAWLY: Oh, I'm so glad.

MR. NID: I have just the place for a fine lad such as yourself. It's perfect! Nice, warm climate. Great view. The local wildlife is exotic, but completely harmless, provided you make your payments on time.

MR. CRAWLY: What?

MR. NID: Hmm? Oh, nothing. I was thinking of something else. Here, let me show you some pictures.

MR. NID ROTATES HIS MONITOR AND BRINGS UP PHOTOS OF THE LOCATION ON THE WORLD WIDE WEB (HA!). THE TWO LOOK AT THE PHOTOS FOR A FEW MINUTES, AND MR. CRAWLY BEGINS TO GROW CONCERNED.

MR. CRAWLY: Isn't... Isn't this the Silverthorn place?

MR. NID, MAKING A SHOW OF CHECKING THE DETAILS: Why, yes, I suppose it is.

MR. CRAWLY: Didn't you sell this place last week?

MR. NID: ...No, I don't believe so.

MR. CRAWLY: I'm sure of it. You sold it to my friend, Tony. He's the one that recommended me to you.

MR. NID: Oh, yes. Tony! I remember now. No, he ended up... uh... backing out at the last minute. He went with a different place in the city.

MR. CRAWLY: Oh, I see...

MR. NID: So, do we have a deal?

MR. CRAWLY SIGNS THE PAPERS.

END SCENE

I think my problem is that I never leave any evidence behind that these spiders ever existed. When a new spider moves in, the place looks brand new, and they have no reason to want to leave. What I need is a deterrent.

I think I'm going to start leaving their bodies in strategic places as a warning. When the spiders come in, they will totally freak out at the sight of their fallen comrades an run away. They will tell all the other spiders. My home will become known amongst the arachnids as "The Land of a Thousand Corpses" and will grow in legend. Boy spiders will take girl spiders to the edge of this dangerous land to scare and impress them. I few boy spiders will be reckless enough to actually come inside, where they will be met with a swift death.

"No," the spider will cry with his dying breath. "I was going to get laid tonight!"

I will look down upon him with empty eyes. "She was just going to use you for your sperm and then kill and eat you. I just saved you from a horrible fate."

"I don't think you're hearing what I'm saying, man. I was going to get LAID!"

*FLUSH*

Former Vice President Dick Cheney Shocked To Discover He Still Has A Heart

2010-02-22T21:15:00.001-05:00

WASHINGTON, DC

On February 22nd, 2010 former vice president Dick Cheney was admitted to George Washington Hospital in Washington, DC with chest pains. "At first I thought it was just my acid reflux acting up," the 69-year-old remarked when questioned. "Imagine my surprise when the doctor told me the pain was coming from a heart condition! I was certain that all traces of my heart had been eradicated during the course of my service in the Bush administration!"

"At first he didn't believe me," Dr. Jonathan Hayward, Cheney's attending physician, said in an interview. "I believe his exact words were, 'I don't have a heart, you liberal quack!' We had to give him an MRI before he would believe us and submit to treatment. It took us a while to find it, but it is definitely there."

Technicians at George Washington Hospital said it took them over three hours to locate Cheney's heart. "We had to rescan him a couple of times," Tim O'Leary, one of the technicians, explained. "I thought the vice president was right, that he didn't have a heart, but we were able to locate it on the third try."

Despite the good news that they were able to locate Cheney's heart, there was growing concern over its size. "Yeah, we're a little worried about him," Dr. Hayward confided. "His heart is about three times smaller than that of a newborn chipmunk, which is way smaller than a human heart should be. We're prescribing a very specific regimen and hope to have the vice president healthy in a few months."

One of the nurses, who asked not to be identified, said that Mr. Cheney is being put on what she called "The Grinch System." "We're putting him on a strict routine of giving presents to orphan children and singing Christmas songs to the elderly in local retirement communities," the source revealed. "With some perseverance and a little luck, we're hoping Mr. Cheney's heart will grow at least three sizes."

The Grinch could not be reached for comment, though he did issue a statement vouching for the success of The Grinch System and wishing Mr. Cheney a speedy recovery.

This Basically Sums Up My Feelings On The Matter

2010-02-06T12:12:00.002-05:00

You can make your own custom abusive Batman comic here. It's getting hammered pretty hard at the time of this writing, so you may have to check back later.

Being Humorous Can Get You Free Stuff

2010-02-05T19:26:00.000-05:00

I was funny on Twitter, and I won this. The conversation went as follows:

Think Geek: Geek O'Clock!! In honor of #snowpocalypse, reply by 4:30pm EST to win a cozy Tauntaun! Or double-enter via Facebook: http://j.mp/bE7IOV

Me: @thinkgeek I would like to win a Tauntaun! Unless I have to sleep in its entrails. Then I don't. #snowpocalypse

TG: @kaellinn18 Congratumalations! And yes, you have to sleep in the entrails. They smell nice.

Me: @thinkgeek Fine, I will sleep in the entrails. But if my wife leaves me, we will have words. WORDS, do you understand?

TG: @kaellinn18 *waves hand* Your wife will understand. She will not mind if you sleep in the Tauntaun.

--

I enjoyed the Jedi mind trick at the end. Okay, geek time is over. *Waves hand* Nothing to see here. Move along.

One Month Of Storytelling

2010-01-31T21:50:00.004-05:00

I have been successful in keeping both of my New Year's Resolutions so far this year. Reading the New Testament has been easy, since it's just five chapters a week. Writing a story for Ficly every day has been a lot more challenging. I feel most comfortable writing suspense, science fiction, or fantasy (basically the stuff I read). In writing these stories I've tried to branch out from my comfort zones and write a wide variety of settings and characters, and I believe I have succeeded.

I've run the gamut from blackmail in "Valuable Information" to fantasy in "The Flying Prince." I've written in the familiar science fiction genre with "Ambush at Corbin," and I've narrated the completely random in "Road Trip." I've also attempted some humor with "Alien FAQ" and some philosophical navel gazing with "Dreams." This exercise has really been useful for me as I attempt to keep from retreading the same ground over and over and boring any readers I may have.

It's been an interesting month, and I'm hoping I can keep this up for the rest of the year. I haven't felt like I've come close to running dry on the creative tap yet, and I'm hoping that won't happen for a long time yet. For those of you who are just now learning of my quest to write a story for every day this year, I have provided a table below with links to all of my work for January. If you'd like to follow my progress as I continue through the rest of the year, I post daily updates on Twitter and Facebook.

Date	Story	Genre
January 1	Valuable Information	Suspense
January 2	Wings	Fantasy
January 3	The Deal Is On Hold	Urban Fantasy
January 4	Into The Wood	Fantasy
January 5	The Puzzling Plight Of Reginald T. Badweather	Humor
January 6	A Night At The Fair	Romance
January 7	Alien FAQ	Humor
January 8	Savage Winter	Thriller
January 9	Hasty Preparations	Fantasy
January 10	Road Trip	Humor
January 11	Dreams	Inspirational
January 12	Ambush At Corbin	Science Fiction
January 13	Not According To Plan	Alternate History
January 14	The Flying Prince	Fantasy
January 15	If Mel Brooks Was Mayor	Humor
January 16	Midnight In The Garden Of Eden	Humor
January 17	Two Roads Diverged In A Wood	Fantasy
January 18	Stockton's Hoard	Adventure
January 19	One In A Million	Generic Fiction
January 20	Deliverance	Zombie
January 21	Severed Ties	Adventure
January 22	The Measure Of A Man	Western
January 23	Meta Poem	Poetry
January 24	Dirty Laundry	Urban Fantasy
January 25	The Promise	Generic Fiction
January 26	A Lover Scorned	Suspense
January 27	A Conversation	Humor
January 28	Results	Micro Fiction
January 29	Disillusioned	Generic Fiction
January 30	Shared Guilt	Generic Fiction
January 31	Long Gone	Science Fiction

New Year's Resolutions

2010-01-06T17:04:00.000-05:00

I didn't really have any New Year's resolutions last year, since I didn't start with the weight loss goal until February. I did do well with that, though. I was 215 lbs at the beginning of 2009 and 210 lbs at the time I made my first weight loss post in February (yay for the flu diet). I'm currently hovering around 190 lbs, which is 5 lbs shy of the goal I set for myself, and I plan to continue working out. I don't have any specific time frame, but I would like to be below 180 sometime this year.

I have two resolutions for 2010. The first is to read through the New Testament. I tried doing the full Bible plan last year, but I ended up getting bogged down in repetitive stuff in the Old Testament and falling way behind. I decided to just do the New Testament this year 1) because it's shorter (I'm not a fast reader), and 2) because it is more applicable than the Old Testament. It's one chapter a day, five days a week. I think I can handle this.

My second resolution is much more ambitious than the first: I'm going to endeavor to take my writing more seriously this year. No, that doesn't mean I'll be posting more often about my mundane life in my blog. (Please keep your sighs of relief to yourselves.) If you've explored this blog at all, you may have noticed the link to Ficly over on the right. For those who don't know, Ficly is a site for writing community fiction in very, very short form. You get 1,024 characters to write whatever you want, and other people can write prequels and sequels to whatever you write. 1,024 Characters doesn't sound like a lot, but you'd be surprised how much you can fit in that space. It's really a lot of fun.

I've been more active on the site as of late, and I've been having a great time. It's a great way to practice writing without trying to do anything of an overwhelming length. So, my New Year's Resolution is to write a new Ficly story every day for the entire year. That's 365 stories. I need to backfill for January 1-4, but I did write one yesterday when I came up with the idea (read: stole the idea from another user). If you're interested, I suggest you take a look at The Puzzling Plight of Reginald T. Badweather. It's a parody of stories that utilize overwrought language, and I had a lot of fun writing it.

To make following along with this easier, I have created a Twitter account. Yes, I have finally joined the 21st Century. Hold your applause until the end, please. You can follow me under my username of kaellinn18. Every day (hopefully) I will post a link to a new story for your enjoyment, and each twitter will be cross-posted on Facebook, so if you don't have a twitter account, you can always follow me there. My life may not be entertaining enough to write about every day, but I can definitely make stuff up!

I hope you'll join me on this little experiment. I plan try to write the four backlogged stories and the one for today this evening. Stay tuned! Or don't. I'm not the boss of you.

2009 Year In Review

2010-01-06T11:10:00.003-05:00

If you still check this blog, have it languishing in some RSS feed, or haven't blocked my notes on Facebook, congratulations! You get to read my annual answers to random questions. Don't you feel special?

1. What did you do in 2009 that you'd never done before? Visited Falling Water in Pennsylvania with the wife and Eric and Emily. That house is awesome!

2. Did you keep your new years' resolutions, and will you make more for next year? I don't think I really made a New Year's resolution of it, but I did lose weight! Over 20 lbs! Believe it or not, I still have a ways to go, so I'll continue to hit the gym. Resolutions for this year are to write a new story every day on Ficly and to read through the New Testament. More on the Ficly aspect later.

3. Did anyone close to you give birth? Emily (Owen) and Pam (Andrew)

4. Did anyone close to you die? Courtney's dad

5. What countries did you visit? Just 'Murrica

6. What would you like to have in 2010 that you lacked in 2009? A new computer and running shoes

7. What date from 2009 will remain etched upon your memory, and why? Not sure of the exact date, but I negotiated a nice salary increase in July.

8. What was your biggest achievement of the year? Negotiating my salary

9. What was your biggest failure? Not finishing reading through the Bible (got bogged down in the Old Testament) and not taking the test for the first part of my certification

10. Did you suffer illness or injury? Had the flu in January, but nothing after that

11. What was the best thing you bought? The Playstation 3. Cool games + Blu-ray + steaming Netflix = EPIC WIN

12. Whose behavior merited celebration? Courtney's mom.

13. Whose behavior made you appalled and depressed? the V.A., Mark Sanford, Tiger Woods, Rod Blagojevich

14. Where did most of your money go? Savings of various types

15. What did you get really, really, really excited about? our OBX vacation, C's new job, getting a Playstation 3

16. What song will always remind you of 2009? anything on the Glee Soundtrack

17. Compared to this time last year, are you:
i. happier or sadder? happier
ii. thinner or fatter? thinner!
iii. richer or poorer? richer

18. What do you wish you'd done more of? reading the Bible

19. What do you wish you'd done less of? not reading the Bible

20. How will you be spending Christmas? we spent Christmas with my family in SC

21. How will you be spending New Year's Eve? we spent New Year's with my family in Springfield watching the VT game, exchanging Christmas presents, and playing games

~~22. Did you fall in love in 2009?~~ I am officially striking this question from the survey. I am happily married. You can assume I will be in love for the duration.

~~23. How many one-night stands?~~ I am officially striking this question from the survey as well. I've been as witty as I can be.

24. What was your favorite TV program? Glee, Chuck, Stargate: Universe, White Collar

25. Do you hate anyone now that you didn't hate this time last year? I don't hate.

26. What was the best book you read? A Game of Thrones. Epic fantasy at its finest. Working on the sequel now.

27. What was your greatest musical discovery? The singers on Glee.

28. What did you want and get? A raise and a PS3

30. What was your favorite film of this year? Avatar, if only for the astounding technical achievement it represents

31. What did you do on your birthday, and how old were you? Took the day off for my 29th birthday, bought a PS3, played it all day.

32. What one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying? The housing market not sucking so we could sell our place and get a new house.

33. How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2009? Clothed

34. What kept you sane? Lack of things that would drive me insane

35. Which celebrity/public figure did you fancy the most? Dianna Agron

36. What political issue stirred you the most? retarded financial bailouts, retarded airport "security"

37. Who did you miss? Eric and Emily

38. Who were the best new people you met? Travis and Stacy

39. Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2009: None of us is as dumb as all of us. (See: US Government)

40. Quote a song lyric that sums up your year: I like the one that Courtney picked: "All that I'm after is a life full of laughter, as long as I'm laughing with you. I'm thinking that all that still matters is love ever after, after the life we've been through, 'cause I know there's no life after you." - Daughtry, Life After You

Various and Sundry

2009-12-01T21:18:00.002-05:00

Alternative title: You Still Write On This Thing?

I guess it's time for my semiannual blog post; it's been almost six months since I've written anything here. That's what you call dedication right there. What that's dedication to, I have no idea, but six months is a long time to be doing or not doing something, so I feel I deserve some recognition. And now, on to more interesting things.

--

Boston.com is doing a 2009 Hubble Telescope advent calendar. They will be posting a different picture taken by the Hubble every day until Christmas. Today's is a beautiful nebula. You will go check it out and then bookmark it. I have spoken.

--

I have discovered something epic which pretty much everyone should have on their computer. MVPS.org maintains a blacklist of ad servers, user tracking servers, and malware/spyware servers. They brilliantly place all of these servers into a HOSTS file and redirect them to the black hole of 127.0.0.1. (Less technical explanation: this group maintains a list of computers that send annoying or bad things to your computer while you are surfing the web, which slow down websites or possibly directly harm your machine. Copying this list to your machine causes all requests to these servers to never take place. They are redirected to 127.0.0.1, which is your own machine.) I recommend you visit this site, read up on it, and install the HOSTS file on your computer. Web pages load ridiculously fast on my machine now.

--

The Church of Scientology is getting sued... again. This organization needs to be destroyed already. That would be just swell.

--

The human chameleon. This guy paints himself so that he's camouflaged into his environment. He could be IN YOUR HOUSE RIGHT NOW.
--

That's all I got for now. You'd think I'd have more after six months, but you'd be wrong.

I Write Sometimes

2009-06-12T10:17:00.002-04:00

It's been really busy as of late. I've been spending a lot of my free time studying for my Microsoft Certified Professional Developer: Web certification. There are three exams, and I'm about halfway done studying for the first one. Needless to say, this has limited what spare time I have to do other things, so I won't be writing as often as I should.

Fear not, though, for Ficly has finally opened its doors. This is the spiritual successor to Ficlets, a short fiction site I used to write on before AOL sent it to the Land of Wind and Ghosts.¹ I've moved some of my favorite old Ficlets over to the new site, and I've also written a new one. You can see my stories here. The link is also in the sidebar under "Me on the Intertubes" if you would like to follow me on the site.

The great thing about Ficly (and Ficlets before it) is that you are limited to only 1024 characters to write a section of story. With such limited space, every word (indeed, every character) counts, so it forces you to refine what you write so that what you create still gets across what you want to convey. It also means you don't have to spend hours and hours writing something. Even better, you (or anyone else) can write prequels and sequels to your stories, so they can go off in tons of different directions you never would have expected. If you think that sounds interesting, I highly recommend you check it out.

--

If you've talked to my wife at all recently, you are probably aware of the laptop issues she has been having recently. I ordered some RAM for it to boost performance, but I ended up ordering the wrong kind. This is because the model number that is printed on the laptop below the monitor is wrong. It says it's a dv1000, but it's actually a dv1300 CTO. This explains why the RAM that is currently in the laptop is not the kind that I ordered. Awesome. I am sending back the incorrect RAM today and have already ordered the (hopefully) correct kind.

In addition to performance issues caused by insufficient RAM, her wireless internet stopped working. It would connect to the router for like two seconds and then drop it and try to reconnect again. Repeat ad infinitum. I spent several hours last night trying to figure out what is wrong with the thing, and I came to the conclusion that the hardware is dying. Luckily I was able to put in a Dell PCMCIA wireless card and force it to work with the HP. Though technically not compatible, they seem to be working okay together for now. Hopefully we can get another year or two out of this thing before buying a new one.

Yay, it's Friday! That's all I got for now.

¹Reference stolen from Wil Wheaton, who stole it from the Simpsons.

Confession

2009-05-20T12:04:00.003-04:00

"Forgive me, Intertubes, for I have sinned. It has been eleven days since my last blog post."

"Greetings, my son. Why so long?"

"Well, I... I just haven't had the time. Like most people, I have a full time job that takes up most of my day. I also have a longer commute than most."

"What about the evenings?"

"I'm sorry, Intertubes, but when I get home from work I generally don't have the energy to write. Sometimes I'm able to do it, but most nights... Does this make me a bad person?"

"No one is perfect, my son."

"I know, but I just feel so guilty. I started an interactive story that some people like to read (though, inexplicably, most do not vote), and I feel obligated to continue it. But I've just been so busy lately. Even weekday nights are full sometimes. We had a bunch of people over on Monday to watch the season finale of 24 (which was a bit anticlimactic, I must say), and I go to church every Wednesday night for choir rehearsal. I'm also trying to keep on track to read the entire Bible this year, and so far I'm on target."

"Perhaps you might find some time on the weekends..."

"I try to, Intertubes, but even the weekends have been busy of late. We had friends visit us from Blacksburg this past weekend, and we spent all of our time with them. We went to see Angels and Demons (which was entertaining enough), and we played a bunch of board games with them. We introduced them to Acquire, Scotland Yard, Pandemic, and Carcassonne, and we just had so much fun that time went by so fast. I was only able to get online for a few minutes at a time to check email or the weather."

"I see. Well, my son, it sounds to me like your heart is in the right place. You just need to try harder. Have faith, and you will be able to find the time that you need. For your penance, say five Our Routers and ten Hail Tim Berners-Lees.

"O my Internet, I am heartily sorry for having offended thee, and I detest all my sins because of thy just packet routing, but most of all because they offend Thee, my Internet, who art all-good and deserving of all my bandwidth. I firmly resolve, with the help of thy TCP/IP protocol, to sin no more and to avoid the near occasion of downloading a virus. In the name of Tim Berners-Lee, and of Robert Cailliau, and of the Holy Google. Amen."

"Tim Berners-Lee, the Father of the World Wide Web, through the death and resurrection of IPv6 has reconciled the internet to Himself and sent the Holy Google among us for the forgiveness of sins; Through the ministry of the W3C may the Internet give you pardon and peace, and I absolve you from your sins in the name of Tim Berners-Lee, and of Robert Cailliau, and of the Holy Google."

"Thank you, Intertubes."

"Go, and sin no more."

My Star Trek Review

2009-05-09T14:57:00.005-04:00

HOLY CRAP

Vote the Adventure: Chapter 2

2009-05-06T00:30:00.005-04:00

Those who live the blessed life of peace will reap what they sow sevenfold, but those who abide by the sword will only drown in the blood they spill. ~ Stephan the Wise

From the moment Quinn first picked up a bow, he knew he was destined for greatness. His father had given him his first bow for his eighth birthday, and he'd killed a rabbit by sundown. He could remember his father's face like it had happened yesterday, that knowing smile and shake of the head as he'd walked proudly up the porch and presented his kill. His mother had made a delicious rabbit stew for dinner, and from that day on his life was different. He became inseparable from his bow, taking it everywhere and propping it beside his bed when he slept; it was a part of him, as much as his arm or his leg.

He spent the majority of his life perfecting his skill. In his teenage years and early adulthood, he had worked as a hunter for his hometown of Briarwood. After he had joined the ranks of the hunters, no one in that village had gone hungry - in fact, he was so good that they were able to stockpile a surplus of cured meats that they could sell to neighboring towns. For many years life was good, and he was loved and respected in Briarwood and the surrounding land. But after a time he grew restless; hunting game no longer held any challenge for him, and he began to grow dissatisfied with the simple life in the village. He became irritable and hostile, alienating his family and friends, resenting the people of his town even as they praised him.

Then fate handed him a way out. It was the year of the Great Winter, and times were hard. Food was scarce for most of the villages, but Briarwood was not one of them. Quinn and the rest of the hunters had amassed a record surplus in the fall, and the Great Winter had descended upon the town before they could travel to surrounding cities to sell their extra supply. This turned out to be a blessing as well as a curse. The people of the town had more than enough supplies to get them through the winter, but this also made Briarwood a target for thieves and brigands. That's when Quinn started hunting for bigger game.

Bounty hunting paid much, much better than killing animals, and it also provided him the challenge he craved. He made good coin that winter, and as the long season's grasp began to slip from the land, fate saw fit to grant him yet another opportunity. A herald from Lionsridge stopped in Briarwood on his way around the kingdom, posting announcements about the Tournament of Roses, which was to begin three weeks after the thaw. Quinn smiled broadly when he saw that one of the competitions was archery. He knew the moment he read those words that he was destined to win, and he thanked the gods for opening this door.

And now, here he was standing in the Inn of the Black Stag with his knife to a knight's throat, that new door perilously close to slamming shut in his face. He hadn't meant for it to go this far; it was the wine. The blood of the grape had always been a weakness for him and had gotten him into trouble on more than one occasion. He had a sharp tongue even when he hadn't been drinking, and spirits just made it all the worse. He looked at the knight's face, flushed with anger and alcohol. He had no desire to kill this man, not least because that would almost surely mean his own life. But he couldn't withdraw now, either. If he dropped his knife, the knight's compatriots would surely take him. Think, Quinn. There's always a way out.

"Come now, sirs. There's no need to quarrel here." Quinn noticed the innkeeper standing off to his left side for the first time, his tray still perched on his shoulder. His eyes were wide, his face pleading. "We all know you didn't mean nothing by it; it's just the wine been talking, that's all. Right, lads?" The innkeeper looked around, desperately seeking support from the others in the room.

"Thatsh the firsh intelligent thing thatsh been said all night!" a voice slurred from off to Quinn's right. All eyes in the room turned to focus on the source of the outburst. A dwarf in dark leathers sat several seats down from Quinn. His long black beard flowed down from his face and rested in the bottom of his empty mug of ale. He laughed quietly to himself and belched. "Now if you gentlemen are done dishrupting the servish, I'll have another ale." The dwarf leaned forward and looked down the table, beckoning to the innkeeper with a waving hand. "Come on now, I don't got all night!"

Ethon looked back and forth between the dwarf and the two men and slowly began to make his way around the table. "Come, come, come!" the small man cried impatiently. "One for me and one for me beard!" As Ethon neared him, the dwarf made a sudden turn as if to grab some ale off the tray. Ethon tried to step back, but he was too slow. The dwarf collided with the tray, upending all of its contents, the majority of which fell directly onto the dwarf, who proceeded to fall back off the bench and onto the floor into a fit of laughter, rolling around in the spilled brew.

The entire room stared blankly at the drunken little man. Then Sir Randolph began to laugh, slowly at first, but building in intensity. "I do believe that's the first dwarf in the three kingdoms to ever take a bath!" he exclaimed, roaring at his own joke. His men joined him, and the rest of the room soon followed. The tension began to melt away. Quinn began to smile also and slowly lowered his knife.

A bard who had been seated next to the dwarf took hold of his own cup. "Time for a rinse," he said and proceeded to dump the contents in the dwarf's face and drop the cup on his head. The laughter in the room erupted anew as the dwarf laughed and coughed and gestured for the bard to help him to his feet. The bard reached down and hauled the dwarf up, and Ethon stooped down and began to pick up the goblets from the floor and place them back on his tray. Quinn saw the opportunity to take his leave, picked his bow up from beside the bench, and began to make his way down the aisle toward the main doors.

As he passed by the dwarf, the little man stuck out a foot and caught Quinn between the legs. Quinn tripped and caught himself on the floor; the room laughed again. The dwarf leaned down to lend him a hand in getting back up and brought his face within an inch of Quinn's. "You owe me for that one, boy," the dwarf whispered. He was looking straight into Quinn's eyes, and it was only now that Quinn could see that he was stone sober. The dwarf erupted in sudden laughter and clapped Quinn on the back. "Hope you had a nice trip, lad!" Quinn got up slowly and made his way up to his room. The sound of music and laughter followed him up the stairs and down the hall. He closed the door and sat down on the bed.

Quinn's mind raced. Who was that dwarf, and why should he help him? Would it be safe to spend the night here? Was Sir Randolph the type to hold a grudge? He didn't know. The knight's reputation hadn't traveled as far west as Briarwood. He could always leave now and camp in the woods somewhere along the road, but he'd had much to drink and would most likely not be able to defend himself if he encountered any trouble. Maybe he could try and switch room keys with another patron. He had a nice room, and no doubt there was someone with one of the cheaper rooms who would like a free upgrade.

--

Click here for Chapter 1

Voting is live until midnight on Friday (between Friday and Saturday).

Interruption

2009-05-04T00:07:00.003-04:00

This weekend was a lot busier than I expected it to be, mostly for an unplanned eye exam. It was just a standard annual exam, but I was surprised that they were able to see me the day I called. New glasses with transition lenses are being forged in the depths of some volcano as we speak, and I should have them in the next week or two. I will try and have Chapter Two of Vote the Adventure up on Monday or Tuesday evening.

Vote the Adventure: Chapter 1

2009-04-25T18:12:00.009-04:00

Darkness dwells in the hearts of all men. It is only the conviction of the strong, holding it at bay with the light of honor, that allows civilization to endure. On this, all our foundations lie. Black, indeed, will be the day when righteousness gives way to avarice and spite. On the shoulders of few, rest the fates of many, and when they fall, all will be consumed.

~ Stephan the Wise

The roar of the fire in the pit at the far end of the dining room was completely muffled by the rowdy conversations emanating from every table. Ethon made his way carefully down the main aisle between the two main tables that ran down the center of the hall, taking care not to trip over satchels, helmets, bucklers, and all manner of other gear piled up against the benches. He carried a large round tray on his right shoulder crammed with goblets, some full of ale, most empty. When he stopped at each section to drop off more drink and take up the empty cups, he was greeted with hearty cheers and claps on the back, some coming perilously close to upending his tray. Ethon marveled that most of the ale managed to make it to the travelers instead of soaking up dust on the inn floor. He'd been lucky so far tonight, and he prayed that it held.

He looked around the large room, making sure the serving girls were getting meat and mead to everyone who needed it. The Inn of the Black Stag was full almost to capacity with knights, squires, bards, merchants, and all manner of men he imagined lived in the three kingdoms. The majority of the patrons were almost certainly on their way to Lionsridge for the Tournament of Roses that occurred every five years in the spring and was set to begin in the next few weeks in the Southern Kingdom. The winter frosts had ceased, and the sun grew higher in the sky each day.

The lords sprinkled throughout the three kingdoms would be sending some of their surest swords and bravest knights in an attempt to win honor for their house and their king. Unlike the annual tournaments, the Tournament of Roses was open to all men, so long as you had a horse and a sword (or could afford to buy them), and many a simple man gambled all he had to try to forge a name for himself amongst the highborn of the three kingdoms. It swelled Ethon's heart, not mention his pockets, to see people from all walks of life put aside their differences and talk of great deeds past and great deeds to come as they filled their stomachs at his tables.

He made his way back to the kitchen and dumped the tray of goblets into one of the large sinks filled with soaping water. Young Will, who had yet to reach eight, sat atop an empty ale cask in front of the sink, drying the last cup of the previous load and setting it aside on the counter next to thirty-odd others. He looked sullenly at the newly filled basin and sighed in exasperation. "Not again, Mr Ethon," the boy pleaded. "I only just finished this load. My hands're run raw."

Ethon started filling the clean goblets with more ale, mead, and wine and placing them on the tray. "I'll hear none of it, William," he admonished, not unkindly. "If you like you can trade places with Jeoff. I'm sure he'll be more than happy to wash dishes and let you shovel dung from the stables." Will stuck out his lower lip, and began to clean the next load. Ethon reached out with a large paw and mussed the boy's hair. "Cheer up, lad. You'll be getting double wages tonight, maybe even triple if we can get enough drink into the merchants. I bet your mum would appreciate the extra coin." The boy grinned and began to wash all the harder. Ethon gave him a smile, loaded his replenished tray onto his shoulder, and made his way back out to the dining hall.

He could tell something was amiss as soon as he entered. The raucous laughter and boisterous conversation had been replaced with a tense silence. Every man, woman, and child was seated, save two, who were standing on opposite sides of the long table nearest the kitchen. The face of the man on the left was beet red and taut. He wore steel chainmail over a leather jerkin and a dark blue tunic. His raven hair fell to his shoulders, framing the neatly trimmed goatee that adorned his chiseled face. The rearing white bear of House Morgan adorned each of his sleeves and the cloak draped over his chair. Ethon recognized him immediately: Sir Alyn Randolph, captain of the regiment of soldiers stationed in the barracks at Swiftriver just a few miles north of the crossroads where the Inn of the Black Stag was located. He was a frequent patron and Ethon had never known him to be anything but an honorable man. Sir Randolph leaned forward slowly, placing the palms of his hands on top of the table. "What did you say?" His words were weighted and deliberate.

Ethon turned his attention to the man standing across the table from Sir Randolph, a man he didn't recognize. He was tall and thin, definitely not a professional soldier like Sir Randolph. He wore light leathers, the shirt dyed green a shade lighter than his trousers. His brown hair was cropped short, his face soft and smooth as a baby's. "I said," the man began, imitating Sir Randolph's pose, "that Theodore Morgan couldn't lead an army downhill if you pointed him in the right direction and kicked him in the arse." A wry smile blossomed across his handsome face. "Was I not clear? Should I have used smaller words?"

Sir Randolph made a move for his sword that stood propped against his chair, but stopped short. From nowhere, a bronze dagger had appeared in the stranger's hand, which now pressed tightly right up underneath the knight's jaw. "Careful, now," the man said. The soldiers on either side of Sir Randolph made as if to stand. "You may want to tell your men to keep their heads," the man said, his eyes not moving from Sir Randolph's. "That is, if you value your own."

--

Poll closes Thursday, April 30th at noon.

Click here for Chapter 2

My Major Accomplishment

2009-04-21T19:23:00.001-04:00

Bask in its glory!

Vote The Adventure: Main Page

2009-04-20T19:16:00.000-04:00

This has been a long time coming, but I'm finally starting this back up. Some of you are already familiar with this from the interactive story I ran on my first website back in 2003 and 2004. It was probably the most popular thing I had on the site, and it was great fun to write, so I've decided to resurrect the Vote The Adventure! (And there was much rejoicing.)

I'm sure everyone reading this is familiar with the "choose your own adventure" style books, where you would read a few pages and then be presented with a decision. Based on your decision, you would turn to a certain page in the book to continue along with the story. Repeat until your character died (I swear, ninety percent of the choices in the books would kill you), or you managed to find one of the very few endings where you lived.

Vote The Adventure is kind of like that, except with a drastically reduced chance (basically zero) of death, since the story hasn't been written yet. I will start the story off, and then when I think I've reached an interesting decision point, I will offer up options for you readers to vote on. The poll will remain active for several days to allow for everyone to discuss, vote, and maybe even get some of their friends in on the action if the poll is not leaning in the direction they'd like. The more people involved, the better! Once the poll is closed, I will continue the story in the direction that the majority of the readers feel will be the most interesting. In the case of a tie, my vote will be the deciding factor.

The last time I did this, I wrote the story in second person, where "you did this" and "you did that," but I think that is too limiting. I'm going to do things a bit differently this time. The story will be told from a standard third person omniscient perspective, but the choices will now relate to several characters, rather than just the protagonist. This way, you'll be able to influence multiple angles of the story instead of feeling like you're just driving this one character down a certain path.

In addition, everyone will be voting on aspects of the main character before the story even starts. That way, hopefully you'll feel like you have at least a little something invested from the very beginning, provided at least one of the characteristics you choose is selected by the majority. If by some chance the protagonist turns out to be completely unlike how you would like them to be, you'll still be able to influence their decisions and growth during the story. Keep in mind that the characteristics you will be voting on are what the character will be like at the beginning; stories are all about growth, learning, and experience, so it's completely possible that later on in the story the character will be nothing like how they started out.

I've been on a fantasy kick recently. I'm currently reading George R. R. Martin's "A Game of Thrones," and I've always thought that fantasy would be a fun genre to write in. I think it gives the author the most freedom, as it's only as grounded in reality as you want it to be. That being said, this Vote The Adventure will be a high fantasy story (think elves, knights, wizards, dragons, etc). So just keep that in mind when you vote on the characteristics of the protagonist.

I hope that you will enjoy reading and participating in Vote The Adventure as much as I enjoy writing it. I had a lot of fun doing this last time, and I hope this time it will be just as enjoyable. If I've piqued your interest even just a little, I hope that you will join me in this little interactive experiment. I will endeavor to be worth your time.

Note: If you're reading this on Facebook, you should know that all of these posts originate from my blog at http://ipushbuttons.blogspot.com. You're more than welcome to read everything on Facebook, but you should know that Facebook doesn't allow Javascript, and so all of the polls will link you to the PollDaddy site. If you're fine with this, great. But if you read the story chapters on my blog, the polls will appear on the same page; you won't need to go directly to the PollDaddy site. Also, there is a lag time of up to several hours between when I post on Blogger and when it shows up on Facebook. Just an FYI so you know what's going on.

Well, that's enough of that. Let's get started!

Main Character Creation

Vote The Adventure: Character Creation

2009-04-20T19:15:00.002-04:00

Not sure what's going on here? Read through the Vote Your Adventure Main Page for a full description. If you want to get involved, go right ahead! Those of you who've already read through the boring stuff can get right to the voting. The polls will be open until Friday, April 24th at noon. Feel free to point anyone else you think would be interested in participating in this direction. It would be nice to have a decent number of voters to get this started.

Continue on to Chapter 1

As Time Goes By

2009-04-18T13:46:00.004-04:00

The weeks have been screaming along more rapidly as of late. I'm not sure why this is. Usually it's only the weekends that speed by, splashing water all over your new suit as you stand on the curb. Now, it's every day. I was always told that as you get older, the perceived passage of time increases along an exponential curve. I've not yet acquired thirty years of playing time in this Game of Life, and it's already going by faster than I'd like. Granted, I'd like for July to be here as soon as possible so I can visit my family and make the annual beach trip to the Outer Banks with friends, but I'm afraid that those brief lulls in the chaos will only fly by all the faster.

--

Last night we got together with friends at Sweetwater Tavern in Centreville for Jim's birthday dinner. (On a side note, I absolutely hate writing "Centreville." It's just so... British. I may have to start pronouncing it Sen-tree-vil to annoy people.) I hadn't been to Sweetwater in a long time, and I was looking forward to ordering the drunken ribeye, which is basically one of the best steaks you can get on the underside of $30. It was just as good as I remembered, and by the end of the meal I was stuffed. Good times were had by all.

--

It's absolutely gorgeous outside today. I'm glad this weather wasn't wasted on a workday. We're planning to go hiking today, probably down to Great Falls in Virginia. The Difficult Run path is a gorgeous walk and great for exercise. Hopefully Courtney will get back from her volunteer work soon so we can head out. She was supposed to be leaving early, but as of now, she is severely tardy. I may have to send her to detention.

--

I got a coupon for 10% off of a single item from Barnes and Noble in my email this week. It's pretty silly to use this on a book, as I usually buy mass market paperbacks, and that would save me a grand total of $0.79 or some such. I looked around the site and noticed they have an okay selection of board games. I was excited to see that they carried Carcassonne, which is a game I have on my wishlist at Board Game Geek (which is a phenomenal website, if you are fan of board games). I had some leftover money in my PayPal account, so I immediately placed an order, and it should be arriving on Monday or Tuesday of next week. I will be sure and write up an impression of the game after a few plays. This looks like it could be a good one to take to game night at church.

--

This comic makes me laugh. It's a fun idea, though I doubt it would be useful. Roxie already manages to communicate her utter disdain without artificial eyebrows. We are already well aware that our existence is merely tolerated. Taping objects to the cat would only assure our complete and unmitigated destruction.

Goings On

2009-04-11T16:03:00.002-04:00

It's been a good Holy Week at church thus far. The Palm Sunday cantata went great, as did my solo in it. I had another solo for the Maundy Thursday service, and that also went well. The week ended with me singing in a trio for the Good Friday service. All of the services this week were great, and the Easter service promises to be excellent as well. If you're in the DC area and are looking for a place to go to Easter service, you should come to Montgomery Hills Baptist. We rock the Hallelujah Chorus.

--

We took the cats to the vet this morning. A couple of amazing things happened. 1) Roxie did not puke, pee, or poop in her cage on the way there or back. This qualifies as an Easter miracle. 2) They didn't try to push any unnecessary medication on us to give the cats for their dirty ears. They've given us tons of different reasons for this condition over the years, from ear mites to allergies, and nothing they've given us has helped. It's not like it bothers the cats, either; they aren't constantly scratching or anything.

--

We also went to the Verizon Wireless store today to switch our phones to a pre-paid plan. We were on the smallest monthly plan they had, which is something like 500 minutes for $69.99. We never even came close to using those minutes, so we were basically just handing Verizon free money every month. Switching to a pre-paid plan allows us to use minutes only when we need them (we aren't big phone talkers), and this will save us a ton of money. I think the savings will be close to $450 a year. That's pretty awesome, if you ask me. If you find that you don't come close to using all of your minutes on your phone plan, you may want to consider switching to pre-paid as well.

Quick Bits

2009-04-04T12:24:00.002-04:00

Had a good time at game night at church last night. Went two for two in games of Blokus and went two for three in games of ping pong with Mike as my partner. I really miss ping pong; we used to have a table in the break room at the office, but they knocked that room out and ended up taking the table away. It was a good way to relieve stress or take a break, and I actually got to be pretty decent. When Quan was my office mate, we used to keep a tally on the whiteboard in our office. I think we had over 150 games on there at one point.

We opened a Roth IRA account for me this month. Now I have two retirement accounts. Aren't I responsible?

I played in one of the blogger poker tournaments on Wednesday night for the first time in a really long time. I finished third out of 77 and won $100. Not bad for not having played against serious competition in a long time.

This weekend is going to be NICE. Carly and Eric are coming over to play tennis tomorrow, and I'm definitely looking forward to that. We haven't played doubles in a long time. I should probably read up on the rules...

When we bought Tigris and Euphrates, we got one of the prints that didn't have enough treasure cubes to play the new side of the board. Those came in the mail this week! I'm sure you don't care.

Currently reading A Game of Thrones by George R. R. Martin. I am completely enthralled. I'm about a quarter of the way through the book, and I feel like I can recommend it. If you like fantasy, pick it up.

I haven't been posting my weigh-ins online recently, mostly because I got tired of it. However, I'm still working at it, and I'm down to 195 lbs now. I hope I continue to make good progress all the way until the beach trip.

It's solo season at church for me, apparently. I had one last week, Amazing Grace (My Chains Are Gone) by Chris Tomlin. I have one in our Palm Sunday cantata tomorrow, and I have one for either the Maundy Thursday service or the Good Friday service, I'm not sure which. I hope they all go as well as the first one did.

Game Over, Man! Game Over!

2009-03-30T20:11:00.002-04:00

Pittsburgh's disappointing loss to Villanova did me in. I got Michigan State right, but every other pick I had for the Final Four turned out to be wrong. Oh, well. Maybe I'll do better next year. I hope Michigan State goes all the way, since they are the team in my bracket that got the furthest.

My order of preference for 2009 NCAA Champion:

1. Michigan State
2. UConn
3. Villanova
4. UNC

March Madness: Day #6

2009-03-28T13:34:00.002-04:00

The end of round three was not so great for me. My south bracket is completely destroyed. Syracuse didn't come close to getting the win I hoped they would, and UNC completely obliterated Gonzaga. Ouch. I have no teams in the south anymore, but it would be best for me if Oklahoma took out UNC, and I think that is about 50% likely to happen. That game should be really close tomorrow.

My Midwest bracket is in great shape. Louisville completely embarrassed Arizona, and Michigan State pulled it out against Kansas. The Kansas/MSU game was intense, and I enjoyed watching that one. I'm glad MSU was able to pull it out in the end. Gotta love those free throws!

I still have a shot of winning this thing in my group. Right now I'm one game behind. If UNC loses to Oklahoma, that will be a huge boost for me, since it will break everyone else's south bracket. Connecticut beating Missouri would also help. Most people had Memphis going to the final four in the west bracket (including me), but one person had Missouri. Pittsburgh has to win for me tonight so they can fight their way to the championship, and Michigan State needs to win tomorrow. The final four is as far as I need them to get, but it wouldn't hurt if they made the championship game either. We'll see how it goes...

March Madness: Day #5

2009-03-27T14:08:00.002-04:00

The opening of round three of the NCAA tournament was both good and bad. It was good, in the sense that I am now in the lead in my group; it was bad in that half of my championship game is now gone. Memphis just could not put it together against Missouri. I don't know what happened, but that was not the same team that destroyed Maryland last weekend. I have to give it to Missouri, though; they played exceptionally. If you think Louisville's defense is tough, Missouri's is like a freaking rock wall. A rock wall that chases you at a ridiculous speed. I think they have a shot at taking the whole thing down if they continue to play at that level. Connecticut is going to have a tough game on Saturday.

I did, however, make one correct call that no one else in my group made. I had Duke losing to Villanova. I was pretty certain that they weren't going to be able to keep it together to get into the Elite 8, and I was right. I don't think Duke had the lead at all the whole game. Their outside shooters weren't hitting well, and they were unable to penetrate Villanova's defense on a regular basis, causing them to lose by over 20 points. It really shouldn't have been a surprise to anyone; they've been inconsistent all season.

Pittsburgh is scaring me. Though they continue to win, their margins are far too close for a championship team. I'm beginning to have my doubts that they will even make it to the final four, much less the big game. This is not the same team that was rocking the regular season. They continue to claw and escape defeat, but I think that's going to catch up to them soon. Of course, as long as they continue to win I don't care how bad they look.

UConn beat Purdue handily, which I expected. I'm wondering if they can handle Missouri, though. If Missouri continues to play like they did last night against Memphis, UConn is going to have to have a practically flawless game to stand a chance. UConn is ridiculously efficient from the free throw line, so they definitely have a chance of making up ground there if they need to.

In order to have a chance at winning this group, I need for Michigan State to beat Louisville. That will break everyone else's West/Midwest section of the final four. I have MSU in the final four, but losing to Memphis. Gonzaga beating UNC is probably also a necessity, as some people have them as winning the championship; I don't even have them in the final four. We'll see how things pan out tonight.

March Madness: Day #4

2009-03-22T20:06:00.001-04:00

No surprises today, although several of the games were closer than what I would have liked. Of the games that I had teams playing in, I picked them all correctly. My sweet sixteen is in pretty good shape with thirteen out of my sixteen teams still alive. Thursday and Friday are going to be huge for me, one way or the other. Here's hoping I got them right.

March Madness: Day #3

2009-03-22T13:49:00.002-04:00

The opening of round two of the NCAA Tournament went very well for me. Of the picks that were still valid, I only missed one. I had called for the upset of Texas over Duke, and for a while I was pretty sure that it was going to happen. However, Texas' massive amount of turnovers and inability to capitalize on their free throws caused them to end up losing by five. Despite that, there were several over-the-backs by Duke near the end of the game, that should have been called that could also have turned the game in Texas' favor.

Speaking of which, I don't know what the problem is with NCAA refs, but there is a severe lack of traveling and over-the-back calls across the board. This goes for almost every game I've watched this year. If you're not going to call it, just take it out of the rules. Otherwise, it makes you look corrupt when you make the calls only occasionally and miss them at crucial points in a game.

In reviewing all of this, if you watched the game you should have been able to see just how overrated Duke actually is. Texas had 10+ turnovers and shot less than 50% from the free throw line, and Duke still only managed a five point win. Don't get me wrong; Duke is not a bad basketball team. But they are not as good as the media and their fans would have you believe, either. Duke in basketball is kind of like Notre Dame in football (before Notre Dame actually became extremely horrible); everyone in the media kisses their butts just because they're Duke. Villanova should make short work of them.

March Madness: Day #2

2009-03-21T10:20:00.002-04:00

Round 1 is now over. Yesterday did not fare nearly as well as Thursday for me. I had seven misses. That's disgusting. Luckily, again, only one of those I had going on to round three (Utah), so it's not devastating. I'm currently second in my group, only one game behind the leader. There's more than enough time for me to take the lead, provided the rest of these teams behave and do what they're supposed to do.

Wake Forest... Guys... What happened? I mean, it wasn't even close. 84-69 loss to Cleveland State?! If someone has a perfect bracket at this point it's someone who doesn't know what they're doing (ie, dumb luck). There's just no other explanation.

Tennessee should have beaten Oklahoma State for the same reason Butler should have beaten LSU. Bah. And they were so close.

I'm surprised Florida State got knocked out so early. If anyone should have been a Cinderella pick, it was them. I was worried they were going to go deeper than the round two I had them set at; at least I don't have to worry about that anymore.

The Ohio State/Siena game was as close as I thought it would be (74-72), and I just lost the coin flip on that one. Whoever won that game was going to get destroyed by Louisville in round two anyway, so that one didn't bother me too much.

My other two misses were USC beating Boston College and Dayton beating West Virginia. At least the West bracket is still behaving itself. I'm still perfect there. Amazingly enough, I only have three correct picks in the Midwest bracket, but I have all three of those going to the Sweet 16, so it's not completely screwed up! Woohoo!

March Madness: Day #1

2009-03-20T08:48:00.002-04:00

I'm 13-16 so far for round one. That's pretty decent I'd say. Of my three misses (I picked Clemson, Illinois, and Butler to all make it to round two), I only had Clemson proceeding to round three (and losing there). So even though all my losses are in the South bracket, the important pieces are still intact. I have Gonzaga meeting Syracuse there for the Elite 8 game. Since all my losses are in the South, I'm perfect in East and West. Midwest hasn't started yet; all of their games are today.

I guess it's not a huge upset that Clemson lost to Michigan. Michigan had a pretty decent schedule this year, and they beat several good teams that came to the tournament, including UCLA and Duke. Clemson just had such an awesome start to their season (undefeated until January) that I hoped that would carry in to the tournament. They only had one bad loss to UNC. Of course, they had an inexcusable loss to Georgia Tech at the end of the season. I'm not even going to try and defend that one. Did they just leave starters out of the game to save them for the tournament? I didn't watch it. At any rate, they should have gone much farther, and it is disappointing that they are out so early.

I was hoping Butler would pull the technical upset over LSU, but they just couldn't do it. I watched the last half of the game at the gym while I was working out, and they just couldn't get their defense together. They were able to get down the court and hit three pointers to slowly close the gap with LSU, but when LSU comes right back down and hits for two, it's going to take a long time to catch up. If they'd made a few more key stops, they would have had this game easily.

And Illinois losing to Western Kentucky? REALLY?? I'd be surprised if anyone has a perfect bracket at this point after that game.

Weigh-In

2009-03-17T22:18:00.002-04:00

Just a quick post with my weigh-in for the week. I made it down to 200 lbs! I've lost 15 lbs since the beginning of the year, although it's 10 lbs since I started tracking it online. I'm halfway to my goal!

Previous Weight: 201 lbs
Current Weight: 200 lbs
Goal Weight: 185 lbs

It's Bracket Time!

2009-03-15T21:22:00.002-04:00

If you would like to compete against me in the NCAA March Madness brackets this year, head on over to ESPN and create your entry. It's fun, and it's free! We'll be playing for bragging rights only, so you don't have to worry about any entry fees or anything like that. Once you've created your entry, join the group "Facebook Bracket Breakers" with the password "guessaway" and you're in!

Weekend Update

2009-03-10T15:49:00.005-04:00

We had a pretty good weekend, for the most part. Friday night we went to church for Friday Fun Night. We brought several games, but we ended up playing "Apples to Apples" the entire time. It was good fun, and we introduced some people to the game who had never played before and ended up really enjoying it (despite the fact that I won two out of three games).

On Saturday, we got up early and went to the annual church prayer breakfast. I sang in a trio, which went pretty well, and we enjoyed some great breakfast food. While there, we decided that we would go play mini-golf with Eric and Emily in Germantown later in the afternoon (the weather was so nice!), after Courtney had finished with her volunteer work. When we got there, however, we were dismayed to discover that it was closed and wouldn't be open until May. Instead, we went to Maggie Moo's at Washingtonian Center, got ice cream, and watched in bewilderment as parents let their children climb over a chain fence to play on a giant, plastic train that was obviously not meant to be played on. I revelled in the irony that the one child to not climb up and play on the train had a mental disability. I predict he will go farther in life than any of the others; furthermore, the others will grow up with an inflated and undeserved sense of entitlement. See, parents? It starts with the plastic trains! Don't let your kid become a leech on society!

End hyperbole.

Saturday night we went to Mark's birthday party at Carly and Eric's, which was good fun. It was a James Bond themed party, so I put on the tux, and Courtney put on one of her nice dresses. There was great food, and a fun time playing blackjack, which I totally destroyed, thanks to an all-in play on the last hand where I was dealt Blackjack. As a prize, I won a $25 gift card, which is probably being held hostage until I remember to give Carly her Demetri Martin tickets.

The only down part of the night is that my allergies kicked in something fierce. I don't know what plant it was, but some species decided that two days with temperatures above freezing meant "shove pollen in Matt's face," and I was sneezing and blowing my nose for most of the latter half of the evening. It was so bad that I ended up staying home from church and on the couch for most of Sunday. Once my meds kicked in, I was fine, and I've been ok so far this week. Hopefully I won't be going through that again any time soon.

Stupid plants and their microgametophytes. That's right, I said microgametophytes. Look it up, kids. Or don't. I'm not the boss of you.

--

I've been doing pretty well with my diet and exercise, the birthday party this weekend notwithstanding. They fixed the scale at the gym, so I was able to do my weigh-in today. I'm one pound away from my first major milestone. Sweet!

Previous Weight: 204 lbs
Current Weight: 201 lbs
Goal Weight: 185 lbs

A Busy Mind

2009-03-04T23:11:00.003-05:00

My apologies; it's been almost a week, and I haven't posted anything. Shame on me. I'll go stand in the corner as soon as I'm done writing this. I haven't really written anything lately because I don't have anything to write. Now, when I say that, I mean that I don't have any polished ideas to write. I have a ton of things bouncing around back and forth in my mind, and, to tell you the truth, it's really kind of annoying.

I have really had the urge to write recently, but the problem is that I can't get my mind to focus on just one project at a time. Right now, I have three big ideas jostling for my attention, and each one of these is composed of many smaller ideas that are tightly interwoven. One of my ideas is to restart my online version of a Choose Your Own Adventure story, which I alluded to a few entries back when I posted the poll.

Several years ago, when I built my own "my first website" spot on the web, I had started this fictional tale where I would write until I hit a decision point, and then I would create poll and ask the readers what the protagonist should do next. It was written in first person, so it was actually people voting en masse on what they wanted to do next. It was actually quite popular among my circle of friends, and I would love to start that back up again. I'm just having trouble nailing down what the main plot line should be.

While that's rattling around upstairs, I also have two other writing projects I've been brooding on. The first is obviously the story I'm co-authoring with a friend. I've been thinking about some of the things we came up with a couple of weeks ago, and I think there may be some problems with some of our plot threads and characters. I've been trying to work around them in my mind so that I have something substantial to suggest when we end up discussing the issues. Naturally, when I start thinking of writing something, my mind constantly returns to the inconsistencies of this project, even when I'm trying to concentrate on something else.

The other story will undoubtedly become a personal task at some point in the near future. I don't remember what I was thinking about a few days ago, but this plot idea sprang mostly formed into my mind while I was on my way to work. I immediately opened a Google document once I got to the office and started making a plot outline. I've done some universe building here and there as the world continues to germinate in my head, and I think that this has the potential to be something really cool and unique. If only I could clear my mind enough to actually work on it. Of course, I have a limited amount of free time, and if I work on this personal project, I will be sacrificing time that needs to be spent on my cooperative project.

What I really need is for someone to pay me to not go to work so that I can play with my own projects. Venture capital for me to do what I want, basically. If you know of such a person or organization, please have them contact me with utmost haste. Thank you.

Now, off to the corner with me.

Ego Boost

2009-02-26T20:45:00.002-05:00

Courtney had a meeting at church tonight, so I went to the mall to get some dinner at Chick-fil-a and browse through the new releases at Gamestop, fully knowing that I wasn't going to purchase anything. I haven't been playing video games as much as I used to, so a game has to be something I'm really looking forward to (or at least one for which I have a trusted recommendation) in order for me to purchase it. After perusing video games for several minutes, I left the store and started heading back toward the other end of the mall where I'd parked.

I hadn't walked too far when I noticed a group of teenage girls heading in my direction. They were your standard modern teenagers, laughing and talking way too loud as they window-shopped their way down the main aisle. As we approached each other, one of the girls looked over, brazenly eyed me, and asked, "Do you have a girlfriend?"

I didn't even break stride. I smiled and said, "Mmmhmm," as I passed her and her friends. I could smell her perfume as I walked by, the kind of inexpensive perfume teenage girls wear to impress teenage boys. Still walking, I turned back and smiled at her; she was still walking too, her head turned and looking back at me over her shoulder. I pulled my left hand out of my jacket pocket and waved my wedding ring at her.

"Oh, snap!" she yelled and started to laugh. I turned back around and continued heading toward the far end of the shopping center, the laughter of the girls blending into the general din of the mall as I went. "Bye, baby!" I heard her call from further down the main corridor.

I didn't look back.

The Post Of Plenty

2009-02-24T20:55:00.003-05:00

I went to the gym today, as usual, but I couldn't do my weigh-in for the week. Someone had left the weights on the right side of the scale for who knows how long, and it had knocked it out of whack. The scale would not zero out properly when all the weights were on the left. So, I had to wait until I got home tonight to weigh in. The home scale said 204, but this measurement was made at a different time of day and right after I ate dinner. I'm going to assume the one pound difference is from the food and just call this past week a wash. Overall this last week, I came in under in my calorie intake, but there were a couple of days where I had more than I should. Hopefully I will see better progress in the next week.

--

This past weekend was a lot of fun. On Saturday I finished reading 2001: A Space Odyssey by Arthur C. Clarke. I avoided reading this book for the longest time because I didn't enjoy the movie at all, and the book was based on the movie (not the other way around, per usual). However, several of my friends who share my reading interests told me the book was much better, so I ended up getting it. I'm glad I did! The book is so much better than the movie. I'm not sure if the movie is lacking (in my personal opinion) because of the technology that existed when the movie was made (1968) or if Kubrick maybe took some liberties with the script. It doesn't really matter, though. If you like science fiction, I definitely recommend the book, even if you didn't like the movie.

Saturday night we met my family in Fair Lakes at Sakura for my aunt's 50th birthday celebration. I love me some Japanese food. I'm not sure if the hibachi style food is traditional Japanese (i.e., they actually eat that kind of food in Japan) or if it's Americanized Japanese food, much like most Chinese food is in the USA. My gut tells me it's Americanized, but I don't care. It's awesome. For the record, I do enjoy traditional Japanese foods as well, like sushi and sashimi. Not that you care.

Sunday afternoon I went out bowling with a bunch of the men from church. We had an absolute blast. I hadn't been bowling in a really long time, and after about a game and a half, I started to get my rhythm back. We bowled two games and started a third one. I did pretty horribly at the beginning of the first game, to the point where I was wondering if I would even break 100. (I haven't bowled below 100 in probably over 15 years.) Luckily, toward the end of the game I started to improve, and I ended up getting a 115. Dave, the winner of the first game, had a 139, so I wasn't far behind.

The second game was a hard-fought match between myself and Daniel. He opened up the game with a turkey (three strikes in a row) and was immediately off to a huge lead. I managed to keep not too far behind him by getting several spares in a row. In the middle of the game, he hit a rough patch with a few open frames in a row, and I managed to land a double, which caught me back up with his score. In the final frame, we were separated by only a few points. I got a strike on my first turn, and then on my second, I got a nine. I failed to pick up the spare, and Daniel got ready for his turn. He rolled a nine on his first ball, which brought him pretty close to my score. He would have to spare in order to beat me, but luckily (for me) he missed, and I ended up winning by two points, 156 to 154.

Our two hour time slot for the lanes was almost over, but we decided to just start a third game to get as much for our money as we could. This game probably would have been my best. Like Daniel's previous game, I opened it with a turkey. On my fourth turn, I rolled what looked and felt like a perfect ball, but the ten pin somehow managed to stand it's ground. At this point it was time to leave, but at the rate I was going, I'm pretty sure I would have topped 200 if I had been able to finish the game.

Bowling with the guys on Sunday made me realize how much I miss the sport. I bowled in a league for many years when I was a kid, and our team of four took first place in South Carolina state's for our age group one year. I'm thinking about possibly getting back into it and joining a Friday night league over the summer. I want to talk with the guys at church and try to gauge interest to see if any of them would be willing to form a team. Even if they don't want to, though, I think I may just join by myself and get put on a random team.

--

I'm hoping to get some work done this weekend on the cooperative writing project I started with a friend last year. It's been on hiatus for several months 1) because we've both been pretty busy, and 2) due to #1 we haven't been able to get together to discuss where we are going with it. We finally met for dinner several days ago and came up with some pretty good ideas and modifications. This weekend I hope to work on a map of the world we've created and start an actual plot outline. If I don't have an outline, I'll end up writing in tangents that will never get resolved, so before we go any further I would like to get at least the main points nailed down.

That's all I got for now. Hopefully things are going well for you.

--

Previous Weight: 203 lbs
Current Weight: 204 lbs
Goal Weight: 185 lbs

This Needs To Happen

2009-02-20T18:05:00.002-05:00

While doing my daily Bible reading (I'm following a blueprint which will get me through the entire Bible in a year), my mind conceived of one of the most awesome ideas ever. I can only hope that someone, somewhere with the powers to make this happen will become aware of this intellectual gem and bring it to fruition. What's this epic idea, you ask?

The Book of Proverbs: As Read by David Caruso

I can just see it now.

"A truthful witness does not deceive, but a false witness..."

[Caruso puts on sunglasses]

"...pours out lies."

[Insert Pete Townsend wailing at the beginning of Won't Get Fooled Again]

If this all seems way out of left field to you, then you must not be familiar with David Caruso's work on CSI: Miami. In that case, I refer you to the video of Caruso's cheesy one-liners.

This Is A Test

2009-02-20T15:52:00.003-05:00

This is only a test to see if this interactive poll thing will work like I hope that it will. I'm not sure if Facebook will allow the javascript to be imported or not. Even if it doesn't, if people are interested, they can always go to my blog and vote there. If it works properly with Facebook, so much the better. I'm hoping to revive something I used to do a few years ago. If you read my blog back when I had my own custom site, you can probably guess what that is.

Back In Action

2009-02-17T16:10:00.002-05:00

I believe I am now fully recovered from the flu or whatever it was I had last week. It was not fun, but it did have the side benefit of helping me lose some weight. I woke up at 8AM this morning and did my usual routine for the first time in over a week, and I made it to the gym this afternoon for another workout. My current progress is noted at the bottom of this post. I have to say that I'm very satisfied with the progress I've made in the last two weeks, and I hope that I can continue to make similar progress in the weeks to come. I hope to be in much better shape for the annual beach trip this year.

--

I picked up a couple of new board games this past weekend for Courtney and I to play. It's... challenging... to find games that she and I both would enjoy and that can be played with only two people. I ended up getting The Settlers of Catan Card Game and Tigris and Euphrates. We played both games the day we got them, but we didn't get to finish Settlers, so I can't really report on that one. What we played of it was fun, but we ended up having to go to bed because it was one in the morning (we started late) by the time we were even getting close to being finished.

We've spent most of our time playing Tigris and Euphrates. I have to admit, I was worried about getting this game because there is a good deal of direct conflict in it, something that Courtney doesn't usually enjoy in games. We've had a couple of rough spots in playing while we were both learning the rules, but the last game we played ended up being a lot of fun, even considering the multiple conflicts that arose during the round. (For the record, she has beaten me four out of the five times that we've played, so I don't see what she has to complain about.)

This is definitely a fun game if you like your games with strategy in them. Personally, I don't really care for games that are mostly luck-based, and Courtney doesn't really get into strategy type games. I think it's pretty lucky that we both ended up liking this game. Of course, I think her taste in games may be changing as well. She didn't think she would like Settlers of Catan (the original), but it's a favorite or hers now. I think that game definitely opened some doors for some deeper games, such as Tigris and Euphrates, and I'm hoping to be able to get more in the future that she will also enjoy.

--

Previous Weight: 210 lbs
Current Weight: 203 lbs
Goal Weight: 185 lbs

Getting Better

2009-02-11T11:27:00.002-05:00

I know I promised that I would update yesterday with my new weight after a week, but as many of you already know, I came down with the flu on Saturday and haven't left the house for four days. As miserable as that was, it did have the added benefit of helping me lose some weight, and my home scale says that I'm now 204 lbs. If that's accurate, I think that once I'm back on my regular exercise schedule I could be under 200 lbs by sometime in March. I can't even remember the last time I was under 200 lbs, so that will be a milestone in and of itself.

FYI, I'm aware a lot of you are following me on Facebook, but these notes all originate from my blog at http://ipushbuttons.blogspot.com. So, if you care to follow me there, you're more than welcome to. You know, just in case you like my pointless drivel better than other people's pointless drivel and want to make sure you don't miss a single word.

Maybe You Shouldn't Be Driving...

2009-02-05T12:43:00.002-05:00

This is insane. Apparently there is some lady in South Korea that has failed the written driver's exam 771 times. The passing score is a 60, and she's gotten as high as 50. Now, it seems to me, that were this woman to pass this test with a 60 at some point, that this country should be scared to death of putting her on the road. There is obviously something wrong here, like a learning disability or memory loss.

Of course, the whole process is screwed up in the first place. I don't think it should be possible to take the test 771 times. There should at least be some sort of annual limit. Off the top of my head, I'm thinking 25 attempts, twice per month and a free bonus test on your birthday. If you don't pass in five years, you're done. It's public transportation for you, lady! Letting someone take the test this many times is like allowing unauthorized users to guess passwords to your website as many times as they want. Eventually, they will get it right, and nothing good will come of it. Seriously, South Korea, if you know what's good for you, you'll keep this lady on the bus.

You have been warned.

--

I got up at 8AM again today. I even woke up before the alarm clock went off! I did a more intense half hour workout this morning since I unlocked some new exercises on the Wii Fit. I'm going to the gym this afternoon and plan on biking for 45 minutes or so.

I Hate Politicians

2009-02-04T18:00:00.005-05:00

Can someone tell me why Geithner and Daschle are not in jail? Oh, that's right, they have the money to buy themselves out of it. They have this money because they didn't give it to the government like they were supposed to. I can understand a couple of errors here and there on your taxes. I can be reasonable and see how Nancy Killefer could have missed the $946 in taxes on unemployment compensation for hired help. But $34,000? $128,000? That not a bookkeeping mistake. Daschle owed more in taxes than most people make in a year. Pleading ignorance is no excuse; especially when everyone is pretty certain he was not ignorant of what he was doing. I hate politicians.

--

I successfully got up at 8AM this morning and did my morning workout. I took C's advice and did exercises on the Wii Fit. I didn't do my afternoon workout because my triceps are killing me from lifting yesterday. It's been a while since I lifted regularly, so I'll have to wait for my muscles to get used to it again before I start doing it regularly.

--

A cat just jumped on me.

Putting It Out There

2009-02-03T17:47:00.003-05:00

Well, I'm finally doing it. I'm determined to lose some weight this year. I'm not even close to obese, but I'm definitely overweight. I've been somewhat trying to lose weight for the past couple of months, but I can hardly say I've been dedicated. I've been lazy and doing it half-assed for long enough. It's time to get serious about it. But, Matt, exactly how serious are you? Well, I'm writing about it on the internet! And everyone knows the internet is serious business.

I've decided on doing several things that I think will help me to lose weight consistently as well as get back in shape. I believe if I can stick to them, I'll be able to meet my goal weight in a reasonable amount of time. Here they are, in no particular order:

1) I'm going to try and get my body into a normal sleep cycle. This means I will be getting up at 8AM each day. This may seem late to some of you, but this is early for me. I work flex hours at work and generally do not leave the office until after 6PM. To help facilitate getting up at 8AM and not hitting the snooze button, I will be moving my alarm clock across the room so I'm forced to get out of bed to turn it off. I plan on getting up at 8AM every day except for Sunday. Yes, kids, that includes Saturday.

2) After getting up, I will do light exercises for half an hour. This includes, but is not limited to: pushups, situps, jumping jacks, planks, leg lifts, etc. This will be difficult to get into for the first week or so, but once my body starts expecting exercise at 8AM, it will be easier to get up at that time. Once it warms up outside, I will add running to the list of morning exercises.

3) I will be moving my more intense workout from the evening to the mid-afternoon. When I'm working from home, I will lift weights using the free weights that I have. When I'm at work, I'll go to the gym around 2PM for weight lifting and light cardio. I went at 2PM today to see what it's like, and it is great! There is almost no one there, so I don't have to wait for any machines, and my workout goes by quickly.

4) I will try to watch what I eat. This will be the hardest one for me. I love food. Luckily, I'm not really a candy/dessert/soda person, so I have that going for me. I think my problem is that I tend to eat too much. This wasn't an issue for me back in college when I had an actual metabolism and walked 10+ miles a day. Now, it's harder. I'm going to try and eat healthier. I will also try and eat less, but more often. Courtney has a program for her iPod touch that helps her keep track of what she eats throughout the day, and once I get an iPod touch of my own, I will definitely be getting that. Hopefully I will be able to get one soon. In the meantime, I will have to go by the honor system.

That's pretty much my plan in detail. I'm going to post my results here on a weekly basis. I'll be weighing myself on the same scale at the gym every Tuesday. I figure if I'm putting it out there for everyone to see, it may help to motivate me. Encouragement is welcomed but not required.

Previous Weight: N/A
Current Weight: 210 lbs
Goal Weight: 185 lbs

Getting The Ball Rolling

2009-02-02T18:07:00.002-05:00

I'm going to try and blog more. I've been on a reading binge lately, which inevitably leads to a writing binge, so I need to start flexing those muscles in my brain so they'll be ready when the time comes.

--

We had a good time visiting Matt and Sarah in Blacksburg this weekend. That town has definitely changed a lot since the last time I was there. They are building all over the place. I deliberately avoided going to the VT campus, as I want my memories of that place to remain untainted. My four years there were some of the best of my life. It's hard for them not to be, really. I made lifelong friends and met my wonderful wife while attending school at Virginia Tech. I want to keep all of those mental images intact as long as I can. Progress be damned.

--

Don't try to have sex with a raccoon. If you do, it will bite off your doodle. I'm pretty sure I didn't have to tell most of you that, but on the off chance you're a dude who is planning on having sex with a raccoon, I may have just saved you a world of pain, in which case you may buy me something expensive as an expression of your eternal gratitude. An iPod Touch would suffice.

--

We are probably going to cancel our cell phone plan and switch over to a pre-paid plan. Basically, the minimum number of minutes offered by the phone companies are way more than we ever use. I generally abhor speaking on the phone, so this should not come as a surprise. It turns out that if we switch to pre-paid phone plans we could save over $400 a year. That's just ridiculous. We're planning on going over to the Verizon store on Saturday to see what is involved in switching to this plan (we're pretty sure we have to buy a specific kind of phone) and if we'd get to keep our phone numbers.

--

The Superbowl was definitely an exciting game. I think it was a pretty horrible officiating job, but I didn't have any real emotional investment in the game, so I don't really care. Both teams played well and have nothing to be ashamed of. Well, everyone except for James Harrison, who should have been ejected from the game following his encounter with Aaron Francisco. That was just childish.

Is it just me, or do the Superbowl commercials suck now? It used to be they were the funniest/craziest/most interesting ads you would see all year. Now it's 75% car commericals and movie trailers. The only memorable one for me was the career builder one that looped over and over showing all the reasons people hate going to work. Any commercial that involves punching a koala wearing glasses is a win in my book.

Here We Go Again...

2009-01-01T01:36:00.001-05:00

Happy New Year, kids! Make it a good one.

2008 Year In Review

2008-12-29T16:47:00.003-05:00

1. What did you do in 2008 that you'd never done before? A doctor. Giggity.

2. Did you keep your new years' resolutions, and will you make more for next year? I have no idea, on both counts. If I made one, I didn't write it down.

3. Did anyone close to you give birth? Ashley (Aubrey), Kim (Brooke), and Nancy (Macy Jane).

4. Did anyone close to you die? My dog Heidi had to be put down.

5. What countries did you visit? Alabama. (This is a joke, kids.)

6. What would you like to have in 2009 that you lacked in 2008? I don't know. I'm pretty happy with where I am right now.

7. What date from 2008 will remain etched upon your memory, and why? November 4th. Our country took a big step.

8. What was your biggest achievement of the year? Being honored as an outstanding employee at my company.

9. What was your biggest failure? Gaining some weight.

10. Did you suffer illness or injury? Still have the pinched nerve in my right leg. I was also diagnosed with GERD, but Prevacid handles that well.

11. What was the best thing you bought? My HD TV. It rules.

12. Whose behaviour merited celebration? Courtney, for persevering and not giving up and getting her PhD!

13. Whose behaviour made you appalled and depressed? Politicians continue to disappoint.

14. Where did most of your money go? Church, savings, 401k and house payments.

15. What did you get really, really, really excited about? The annual beach trip.

16. What song will always remind you of 2008? I don't really associate songs with years.

17. Compared to this time last year, are you:
i. happier or sadder? the same
ii. thinner or fatter? a little fatter
iii. richer or poorer? richer

18. What do you wish you'd done more of? Exercising and eating healthy.

19. What do you wish you'd done less of? Eating unhealthy foods.

20. How will you be spending Christmas? We went to Courtney's parents' place.

22. Did you fall in love in 2008? I fell a long time ago and don't plan on getting back up.

23. How many one-night stands? I agree with C. This question is now officially annoying.

24. What was your favorite TV program? I'd have to say Chuck.

25. Do you hate anyone now that you didn't hate this time last year? Nope. I'm a nice guy.

26. What was the best book you read? I think Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman was my favorite.

27. What was your greatest musical discovery? Gotta agree with C: Jackson Rohm.

28. What did you want and get? An HDTV!

30. What was your favorite film of this year? The Dark Knight, hands down.

31. What did you do on your birthday, and how old were you? I turned 28 this year, and we went out to dinner at Ruth's Chris.

32. What one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying? Winning the lottery? I guess that's kind of hard to do when you don't play, though.

33. How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2008? Non-naked.

34. What kept you sane? My sanity.

35. Which celebrity/public figure did you fancy the most? Yvonne Strahovski

36. What political issue stirred you the most? The presidential election.

37. Who did you miss? My family in SC.

38. Who were the best new people you met? Eric and Emily. Matt Duis.

39. Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2008: If you build a giant planet-destroying space station, don't leave a hole in it that leads directly into the main reactor because eventually some punk kid in an X-Wing is going to come along and launch a proton torpedo into the thing, and then you're screwed. I actually learned this lesson a long time ago, but it still applies.

40. Quote a song lyric that sums up your year: "... a ..." I'll leave it as an exercize for the reader to determine where this lyric came from.

I Suck At Blogging

2008-12-02T17:38:00.003-05:00

It's true. I mean, I could write every day, but my life really isn't that interesting. I doubt people want to read about how there was no traffic on my way to work or that I got Japanese pan noodles for lunch. Let's face it: a list of my daily activities just isn't that entertaining. I should know, I live it. Maybe if I start feeling spiteful, I'll subject you to such boring drivel, but it's the holiday season, so you caught me in a good mood. Lucky you.

It's not just the fact that I have nothing to write about that has kept me away from my slice of internet real estate, though. I have a kind of ADHD when it comes to hobbies, and I flit between them at a moment's notice. Currently, I'm hooked on reading and some occasional poker. The good news is that this generally leads into a writing phase. The bad news is that this will lead into more inane blog posts for you to read. Sorry about that. If it's any consolation, the blog phase will pass, and I'll be playing video games or writing stories that you'll never read.

I just don't have enough free time to devote to all of the pasttimes that I'd like to participate in. I've come to the decision that I spend way too much of my life working, or getting myself to/from work. I have often thought of what it would be like to just drop everything and go somewhere else for a couple of years, but I'm just not that spontaneous. I also have a wife to love and support. If I were single, I would probably do it in a heartbeat.

But I'm not single. Or spontaneous. That's 0/2. I'd say that's really bad, but two is such a small sample size of characteristics that I can't really draw any useful conclusions from it, other than the fact that I'm highly unlikely to contract herpes.

Football season has been pretty good to me this year. Virginia Tech didn't do horribly for a rebuilding year, and hopefully they won't completely suck in the ACC Championship game. I won this year's group game of college Pick'em, and the fantasy football team that I co-manage with Courtney has sealed up third place in our league and is headed into the post-season. I think we have a decent shot at taking the whole thing down. This was my first year doing fantasy football, and despite the fact that our #1 draft pick (Tom Brady) was out for the season in the first quarter of the first game, we still managed to pick up the pieces and put together a really tough team. Next year I might even play for money.

We had a nice Thanksgiving vacation with my grandfather in Massachusetts, and didn't have to deal with any bad traffic, despite leaving the day before Thanksgiving and returning on the weekend. We have found the ultimate way to get to New England without having to deal with traffic. No I'm not going to put my secret out on the internet so all the millions of people who read my blog can ruin the roads for me. If I like you, ask me in person, and I'll tell you. If you ask me in person and I don't tell you... well, I think you can follow that to its logical conclusion. You're a big boy/girl/other.

Of course, I can always be bribed.

Holy crap. It's December.

Wow

2008-11-05T00:19:00.001-05:00

Regardless of who you voted for, this is epic. It will be interesting to see what the future holds.

Way To Go, George!

2008-10-31T17:13:00.003-04:00

I'm writing this today to commend our president, Mr. George W. Bush. He has accomplished what no other person in the history of this country has. In fact, it will probably be a landmark achievement for many years to come. I will be pretty impressed if someone is able to surpass this feat at some point in the future.

I think we can all agree that the Bush Administration has been an utter disaster. At least, that's what he wanted you to think. Oh, Mr. President, only now do I see the true brilliance of your plan. Soon, people across the land will notice, and they will stand dumbfounded at your foresight, unable to do anything except slowly applaud in awe.

You see, dear readers, the entire Bush presidency has been nothing but a concealed, highly sophisticated scheme to get the American people to vote, and this program has succeeded beyond anyone in the administration's wildest dreams... except Mr. Bush. You see, he saw this coming all along. Cheney didn't think Bush could pull it off, but he did. People are registering to vote in record numbers. The sheer amount of young people now interested in politics and dedicated to voting on November 4th is like nothing this nation has ever seen. There are people in some states waiting in line for hours to vote early. I'm going to say that again in its own paragraph because that's just unbelievable.

There are people in some states waiting in line for hours to vote early.

Holy freaking crap, Mr. President. My hat is off to you. You, sir, have performed what was once deemed impossible. Not only have you managed to get inebriated college students to care about our elections, but you have done it so thoroughly that they are actually showing up early. Just in case you didn't know, sir, getting a college student to show up early for anything except a kegger is quite noteworthy, and you should be commended.

I invite all of you to join me in congratulating our president on a job well done. It was eight years in the making, but the fruits of his labor will be felt throughout this nation every four years for a long time to come as we all join together in one voice and say: "never again."

So Sick

2008-10-25T11:35:00.001-04:00

This is so messed up. At least I won.

Epic Debate

2008-10-15T23:14:00.003-04:00

When election day comes, I know who I'll be voting for!

Test

2008-10-03T15:37:00.002-04:00

This is only a test to see if Facebook will import this post. Had this been an actual post, the amount of interesting content would increase by .035%. This is only a test.

Poker Progress

2008-10-01T22:38:00.002-04:00

I haven't really been posting about my poker play because there hasn't been much to say, at least in terms of notable events. But I've been slowly and steadily building a pretty decent bankroll on Absolute Poker. I've hit the final two tables of several small buy-in tournaments for decent payouts, and I think I might have final tabled one also. I've been playing $.10NL here and there and getting a few dollars at a time. I've also played a few SNGs, and as of earlier tonight, my bankroll was sitting at a little over $400.

I've been following Chris Ferguson's money management tips in order to keep from going broke, and it has been working very well. One of his tips is that he never spends more than 5% of his bankroll to enter a single table sit-n-go tournament. Since my bankroll was at a little over $400 tonight, I decided to take a shot at a $20 sit-n-go to see if I can get started at that level. Well, I brought my "A" game, and I ended up winning the whole thing, coming away with a $70 profit.

So now my bankroll is a little under $500, and I have a small cushion for playing sit-n-gos at the $20 level. If I can keep my head straight and avoid the beats and suckouts, I could get my bankroll back up to the level it was before Congress went and screwed everything up in the online poker community. If I get to that point, I may start thinking about trying to win my way into some bigger tournaments. I came less than 50 places away from winning a seat in the WSOP main event one year, and it would be nice to get back to the point where I can start taking those kind of shots again.

Insurance Rant

2008-09-27T12:23:00.004-04:00

So, on September 16th, some woman backed out of a parking space into the side of my car, which was directly behind her in the driving lane. How she did not see me is unfathomable. It's not like I was in front or behind her space where I would be somewhat out of view. I was directly behind her car. Observation fail.

Anyway, I get this lady's insurance info, and we part ways. I call Amica (the company) later that week, and that Friday their insurance adjuster comes out and looks at the damage to my vehicle. He gives me an estimate and tells me to call him if I want a recommendation for a body shop. I call him on Monday, and he recommends I take it to True 2 Form, since they have a direct bill set up with Amica. I take my car over there yesterday, and they call Enterprise, who comes to pick me up. We go to their office, and they set up a direct bill with Amica for the car rental. This was easily the most efficient insurance process I've ever been through.

"Matt, this is the worst rant ever."

I'm not done yet! Don't interrupt. It's not polite.

Later that day, I get a call from Enterprise saying that Amica has not accepted liability for the accident, and that I need to bring the car back. What the hell? While I'm on the phone with Enterprise, the house phone starts ringing, and True 2 Form leaves a message saying that Amica has denied the repairs, and I need to come and get my car. What the hell? So I call Amica and demand to know what's going on. Apparently they haven't yet talked to the lady that hit my car. That's right, kids. By this point it's been ten days since the accident, and this stupid woman has yet to report it to the insurance company. They can't get a hold of her or her husband.

So I ask them what happens if they don't get a hold of this person? Are you going to cancel their policy or something? The lady tells me that, no, they won't. I ask, then, what motivation exactly do these people have to contact Amica, then? She says that they would have to pay for the accident out of pocket. How exactly are they going to pay for my repairs when I can't get the damn thing fixed?! Apparently, I'm not even supposed to have the estimate that the insurance adjuster gave me. So why did you send him out?? I hang up on the stupid woman, so I can go and get my car back.

I return the rental to Enterprise, and they have to charge me for a day's rental. I'm now out $35 bucks because Amica won't cover the damn rental. They drive me back over to True 2 Form, where I pick up my car and drive home. I'm not inside the house more than five seconds when my phone rings. It's someone from another Enterprise branch saying that Amica has set up a reservation for me. At this point I'm prepared to murder someone. I tell this guy everything that's happened that day, and he suggests that I call the Enterprise branch I dealt with earlier. I call them and talk to the guy, and he says that he doesn't think Amica has assumed liability yet and to just wait until I hear from them.

(I'd like to make on thing clear: the people at Enterprise and True 2 Form were great. They were very nice and genuinely sorry for the mess that Amica had caused. I will be giving both of those companies my business when this gets worked out.)

So at this point, I've lost $35 and 4 hours of work time because of an accident that wasn't even my fault. If I don't hear from Amica by Monday or Tuesday, I am calling Allstate and having them sic their lawyers on Amica. This whole situation is ridiculous. I'm beginning to think that there is no good way whatsoever to deal with insurance companies, whether it's yours or someone else's. I hate them all. I guarantee you this, though. If I have to go through Allstate to get to Amica, they will be reimbursing me for that car rental and paying me $400 for the time I wasted because of their screw-up.

Writing this has raised my blood pressure. I'm going to go break something to bring it back down.

Football Stuff

2008-09-19T16:14:00.002-04:00

I'm playing two online games this football season. The first is College Pick'em, where you pick the winners of ten NCAA Saturday games and rank them according to your confidence level. The second is your standard Fantasy Football. Both of these are great fun and allow me to at least have some stake in games I otherwise wouldn't really care about.

I'm doing much better in college Pick'em this year than in years past. I'm currently in second place and only behind by one point. I've been doing a bit more research this year than in other seasons, so that's probably why I'm doing better. Up until now, it's been relatively easy to pick the winners, so everyone is pretty close in terms of score. However, this week's picks are a lot more difficult. I expect there to be a decent bit of separation after this week is over. Several of the ten games we have to pick are expected to be very close.

Fantasy football has been rather interesting. We got destroyed in our first week because we had Tom Brady as our QB, and of course he's now out for the season. We picked up Jake Delhomme, but he didn't really do anything for us in week two. Despite that, though, we managed to eek out a win, thanks mostly to Plaxico Burress, Calvin Johnson, and Marion Barber. Those guys are killer.

For this week, we dropped Delhomme and Chad Johnson (who has been nothing but dead weight) and picked up both Philip Rivers and Aaron Rodgers, who are both having great seasons so far. Hopefully they will keep it up and help us win another in week two. We're projected to lose by a few points, but I've come to notice that ESPN's points projections have two possible states: "almost dead-on" and "off by a ridiculously huge amount". Each of these states has a 50% probability of occurring for any given player.

I'm torn between whether or not to play Rivers or Rodgers. Even though Rivers is projected to have 15 points this week (seven less than Rodgers' projection), I think he will end up outperforming this estimation. He's got Chris Chambers and Vincent Jackson as targets; plus, San Diego is going up against the Jets, not exactly a powerhouse defense, while Green Bay is facing Dallas. Of course, Dallas gave up 37 points on Monday, and Green Bay's top three defense could give Rodgers a lot of time on the field. But Rivers is tied for the lead in touchdown passes this season, as well as top five in passing yards and QB rating, and Dallas' offense is killer enough to eat a lot of time off of the clock against Green Bay.

ARGH!

I may just flip a coin. Or let my wife pick. Women have that fancy intuition thingy, and she's been telling me to play Rodgers. But I can't shake this gut feeling about Rivers, either. One more day to decide...

Internet Publishing

2008-09-10T17:22:00.004-04:00

It's the next big thing, kids, and it's here to stay. With the rise of YouTube, it was only a matter of time before internet publishing started to become mainstream. Some small time directors and actors have been taking advantage of YouTube to get their names out there, and it's working.

And now the big names are joining them. Tired of the way that heartless corporations treat them and their work, creators, actors, directors, artists, and more are leaving these studios to pursue self-publishing via the internet. Joss Whedon's experiment with Dr. Horrible proved a success beyond the creator's expectations (or anyone's for that matter), and shock waves have been moving throughout the entertainment industry. It turns out that people will pay for quality entertainment all on their own without the blessing of some executive in a corner office. Imagine that.

Now, Family Guy creator Seth MacFarlane is throwing his hat into the internet distribution ring. His brainchild, Cavalcade of Cartoon Comedy, opened its doors today. So far, there are a couple of teasers and two cartoon shorts available on the site. Think the random segues that occur throughout episodes of Family Guy, and you'll have a good idea what this show is about. Take a look, and if you like what you see, be sure to support them with your wallet when the time comes.

The era of idiotic, out-of-touch suits in boardrooms dictating what will and will not be shown is coming to an end. Content created specifically for the internet is starting to gain traction, and you can bet the CEOs of NBC, ABC, and CBS are crapping their pants. Eventually, no one is going to need them anymore, and that scares them to death.

It's Here!

2008-09-05T10:52:00.005-04:00

And I have it!

The Dr. Horrible soundtrack is now available on iTunes! Be sure to download it. And while you're doing that, brush up on your lyrics by reading through the liner notes.

rand();

2008-08-24T14:33:00.002-04:00

I can think of no coherent way to string all of this stuff together, so this post is just going to be a bunch of random factoids. Enjoy. Or don't; I'm not the boss of you.

------
My little sister, Julie, who was in a severe car accident a little over three years ago, just started back at school full time again. She's been going through a lot of physical, speech, and occupational therapy over the years, and she's come a very long way. But there's still a long way to go. She's still in a wheelchair, and she has an assistant taking her to all her classes. She also still has trouble speaking, but if you're with her in person, you can generally understand what she's saying. This is a huge step forward for her, and a nice break for my mom, who has not left her side for those three years.

------
I played in a $1 rebuy no limit hold'em tournament last night on a lark. A little under 500 people entered. I rebought immediately and then did the double add-on at the first break. I ended up playing this thing for over five hours. I came in 6th place and won $77. I lost when I went all in with KJ in the big blind over the top of a steal raise from the small blind, and the guy calls me with Ax. I hit my K on the flop, and he hits his ace on the river. I blame Barry Greenstein.

------
We had our fantasy football draft on Friday night, and we went over to Carly and Eric's to hang out while the draft went on. Courtney and I are co-managing our team in an eight team league, so everyone ended up with a pretty strong team. We got Tom Brady in the first round, fourth pick. LaDanian Tomlinson, Adrian Peterson, and Randy Moss were the first three to go. Hopefully Brady's foot doesn't end up becoming an issue this season.

We totally screwed up our backup QB choice by picking one with the same bye week as Brady (Hasselbeck). (Hey, it's our first time playing fantasy football, give us a break.) We ended up trading him right after the draft for Jason Campbell. Then we saw Jason Campbell suck big time last night against Carolina and also learned that we're going to have to use him when they're playing the Cowboys in Dallas. We dropped him, and are hoping to pick up Jake Delhomme, who will be playing Atlanta that week.

The rest of our team, in no particular order: Marion Barber, Plaxico Burress, Brandon Jacobs, Chad Johnson, Chris Cooley, Santonio Holmes, Calvin Johnson, DeAngelo Williams, Jeremy Shockey, Ahmad Bradshaw, Amani Toomer, Seahawks defense, and Nate Kaeding kicking. It's more Giants heavy than I'd like; I was forced into making a quick decision for Amani Toomer when I was close to running out of time. I was being distracted with conversation about something else. I might end up trading him for someone else, or maybe just running three RBs more often. We'll see how the season goes.

------
That's enough for now. I should probably get back to the writing project I'm working on. I'm not really ready to talk specifics about it yet, except to say that it's a novel. Every time I talk specifics in the early stages of a project, I seem to jinx it and lose interest. I'm co-writing this one, though, so that is helpful, and it's been going pretty strong for a few months now, despite busy schedules on both sides. I'm excited about it, and I will be sure to post about it here when it's further along.

Weekend Of Interest

2008-08-18T20:26:00.007-04:00

Oh great What-if Machine, bless us with thy vision and grant us wisdom. What if we spent an entire weekend celebrating Courtney's birthday?

TO DO: insert shimmery special effects

Apparently what would happen is that Courtney would go to her Saturday volunteering, as usual, and then we would pack up the gym bag and head down to Carly and Eric's for some afternoon tennis. We would play for a little over an hour and try to figure out how the hell doubles tennis is actually supposed to work. We wouldn't really care, and we'd have fun anyway. Amazingly, we would not get sunburned.

After tennis, we'd go back to Carly and Eric's to shower and change to grab a quick dinner and head to the Maroon 5/Counting Crows concert, the tickets for which I would have scored for $6 each through a deal at my company. We would end up getting dinner at a local McDonald's and try to find fish jam on the menu. Unfortunately, there would be no fish jam to be had.

After dinner we would follow Courtney's GPS to Nissan Pavilion. The GPS would give us directions which would cross a train track that would be occupied by a train. We would then follow the signs we should have followed in the first place to Nissan Pavilion. We would play many hands of rummy while listening to Sarah Bareilles' opening act, which would be good, but not phenomenal. We would then rock out to Maroon 5, because they are awesome.

We would then be utterly disappointed by the Counting Crows. Adam Duritz would show up either baked out of his mind or doing a grand impression of someone who is. Adam Duritz would forget what song he was singing at least twice. Adam Duritz would forget which city he was in. (Note to Adam: For future reference, a clear lack of skyscrapers suggests you are not in New York City.) The set list for the Counting Crows would be made up almost entirely of songs no one wants to hear. The few songs that would be played which people would want to hear would be utterly destroyed beyond recognition, including Rain King and Mr Jones. The Counting Crows would adequately perform Accidentally In Love and Hangin' Around, but it would be too late. Adam Duritz would also wax philosophical about a magazine cover that he saw himself on, and everyone else would wonder where exactly he gets such great weed.

In addition, we would be surrounded by the only smokers in the whole venue. Stupid assholes would show up about 3/4 of the way through the concert absolutely wasted. One of said assholes would whip it out and pee all over the lawn near everyone. I, being luckily placed behind said asshole, would avoid going to jail for assault and battery.

The next day Courtney and I would go to Baltimore to see the Body Worlds exhibit. We would get ripped off and have to pay $16 for parking. We would be astounded and amazed at the intricacies of the human body. My favorite display would be the exploded man, which is not exactly what it sounds like but kind of is. We would then head back home and eat a birthday dinner at Ruby Tuesdays. I would have awesome ribs and shrimp, and Courtney would have an amazing steak and crabcake. Then we would go home, be exhausted, and get ready for bed. Courtney would play her new crossword game, and I would finish V for Vendetta before falling asleep.

TO DO: Insert dramatic closing music and credits.

You read it! You can't unread it! Stay tuned for more...

Keep The Olympics Robot-Free!

2008-08-16T12:31:00.006-04:00

I come before you today regarding a very serious issue that is vital to the safety of not only our nation, but to humanity as a whole. For those of you who have been paying attention, you already know what I am referring to; for others, this may come as quite a shock. I will try to break the news as gently as possible. I may get in trouble for outing my country in the middle of the contest, but I can no longer, in good conscience, sit by and let this continue unabated.

Ok, here goes. No turning back now.

For the past few weeks, the United States has been using an automaton, or robot, in competition in the Olympic Games in Beijing. I have provided a picture of the robot below.

The most disturbing aspect of this international fiasco is how blatantly obvious the United States has been in the use of this android. They haven't tried to be remotely inconspicuous, brandishing their superior technology in the world's face and having it shatter world record after world record and earn gold medal after gold medal for the homeland. The worst part is that this wasn't enough for the United States. They had to take it one step further and insult the other competitors directly, specifically the Serbian swimmer Milorad Cavic, by having their robot beat Cavic by precisely .01 seconds. Now, I love my country, but this sort of behavior is just inexcusable. It brings us no honor when we resort to using machines to win athletic events.

I can understand that to the untrained eye he looks like a regular person, but that's the whole idea. He was designed to pass as a normal competitor. However, their brazen use of this robot has made his physical appearance a moot point. They might as well remove the external biological casing and just have him compete in his raw titanium form.

But I digress.

The main point I want you to take away from this is not that the United States is cheating in the Olymics with a robot, but that this robot even exists. It is plain to see that the United States government has learned nothing from our nation's brightest scientific minds when they tried to warn us about artificial intelligence in documentaries such as The Terminator and I, Robot. Creating robots like this one can only lead to millions of deaths, the enslavement of mankind, and blockbuster ticket sales. I implore you all to contact your congressmen and senators and make your voice heard: Keep the Olympics (and our nation) robot-free! Do it for our children and our children's children.

This has been a public service announcement.

Cool Shirt

2008-08-09T01:11:00.005-04:00

I got this shirt when I was down at the beach. Never has so much truth been condensed into such a pure form.

return; (A.K.A. - The Beach Trip Report)

2008-08-03T20:26:00.002-04:00

We're back from the Outer Banks, and we had an awesome time! The beach trip always goes so fast, and I think that's mostly because it's only for a week. By the time the week is up, I still feel like I'm just settling in. I would love to do a beach trip for two weeks, and hopefully at some point I will be able to convince enough people to participate.

We arrived in the Outer Banks last Saturday around 11am and had our traditional lunch with Carly's family at Cap'n Frank's in Kittyhawk. It's a great family-run hot dog joint that has some good food for decent prices. After lunch, we walked over to the board game store so I could get my annual new game for the trip. I had planned on purchasing Pandemic before we left, but it was sold out everywhere due to a reprint. We ended up buying Blokus, which is a really fun puzzle/strategy game. It got played several times over the course of the week. Our purchase made, we went to the outlet mall to waste some time until the house was available.

The rest of Saturday was spent getting groceries and moving into the house. The house we got was both better and worse than the house we had last year. It was better in that it wasn't as far south as before, so we didn't have to drive for an hour just to get to Nags Head. It also had two tables, so we were able to have a dedicated table for our puzzle. (This year it was Edward Hopper's Nighthawks; we didn't get it finished [about fifty pieces left], so we'll have to finish it up this week at home.) The house was worse in that it was a lot smaller than we expected, the fridge wouldn't close properly, and there was an enormous dune blocking our view of the ocean. But we took what we got and had a great time anyway.

Sunday and Monday were spent reading Watchmen (which is phenomenal; thanks for the recommendation, Wil!), hanging out on the beach, and playing all kinds of games. Among the games played were Blokus, Settlers of Catan, Puerto Rico, Yahtzee, Cribbage, Jenga, Backgammon, Five Crowns, Apples to Apples, Loaded Questions, Munchkin, Space Munchkin, and Set. Needless to say, this was a board game loving group. We also played Bocce and Volleyball out on the beach, as well as throwing a frisbee and football around in the ocean.

Of course, you can't play in the ocean without body boarding. The waves at our location this year were much better than the ones we had last year, and we had some great rides. There were even some people attempting to surf, which prompted this response from me (with all apologies to the Beach Boys):

Sung to California Girls

Yeah, east coast surfers are posers
They can't even catch a wave
And even if they do, it's only two feet tall
And they just looking freakin' gay.

I wish they all could be bodyboarders.
I wish they all could be bodyboarders.

Yes, I did actually sing this.

Also on Monday, the group got together to go see Wall-e. I must say, I was surprised at the adult nature of this film. I hadn't really read much about it beforehand, other than that people liked it and that the art in the end credits was great. Sure, there was stuff for the kids to enjoy, just like any Pixar movie, but this one was definitely made for the grownups. It's a pretty telling commentary on the current state of human existence and one of the possible directions we could be headed. I highly recommend it.

On Tuesday the gang headed south to Hatteras and Carly's family's house for the annual seafood bake. The wives really love this, while Eric and I manage to tolerate it. Basically, Eric and I are of the mindset that crabs involve way too much work for way too little reward, especially east coast blue crabs, which have very little meat in them to begin with. So we survive on clams and shrimp while everyone else rips into around 100 crabs or so. We had a great time socializing and playing Five Crowns, although we ended up getting eaten alive by mosquitoes in the process. I don't think I've ever had so many bug bites in my entire life. I blame this on the standing water in the driveway due to a storm a week or so prior.

After dinner, we decide to head over to the Froggy Dog in Avon for some karaoke, swatting at mosquitoes in the car along the way. Now, prior to this, I'd only ever done karaoke once in my life, several years ago at a friends' wedding in Blacksburg. I sang Bright Lights by Matchbox 20 then, and I messed up a little near the end of it. It was basically my first solo ever. Since then, I've sung many solos at church, and my confidence has grown much higher. For my first song this year, I decided to retry Bright Lights, and I'm happy to report that I didn't mess it up this year. I also sang I'll Be by Edwin McCain and Piano Man by Billy Joel. I felt really comfortable while singing these songs, and at the end of them I was getting compliments from complete strangers while heading back to my table.

On Wednesday we hung out on the beach during the day and went out to play mini golf in the evening. We decided on going to Lost Treasure, which I realized after the fact may be the exact same design as the Lost Treasure at Myrtle Beach. We did the diamond course, and I played the best game of mini golf I've ever played in my life. I ended up doing the best out of our group, shooting one under par for a score of 41. Move over, Tiger; I'm coming for you. After my victory in mini golf, we went to get some frozen custard, which was absolutely delicious.

Thurday afternoon, Mike, Randi, and I went to see The Dark Knight. Amazingly, none of us had managed to see it. I'm pretty sure it was Randi's idea that we wait until we get to the beach to see it, but she blames me. Regardless of whose fault it is, the movie is absolutely phenomenal. Heath Ledger's jaw-dropping performance only further drives home the fact that when the world lost him, it lost one of the greatest actors of our time. He is my generation's River Phoenix, and he will be sorely missed. I cannot wait until this movie comes out on DVD. I will be one of the first in line to buy it.

Friday was our last full day at the beach, so we spent most of it next to or in the ocean, catching some last waves and enjoying the sun. The weather was great the whole week, except for a single storm that blew through on Thursday night. After dinner, Courtney and I grabbed our beach blanket and a bottle of wine and went out on the sand for some stargazing. No sooner had we sat down, than a lady came up and offered us her campfire, since her family was done with it. We accepted and moved over to the fire, which helped to keep bugs away. We had a great time just laying on the beach, listening to the ocean, talking, and trying to find constellations in the sky. In the process, we saw a shooting star and either a satellite or the International Space Station, which I guess is technically also a satellite. That's one thing I hate about where we live: there's so much light pollution that it's rare for us to be able to see anything more than a few of the brightest stars at night. It was great to be able to lie back and see hundreds, maybe thousands, at a time and a wonderful way to end the trip.

Saturday morning we packed up and drove in to Nags Head for some last minute shopping and lunch with Carly and Eric before we headed our separate ways. Overall, I think this trip was more fun than last year, mostly due to there being a larger group. Everyone got along really well, and we had a fantastic time. It's just too bad I have to wait a whole year before I get to do it again.

Be Jealous

2008-07-27T19:41:00.002-04:00

It's Finally Here!

2008-07-25T16:52:00.002-04:00

That's right. I am officially on vacation! We are in the midst of packing to drive to our friends' house in Virginia, where we will stay the night. Tomorrow we will be getting up very early and heading out at 5:30am to head down to the Outer Banks in North Carolina. I am beyond excited. I haven't had decent time off since Christmas, and I'm beat. I'm ready to relax!

Options for the beach ("to do" is too restrictive):

read Watchmen

body boarding

build a sand castle

take some photos for the blog

play some board games

put together puzzle of Edward Hopper's Nighthawks

play miniature golf

play Rock Band

watch some movies

play some poker

write some more on my current project

play bocci

play volleyball

have a drink... or many...

I will most likely be updating this blog while I'm down there because I will have free time. Crazy concept, yeah? My heart bleeds for those stuck working next week. I will catch a wave for you.

Dr. Horrible's Sing-a-long Blog

2008-07-18T18:36:00.005-04:00

What do you get when you cross a phenomenal director, great actors, super-villains, and musicals? Pretty much the greatest thing the internet has ever seen. Joss Whedon, along with Neil Patrick Harris, Nathan Fillion, Felicia Day, and awesome behind the scenes people, has created an epic (in awesomeness, not length; hey size doesn't matter, it's how you use what you got. I don't care what she tells you! It's all lies! That TRAMP is just trying to make me look... sorry, slight tangent. Where was I? Ah, yes...) short film that was developed specifically for the internet.

This movie has something for everyone, whether you're a fan of musicals, comedies, or superhero movies. (If you find none of those categories enjoyable, I submit to you that you are not human. You might want to get that DNA checked; my guess is you are most likely some kind of wildebeest.) As of today, July 18th, only the first two parts have been released. The third act is due out tomorrow. They will be available for viewing until the end of Sunday, and then they will be taken down.

But don't worry, there's a plan for you to be able to download them for a small fee, as well as purchase the DVD which is in the works. Joss Whedon explains it better than I would, but the short version is that a lot of actors and writers are tired of the Hollywood machine. They're working on a way to start things over, so to speak. I recommend reading what he has to say.

Oh, and watch the movie. NOW.

Boston Photos

2008-07-12T18:09:00.003-04:00

I finally got the photos developed from my trip to Boston. I forgot to bring the digital camera, so I was forced to buy some disposables. Very sadly, none of my interior photos of the churches came out at all. However, I do have some really good exterior shots of the city. I've included some of my favorites in this post, but you can view the whole photo set in my Flickr account.

A pretty cool view looking straight up the side of the tallest skyscraper within a several mile radius.

I don't know why, but I love this picture. It's just some random side alley off of Berkeley street, but for some reason the light and shadows really jumped out at me.

This is another one of my favorites. I managed to capture the sun setting just behind the top of the steeple of Old South Church.

I took several photos of other buildings as seen reflected by the windows of the massive skyscraper, and this one is my favorite.

Awesome skyline picture with some neat patterns resulting from the sunlight refracting off the camera lens.

This is Tremont Street, about two blocks from where I was staying. There were a ton of restaurants, luxury condos, and small businesses here. It was a really nice area.

Slinging Chips

2008-07-07T22:58:00.002-04:00

I may not be updating Matt on Poker anymore, but it does still pull in a tiny bit of ad revenue for me. This is in the form of points that I can redeem over at Poker Source Online. (PS - If you're interested, you can follow that link and check out the "Free Poker Money" section to get a free $100 to play with at Absolute Poker. No strings attached. You just can't take the money out until you play a certain number of raked hands.) With the last few months' worth of points, I decided to cash in for a $100 Absolute Poker gift certificate. There are pros and cons to this. The pros are that I get to play some poker again, and, hey, it's a free $100! The con is that I have to play on Absolute Poker. Compared to the other large poker sites on the internet, their software is pretty much the worst. Also, they're no stranger to scandal.

I'm willing to give them a break, though, mostly because I'm getting a free $100. I took my first dip back into the poker waters this evening with a $5 single table sit-n-go. For those of you not familiar with the terminology, this is a single table tournament of nine players, where the top three end up winning cash. I kept my cool, made a few well timed moves, and ended up winning the whole thing, quadrupling my buy-in. It's nice to know I haven't completely lost any skills I had when playing regularly.

I built up my first bankroll back in 2006 starting with just $30, so I'm hoping I'll be able to do the same thing again with this $100. The only problem is whether or not I will be able to stick to the low limit games and not blow what little cash I have available. I know how to manage a bankroll properly; it's just a matter of whether or not I become too frustrated to deal with it and tilt it all off. We'll see how it goes. I'll be sure to let you all know of any notable wins/losses that occur along the way, and I'll do my best to keep the bad beat story count at zero.

Independence Day

2008-07-04T13:21:00.002-04:00

Happy 4th of July, kids! Many thanks to all soldiers, past and present, who have fought to protect us and maintain our freedom. You are the true super heroes.

This post dedicated to Lance Corporal Daniel Arnott. Ooh-RAH!

A Subconscious Trip To Outer Space

2008-07-01T10:53:00.004-04:00

Apparently the average person has three to four dreams per night. This may be the case for me as well, but I rarely ever remember a dream or even wake up with the sensation that I had been dreaming. This morning, however, was different. I remembered a good bit of what I dreamed about last night.

It started out with me being on a space shuttle. I was strapped in a seat by a window, and we lifted off from Cape Canaveral. However, this launch was not like you would see in real life and actually made very little sense. First of all, it wasn't bumpy at all, and the gravitational force remained at one earth gravity. It was actually very pleasant. I highly recommend space shuttle travel for all your dream getaways. The launch trajectory started out vertically, like you would expect, but then we curved north over the earth's surface and started flying like a normal airplane. I remember flying very low over the house in South Carolina where I grew up, and then after that we banked vertically again and took off into space. Hopefully the house was not incinerated.

I remember very vividly the land falling away from my view through the window. Then all I could see was white, and it gradually started fading into a sky blue as we got higher in the atmosphere. The blue then became darker and darker until I was looking at the entire planet shrinking in front of me, surrounded by stars. It was a pretty good visual effect for a dream. I imagine that my mind combined a bunch of random clips from different NASA videos I've seen over the years.

Once we were up in space, we ended up docking with the International Space Station. For some reason, there was gravity on the station, and it was also a lot bigger than the actual ISS. Also, apparently there was some kind of elementary or middle school class up there. They were taking some kind of test on whatever science experiments they had been working on with the astronauts. Man, if only I could have gone to a school like that when I was a kid. Anyway, one of the girl students ended up taking some of the pens from the teacher's desk that the teacher used to grade the tests with. After the tests were graded, the girl ended up changing some of the grades and got in trouble. I don't know if she was changing Ds to Bs or what. Also, apparently the forensics team from CSI was investigating who had changed the grades. Obviously this was some kind of horrific space felony. The poor kid's probably gonna wind up in Gitmo or jettisoned out an airlock.

That's about all I remember of this dream. I think my alarm woke me up in the middle of it. As far as dreams go, I think this one was pretty tame in terms of weirdness. Possibly interesting bit of trivia: I'm certain this dream is the result of me watching several episodes of Numb3rs leading up to when Dr. Fleinhardt gets to go up into space and stay on the ISS for six months.

Home Again, Home Again, Jiggity Jig

2008-06-29T18:16:00.003-04:00

I have returned from my business trip to Boston, and I must say that it was great. The only problem I had with the whole trip was that the initial flight up was delayed due to a big storm that came through the Baltimore area and was also right over Boston around the time we were supposed to land. Other than that, though, the whole thing went off without a hitch, despite the constant feeling that I was forgetting something. I blame this on the fact that the entire trip was planned by my company, and I'm not used to giving up that much control when it comes to planning a long distance trip.

The conference itself was excellent. I won't bore you with a ton of details, but it may have been the most educational three days of my entire life, including all previous public and private school education. This not only speaks to the quality of the information we got, but it also speaks volumes for Stephen Few's ability to convey said information. I'm going to recommend this conference to others at my company, and hopefully some other people will be able to get the same learning experience I did. This information could definitely help improve a lot of our products.

While I was up in Boston I got some (hopefully) beautiful pictures. I forgot to take the digital camera with me, so I ended up having to buy a couple of disposables. Once I get those developed, I will be sure to put them up and link to them here. I got a bunch of great photos of the old architecture in South End as well as some interior photos of Old South Church, which had some gorgeous stained glass windows. I ended up running out of film just before I found Trinity Church, which had some great ceiling paintings, but by the time I had purchased another camera across the street, they had closed. I guess those pictures will have to wait until the next trip.

I got home Thursday night and ended up taking Friday off, since Courtney also had the day off. Matt and Sarah arrived for the weekend that evening, and we had a nice dinner of homemade chicken enchiladas, which were awesome. After dinner we went to see Get Smart at the local AMC. I have to say that Steve Carell is the perfect choice to replace Don Adams in a modern remake of this movie. Anne Hathaway is also a great casting job, and I have to say I enjoyed the movie immensely. I recommend it. After that we had some drinks and played a few games of Star Munchkin, which was hilarious as always. Everyone that we've introduced to that game has had a blast playing it, and I look forward to exposing others to it on our beach trip this summer.

On Saturday we got together with Carly and Eric for a hike along the Seneca Creek trail while Matt and Sarah attended a wedding out near Leesburg. It was a gorgeous day and perfect for hiking. Apparently we missed a massive downpour by just a couple of miles. Matt and Sarah had eaten lunch in the area just before they left for the wedding, and they said that a pretty nasty storm blew through. As we were hiking, we started having to walk around more and more large puddles. At the time, we thought they were from the big rainfall a couple of days ago, but once we talked to Matt and Sarah we realized it was from that same day. We'd already had to reschedule this hiking trip twice before, and it would have sucked to have to do it again. Looks like we made this one by the skin of our teeth.

(Aside: teeth don't have skin, so where did this phrase come from? If the actual point of the phrase is that teeth don't have skin, then the phrase makes even less sense. You can't miss something by a factor of zero, because then you hit it. End nerd rant.)

After hiking, we got lunch at Boston Market.¹ I have to say I am not a big fan of the new four cheese macaroni; it's way too soupy. Stick with the tried and true, kids. Their chicken and garlic green beans are always great, though. Once we'd eaten, Carly and Eric had to head home for a birthday party, and we headed back to our place to shower and relax for a couple of hours.

Today was church with Matt and Sarah, and everyone parted ways afterward. They headed back to Blacksburg, Courtney headed up to Baltimore for a couple of hours of work, and I stayed at church for a couple of hours of choir rehearsal for a program we're doing in the middle of July. I'm not a huge fan of it, but it could be worse. I just don't particularly enjoy the arrangement of some of the songs that I'm a big fan of in their original form. They now seem to be devoid of the intensity that they originally had. Now, not all of the songs are like this... just my favorites. It's like this guy made this arrangement specifically to annoy me. Knowing the universe, I lay the odds on this being the case at 5 to 1.

Four day work week this week, and then Fourth of July weekend! Four weeks until the beach!

¹You know, I didn't see one Boston Market in all of my time in Boston. I have the feeling we're being misled.

Hunkered Down In South End

2008-06-24T18:28:00.004-04:00

"You got any disposable cameras?" I ask the men behind the counter.

"Yep," the tall, black man replies, turning around and reaching for one of many hanging from a rack behind the counter. "Kodak okay with you?"

"Sure," I say, not really caring. I doubt there's really much difference when it comes to disposable cameras. It doesn't look like they carry any other kind anyway. "You wouldn't happen to have umbrellas too, would you?" I ask with a glance out the window. There had been an impending storm brewing all afternoon, and it was starting to look like Mother Nature might make good on the threat.

"We certainly do," the other man, a short and cheery Arabic fellow, says as he ducks underneath the counter and pulls out a small umbrella in a clear sleeve. He places it on the counter and raises his hands above his head in triumph. "We have everything you could possibly need at 7-11!"

"Thanks. You guys are awesome." I pay the men and step outside, turning left to head toward Tremont Street. I fumble with the packaging for the camera and finally manage to remove it, depositing the wrapper in one of the many trash cans lining Berkeley Street. I pop in my iPod's headphones and resume listening to Coldplay's Viva la Vida album for the thirtieth time in three days.

Chris Martin's crooning falsetto echos in my head as I cross Berkeley and head down Tremont. There are a few choice areas with gorgeous architecture that I spotted on a walk the night before that I want to photograph. Gray clouds start to roll in from the east, cascading over the tops of the red brick buildings, and I pick up the pace, hoping to get some shots in before the rain comes. "Yes" starts to play as I take a picture of a gorgeous side alley. Red brick row houses surround a street with trees springing up out of its center, their lush green branches reaching out to shelter the cars lining the sidewalks in front of the buildings.

When it started we were alright
But night makes a fool of us in the daylight

As if on cue, the clouds grow darker, and the wind begins to pick up. A light rain begins to fall, and people start walking faster. Two girls rush by me and duck into an entryway. I quicken my pace as well and continue to make my way down Tremont, hoping to take shelter in the beautiful old church which I had seen open the other night. Lightning flashes close by and reflects off of the windows of the skyscrapers piercing the clouds behind the smaller businesses lining the road. It's one of those flashes where it's so bright that you know you're going to feel the thunder more than you're going to hear it. A second later, and the roaring percussion rips down Tremont Street, rattling door knockers and vibrating in my chest as if I were standing in the front row of a rock concert.

The wind answers the thunder's challenge and swoops down between the buildings with a ferociousness approaching hurricane strength. It tears at my umbrella, yanking it inside out and nearly wrenching it from my grasp. I break into a full sprint as the rain starts to come down in sheets. I cross a side street and duck into a little corner store, soaking wet after only a few seconds of exposure. It smells of unburned incense and stale coffee. I manage to fix my umbrella and close it, laying it on a plastic shelf. I attempt to dry my glasses with the hem of my shirt, which itself is only partially dry despite having been tucked in. An old man with wrinkled ebony skin and a charcoal mustache is perched on his motorized wheelchair inside the door looking forlornly out into the ensuing storm. A woman with large bug-eyed sunglasses finishes making her purchase and joins us near the doorway.

Tink. Tink. Tink.

The constant hiss of the rain is now interrupted regularly as small hailstones pelt the windows and sidewalk. I take a few steps forward to take a picture of the chaos outside. My camera flashes, and suddenly there is a large black man in a basketball jersey in front of me.

"Look at this!" he exclaims, pealing the drenched clothing from his body. "Two blocks! Two blocks!" No one seems surprised. You couldn't make it two feet out there without looking just like him. "And I was getting hailed on! And when I say hail, I mean hail!" He puts his thumb and forefinger together to illustrate his point and heads to the refrigerator in the back of the store for a two liter of Coke. The rest of us continue to stare at the tempest whipping its way through the city.

Suddenly, the wind shifts and starts throwing hailstones into the store entryway, and the young Asian woman working this shift steps out from behind the counter to close the door. "I've never seen anything like this in all my life!" the buy-eyed lady exclaims. The elderly man in the wheelchair concurs, and they go on for several minutes comparing this storm to others they've seen over the years. I only half listen, my attention mostly focused on the storm and the people still running around in it, some trying in vain to stay dry, others not even making an attempt.

The black man with the soda pays the cashier and steps up to the door. It's stopped hailing now. "Well, here goes," he says with a resigned shrug and runs out into the pouring rain. I'm pretty sure he'd already reached maximum saturation, so I suppose he concluded that it didn't make a difference whether he waited out the storm or just ran the two blocks home.

A few minutes later the rain lessens, and the wind lulls. The old man sets his jaw and gives me a resolute look. "Well, I think I can make it now. It's only just over there." With a nod of the head, he indicates a building a little ways down the street. I hold the door open for him and wish him luck. I decide to take my leave as well, thinking my chances might not get any better. I reopen my umbrella, which is miraculously still functional, and start heading back down Tremont Street the way I had come. Photography would have to wait for another day.

I hurry down the sidewalk, passing a man stubbornly braving the rain without an umbrella, cigarette gripped tightly between his lips. He puffs at it with each step, fighting against the rain to keep it lit. My stomach informs me with a growl that it's time for dinner, and after a couple of blocks, I duck into Emilio's, one of the small family run diners that have sprouted up all over this particular area of South End. Two slices of pizza later, and I'm back in the rain, heading toward my hotel, hoping the storm doesn't pick back up before I reach the sanctuary of the lobby.

I cross Berkeley Street and turn north to follow it a couple of blocks to where it intersects Chandler Street at my home away from home. Along the way, I pass the 7-11 I had patronized earlier. The black man is leaning on the wall in the entryway having a smoke and watching the storm. I tip my umbrella to him and smile. He smiles back and gives a friendly wave as I continue on, my shoes sloshing satisfactorily as I make my way down the stony streets of Boston.

These Guys Are Brilliant

2008-06-23T22:24:00.002-04:00

So we went out to dinner at Morton's last night for our anniversary dinner. We'd eaten at Morton's once before, and we'd even ordered the hashed brown potato before. But last night was the first night I witnessed the most brilliant culinary invention I've ever seen: the bacon tin. Yes, the waiter brought to our table a tin full of crumbled up pieces of bacon. He asked us if we wanted some on our hash brown. I asked him if he would marry me. Then Courtney punched me in the face, tried to stab the waiter with a steak knife, and got us thrown out. We are now banned from all Morton's.

This is all true. /Eddie Izzard

Ok, so we didn't get thrown out, and no one was assaulted. But the bacon tin is real. All restaurants should take notice of this. This thing needs to be on every single table, as in required. There will be salt and pepper and a bacon tin. When we eventually get a house, I plan on having a fun room. This fun room will have a bar. This bar will not have beer nuts. It will have a bacon tin. If you have a problem with that, you and I are no longer friends.

Happy Anniversary!

2008-06-22T17:27:00.003-04:00

Today is Courtney and I's (me and Courtney's? English sucks) fifth anniversary. That's all the fingers on one hand people. We celebrated by giving each other a high five. And presents. And we're going out to dinner at Morton's tonight. Courtney bought me Coldplay's newest CD, "Viva la Vida," which is just plain awesome. I've been fans of these guys for a long time, and they just keep getting better. I could listen to the title track all day, I'm pretty sure. This CD will no doubt encompass the entirety of my iPod listening for the foreseeable future.

She also got me the V for Vendetta DVD and graphic novel. I've seen the movie, and I love it. I can't wait to read the graphic novel, but it's going to be a while. I still have to finish Blue Mars before the beach trip next month, and I'm bringing Watchmen (another graphic novel) to read on the trip itself. My reading list is ridiculously long. We're talking a year's backlog here, at least.

The last thing she got me was a neck pillow for me to take on trips. This is because during our trip to Birmingham on the train, I stole hers multiple times. She claims this will prevent further thefts, but I'm not convinced. I need something to lean on too; those arm rests are hard!

It seems like just yesterday that we got married. It's hard to believe it's been five years already. I guess that's a good thing, as I've enjoyed pretty much every minute of it. I love you Courtney! I can't wait to see what the future has in store for us.

"Because I Earned This, Dammit!"

2008-06-22T15:34:00.005-04:00

My Pet Peeve: Gratuitous use of the word "deserve" in advertising.

It seems to me that the number of advertisements saying that you "deserve" whatever it is they're selling has increased exponentially. Either that, or I just haven't been paying attention until now. Now that I think about it, I'm pretty certain it is the latter. Regardless, I find it kind of appalling that companies are projecting a sense of entitlement onto the United States population (especially the teenage and young adult age group; gotta get 'em while they're young and easily influenced by the groupthink!), and what's more disturbing is that people are falling for it. Just look at the recent real estate fiasco.

You live in the greatest country in the world! You deserve this five bedroom house, three car garage, and two acres of land. What's that? You don't think you can afford it? Step into my office...

Before you go and write an angry tirade in the comments, I'm aware that not everyone affected by the housing crisis is suffering from this kind of mentality. Some people were legitimately ripped off or misled. In addition, I'm not saying that everyone who can afford the finer things deserve them and people that can't don't. I'm sure there are thousands of hard-working, kind, and generous Americans who deserve a better life than the one they are currently living, just as I am sure that there are those who want for nothing, are horrible people, and deserve none of what they have. My problem is more with this trend in advertising and the marketing departments of these companies, not the average citizen.

I'm sure this direction in product promotion isn't just a problem in the United States, but I haven't been out of the country in a very long time to know what is getting shoved in everyone else's faces. My gut feeling is that marketing BS transcends national borders and language barriers. I'm sure these companies would love nothing more than for everyone in the world to feel like they deserve to have more stuff.

I went searching through Google Images to find an image to go with this post, but I couldn't narrow it down to just one. Just head on over to Google Images and type "you deserve it sale." If the results don't make you just a little bit nauseous, congratulations! You're a good consumer.

Jury Duty

2008-06-20T09:49:00.003-04:00

A couple of weeks ago, I received a summons to fulfill one of my obligations as an American citizen and report for jury duty. I had received this once before, but when I called in the day before I was supposed to serve, they said that I wasn't needed. This time, however, I went through the whole process. I was a little nervous about a trial interfering with my business trip to Boston next week, but it ended up just consuming a single Tuesday. And boy was it interesting.

It started with me reporting to the jury lounge to await being called for a trial. They gave you an information packet to read over and also offered you the opportunity to donate any jury pay you would receive (a whopping $15/day for the first five days, $50/day after) to the childrens. I donated all of mine since my company still pays me when serving on a jury, and I proceeded to waste an hour or so surfing the net. It was nice of them to provide free wifi, but the network was locked down tighter than Maid Marian's chastity belt. I couldn't even log in to Google Talk or Yahoo Messenger. AIM, though, is apparently acceptable.

(Sidebar: In Googling to see if I spelled Maid Marian right, I learned that Ridley Scott is doing a remake of Robin Hood where Robin Hood is portrayed as the bad guy. Ridley Scott is one of my favorite directors, but I have some reservations with him drastically changing such an iconic character as Robin Hood. But if anyone can make it work, he can.)

After an hour or so, I was called up to a courtroom to possibly serve on the jury for a trial. The judge asked us some questions to determine if we'd be fair and impartial, such as whether we knew anyone involved in the case or if we'd had bad experiences with the court system in the past. After that, she called up the first twelve people to the jury box. She went down the line one by one and asked the defense and the state whether or not they wanted to seat or strike the potential juror. Each side gets four strikes, and the defense (who was representing himself, more on this later) used up three of his four strikes in the first five people. I'm not sure he knew there was a limit until the judge reminded him after his third strike.

Pretty soon all twelve jurors and an alternate were seated. I'm not sure how I thought an alternate worked before, but it caught me by surprise that they are there for the whole trial and only leave when the jury goes into deliberation. This makes sense, of course, because if something happened to one of the jurors, and the alternate wasn't there for the whole trial, then they would pretty much have to start over. It makes perfect sense, but for some reason at the time I thought it odd that she was there. Stupid brain.

The trial itself was kind of a circus. As I mentioned before, this guy was representing himself in an attempt to refute charges of running a red light and driving while impaired. He was supposed to have a witness, but this witness never showed up. He also mumbled and trailed off when explaining to the jury why he was representing himself. (No one asked him this question; he was just rambling in his opening statement.)

The entirety of the evidence in this trial boiled down to the testimonies of two officers and the defendant, as well as a printout from a breathalyzer machine which said that the defendant did not provide a sufficient air sample to be processed. The state, being the professional lawyers they are, were very direct and brief in their questioning. However, when the defendant was questioning the officers, there were several points where I had to do my best not to burst out laughing in the middle of the courtroom. This was a guy who had seen one too many Law and Order reruns. Sample scene in 3... 2... 1...

The defendant paces deliberately in the center of the courtroom, hands clasped behind his back.

Defendant
So, officer, how long would you say you were in the testing room with the defendant?

Officer
Oh, I'd say about forty or forty-five minutes.

Defendant
(triumphantly, with hands up in front of him)
Forty-five minutes!

He did this several times, where he would ask a question completely irrelevant to the charges at hand and then act as if the answer were some sort of shocking revelation which helped make his case. It was all I could do not to laugh at him, and I could see that several of the other jurors were stifling their own giggles. When it came down to it, all he did the entire trial was to try and misdirect us with questions and testimony that had nothing to do with what he was charged with. We went with the testimony of the officers (he had failed the field sobriety tests before being taken to the station) and the refusal to provide a sufficient breath sample to be analyzed by the machine as reasonable proof of the charges and convicted him.

All in all, I found the entire process to be quite interesting and educational. The trial itself was compelling enough, even if I started to get pissed off when the defendant asked the officer about twenty different versions of the same question and also when he deliberately asked questions about things which didn't happen in an effort to trip up the officers. (The crimes in question had taken place almost two years ago. For some reason, the trial had been postponed multiple times.) Other than that, it was nice to see the process at work. Though my faith in the upper realms of our government has almost completely eroded, my confidence in my fellow everyday Americans has been reassured. We may have to fight for some of the things we've lost, but what we still have is pretty great.

Why I Push Buttons: A Programmer's Journey

2008-06-18T20:40:00.008-04:00

I've always loved pushing buttons, ever since I was a little kid. There's just something about pressing a button, feeling it sink and make contact, and having that do something that is innately satisfying to me. Pushing buttons to me is akin to breathing; it's an involuntary muscle reaction. In fact, I go so far as to press down all the little tabs on top of the plastic soda lids every time I get one. If there were several of us trapped in a room with a big red button labeled "DO NOT PUSH," I'm the guy you'd have to worry about destroying us all.

I blame my grandparents. My dad's parents, to be specific. They were the ones who got me hooked on buttons at a very early age. They would always let me call the elevator and order it to whatever floor we needed. Such power wielded at the tender age of three! But it didn't stop there, oh no. There were several toys I was given over the span of a couple of years that would set my life on a course that I would never be able to change.

I don't remember which came first, the hand-held pinball game or the Speak'n'Spell, but I was captivated by those machines for hours on end. I'm pretty sure my parents spent more money on batteries than on my college education. The fact that I could press buttons and make letters appear or hit a little pinball around a virtual table while accumulating the high score captivated my little mind like nothing I'd ever experienced in my few years of life. Hours long trips to the beach or to relatives' houses seemed to last mere minutes while I played in my digital realms.

After I outgrew the Speak'n'Spell, my grandparents presented me with the awesome WhizKid. At least, I'm pretty sure that was the name. I can't for the life of me find a picture of it on Google Image Search. It had a huge base with a thin keyboard that flipped up and locked into place over the display, and the games ran off of little flexible cards. If you know what I'm talking about and can find an image, I'd appreciate it. Then all of the intarnets will bow to your web-fu.

After the WhizKid, it was a small portable computer system with a single line display. The text would scroll across the LCD, letting you play hangman and other games, as well as asking you math, geography, and history questions. This little machine was also my first introduction to computer programming, as it had a very rudimentary form of BASIC on it. I was entirely too young to really understand how intricate programming was, and I don't think I was even able to grasp the concept of a variable at that point. But I did manage to figure out the PRINT command, and my rapidly developing brain found this utterly fascinating. I could make this machine say whatever I wanted it to say, and it had to do what I told it! Even if it was "Poop!" (Not surprisingly, I still find this highly amusing.) I was on a pre-pubescent power trip from which I would never recover. Many machines came and went during my early childhood, from my friend's Atari 2600, to my first Nintendo, to a Sega Genesis; they all impacted my life, even if some were not as important or memorable as others.

From grades four and up I was fortunate to attend schools which had computer labs. I didn't care if they were IBMs or Macintoshes, as long as I got to use a computer. Computer lab was my absolute most favorite thing to do at school, and I loved using these machines to engage my mind with activities like Number Munchers and Oregon Trail. It would make me sad when computer lab was over because I knew I would have to wait for an entire week before I got to play on the computer again.

My first exposure to industrial strength computers came when I went to visit my aunt and uncle in Houston. They both worked at NASA, and they got to take me on a personal tour of the complex. I even got to go into Mission Control and watch them launch a satellite. They even let me play at one of the stations, allowing me to put on a headset and talk to the other engineers! It was fantastic and pretty much my life's greatest accomplishment up to that point.

After the tour, they took me back to their place, where they showed me their IBM PC and set me up with Wolfenstein 3D. I can remember the first few minutes of this like it was yesterday. I was amazed that I was able to walk down halls, open secret passages and doors, and shoot nazi scumbags all while collecting tons of treasure! Apparently I also learned to swear in German, yet another educational experience point gained from computers. I remember that when I first started playing, the game made me feel nauseous, as I'd never been exposed to any kind of 3D game before. There were several times where I wanted to quit, but I fought my way through the sinking tugs in the pit of my stomach. I was just too enthralled to stop, and I never told my aunt or uncle how bad I felt because I was afraid they would make me stop playing. After this day, I never got motion sickness from a computer game ever again.

It wasn't long after this trip that my dad purchased our very first home computer: a Packard Bell running Windows 3.1. I was meant to use it for school work, which I did, but the majority of the hours spent on it were dedicated to games. I remember the very first game I bought with my own money: X-Com UFO Defense. I played this game for hours and hours and hours. It had everything a kid could want: space, aliens, explosions, rockets, guns, flying saucers. Those of you who played this game know exactly what I'm talking about. The other game on this system that really hooked me was the original X-Wing by Lucasarts. This one not only caught me in its unrelenting grip, but it snared my dad as well. It served as a great bonding tool, as I would watch dad fly a mission, and he would watch me, each of us acting as spotter for the other. I watched the tiny dots on the radar with an intensity of focus I had previously reserved for GI Joe and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

This computer was also my first exposure to a more robust form of Basic than I had learned previously in the form of QBasic. The first real program I ever wrote was a computer game review program. When you started it, it would bring up a list of computer games that I had played. You typed in the number corresponding to the game you wanted to read about, and it would display my opinions for your perusal. I was immensely proud of this little program, and I showed it to anyone who would look at it.

Through my high school, college, and professional years, as technology became more sophisticated, newer and faster machines replaced the Packard Bells, and larger and more complex languages have replaced the simple world of QBasic. These improvements seemed to come along increasingly more often, constantly feeding my need to find new ways to learn and play. Looking back now, it seems I really had no choice in what I was going to do when I became an adult and joined the ranks of tax-paying citizens. My place in life was reserved at a very early age, and I never once considered veering from the path that would take me there. After writing this post, the very thought seems ludicrous.

180 END

And We're Back!

2008-06-16T12:32:00.002-04:00

We are back from Birmingham, and the trip was a rousing success. As far as I know, Matt and Shelly's traditional Indian wedding was in no way cursed, at least as far as my own actions are concerned. I can't speak for those who showed up late, wore shoes into the ceremony, or forgot to turn off their cell phones. Hopefully their kids don't wind up with three eyes or something. The Methodist ceremony also went off without a hitch, and so, being married twice over, I'm pretty sure everyone was sufficiently convinced that their love is genuine. I mean, I barely made it through planning and being married once, let alone twice in the same weekend. (And, yes, being the man, my participation as far as "planning" goes was limited to agreeing with everything my beautiful wife-to-be said.) Truly, these two are workers of miracles seldom seen by mere mortals.

Being in the south and in relatively close proximity to New Orleans, I was not especially surprised to learn upon arriving at the reception that the happy couple had hired a jazz band for the evening's entertainment. Everyone in the troupe was under thirty with room to spare, and it made me happy to see younger people carrying on "older" styles of music, especially in these days of cookie-cutter Top 40 songs churned out by the monolith that is the music industry machine. The only qualm I had with the band was that they didn't have their sound levels quite right. The trumpet and sax drowned out most of the rhythm guitar, and you could barely hear the poor soloist, a beautiful young black woman with a perfect voice to accompany their musical stylings. Most of the time one was left wondering if her microphone was even plugged in.

However, when it came to actual talent, the band more than delivered, and we danced and laughed... mostly at Brooks. You don't even have to know Brooks, a long-time friend of the groom, to know that he's great entertainment. I imagine that is part of the great burden one must shoulder when going through life with a name like Brooks. There is much less pressure on you when your name is Matt, except for when 30% of the people your friends know are also named Matt, and then it becomes a constant struggle to differentiate yourself. But I digress.

I must say that I really did enjoy traveling by train. It is by far the most relaxing form of transportation that I've used thus far. You don't have to deal with the stress of driving with the myriad of idiots that infest the American roadways, and you also don't have the stress of long lines at the airport, going through security and dealing with the jackbooted thugs in the TSA, measuring out fluids into appropriately sized containers, etc. In fact, there was no security (theater) to speak of at the train stations, unless you count a glass door that was closed (but not locked), which led out to the platform. There were no metal detectors or X-ray scanners, no glorified rent-a-cops feeling you up, and the people that work on the Amtrak trains themselves seem to genuinely enjoy their jobs, as opposed to those in the airline industry who just barely manage to tolerate theirs. (I should know; my dad's a pilot.)

The only problem I had with the trip was sleeping. The seats on the trains lean back great deal farther than those on a plane and have at least twice as much legroom, but I'm one of those people who generally sleep on their sides, which is difficult for me to do in a chair. We tried to upgrade to a sleeping car for the trip home, but they were sold out. I imagine that if you're in one of these, train travel ceases to become a way to get from point A to point B and becomes an experience. Other than difficulty sleeping and the fact that the train car was kept at around fifteen degrees below zero (I understand some of the staff are former penguins), the trip was thoroughly enjoyable. We had our evening meal in the dining car, and the food was excellent, on par with what you would expect at a pretty good restaurant. Salad, entree, a half-bottle of wine, and dessert came in at just over $50 without tip. I think that's a pretty good deal, considering they have a monopoly on hot meals. So, if you ever find yourself needing to travel a few hundred miles, and time is not a huge issue for you, I recommend trying the train. I'm pretty sure with regular use it will add years to your life.¹

¹ "Addition" of time to the life of the user is based on retention of years that would otherwise be subtracted had the user chosen to travel by plane or car. Train use has not been approved by the FDA and is intended for transportation purposes only. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice. This footnote brought to you by letter iota and the number zwei.

Planes, Trains, and Automobiles

2008-06-12T12:59:00.005-04:00

We're leaving later this afternoon to head down to Birmingham, Alabama for one of my former college roommates' wedding. We looked into flying down, but with fuel costs being what they are, the price was going to end up being around $600 for both Courtney and I. That's just a bit ridiculous. Courtney did some research, and it turns out that tickets on Amtrak from DC to Birmingham are about $200 cheaper. So, today will be my first ever trip on a train.

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We interrupt this broadcast to bring you

BONUS POINTS

I don't have to deal with stupid drivers OR the morons at the TSA! That's what I call a win/win. I can just relax and do some reading.

We now return you to your regularly scheduled programming.

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There's a huge number of stops on the way down. Apparently, this train runs from New York to New Orleans. It will be an overnight trip, which should be interesting, since we don't have a sleeper car. I've heard that the chairs on the trains lean back pretty far, though, so hopefully it won't be an uncomfortable trip, and hopefully the constant stops won't wake me up. Once we get to Birmingham, Julia will pick us up and take us to the airport to pick up our rental car for the weekend. The last time we rented a car, it was ridiculously expensive, but that was because we were on our honeymoon and both under twenty-four at the time. It should be much less expensive this time around.

The wedding itself is taking place over two services. The first service is on Friday night and is (I think) a traditional Indian wedding service. The service on Saturday is the standard wedding service that is the staple of western culture. I'm interested to see what the Indian wedding service will be like. I just hope I don't somehow violate some ancient Indian tradition through my cultural ignorance and curse their family for seven generations or something.

By the way, this is the third wedding we've been to this year, and we still have two more on the schedule. Three of the five weddings require a great deal of travel and overnight stays. At least we're not in any of the weddings, or we probably wouldn't be able to afford to go to all of them (plus buy the couples presents). This stuff is getting expensive. From this day on, I demand all of our unmarried friends and family consult us on the date of their wedding. If we already have three weddings for a particular year, you're going to have to postpone. Now taking reservations.

You Can't Be Serious...

2008-06-11T21:40:00.002-04:00

Come on, Matt. Enough is enough. I've looked at your profile, and this is your... fourth... your fourth blog. Because what you need is another freaking blog.

Hey, shut up, me.

Sorry about that. That guy can be kind of a jerk. Yes, as you may have noticed, I'm racking up quite the blogroll here. I figured out what my problem is, though. I attempted to separate all of my thoughts into certain types and store them in distinct places, and it turns out that, honestly, I just don't have enough interesting thoughts to keep three separate blogs going. Not only that, but there were things I would like to write that I didn't post because they didn't "fit" in any of my previous blogs, so they just fell by the wayside. This blog will hopefully be the last until I'm able to build my own website. I don't anticipate having the time or inclination to do this in the near future, so I expect this to be my home for quite some time. It should actually be worth it to bookmark this one.

Now, if you'll pardon me for a few moments, I need to take care of some business.

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I'm sorry boys, but there just isn't enough work to keep all of you around. Matt's Personal Blogosphere^TM is filing for Chapter 11 and reorganizing. I'm not going to candy-coat this; there's going to be some layoffs. There will probably be some hurt feelings, but at this point I really have no choice.

Truer Than Fiction, you were the first, but you were also the least productive. I have to say I don't feel bad letting you go at all. Take some time off, get your life together, and when you're ready, I'm sure they'll have a job for you writing anonymous comments over at Digg or Slashdot. You'll have to work on obnoxious internet spelling and grammar; an extremely racist and US-centric attitude; and a strong aversion to actual facts, but I think you can do it.

Sheer Determinism, you started out a strong employee, and you hit the ground running. I had high hopes for you. Your contributions were both (+5) interesting and (+5) insightful, but somewhere along the way you just got lazy. I'm afraid we don't have room around here for laziness, so I suggest you take a permanent leave of absence. Once you develop a strong work ethic, look up the kids in the moderate and unbiased news media. Actually finding these media outlets is left as an exercise.

Last, we come to you Matt on Poker. What can I say? You ran pretty solid for about two years. Then congress had to go and stick their noses where they didn't belong, and you languished along with my bankroll. For that I am sorry; you deserve better. You were a good worker, and you were great at developing contacts out there in cyberspace. I've a lot of "pretend friends" that I enjoy talking to because of you. You will be missed. Enjoy your retirement.

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Well, I guess that's that. What's done is done. Welcome to my new home. Hopefully it will be a lot more interesting and active than those past. If not, I can always go to five...