Matt Stratton’s blog

Scout all tucked in

nobody@vox.com(Matt Stratton) — Wed, 29 Nov 2006 17:47:22 -0800

Scout all tucked in
Originally uploaded by Matt Stratton.

I'm sorry, but if you don't find this adorable, we just can't be friends anymore.

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Thanks for the giving, yo

nobody@vox.com(Matt Stratton) — Fri, 24 Nov 2006 16:50:00 -0800

Wow, I have not updated this old bloggy blog in a while. For that, I apologize.

I've been off of work this entire week. Carrie as well - last Friday was her last day as a teacher, and she starts her new job at Morgan Stanley on Monday. So we had a week of leisure. It was glorious.

Friday night was a pre-Thanksgiving feast Kevin and Nora's house - some great food, and good times with the whole crew. We ate pie and watched Trapper teach Julia how to play Gears of War. Then Ray killed a bunch of zombies with a plastic sword while running around with a teddy bear mask on. Seriously.

Cheez-Threepio

The weekend was spent up in Holland, Michigan, visiting Angie and Brian and checking out their new house. It was pretty cool, even though it reminded Carrie of her grandparents' house. Probably the coolest thing was that in his office,Brian has a cardboard robot named Cheez-Threepio. Do you have a Cheezit robot? Of course you don't. It's okay to be jealous.

It's a shame that Brian and Angie don't live closer - Brian and I are kindred spirits in nerdary. While Angie and Carrie talked about wedding plans, Brian and I had a long, in-depth conversation about our disk strategy for Time Machine in Leopard. I have some more cool pictures from the weekend, which you can check out here.

Carrie

On Sunday, Carrie and I went for a hike in some kind of forest preserve in Holland - the Sanctuary Woods or something. It was a beautiful morning for a hike, and I got some good pictures of squirrels.

After the hike, we headed back towards home, although we had a stopover in Michigan City to hit the outlet malls. I got a present for Carrie, and she picked up some items as well. During our drive, we came up with a contest, which I will be reporting on - we have set weight loss goals for each of us between now (well, last Monday) and Christmas Day. If a goal is attained, then the person who attained it gets to be taken out on a date by the other person, but the date must be completely geared towards the attainer. So far we've been doing pretty well.

Monday I hit my new gym, and really liked it. I don't know what was up with all the people posting about how the Crunch on Orleans is "dirty" or whatever - it seems to be in fine shape to me, and the people are super nice. I did over-do it on the weights though, and my right shoulder has been giving me problems ever since Monday night. But it's slowly getting better.

On Tuesday we did a little rehearsal dinner sampling at Costa's in Greektown - and I think we've decided against Greek for the event, just because we're not so sure that most of the guests will enjoy it.

Wednesday night we drove out to the suburbs to have dinner with my family. Traffic was awful - it took us two hours to get to Villa Park from the city. Ick. We had a lovely dinner at Anyways, and talked about honeymoon plans, real estate, and Tom Waits. Good times.

Cousins on the Couch

For the Turkey Day of Turkey Days, Carrie and I met up with her family at her Aunt Rosemary's house in Deerfield. Before heading out there, though, we went to church (Carrie was lecturing - I think that's how you spell it - and it was actually a pretty nice service), and then I hit the gym. I wanted to walk around all afternoon with a button that said "I ran two miles today", so that nobody would give me any crap about my portions, but I didn't have time to make one.

Dinner was good. It was nice to spend the holiday with an extended family - although Carrie's cousins crack me up - they all flop all over each other on the couch. It's hard to explain. But still pretty funny. Scout had a blast - he ran around the yard with their collie, Buddy, for almost five hours straight. That is what I call a cardio workout. Seriously, that dog is nuts.

Matt dancing with Caitlin

Carrie and I tried to teach her ten year old cousin Caitlin how to swing dance, which was kind of fun. My favorite part was when I was dancing with her, and she kept saying "No, you have to turn me now", etc. I informed her "Caitlin, I'm leading. You have to follow what I'm doing!" I don't think she liked that idea.

We spent the night at Carrie's parents' house in Wheaton in anticipation of Black Friday. We figured that there would be less craziness at stores in a posh suburb than at the Target in the city. And we were right. We got to Target about three minutes before they opened - we took this time to stock up on our own McDonald's breakfast (Carrie rocked the McGriddle, and I kicked it old-school with an Egg McMuffin). There were about 40 people in line at Target, but when we got there the doors were just opening, so we were inside by 6:01. Carrie walked up to the electronics counter, and asked for the camera we were buying for ourselves (her current camera's battery is being held in with tape). After that, we leisurely strolled the store, and were 2nd in line when we checked out.

We hit Kohl's afterwards - it was almost 7 am by then, so we did not witness the madness that Angie described. The place looked fairly picked-over, but we got some good deals on Fisher Price toys, and waited in a line of about three people to check out.

The only long lines we saw were at Carson's - we went to the mall to check out JC Penny, and went into Carson's to use the bathroom. Every register there had at least 40 people in line to check out - I told Carrie to not even bother looking at any merchandise there :) Apparently they had some kind of computer issue with their POS, so checkout was running super slowly.

Last night we went to Wishbone to check it out for the rehearsal dinner. The food was, of course, amazing - but they don't have a private room, which concerned Carrie. I am going to call the north side location on Monday though - they have a private room, although it's not as close to the church as the downtown location is. All this planning is making my head spin.

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Vox Hunt: Crazy Hat

nobody@vox.com(Matt Stratton) — Fri, 10 Nov 2006 18:53:32 -0800

Show us a crazy hat.
Submitted by Mindy.

Chicken Hat

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Time keeps on slipping...

nobody@vox.com(Matt Stratton) — Fri, 10 Nov 2006 14:46:39 -0800

80s night

This is really more of a test of crossposting to my LiveJournal from a Vox post, but I also should do a general update, I suppose.

The picture is from last week, when we all went out to Dark Room for 80s Night to celebrate Lippy's birthday. I think my outfit was fine for being thrown together at the last minute.

Carrie's 80s Look

Carrie's was a lot better, I think. But she's more talented than I am. I'm actually just typing a lot more crap so as to take up room and make the photos flow better. Aren't you happy that you have to read all this?

That being said, I've spent this entire week in VMware training. It's been pretty cool, although by going to the training, I missed out on a major VMware installation at work. Plus, I was trained on Virtual Infrastructure 3 (ESX Server 3 and Virtual Center 2) and we're rolling out VI 2.5 at work. So when I actually DO get to use it at work, I'll be pissed off that we're using the less cool stuff. Oh well. I got a certificate and a laptop bag.

Tomorrow night Carrie and I will be taking her little sister Meggie out for her 21st birthday. We'll be doing Rush and Division up old school. I have no idea what that means.

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Someone take away this guy's webbernet access...

nobody@vox.com(Matt Stratton) — Wed, 01 Nov 2006 14:40:41 -0800

Stepaway

So I get this email this morning, from "Gary" at the Diversey Rock and Bowl. Basically, it tells me that I have won some free bowling, and all I have to do is print out the attached certificates, make a reservation, and voila. I am off to bowling heaven.

Well, there are two problems with the email. First of all, the attachments are files that end with .sig and .shs. Um, I'm not going to just randomly open these files I've never heard of, even on my Mac (as it happens, that file type is a Print Shop file. I'm not surprised.)

Secondly, this email was sent to about 100 people. All of whom were listed in the "To" field. So that means that all Diversey Rock and Bowl customers whose first name starts with L to M now have my email address. Brilliant.

I sent "Gary" an email explaining to him why he was a friggin' moron (but in nicer terms). The ultimate irony? It was returned to me to go through SpamArrest verification.

Yes, that's right. Mr. Spammy Spammerson of Diversey Rock and Bowl demands that anyone emailing HIM go through a CAPTCHA process.

If it weren't for the fact that we know a hot bartender there, I'd never go back. Unless they send me a certificate for free bowling in a file format that I like :)

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NaNoWriMo

nobody@vox.com(Matt Stratton) — Tue, 31 Oct 2006 14:41:59 -0800

So after hearing people like Fuzzy and Jess talk about it all the time, I decided I would sign up for the National Novel Writing Month challenge.

That's right.

In the month of November, I will be attempting to write a 50,000 word "novel".

I have no idea for a story.

I have no ideas for characters.

But I need to practice writing.

I figure I have a couple things on my side - one being that I have the entire week of Thanksgiving off as vacation, and no plans, so I should be able to hammer out a lot of stuff in that week.

This is a little scary. Actually, I'll just be scared if I manage to finish it. I am good at starting things.

Not so good at finishing them.

Please, help keep me honest, guys.

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Painting by numbers

nobody@vox.com(Matt Stratton) — Sun, 29 Oct 2006 21:36:54 -0800

Nora, Carrie, and Tracy painting

Okay, seriously, that title was lame. But it's late at night, and I'm tired, so you can all just suck it.

Now, on to the weekend recapping...

Friday was uneventful. Enjoyed lunch at Big Sandwich, and after eating a half of a Combo Favorite (pastrami and corned beef on rye with Russian dressing, cheese, and cole slaw), there was no way I was getting anything done in the office. So I came home early. Carrie brought home a chicken from Jewel (nowhere near as good as the Costco chicken), and we watched TV.

On Saturday we sallied-forth out to the suburbs, to the new home of Tracy and Brian, to assist in some madcap painting adventures. We brought Scout along, and he and Levee ran around in the backyard together for about five hours. No joke.

My Mom's Old House

We also walked down the street to see the house my mom grew up in (it's about three blocks from B&T's new joint). It looks different from how I remember it, but then again, the last time I was there was about twenty years ago.

Today, Carrie and I rode our bikes to Heather's house, where I attempted to fix her PC by replacing the power supply. This did not do the trick. I think that it might just be the switch (the motherboard is getting power, but when you press the switch on the front of the case, nothing happens), but I'm not quite sure where to get a replacement switch for an E-Machines PC. So I am offering her the use of my spare PC (which I am, as we speak, installing XP onto) until she can figure out what new computer she wants to get (hers is kind of old anyway).

After our bike ride home, we picked up Scout, and met Nora and Kevin (and Levee) at the dog park for some more canine clowning. It was a long day. We're all very tired now, and for some reason I'm still awake.

I'm also freaking out a little bit, because I'm on-call this week (starting tomorrow morning). Which means that I have to work remotely all week (since you have to be online at a terminal within 15 minutes of being paged, they don't want you even commuting during your on-call week). Well, I just tried to log into the VPN from my laptop, and the remote gateway isn't responding. And the only place I know to find the number of the help desk it on our Intranet.

Which would require me to log on remotely.

Fun times.

Update - the VPN started working moments after I posted this.

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Tech Support, at your service...

nobody@vox.com(Matt Stratton) — Tue, 24 Oct 2006 20:59:09 -0700

My old Mac iifx

Tonight, Carrie and I went over to her friend Jessica's house, so I could play the role of Tech Support Guy/Computer Fix-It Dude.

Her laptop has been in BAD need of rebuilding for some time - spyware-ridden and slow as hell. It's taken some for me to be able to finally schedule with Jess to do the re-image, and even though it took about three hours, I think it was well worth it. I left her with a bookmark to the 512 MB DIMM on Crucial that her laptop will need (she's only got 256 MB in there now, so adding another 512 will make XP much nicer. Actually, I suggested she get two, since they're only about $70 each. $140 is a lot cheaper than buying a new laptop). She was definitely excited by the speed of her "new" computer. I can only imagine how happy she'll be once she's got a gig of RAM in there.

The picture I chose for this post is one of my favorite computers that I've ever owned - my old Mac IIfx. I obviously bought it used (it was something like $10,000 when new), but it was still a rocktastic machine. Stock, it ran a 030 chip at 40 MHz, but I had an accelerator board in it that let you juice it up as high as 70 - although running it that fast made it lock up after about an hour, and I went through three different logic boards. Good thing I was working for an Apple Authorized Repair shop at the time.

If I recall correctly, I had two hard drives in this machine - I think one was 40 MB and the other was 80. Coupled with the 16 MB of RAM and two (count them, TWO) video cards (not pictured here is my 21" SuperMac CRT) this was a tricked-out pony. Especially for 1996, which is when I had it.

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QotD: I Can't Believe I Ate This

nobody@vox.com(Matt Stratton) — Tue, 24 Oct 2006 05:51:29 -0700

What's the weirdest thing you've ever eaten?
Submitted by Megan.

See, the thing is, the first time you eat almost anything, it's "weird". But after that, it's unremarkable.

Take sushi, for example. When I first tried sushi, I could barely believe I was eating it. But now it's like peanut butter and jelly for me.

I'd say the strangest thing that comes to mind (although I may come back and edit this later if I think of something better) would be fried alligator. It tasted like a chewy pork chop. Not very exotic.

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Dancing, redux

nobody@vox.com(Matt Stratton) — Mon, 23 Oct 2006 19:18:10 -0700

Jay and Matt dancing

As I've discussed before in my LiveJournal (but not here, yet), Carrie and I are taking swing dancing lessons, in preparation for our wedding in May.

(For those of you new to the story, I have been swing dancing for a zillion years, but Carrie has not, so I am taking the lessons with her. It's a good refresher.)

It's been interesting, going through this class. First of all, I have a lot of bad habits. I mean a lot. Okay, well, really, only two that I have identified. One would be the bad habit of not going straight back on a rock-step, but crossing my left foot behind the right.

The other is that my steps are HUGE. I am all over the place. Julee actually gave me a good tip tonight - she said "Pretend you're back at Liquid on a super packed dance floor." Suddenly, my footwork got a lot tighter.

What's interesting is seeing the different levels in the followers in the class. There are a couple of girls in the class who have pretty good frame - luckily, Carrie is one of them. Most of the girls have major spaghetti arm. And with some of them, I just get the feeling that they have NO idea what we're doing.

I feel bad thinking these superior thoughts, knowing that the only reason I am nailing everything we're doing is that I learned it back in the last century. And I know that when I was taking Swing II for the first time, I was definitely one of the people that the other students were blogging about as being terrible - except that blogs hadn't been invented yet.

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