Category: Uncategorized

So Justin’s blog reminded me that there has alway’s been something that I have alway’s wanted to say but haven’t done yet. It’s about Matt. I have alway’s wanted to tell him thank you for being him. Matt just may not realize how much influence he really had on some of us. More than just being in Wayward Sun.

You see, Matt was Matt.

We all know how bouncy and energetic he was. We all know that he was the drama and cheerleading geek. He went all out in everything that he did. Just like the rest of us, he was odd. He made it acceptable to be odd. He made it easier for us that were self-conscience to be able to live in our skin a little better.

You see, I was the quiet girl that was everyone’s secret. Always afraid of what someone else would say or do. It took a long time for me to get over that and say I really don’t care anymore. Matt made that possible.

I remember the day that Matt told me he was going to be a cheerleader. I asked him, “are you sure you wanna do that?”. Because I knew that there would be talk and repercussions. (And from his comment about his house being egged, there probably was).

But you know what his response was? “Sure, why not?” Then he skipped off merrily. The same way he did when before graduation he announced he was going on mission. When Matt saw something he wanted to do he did it. He didn’t allow anything else to hold him back.

It’s because of that that I think that he has got some of the best friendships around. Matt helped to bring me out of my shell. I want Matt to know that by him being friendly to everyone, happy with the cheesiest grin, alway’s willing to help (and he did that a lot) his true self showed through all the goofiness. A wonderfull Bright being.

Christy, you have a wonderful husband and catch. Matt I just wanted to say thank you.

And to everyone else how has Matt influenced you?

EDIT by matthew: Formatting, tpyos.

From one of my mailing lists, for today’s polling pleasure, I present to you: How nerdy are you?.

My score was…

========== 5% scored higher (more nerdy), and 95% scored lower (less nerdy).

What does this mean? Your nerdiness is:

All hail the monstrous nerd. You are by far the SUPREME NERD GOD!!!

==========

Dude, when did this happen? I was so cool in high school. Really. I mean, I dressed cool, I acted cool, I was cooler than cool. I was so cool, I was chilling. Hip, ph4t, l33t, and all that good cool, non-nerdiness.

Wait, no. I was a cheerleader. In Drama. And Show Choir. I just dreamed that I was cool and popular. That’s right.

Now it’s time to go back and try to select the least-nerdly answers. I think it was knowing the speed of light in meters per second, and knowing what element Mn was (I memorized the periodic table in high school, and that’s one I remembered) that pushed me over the top…

Post your nerdliness here, if you take it 🙂

Hey Matt, Just wanted to say this looks really great, I love what you have done with the site 🙂

Today, our new Barnsonian, Bryan, wrote something funny. He noted that if it were a category in High School, I would have been voted “Most Likely To Be Matt Barnson”. I’d be mad if it weren’t really true (and if you thought I was bad the year you were there with me, you should have seen the Train wreck of the years after.. I was to Matt what Bizarro was to Superman.. same idea, but wacked)

So, sparked by that, and by the redesign of the site, I thought it might be appropriate to reintroduce, the bloggers here.. and how they came to the site. I don’t know whatever happened to Bryan, nor does he to me.. I don’t know exactly Curtis’s relation to Matt, nor do I know really where Weed came from. Ante up again.. who are you?

Here are some funny quotes that my wife forwarded to me today. I have them posted on Brusco.org, but since i don’t get alot of traffic there I figured i would post them here as well.

I hope that they bring a smile to your face as they did to mine. Birds of a feather flock together and crap on your car.

——————————————————————————– When I’m feeling down, I like to whistle. It makes the neighbor’s dog run to the end of his chain and gag himself.

——————————————————————————– If you can’t be kind, at least have the decency to be vague.

——————————————————————————– Don’t assume malice for what stupidity can explain.

——————————————————————————– A penny saved is a government oversight.

——————————————————————————– The real art of conversation is not only to say the right thing at the right time, but also to leave unsaid the wrong thing at the tempting moment.

——————————————————————————– The older you get, the tougher it is to lose weight, because by then your body and your fat have gotten to be really good friends.

——————————————————————————– The easiest way to find something lost around the house is to buy a replacement.

——————————————————————————– He who hesitates is probably right .

——————————————————————————– Did you ever notice:

The Roman Numerals for forty (40) are ” XL.”

——————————————————————————– If you think there is good in everybody, you haven’t met everybody.

——————————————————————————– If you can smile when things go wrong, you have someone in mind to blame.

——————————————————————————– The sole purpose of a child’s middle name is so he can tell when he’s really in trouble.

——————————————————————————– There’s always a lot to be thankful for if you take time to look for it. For example I am sitting here thinking how nice it is that wrinkles don’t hurt.

——————————————————————————– Did you ever notice:

When you put the 2 words “The” and “IRS” together it spells “Theirs.”

Have a good Day,

JB

For the many who attempted to visit this morning, I apologize. It turns out there was a cross-site scripting vulnerability in the weblogging software in use here at barnson.org. I upgraded to the latest version.

Known-broken stuff:

• Private messages aren’t working. Note: Fixed this, working now.
• The “theme”, or look-and-feel, of the site isn’t what it used to be. It turns out that the theme I slaved over to get just the way I wanted it isn’t working (yet) with the new codebase. I’ll be doing some programming over the coming days to get this back the way I want it. After some effort, and remembering little hacks I’d done two years ago, I got it looking mostly like it’s the same website again, with the exception of the missing avatars (which were totally changed for this version, it will take time to fix). Still some spacing tweaks to be done, but overall I’m pleased that the look and feel is similar. Now it’s time to plan my next site redesign around the same color scheme, but an improved layout…
• The photo album is gone. I think I’m going to actually leave it permanently gone from its old location, and instead begin using the new photo functionality within Drupal. So long, Gallery. This also means I’ll have to go back and fix some links for pictures, though…
• But on the plus side, the MP3’s are all working!

Let me know if you run into any weird issues not mentioned above; I’ll update this page when maintenance is fully complete. In the meantime, post all you like!

You know the scenario. You are walking down a long hallway. Someone else is walking the opposite way. You’re going to be walking toward each other for at least the next twenty seconds, yet neither of you know each other.

What do you do?

I’m playing this game with myself today: trying to act in a (very slightly) unconventional manner when in a public area. The traditional response, when approaching a person down a long hallway with nobody else in sight, seems to be to find something interesting to look at along the sides of the hallway until within speaking distance of the other person, then quickly look at them, give a brief nod, small gesture, or “hello”, then move onward. This situation changes if there are other people in the hallway; people stare at their feet, sometimes speed up to be walking near the other person whom they apparently know if they don’t know you, etc. If people are carrying papers on that long approach, they’ll tend to shuffle or straighten them with great interest, rather than make prolonged eye contact on that long approach.

I found this morning that simply watching them as they walk towards you definitely creeps them out 🙂 I was playing my little game, and decided to watch this guy as we approached each other. He desparately looked left, right, up, and down, seemingly finding interesting things to look at during our very long approach down a very long hallway, with frequent glances in my direction to see if I was still staring at him.

He gave an audible sigh after I passed and gave a cheerful “howdy!”, moving on.

What interesting body language have you run into? I’m trying to pay more attention to people’s body language these days (a language that, really, still feels like a foreign language to me), and it’s kind of fun figuring out the unspoken social graces which grease the cogs of society.

So this morning I was listening to the radio, and the topic of discussion was labor unions. In particular, labor unions and Wal-Mart.

Wal-Mart’s union history is long and checkered. Employees have repeatedly attempted to form unions, and been met with impressive stonewalling tactics, from shutting down stores where employees were organizing, to firing employees involved in organizing a union, or refusing to hire employees who had previously belonged to a union. The Wal-Mart management handbook states that managers should be “constantly alert to any signs your associates are interested in a union… Wal-Mart is opposed to unionization. You, as a manager, are expected to support the company’s position.

They include an aggressive anti-union video as part of their indoctrination process, and weekly meetings which frequently discuss labor issues in an attempt to prevent workers from supporting unionization.

Some estimates suggest nearly 40% of Wal-Mart’s 1.3 million workers rely on welfare (your tax dollars) to pay for their health insurance due to Wal-Mart’s cost-cutting practices: 28-to-32-hour work weeks, low pay, and extremely high health insurance costs. Workers have provided compelling evidence that Wal-Mart went to great lengths to educate workers on how to apply for public assistance in lieu of company-provided health insurance.

Yet on the other side of the coin, the company is known for hiring disabled people and the elderly as door greeters, being a cheerful place to work, and that for most employees, it does not represent their primary income-earning outlet. There’s a case to be made that the case against Wal-Mart is overblown. The language of Wal-Mart opponents, such as “third-world slave-labor camps” lends itself to easily discounting their opinions as biased. And heck, my family shops there.

Wal-Mart brings in more cash than all but the six largest nations in the world (by GDP). Unionizing Wal-Mart: Good, or bad, for America?

So today I was yukking it up with Jenny Gagne over ICQ. The conversation went like this:

 (12:25:16) Me: That's a good story! You should blog it! (12:26:13) Jen Gagne: Heh. :) (12:26:41) Jen Gagne: My favorite story I ever blogged was my 9/11 shark bite story. Did I show you that one? (12:26:56) Me: URI? (12:27:49) Jen Gagne: http://www.livejournal.com/users/jengagne/19760.html (12:29:57) Me: Reading :) (12:30:12) Jen Gagne: Think you'll love it. :D (12:31:30) Me: I'm gonna have to blog about your blog, you know. (12:31:42) Jen Gagne:  Sure. It's all about recursion. 

So in case you aren’t good at cutting-and-pasting, click here to read her funny (and somewhat macabre) sharkbite story. Doing my part for the recursive recursing society…

So when I was in high school, one of my friends (was it Justin, or someone else?) used to say, “Wow, vuja de. I have the most incredible feeling that I’ve never been here before.”

If said aloud, you’ll realize it’s “deja vu” spelled sideways.

Anyway, so today, I finally learned that there’s a real term to describe the phenomenon, called “Jamais vu”, or “the experience of being unfamiliar with a person or situation that is actually very familiar”. Not exactly the same thing, but close enough for government work.