matthearn.com

So my good buddy Courtney sends me a link. I click on it. Hey neat, it’s some “hunt down Osama” game. Sure, I’ll play it. Doo-dee-doo, pick up the nukes…okay, this is boring. Closed.

15 minutes later, I’m getting IMs from half of my buddy list saying, “Neat game.” What? I didn’t forward that link. It wasn’t that interesting. But the IMs continue, including replies from people I have on my buddy list that I haven’t talked to in months (I guess I need to clean up my buddy list). What the hell is going on?

The “game” installed some spyware on my system that was going from person to person on my buddy list and sending them a link to itself, without telling me. I can’t say as I’m a big fan of this. Great, I’ve got a virus. Turns out the software, buddylinks.net (and no, that link won’t install the software on your computer, but downloading the games off their site will!), is developed by a group of folks that actually thought automatically sharing links with everybody on your buddy list would be a GRAND idea, particularly if those links installed the software that perpetuates the process! Disturbingly similar to an internet worm, if you ask me, which is probably something covered by federal hacking laws.

So after hours of deleting and reinstalling software, plus going to the buddylinks website to “opt out” all my screennames, I think I’m clean. Just to be on the safe side, I’m running Trillian for the time being. Corey found another way of disabling it through the buddylinks configuration files, but I was able to completely remove it from my system. We’ll see if it returns.

Anyway, through me and Courtney and God knows who else, it’s transmitted through most of my friends and their friends and THEIR friends, not to mention the entirety of CSC (although I’d like to think I’m not the only idiot that introduced it at work…I hope I hope I hope).

So I’m trying to think of a suitable response to the buddylinks folks. Should I send a nasty email? Probably will, yes. Should I attempt to file a class action suit? The idea has merit. Heaven forbid I should ask all my hacker buddies to LAUNCH A DENIAL OF SERVICE ATTACK, since that would be illegal. I could never tell someone, “PLEASE LAUNCH A DENIAL OF SERVICE ATTACK AT BUDDYLINKS.NET” and not feel the pangs of conscience.

I’m having weird dreams again, although luckily not as weird as this one, since that one involved mutations into Claymonters, and scary black guys with bad acne. (I woke up crying like someone had waxed my butt while I slept.)

Last night’s dream started out reasonably sane; I was involved in some kind of ESPN game show that had me playing football with Michael Vick. The only thing I really vividly remember is participating in an industrial-strength handshake, featuring multiple hand-slaps, fist pumps, and rump-shakes. I also made sure to have Michael give a shoutout to his biggest fan, my boy Kyle, for the benefit of the TV cameras.

Possibly sexed up by The Hearn?

Next thing I know I’m at the ESPN studios (I’m not sure how I got to Bristol, Connecticut, but it’s a dream, dammit, get off my case for once), wandering around, chatting with the peeps. I may or may not have made love to Stuart Scott at this point. Suddenly, I’m auditioning for a job as SportsCenter anchor, although I don’t have any prepared material, so I end up telling a couple jokes to some woman inside her house, and then I sang a Stone Temple Pilots song to her. I don’t even know any Stone Temple Pilots songs.

Come to find out, I’m disqualified from the auditions because I went outside to get something out of my truck and missed part of the musical audition. And here I thought the only requirement to be a SportsCenter anchor was dance skills! (I remember saying exactly that to one of the actual anchors, who was hanging around, watching the festivities. He agreed.)

I think it all means I should quit this computer career and get a job calling hockey games on the radio.

In other news, ZICAM IS THE BEST STUFF EVER. The cold I mentioned I had? Gone. I was able to sing my usual Sunday church service PLUS yesterday afternoon’s concert with minimal difficulties, although I was fairly dry. Total number of days sick: 4. This is well below the normal of 2 weeks.

I should qualify the above paragraph; I am still venting slight amounts of nose-juice, but nowhere near as much as I’d be without Zicam. Let it be said: If I didn’t already have a dad, Zicam would be my real dad.

That’s all we have for today, kids, but there may be more tomorrow! And be sure to check out this week’s Strong Bad email (turn your sound on) if you like peeing your pants. I knows I does!

I hab a cod agin. Er, I have a cold again, I mean. I swear I just got over one like 2 weeks ago, but here it is again, squishing my brain like a flower in an unabridged dictionary.

This, and extreme business at work, is why this week is rather light on updates. But fear not! I’m stuffing Zicam up my nose like it’s butter. (Not that I actually stuff butter up my nose, as that would be delicious. I mean, uh, nasty.) It’s not doing much for me yet, but the irrepressible Jared (see picture below in which he is riding me like a retarded pony) says it’s the bomb. I really need this cold to be gone by Sunday, since I have a fairly massive concert to sing. Let’s go over this week’s topics:

• Janet’s Hooter: Whoop-de-friggin’-doo. If I can be permitted to quote Jeff Kay on the subject:
  

  Why is this such a big deal? Seriously. It was a split-second flash of a woman’s breast, for god’s sake, not a live televised suicide.

• Super Bowl: Great game. The few interesting “behind the game” stories panned out in interesting ways, like the breaking of the “Win the Video Game Bowl, Win the Super Bowl” streak, and the whole “2004 Patriots are the 2002 Rams, and the 2004 Panthers are the 2002 Pats” thing. Adam Vinatieri missed two field goals (sure, one was blocked, but he kicked it awfully low for such a short distance), and made the game-winner, cementing his legacy as “mediocre kicker who you absolutely want kicking the clutch figgie.” Jake Delhomme showed he has what it takes to play at this level. And most importantly, Matt is a frigging moron for not putting money on the Panthers (who were +7 and only lost by 3) because Bill Simmons told him not to.

Distant relatives?
• Politics: Kerry’s lead is looking awfully insurmountable to me, which is a pity because he has the looks of a puckered up butthole, with none of the charm and charisma. The resemblance to Joseph Merrick is just uncanny. People keep quoting opinion polls showing that Bush is vulnerable, but I think it’s his election to lose. Vote Libertarian!
• My job: Can anybody tell me why AMTrix 4.4.1 can’t seem to communicate with MQSeries 5.3 on our development/assurance server? I’ve spent 3 days on it. No? Okay, let’s move on.
• I think Congress should introduce legislation making it legal to stab in the neck any man you see peeing (while standing up) in a regular toilet when a perfectly serviceable urinal is available. If they haven’t put the seat up, stab them in the back a few times first to make it more painful. If you have a great deal of surgical experience, you don’t even need to kill them, just sever their spinal cord in such a way that they’ll never stand up to pee again.
• Last week, HW was watching ER, and what do I see but Elizabeth Corday shacking up with some dude! It’s only been like 2 years since Dr. Greene died, right? And she’s already nailing the flavor of the month? (I have to say, she looked rather fetching in nothing but a sheet.) Is nobody else weirded out by this?

Okay, I think my work is done here. I’m going to go back to snorting lines of Zicam and eating hot pockets.

I hate computers so #$*&ing much. I mean, I despise them. My entire life revolves around them, so when they misbehave, I get really mad, like when I lose 45 minutes to an hour of work because Blogger saves via the internet, so even frequent saving doesn’t help. I just wrote a nice long column about the goings-on here at work today, hit save, and poof! Network gets a little sketchy, entire column now gone.

For a change, this isn’t Blogger’s fault, but CSC’s, though Blogger going down has caused similar problems in the past. Can anyone say, “Switching to Movable Type?”

Okay, had to get that out, sorry. I guess I’ll just be typing my column again. Here goes:

The building I work in is old. I mean, really old. Almost as old as your mom. It was built in the 19th century as part of a vulcanized rubber plant, and was renovated in 2000 to hold my group of extremely sarcastic UNIX engineers. (For those of you who know Newark fairly well, yes, it’s in the same complex as Timothy’s, there on White Clay Creek. It’s the really skeevy building with nothing on the outside to indicate what it is.)

Being a 19th century structure, much of the pre-renovation interior was wood, particularly the ceiling supports. It’s a 5 story building, so the first floor supports are holding up the four floors above us. We are fans of this, since it means our workday doesn’t get interrupted by a violent and painful death; our employer is also a fan because of the obvious insurance implications of workers dying on-the-job, even if the reduction in headcount would help with budget issues. Unfortunately, many of the supports were somewhat rotten or termite infested, so they replaced the bad ones with what I assume to be solid steel support beams, the outside of which are drywalled into a square shape roughly the same size as the old wooden supports (about one-foot-square). The wooden supports that were deemed to be in fine shape were left in place.

They are now discovering that some of the wood beams they left in place are not as strong as they had originally assumed, and are replacing them. This sets the stage for this week. They’re replacing one of the beams on my floor, about 30 feet from my desk, so many of my coworkers had to be moved to other cubicles. Thursday morning, workers arrived, and in the space of one day:

• Disassembled and removed any cubicles that were in the way.
• Removed the ceiling tiles and all their supports.
• Constructed a large aluminum frame around the work area.
• Hung drywall on the frame to keep dust in the work area and away from the lungs of fragile UNIX Engineers.
• Attached a door to the room they’d built.

It really was impressive to see. I’d be typing away at the computer, probably writing a nonsensical column about writers’ block, and I’d glance around; hey, they’re taking down the ceiling. I’d go back to typing, and turn around again, and Hey, they’ve drywalled an entire room off, what the hell? It was neat. So today, I imagine they began work on installing temporary supports so they could saw out the old wooden beam and put in a nice tempered steel I-beam.

Around 10am, I’m typing away happily, listening to some ABBA mp3s and periodically going to the International Male webpage to admire underwear, when I hear a bunch of banging noises, as if the fellows behind The Dry Wall are shoeing horses. Normally, I’m all for a game o’ horseshoes (that was for you, DeeDee), but hearing repetitive metal banging is not fun when you’re trying to pretend to work. After a minute or so, it stopped, and I thought little more of it . . .

. . . Until around 11am, when I heard a very loud CRASH-MANGLE-SPLASH noise. I leapt up to see what had happened, and noticed that one of the walls surrounding the work area was missing. Well, okay, not missing, exactly, but piled in a crumpled heap on the floor. It seems that one of the workers had been up on a ladder and somehow fallen through the wall, taking the ladder with him. I can only assume no one was hurt, because whoever fell through it was up and back inside the wall by the time I could see what had happened, and I heard none of the horrific screaming usually indicative of the terrible demise of a small Hispanic drywall-hanger with a long piece of aluminum stabbed through his pancreas.

It scared the bejesus out of most of us. I haven’t been able to work since. Not that I would be anyway, when I could be looking at this.

I had a whole column planned about the Democratic primaries, but I decided to scrap it. Two reasons:

1. It was unfunny. Like, depressingly unfunny. If you read this column, and then read something funny, they would cancel each other out, and you’d go through the entire afternoon feeling horribly unfulfilled. I’d never forgive myself for that.
2. Achewood said everything I wanted to say in 7 short panels: Philippe for President!

So now I’ve got come up with something new upon which to expound. Let’s see…hmm…yeah, I got nothing.

Here’s the thing. I need to figure out how it is that other guys, such as Jeff,
James, and Charles, come up
with quality columns, every day. Hell, I’ve been going twice a week for about a month and the ideas just aren’t flowing.
Well, they are, but they suck. Here’s a list of the stupid crap I’ve come up with for columns over the last week:

• Ask people what they would do with a million dollars and write about their responses. I don’t think I could get more clichéd if I wrote about the Curse of the Bambino, which of course I have already done. Sad, people, just sad.
• Political stuff. Not only am I about as politically astute as lichen, the column was (as previously mentioned) not funny. I can’t be having that here.
• Grammar instructions for blogs. I think everybody’s had enough of crap like that from me, right?
• A simple title: “Why girls are cool.” I think I got cooties from that.

See? And yet Lileks just writes a bunch of stuff about how he’s too busy to write bleats and gets 3,487 hits an hour. Jeff Kay takes a bunch of pictures of fat people at Walmart and he’s got material for weeks. Charlie…well, Charlie is clearly snorting 20 grams of cocaine every 15 minutes. (I wonder if he lets people call him “Chuck” or “Chaz” when they get to know him better. I dunno. Somebody get him drunk and find out.)

And my dumb ass is sitting here, looking around my cubicle, frantically looking for something to spark the old Muse. The only thing that’s really happening, though, is a bunch of tough-looking guys are disassembling the ceiling a few rows over, so they can work on a ceiling support. One of them does kinda look like David Crosby, but how the hell do I get a column out of that? Answer: I don’t. And so you get to hear me rant about it. Which basically indicates I’m not much of a writer, I guess. Maybe I should look for a job in computers.

Wait. Already got that. Dammit.

Today’s post is in the style of The West Virginia Surf Report, which is funny.

I need a camera phone. Not because like taking pictures of things and sharing them with my friends on a regular basis. I need one right now so I can take a picture of my hair and show you why I want to shave it off.

Matt’s hair does not
look like this today

In order to make it do anything, I have to put what amounts to candle-wax in it, and that doesn’t always help, plus it takes THREE latherings of cheap shampoo to get it out. (Suave: 99 cents a bottle, and you get what you pay for.) This morning, I put my usual slather of pomade in it, and mushed it (kinda like playdough) into a reasonable facsimile of Kyan Douglas’ (the hot one on Queer Eye) coif. Went downstairs, made myself a tasty egg sandwich, gather’d my stuff up, and made my first major mistake of the day:

I put on a hat.

What can I say? It’s cold outside. Weatherbug reports it’s currently 15 degrees out there. Ain’t no way I was gonna have my ears be cold for the 15 foot walk from the house to the truck, and the 50 foot walk from the truck to my office building. Cold ears are Satan’s Breakfast, as dear old Great-Aunt Missoula liked to remark. (Alcoholism runs rampant in that side of the family.)

Now, when my hair is dry, I can put on a hat, and then when I pull it off just mush my hair back into position. This morning, though, my hair was wet. I forgot that part of the equation, and didn’t realize my error until I pulled off my watchcap and felt the damage. A quick run to the bathroom confirmed my fears: I looked like Don King, if Don King’s barber had cerebral palsy.

I tried to do a little mushing (Er…zhuzhing), but I was not having much luck. So I wet my hair, hoping to start over from scratch . . . oh boy. Now I look like a horribly sweaty Don King. I give up! So tonight I want to shave my head. Sarah says “hell no,” but she can’t do anything when she’s locked in a bathroom.

In other news, Wednesday was my birthday! Happy Birthday to me! I am now 26 years of age, though I don’t look a day over 19, despite the wrinkles and extreme obesity. Sarah got me a UD NCAA Division I-AA National Football Champions t-shirt (which I am sporting today) and everything I need to run a wireless network in my house, which I will probably set up this weekend. Once that’s done I’ll get started setting up all my old computers, including my linux machine. At some point I’ll have to buy a wireless bridge to connect up my P2, and later on when I get ReplayTV I suppose I’ll need to bring home this little 10Mbit hub I have here at work.

Are your eyes glazed over now? If so, good news! You’re not a dork like me! And you should be proud. Even if I make more money.

UPDATE: My hair has calmed down a little bit. Now I look like a more normal Don King.

Holy Special Needs, Batman! Another multi-topic day! Many of you are probably saying, “Well, that’s great and all, but why don’t you just write one column on each topic and therefore have more columns per week? Dumbass.” In reply, permit me to quote the Great Emancipator, Abraham Lincoln: “Shut up.”

On to the first topic: Women’s Fashion. Personally, I think female style is moving in the right direction: more cleavage, and tighter shirts. However, there are a couple of things I’d like to discuss.

Low slung pants: bad idea. Fewer than 5% of the American female population has the right body style for these, and anyone else that wears them ends up with serious backfat issues. I saw a girl today who had on a pair of low pants and a shirt that was dreadfully incapable of covering the rolls of blubber attempting to free themselves from the confines of her pants. It was not fun.

Capri Pants: I’ve ranted on capri pants in a non-web format before (mostly saying to my wife “WHAT THE HELL IS THE POINT?”). My view is this: just wear shorts. Capri pants merely mean your cankles get cold, without revealing the part of the leg that’s truly interesting, that is, the thigh. If your thighs are unattractive, just get a pair of baggy jeans and some black lipstick and go Goth.

Brassieres: Are you going jogging today? No? Then let them be free. Exceptions can be made if you wish to hoist The Boys up for proper cleavage. It’s not like I wear a jockstrap on a daily basis. (I’m probably gonna get stabbed when I get home tonight.)

Jewelry: You only really need one good pair of earrings, a nice simple gold chain necklace, and two rings, tops. Save your money and spend it on something truly useful, like cigarettes, beer, or expensive electronic devices. (I’m trying to help the guys out here, and I get the feeling I’m gonna get stabbed twice.)

Thongs: Actually, these are pretty cool. Forget I mentioned them.

Next topic: Nachos, or, Tuesdays at Kate’s Are No Better Than Any Other Day. Sarah and I went over to Klondike Kate’s for lunch this afternoon, and we each had the Crab Bisque (exquisite), following it up with the Shore Bird (chicken and lump crab meat in an alfredo sauce over pasta) for me, and the half-price nachos for her. I guess I never really noticed it before, but, um, Kate’s nachos are not good. They’re dry and meatless, and try to compensate with many different chopped vegetables and some chili and beans on the side. I find it strange that the local establishment’s star appetizer is trumped by a similar offering from Taco Bell, and TB uses cheez whiz.

Listen up: there are 3 things that are absolutely crucial to good nachos: excellent cheese, good corn chips, and as much meat as you can fit on the plate. If you want chicken, that’s cool, but be it poultry or cow, slather it on there (with as much grease as possible), and then melt some cheddar and jack on top. Anything else you put on is merely decoration, with the possible exception of beans; stick some beans on with the meat, that’s good times. Lettuce, tomato, olives, and peppers are all nice things to have, but if you are relying on them to make your nachos tasty because you were too cheap to put a half pound of ground chuck in there, you have failed in your mission.

I will brook no argument. Nachos must have meat, and lots of it. Taco Bell knows this; La Tolteca knows this. Kate’s needs to learn this.

In other news, only one shopping day left until my birthday (1/21)! I like CDs, books, and widescreen HDTVs.

Note: It has been pointed out to me that nobody knows what “cankles” are and just think it’s a typo. Well, cankles are when your calf blends straight into your ankle without any of the normal narrowing. If you’ve got them, I’m terribly sorry you do.

It’s a two-topic day! Well, 3. Er, 2 1/2. The last two topics are sort of intertwined, so . . . let’s start over.

It’s a multiple-topic day! There, that’s better. Topic one:
The Weather Gods suck. 3 to 6 inches my portly pink posterior. Those of you not stuck in Delaware are probably unaware that last night was spent in a Winter Weather Warning, meaning The Storm was Heading Right For Us and Nobody Was Going To Work or School for 3 Months.

Skeptic that I am, I kept an eye on the weather map all day. Sure, the storm is coming this way, but the way it is subtly curving, I said to myself, it’s gonna pass north of us. We’ll be lucky to get 2″. That turned out to be optimistic. We got less than an inch. The only thing that closed was the preschool at which my mother works, and they close for sun flares.

Actually, it was rather amazing. I have never seen a storm so spiteful, so determined to drop as little snow as possible on yours truly. I watched the weather map off and on until I headed to bed at 11, and the small portion that knew it wasn’t going to be able to pass north of us actually split in half and went around us on either side. It was like nothing I’ve ever seen. Therefore, the Weather Gods get one hell of an “up yours,” unless of course they defeat Mongo, in which case I shall bake them a most excellent pie, provided they have the good taste not to mention that I spoke to them. Topic two:

The Inability of Most Americans To Speak English. Okay, this topic is largely old hat, but I think some lessons need to be restated:

• The word is pronounced “offen.” Yes, I know there’s a “t” in it. There’s also a “b” in a “subtle,” an “o” in “opossum,” etc. It is, and I’m sure you’ve heard of this before, a silent letter. It is left out. Please stop saying it.
• The word “espresso” does not have an x in it. Those who pronounce it as if it does, such as the idiot local yokel I heard in a Dunkin Donuts ad this morning, will be the first against the wall when the revolution comes.
• We’ve been over this approximately 3000 times. The correct phrase is, “I could not care less.” Those of you who say, “I could care less,” are essentially saying that you DO care at least somewhat, because it would be technically possible for you to care less than you currently do. If you did not care at all, it would be impossible for you to care less. Thus, “I could not care less.” Those of you who cannot understand this are advised to use the phrase “Here’s a quarter…call someone who cares,” so you can avoid getting shivved if you say the wrong thing in front of me.
• Your vs. You’re: I’ve almost given up hope on this one. I’ve grown to accept that the average American is both stupid and lazy, and therefore types “your a jerk” because they lack the energy to type the extra two characters and the intelligence to care. But when I see something like “you’re dogg bited me!!?!” I start twitching. Please just stop using pronouns altogether, I beg you.
• Capitalization: the shift key is your friend. He loves you, albeit unrequitedly. Please learn to love him back.

Related Third Topic:
Cool archaic spelling. This is probably something that most folks don’t run across, but as a church singer I see it very often. Centuries ago, English was largely pronounced as it was spelled, meaning words like “rejoiced” were pronounced “ree joy said,” and and “scattered” was pronounced “sca ter red.”

Later on, people starting shortening things to “re joissd” and “scat turd” (I think scat and turds are the same thing, right? Just remember, when you drop your bag of marbles and they go everywhere, that’s TWICE as crappy as you think), but when they did, they would replace the “e” with an apostrophe, such as “scatter’d.” Rejoiced doesn’t work as well for it, because you need the “e” there to indicate the soft “s” sound of the c, so obviously that was a piss-poor example, but it’s too late to change it now, I’m on a roll.

Anyway, I’m proposing that we try and return to the style of spelling that puts an apostrophe in any past tense word you can. I’m going to start doing it, at least. I thought about promoting “Cool Archaic Spelling Day,” but I suspect that no one would do it, and I’d look like a tool, so I’m gonna start gradually, with just me. I imagine that people at work, or teachers at school, would be confused and annoy’d, so I’d say leave it out of any professional correspondence. But in emails or instant messages or retarded websites, I’d say make sure everything is spell’d (er…spelt? Better look that up) in an amusing, olde timey manner.

Oh, and topic four: (I faked you out! I’m so quality.) Don’t forget to look at Kyle’s New Girlfriends and vote for a winner! And have a superb day.

NOTE: Rick has pointed out I typed “and” twice, a few paragraphs up. I, in response, pointed out that he has an ass for a face, and struck out the offending word. Problem solved.