Author: matthew

I was enjoying a little pillow talk with Christy tonight, and a thought struck me.

“You know what’s cool? I mean, we’re married. We’ve been married for coming up on nine years. I’m your permanent boyfriend. It’s like you’re driving along this lonely highway, and then suddenly you realize you’re not alone, because you see this sign on the side of the road that says ‘No Dumping’, and you’re like ‘Hey, that’s what marriage is, no dumping!'”

Thanks for letting me share.

Over the last few months, I’ve begun developing headaches centered about three inches above my left eye. Very painful, not much fun at all.

Finally, Christy sent me to the store tonight to get some migraine medicine. Excedrin Migraine. It’s a cocktail of Aspirin, Acetomenophen, and… Caffeine.

So it’s 11 PM, and I am given a choice between a headache keeping me up for the night, or the caffeine keeping me up for the night. Not a good choice when both of them involve not getting enough sleep! I now finally sympathize with friends of mine who have bad headaches. These hurt so bad I feel like digging my eyeballs out with a steak knife. I took the Excedrin.

“Potterheads!” I thought to myself as I skulked into Wal-Mart at 12:30 AM to obtain some emergency supplies my wife wanted.

I noticed a pair of wives from my neighborhood. “Potterheads!” I shouted, and they laughed. We chatted for a few minutes about their addiction, and I explained that *I* was here for vital emergency supplies.

I quickly found what I was looking for. Late-night is when they restock the shelves, I rationalized, and that must be why my supplies were trundling down the aisle on a pallet. I grabbed two units, smiled politely to the woman dragging the very heavy pallet, and expressed my wishes that I’d made her life easier by lightening the load on the way to the shelves…

I stealthily crept up to the Wal-Mart checkout counter. A tall, broad woman with a flat nose, thick glasses, and a knowing grin staffed the cash register, rang me up, and commented on the thronging hordes throughout the store.

“Busy Night,” she remarked, “with the release of that book.”

I noticed the filling line of Potterheads in line behind me, each carrying a thick, heavy, blue addiction cradled lovingly in their arms. In my best Gollum voice, I loudly uttered “Potterheads! Potterheads everywhere! What kind of people are you, staying up in the middle of the night to feed your addiction? We all know what you are, yes, my Precious, you’re all FREAKS! What kind of loony would be in Wal-Mart at 12:30 AM just to buy a BOOK?”

I then grabbed my two precious copies of “Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix”, tucked them under my arm to the gales of laughter from the large line behind me, smiled, and headed out to my car.

Life is good. Harry Potter book V is finally out. I finally rolled into bed at 3:30 AM, 220 pages later. Not to be too much fo a spoiler, but Harry is attacked in the first ten pages of the book. You see several of your favorite heroes return from previous volumes, and Harry is put on trial in the chair with the chains on it…

We must go back to the Precious, yes, we’ll see you later!

Update: I finished reading the book at around 6:30 PM today. Yeah, that’s nearly 900 pages in about 12 hours. I had a blinding headache all day today (maybe something to do with going to bed at 2:30 AM, but I don’t normally get headaches). The book really helped me keep the headache off my mind, so to speak. Spoiler and review coming soon!

I just got an email from Sam Graber, who was my best friend in high school. We haven’t talked in like 4 years or something like that. Anyway, he mentioned that he wanted to see my photo gallery again.

Temporarily, you can get to the gallery using this link. The pictures are all still there, but I’m trying to convert them over to the new system which works a whole heck of a lot better with my weblogging software. Happy viewing!

How often do you think about the potential corollary to a statement you are making? A corollary is something that follows without requiring proof from a statement already proven, a deduction or inference, or a natural consequence or result. Does it even matter?

“I know I’m raising my kids right because they pray to Jesus every night.”

Is the corollary to that, “I know you aren’t raising your kids right because they don’t?”

As mad as it may make some die-hard anti-religionists out there, I’m going to say “No. The two have nothing to do with each other in the mind of reasonable people.”

I found myself thinking about corollaries today because I went to church. This is a somewhat rare occurence lately, and entirely by choice. Most of my friends and family (although not all unless they stumble across my blog) are aware that I’m actively non-theistic. I hesitate to use the word “atheist” because people assume that implies anti-religion, which I am not. I simply think that religion is irrelevant to my daily life, and has been for a very long time. Last August began letting my wife and close friends in on that fact.

Anyway, my daughter asked me to come because the “Primary” (an LDS church word for “babysitting and religious indoctrination for children 12 and under”) was going to be singing a couple of Father’s Day songs and she wanted to sing to me. I enjoyed the singing, and the winking glances sent my way by my daughter and son. I smiled and enjoyed their show of affection immensely.

The only unfortunate part is that I had to sit through some rather insufferable speeches. That’s part of the reason I stopped going, was simply that sitting through classes where they expect you to agree and not make waves when you disagree with the speaker’s opinion just doesn’t work for me. I’ve had people tell me that’s not true, and that the religion doesn’t discourage differing opinions when those opinions disagree with the official dogma. Try telling that to the Bishop who called me into his office to inform me that Church meetings were to be “faith-promoting”, and that my questions were not. Anyway, there were a couple statements that came from speakers that caught my attention:

“I’m so glad my child came to my husband and asked him to give her a Father’s Blessing. This shows that he’s a good father, and that I’m raising my children the right way.”

Is the corollary to that statement, “If my child doesn’t come to my husband and ask him for a Father’s Blessing, then he’s not a good father and I’m not raising my children the right way.”?

Initially, I thought so, and the only thing that kept me from being upset by the statement was once again reminding myself that, from the Latter-Day Saint perspective, even if I raise my children well, teach them to be moral and good people, spend time playing with them, help around the house, keep myself away from drugs, pornography, and other bad habits, and in every way try to set a good example for them, that’s not enough. Without “Temple” services, taking “sacrament”, participating in other “ordinances”, and avowing myself in front of two witnesses every two years to be free from sin (or at least as far as 14 questions can determine), I cannot ever measure up to the standard of a good father in the eyes of most Latter-Day Saints.

Once I remembered that, and that my perspective and the speaker’s perspective were completely different, I stopped being angry and began thinking about corollaries. If one assumes as fact that a God requires worship and supplication from His worshippers in order for them to be good fathers, then it follows that one who does not do that is a bad father. This is not an insult to the “bad father”, but a logical conclusion following from a completely different set of basic assumptions. Barring a dramatic opinion change on the part of the theist or non-theist, this gulf is quite difficult to cross.

Quite some time ago, I worked for a small company called “Talk2”. They were founded on the somewhat laughable proposition that internet-based speech-recognition technology would revolutionize the telephone industry, and they could make a fortune by so doing. They were partly right, but it’s turned out that voice services are just a small part of the standard suite of services with any cell phone these days. They’ve reinvented themselves as “Spontaneous Technologies”, and are focussing on VPN stuff now with maybe a dozen employees.

Anyway, a co-worker named Joel Hull, during one of our several religious discussions at work, made the statement one day that has stuck with me.

“Just because I think I’m right, doesn’t mean I think that you’re wrong.”

If we all approached life with this perspective, I think there would be fewer hard feelings and a lot more understanding in this world. I’m going to keep trying to remember this as I continue to explore Life Without Personal Religion.

I realize this is probably rather too intimate for a public forum, but a few months ago my wife and I had a discussion. She’s very actively Mormon. I’d been working very, very hard toward trying to be a better father and improving myself (exercise videos and all that), and I felt I’d made tremendous gains. In a late-night discussion, I asked her “Do you think I’m a better husband and father than I was back when I acted religiously?”

Her answer cut me to the core. “No,” she said. No explanation. I fumed, rolled over, and tried to go to sleep as that “No” echoed through my brain for hours.

The next day, she amended her statement of the night before. “In every way not involving religion, you are a better husband and father now than you were a year ago.” It felt lame, and too little too late, yet I’ve found that I can’t stop thinking about the statement for the last three months. It sent me into a bit of a downward, depressed spiral, thinking that my wife thought I was a worse husband and father, even when I practically bleeding out of the ears in my efforts to be one.

Now, I get it though. If your base assumption is that it’s impossible to be a good father without religion, then you’ll assume I’m a bad father for disavowing religion. My assumption is different — but it doesn’t make anybody else wrong. Now time to go be a good Dad.

I’ve been participating in a Slashdot Discussion today which contrasts well-known civil liberties advocate and scholar Lawrence Lessig against an RIAA representative discussing copyright. As a proponent of balanced copyright (what we have today is considerably unbalanced, in my humble opinion), this article fascinated me to get a glimpse of Lessig’s opinions and those of the recording industry. One of my favorite Lessig quotes is “Record companies value their artists in the same sense that cattle ranchers value their cattle.” Or something like that 🙂 Anyway, read more for snippets of discussion I found interesting and thought-provoking…

(Node is unfinished, sorry for publishing early.)

I came across a fantastic article about correct preparation and seasoning a Wok for use today. I’d never really understood the idea behind “seasoning” a pan before. The concept seemed repugnant to me — I mean, you’re making it ugly and black and look like it’s covered and cruddy. That’s just gross. But now that I understand how and why to do it, I’m eager to throw away some of the Teflon crap at our house and season myself some cast iron…

Check out the Wok Seasoning article here

I’m updating to the latest version of Drupal. Thus you may note the lack of any theme and strangeness from time to time. I apologize to my half-dozen readers for the inconvenience 🙂

Please note that the Gallery is down for the time being. I’m working on a new photo gallery to replace it. It still has a couple of issues (notably, problems submitting items at any resolution lower than 1280×1024). Once I’m done, though, it should be a lot more integrated and nicer than the old gallery.

UPDATE: Got the upgrade in. Cool, you should see more updates now that the Blogger API is working right. I’m excited to load up the pages on my laptop and have an opinion written by the time I get to work in the morning…

First, I haven’t posted any blogs in a while because I’ve been working on the web site for my Planetside outfit, the Outlanders. You’ll see a link to that site on the right-hand side. It uses the same technology as Barnson.org to drive it (Drupal), but it’s a newer version. Once that new version graduates from “release candidate” to “release”, I’ll be updating Barnson.org as well.

Second: My life used to be pretty boring to all appearances. Yeah, I’m always excited about my work, technology, and music, but outside of those arenas, we didn’t have much in the way of interpersonal conflict with neighbors or any other strangeness to be worried about. I mean, it seems like there are people who thrive on disasters. For a really great treastise on this subject in an easy-to-read fiction form, try The Losers, by David Eddings. It’s an engrossing read by a popular fantasy author, but it’s not fantasy. It’s a modern-day urban good vs. evil morality play, and really worth the time to read. It’s not very long, either.

Unfortunately, I found my life closely resembling The Losers last night…

Anyway, our life was pretty routine until our neighbor (I’ll call him Jim) married a Russian bride he found through an agency (I’ll call her Nona). My wife and his new wife became friends, and kept in touch even after this neighbor and his kids moved up to Canada. They started having some marital problems I won’t go into, which culminated in her arranging to come back down to the U.S. and then go into hiding with her children. Obviously, her husband was upset and suspected us of complicity in her decision to run from him. We know little more than he does about her whereabouts, other than that she’s found a safe place to stay. But that was just the beginning of the excitement.

Before I go on, allow me to caveat that we are nosy neighbors. No ifs, ands, or buts about it, we want to know what’s happening in our neighborhood, particularly if it involves those we know and care about. Part of our development is “twin homes” (townhomes that only share a single wall), so we live pretty close to a lot of people. More so than larger acreage Suburbia. We’ve known these neighbors having marital problems for years now, and consider them both friends, although the husband seems a bit psycho at the moment.

So it was with great distress my wife peered out the window and noticed several men in white t-shirts hauling stuff out of Jim’s kitchen, and handing it over the fence to other waiting men on their side of the house. In general, this activity resembled one called “burglary”.

I did a dumb thing, I guess. I hopped on my bicycle, rode around the corner (I figured my bike was a safe bet if I had to get home in a hurry, I was about to confront at least 3 fully-grown men and accuse them of burglary), and parked it in the street in front of their house. I must admit it. I was scared. Scared enough, and with enough adrenaline pumping through my veins, that my hands and knees were shaking. I just hoped that the men I was confronting wouldn’t sense my fear confronting them. I’m really a wimp, a very non-confrontational person that would rather talk my way out of any problem than fight my way out.

“Excuse me,” I began as I approached the front steps where the men and two women were hanging out, “I have a concern.” I walked closer to the steps and stopped about five feet away. “A few minutes ago, my wife noticed you guys taking items from your neighbor’s house here and handing them over the fence. I’m friends with Jim, and would appreciate it if you put them back. The police are on their way now.” I added that last part because my wife had dialed 911 to report the burglary, and the look on the face of these men, particularly the chubby blonde one to my left, were murderous.

I received a moment of stunned silence in return.

“What do you think you’re doing, riding your bike over here and accusing us of stealing?” shouted the blonde. From his slightly slurred speech, I guessed he’d been drinking.

The goateed, brown-haired guy in a wife-beater t-shirt (you know the type I’m talking about, mesh tank-top undershirt) seemed to take a more moderate approach. “Hang on a second. We’re just hanging out here, having a few drinks. What are you talking about?”

I reiterated what my wife had seens almost verbatim from the first time, but this time he caught on.

“Oh, man, that’s not it at all!” replied Goatee. “You see, Jim’s my friend too,” (I consider this unlikely, since Jim had been living in Canada until the day before since these new neighbors had lived there, but I digress,) “and he asked us to keep an eye on his house. His wife showed up in a big gray van with two other women today and hauled like twenty things out of the house. We were afraid she was going to take the rest, so we brought the TV and stuff over here. I mean, there’s like nothing in there, man, it’s pretty bare. We were even thinking about buying their house.”

In my mind, I thought about the surroundings. They had been handing items over the back fence, when they could have easily used the front yard and the nice, large front doors. All the lights were off in their house, when you’d think they’d at least want the kitchen light on so they didn’t trip over the stuff they were supposedly safeguarding from Jim’s wife. They had been whispering to each other very quietly as they moved the items over. I smelled bull manure being thrown my way, here.

“For some reason, I doubt,” I began, but Blondie interrupted again.

“Look, this is ridiculous. He left his door unlocked and asked us to watch his house. You’re accusing us of stealing his stuff. Why don’t you keep the TV at your house if you’re so concerned about it?”

I was, for a moment, completely thunderstruck by the leap of illogic. Was he actually implying that he thought they could make this right by giving me my neighbor’s stolen goods? Apparently so.

“I have no desire to keep Jim’s television,” I replied. “I think it should stay in his house where it belongs. For some reason, I doubt Jim asked you to take his stuff out of his house to protect it.”

“Wait a second, dude,” Goatee said as he backed into his house. I wasn’t sure what he was up to, and I wasn’t entirely certain I wanted to find out. In his absence, the quiet Tall Guy in the corner, the two women sitting on the front porch, and Blondie all began trying to explain what was up, and how they were actually just concerned neighbors trying to guard Jim’s goods from his “bitch” wife. I nearly laughed, because I know Nona, and that would be the last word I’d use to describe her mildly hyperactive yet affable demeanor.

In a few moments, Goatee popped out of his house, a twenty-one inch television in his arms. “Here, dude,” he said, “take the television. Keep it at your house. We’re just trying to be good neighbors.”

I backed away and held up my hands. “No, thank you, I don’t wish to touch it.” In the back of my mind I was thinking because I’d really rather not have my fingerprints on your stolen goods. “I’d just like for you to return it to his house, and lock the house on the way out.”

I could sense their mood gone from initial shock and outrage, to planning. I didn’t want to stick around to see what they’d planned, so I said my goodbyes, hopped on my bike, and rode back home. My wife and I had a discussion for a few minutes about the incident. She reminded me that these same neighbors had stolen the dog run out of Jim’s back yard several months earlier, and only returned it when confronted. In her opinion, these people were of the opinion that if nobody lived there, then nobody wanted the house or its goods.

A few minutes later, two city cops arrived. They had us explain the situation, immediately went over next door to speak to the perps, and then returned with some forms for us to fill out. The lady cop informed us that the police could not enter Jim’s home without a search warrant or Jim’s permission, and that she did not see any out-of-place items at Goatee’s home that appeared to be stolen goods upon being invited in to investigate. They also couldn’t prosecute without the homeowner filing charges. I think I’ll call Jim today to let him know what happened. Anyway, we gave her contact information for Jim, then bid goodnight.

There was a lot of movement in Goatee’s house later that night. Lots of moving around, lights turning on and off; they were up later than we’re used to them being up. I had some insomnia, mainly due to stupid worries about what these irrational neighbors might do in retaliation for us turning them in.

I guess to sum it all up, either these neighbors were colossally stupid in the execution of their Good-Samaritan ideals, or they were trying to cover their burglary by justifying the crime. I suspect the latter, given the total illogic of waiting until midnight to hand things over a backyard fence with all the lights off. But hey, maybe Jim will give them the benefit of the doubt. Given that he’s back in Canada, though, I think there’s not much he can do, so I suspect these would-be thieves will get away scot-free or be able to explain their way out of prosecution.

UPDATE 11 June 2003: Those of you following the story might be interested to know that I called Jim, and he informed me that he asked those neighbors only to watch and call him if Nona showed up at the house. Definitely burglary, and he wants to press charges. I’ll keep this entry updated as news progresses.

Here are some tips I picked up recently off the Sony boards that I thought were relevant. If you don’t play Planetside, this will probably make no sense to you.

Please see the Outlanders Outfit Strategic & Tactical Guide to Planetside for more frequently-updated tips on how to play and excel at Planetside. With your contributions, we can make this the best player-maintained Planetside tips manual in existence.

1. Infiltration suit + Advanced Engineering + your base about to fall == fun. Stock up three ACE’s in your inventory (more if you can) and put them on the vehicle platform. When you see all the lemmings jostling at the vehicle platform to try to get their dozens of Reavers or whatever, blow the ACEs up. You know none of those guys are wearing Reinforced armor or heavier because they have to go pilot or drive something…
2. Remember that, if you are an engineer deploying Spitfires and Mines, to choose creative locations like the tops of stairs and behind trees. Put mines near your Spitfires to discourage runovers. Even though those Spitfires and mines won’t rack up many kills, you’re doing your job by slowing the enemy down. That’s the important thing, slow them down.
3. When driving a Galaxy, an easy way to get everyone to drop at the same time is just to lock (shift-v, click “lock”) the vehicle. This dumps all your passengers at the same time. It won’t eject vehicles, though. The driver of the vehicle needs to alt-g his own vehicle. And the gunner of said vehicle needs to NOT do so, and let the driver do his job, or else he’ll eject from the plane sans vehicle.
4. Hot-dropping is often overrated. To effectively overrun a base, though it’s not as impressive, park your galaxy a minute’s run from the base. The surprise is much better than a huge red blip on their radar letting them know there’s incoming.