Unabashed

It’s time again to Turn Up the Thermostat. Here’s your yearly reminder that we were all animals once, no matter what we think of ourselves now. There’s no better time of year to remember that than right now.

written by Matt Mitchell

I just finished reading Crystal Rain by Tobias Buckell, and I am a FAN. What an awesome book. This is not a review, this is just a fanboy proclaiming adoration of a book. Sly Mongoose is next. Ragamuffin is next. Then Sly Mongoose.

written by Matt Mitchell \\ tags: Crystal Rain, Tobias Buckell

Anybody else going? I’ll be there Sunday. If you’re there, look me up, I’ll be the freak wearing the plain clothes. I’m thinking I may really attract some stares with my getup, I’m planning on wearing a tee shirt and maybe some cargo shorts. Seriously, people will freak out when they see how normal I look. I say this because I’ve seen pictures of costumed people from DragonCons past, and while a part of my mind says that those are the rare examples of attendees, I began scanning the background of those pics and realized that even the people on the fringe were in costume. I’ve never been to DragonCon, so I’m looking forward to it. I hope I don’t get beat up for looking so plain. I won’t even have a particularly cool tee shirt. I once had a D&D tee shirt that said, “The only good troll is a fireballed troll.” But my best friend stole it and then lost it. I wish I still had that shirt.

written by Matt Mitchell

In a stroke of near-Douglas Adams caliber genius, Warren Ellis has figured out a perfectly plausible way for mankind to realize teleportation:

Teleportation should be a matter of simply proving you’re somewhere else.

A teleportation device would be a little computer set up to run a single equation. And this equation would prove that you’re somewhere else entirely. You’d plug in the coordinates of where you want to be and press Enter. The machine would run, the equation would solve, proving to the entire spacetime continuum that you are in fact in the other place, and suddenly you’d be in the location relating to the provided coordinates. You wouldn’t appear inside another object, because the universe doesn’t like that. The only tricky bit, I figured, would be that the Earth moves through space around the sun and the sun moves through space with the Milky Way and the Milky Way is subject to the expansion of the universe. But people are clever and would find ways to allow for spacetime drift. I think that if you’ve cracked the mathematics to convince the universe that you’re somewhere else entirely, these small details would be easily attended to.

Interestingly, my experience in the Navy back in the early 90’s gave me a bit of insight into the way a certain flight navigation system called AHRS (”Ahars”) works, which was basically by proving where you were by proving where you weren’t. AHRS never really knew where you were, see, it only knew where you weren’t, thereby providing and exact location for where you were. So all we need to do is strap an AHRS machine to my brain and flip the switch and…well then I’ll be somewhere where I’m not. That might not be good.

written by Matt Mitchell

In the wee hours of the morning, we’re off to Destin, Florida, for a week-long family vacation. There’ll be 18-20 of us occupying a 6BR house. I don’t expect to be totally silent for the entire week; I’m taking my laptop, and I hope to post on points of interest while we’re there. First night out I’m cooking my personal seafood gumbo recipe, taught to me by my cajun granny. Here’s hoping I don’t burn the roux.

written by Matt Mitchell

Knowing that I’m a fan of turtles of all kinds, and always in the market for a new children’s book, my wife bought a book called “Old Turtle” from Amazon. As soon as it came I opened up the box and read it to my two boys. They loved it and I did, too. This book has a message in it that every religion on Earth should read and heed, children and adults, too.

Photo by  ziggiau

written by Matt Mitchell \\ tags: book, children's, old turtle, turtle

Sometimes, like many bloggers, I like to delve into my mass of spam comments just to make sure nothing’s slipped through accidentally. And also like other bloggers, I find that sometimes, the spam I get is so utterly nonsensical that it sounds almost poetic. Take this bit, for instance, from a Viagra spammer:

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I guess the lesson we can all learn from this is to “be deductible to fructose.” That, of course, is only a highlight. If you really want to delve into the poetic brilliance of the entire piece, here it is:

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Yes, mohan, I would definitely agree that you are indeed having problems.

written by Matt Mitchell \\ tags: poet, poetic, poetry, spam

I’m going to see the land Sherman burnt this weekend with my family, so the blog won’t be updated until Monday, probably. In the meantime, here’s a nice little interview with Dr. Michio Kaku that I thoroughly enjoyed. Do your homework, kids, there’ll be a quiz on Monday… er, kidding :-)

written by Matt Mitchell

Well, how’s that for a dramatic change (for the WP theme, I mean)? It still needs work, but I’ve done all I’m willing to do tonight. I hope it’s pleasing to the eye and not too cluttered.

Back to the grind tomorrow: the bathroom carpet dried nicely, in case you were wondering. The boys are in bed and daddy is soon to be. Hope you have a good night, and a good day Friday. I’ll be watching as a tower crew climbs one of my towers, about two-hundred vertical feet, tickled as punch that I’m not the one having to climb. G’night.

written by Matt Mitchell

I’m hating my theme. Expect irritating mods today.

I’m at home all day today–I had a little flooding in the bathroom closet and I’m minding the fans and heaters I’ve got running trying to dry it out. No big deal, just not something I want to leave and come home to find out it didn’t work or caused another problem. Good thing, too: the fan array has already tripped a breaker twice, so I had to get a longer extension cord to find an outlet that isn’t as strained. Just a bother, no big deal.

written by Matt Mitchell

When faced with the question “Should I spend $400 upgrading my current PC or just buy a new one for $600, I opted for the new box. My old one was a Dell, and now I’m using an HP with dual 19″ monitors. I bought it at Best Buy, despite a bad experience I had there a few years ago. And guess what? Once again BB has undermined my shaky confidence. The box I bought had a 320GB hard drive. When I got it home and turned it on, went through all the fundamental setups required by Vista and began loading my program set, I found out the box I brought home only has a 50GB HD, which is only 10GB more than my Dell had. The HD space was one of the main reasons I decided to upgrade. So today I’ll disconnect the new HP and take it back to BB, where they’ll either replace the HD or give me my money back.

Side note: The dual monitors look great! I’m about to kick my productivity into overdrive.

written by Matt Mitchell

It’s not my fault. I don’t know what’s wrong with them. It may be a glitch in the new theme. If you have any ideas drop me a line at mattmitchell8 @ yahoo.com. If you happen to like a post enough to comment on it, a trackback post would be nice. Otherwise I’ll get them back as soon as I can…

written by Matt Mitchell

Okay, I think the theme jockeying is over with for today. I’d found one theme that I really liked but once I uploaded all the files and switched to it I found out it wasn’t widget compatible, so I began the search again (page after page after page afterpageafterpage…) and finally found another one that I liked, not as much, but it was okay, so I uploaded the files and… it wasn’t widget compatible. (FYI: widgets are those neat little Wordpress thingys that make the sidebars so easy to work with. Otherwise you’d have to code out every change you wanted to make.) So I took a quick crash course on widgetizing a WP theme and did it myself. So welcome to the new blog, hope you like it, feel free to comment and let me know if it works for you or not.

–Matt

written by Matt Mitchell

Since the Halloweeny theme is now dated, and since I don’t want to be the internet version of one of those people who leave their decorations up all year, I’m changing themes today, so I’m sorry if you get here in a transition period. It shouldn’t be much longer…

I know I could have just changed the header, but I was getting tired of that theme anyway, and until I’m ready to pony up the bucks for a professional theme then I’ll have to resort to theme jockeying every now and then (usually I get sick of them every three or four months, so it’s probably a good thing I don’t buy my own).

written by Matt Mitchell

Cool guy in Chicago who blogs about his love of his lawn and his mower.

Please pray for me as I am feeling a little empty nest syndrome since I tucked my lawn mower in to hibernation for the long winter to come.

You know it makes me want to go out and give the old JD a nice hug. Of course, my yard (as I discussed with Allyn earlier: I have a yard, not a lawn. Six acres can hardly be called a lawn) is still going to need another cut at least, so I need to square off about six hours this weekend to take care of it. And then it’ll be adieu till next year!

Allyn giving his mower the luv.

written by Matt Mitchell \\ tags: blogging, lawn care, lawnmower, lawnmowers