:mattLandia:

I've been suffering some pretty annoying left chest pain the past few days and this morning I woke up to the worst it's been yet. I didn't want to think it, but I was really starting to worry that I was having some sort of mild heart attack or the like. I called my doctor and described my symptoms and her advice was, "...um, yeah, I think you hang up and call 911". That woke me right the hell up.

I put Boris up and drove myself to Gwinett Medical where I spent the remainder of my day in the Emergency Room. I know I used a definition in my last post too, but for the sake of contrast, let's review another:

e·mer·gen·cy: n. pl. e·mer·gen·cies
1. A serious situation or occurrence that happens unexpectedly and demands immediate action.

Let me know if this definition of "emergency" when used in the phrase "I need the get to the Emergency Room" rings more true with you:

e·mer·gen·cy: n. pl. e·mer·gen·cies
1. A serious situation or occurrence that happens unexpectedly and demands immediate action which you will absolutely not get, and often requires a mandatory 3 hour "sit in a small room with other sickos with nothing but Montel on a antenna driven TV" period, followed by another 3 hour "lay in this backless gown, on a sheet of paper, under another sheet, in our hyper AC-cooled room" period where you have nothing to do but alternate staring between the acoustic ceiling tiles and your IV, hoping like hell a catheter isn't in your future.

My saving grace today was that my old friend Tesha was pulling a mandatory rotation at said hospital (she's the most kick ass EMT you could ever hope to respond to your 911 call) and not only did she personally draw my blood and get my IV stint ready, she sat with me for most of my 3 hour period, regaling me with stories of life on an EMT in Atlanta's projects. Tesha is my new, bonified heroine. One of these days, if she gets her wish, she'll be repelling out of a helicopter and doing search and rescue or the like. Whoever she finds will be lucky to have her.

After 6 hours of poking and prodding, an X-Ray, a EKG and some blood work, it was determined that my ticker is actually functioning as designed and that it was more likely I was suffering for a bruise or small tear in the left chest muscle wall. Still supposed to be painful for another few weeks, but I've been informed that I can help myself to a warm compress and a handfull of Ibuprofen as I deem necessary. Gggrreeat.

Posted by mattLandia at 10:42 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

DORK:
1. a whale penis
2. an individual who is keenly interested in and good at mathematics, science, and technology, and applies mathematical and scientific principles to everyday occurrences, while at the same time being loveable and very personable, often having many friends due to wittiness, often loves video games. Not to be confused with nerd or geek or dweeb.
1. The blue whale's dork is the world's largest sexual organ.
2. Dork: Wow, that light bulb that's flickering in a seemingly random fashion is actually occurring as such due to a capacitance built up on one side of the tungsten filament until it discharges sending electrical flow through the tungsten, causing photonic emission through heated excitation, which then dissipates as you get farther from the light bulb according to inverse square law.
Girlfriend who is also a dork: You're right, you dork. Shut up and kiss me. You're so cute

I came out of the dork closet about 5 years ago. I remember the exact moment. I was interviewing and hiring web developers for a consulting firm based on the quality of their portfolios. Honestly, I had no clue what I was doing, but I would throw out words like HTML, Javascript, ASP, GIF, and Notepad as though they were common enough, but in most instances my context was more in the ballpark of a random madlib.

One day however, I was glancing at some HTML code and I froze in my cubicle chair. I actually understood what I was looking at! The tags, nested tags, and general architecture made sense to me. Granted, I didn't understand the complexities of each tag, but I got the gist of it all. I marched over to Borders, bought the HTML Bible 2 and started cobbling together web pages.

My inner dork was unleashed.

Today my path on the road to DORK continues. Granted, I'm no black-belt dork. Perhaps an aqua-belt. Teal maybe? Peuce? No matter the color, I know that I at least own a belt. Evidence might include tidbits like the the existence of this very blog, I like to shell around UNIX just to say I did, I enjoyed writing a tutorial on how to compress digital photos with MS Paint, and my devotion to Mozilla.

Yesterday, I was reading the blog of a Dork Titan who recently posted a witty, yet compelling call to action on the necessity of data backup. Since I'd actually been mulling over the need to expand my PC storage capability in recent months I decided I needed to be a doer, rather than just a reader. (For any closet dorks out there, note that becoming a doer is the first step out of the closet. Embrace your inner dork, and come joing the movement...)

I stopped by Microcenter on the way home and picked up a 200 GB internal disk drive for $99 as well as an external case for $30. Granted, I could have just installed the internal drive at no extra charge, or bought a simple external case for $10. Not today. Today my friends, I decided to go the "pimp my ride" route and "pimp my drive". Feast your eyes on my CI320U2 XGear-II external enclosure for a 3.5" hard drive. Oh yeah. My hot-swappin', heat dissapating, USB 2.0, 7,200 RPM red-lining storage device has got mad MB storin' skillz yo!

I was so dorked out, I had to set up my camera on a tripod to get just the right picture for this entry.

I got dork cred. Do you?

Posted by mattLandia at 10:25 PM | Permalink | Comments (5)

Posted by mattLandia at 11:44 PM | Permalink

You know it's time for a little more culture when my basketball-coach-sports-crazy-brother-in-law's youngest son Will attends a ballroom dance exhibition in small town Montana and at the conclusion leans over and whispers, "Is it a time-out or is it over?"...

Posted by mattLandia at 02:06 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

This afternoon I decided I needed some "man-time" in my garage. I've been mulling over how to build some portable light fixtures for my makeshift photo studio and I figured this evening was a good as any. Wood was purchased, tape measures were stretched, drills were put into into action with 1 inch diameter bits attached, and a mighty sweat was called forth.

I was feeling it. That manly man sort of feeling. That Old Spice, Aqua Velva, Lee Jeans, Black and Decker sort of feeling. After a few hours of uninterrupted work, lost deep in thought, I sat down to admire my handiwork. Alright, I admit that one of the fixtures leaned a bit to the left and my overall carpentry is a bit haphazard, but overall I was pleased. My project was complete.

As I sat on the garage floor, Boris busied himself with the snorting of wood chips and Blanca sauntered up to me for a little behind-the-ear scratching which I obliged her with. As I was petting her HEAD I glanced down and was shocked out of my reverie by a 12 inch man-eating garden serpent she had tucked delicately between her teeth as if it were a piece of licorice, or a perhaps a Slim Jim.

At this point in my narrative I must confess a deep seated fear of snakes, the Cobra being my most primal of fears. The fact that my trusted cat brought a snake unannounced into our circle of trust was just too much shock to the system. I exploded off the ground and bounded out of the room squealing like a little French girl being chased by Italian gypsies. I can't be sure because my unadulterated surrender to flight (rather than fight) has been blacked out by the sheer humiliation of the moment.

Considering my man-time had been completely voided by my sissy hysterics, I knew I had to redeem my cojones from their hiding place high in my abdomen. I gathered my wits about me, went back to the garage, asked Blanca if I might steal a few moments with her friend and picked up... yes, I said picked up... the snake. I've watched that idiot Crock Hunter enough to know the basics about picking up a snake: pick it up gently by the tail, hold it just inches away from your face, and brag joyously in your best Aussie accent "Oi mate, that's a right beauty!".

Professor Snape (yes.. I named him) and I shared a few moments together, I snapped a few good-bye pictures and then promptly threw him as far into the back yard as I could. **sniff sniff** Parting is such sweet sepertine sorrw.

Posted by mattLandia at 11:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

25 Signs You've Grown Up.

1. Your houseplants are alive, and you can't smoke any of them.

2. Having sex in a twin bed is out of the question.

3. You keep more food than beer in the fridge.

4. 6:00 AM is when you get up, not when you go to bed.

5. You hear your favorite song in an elevator.

6. You watch the Weather Channel.

7. Your friends marry and divorce instead of "hook up" and "break up."

8. You go from130 days of vacation to14.

9. Jeans and a sweater no longer qualify as "dressed up."

10. You're the one calling the police because those %&@# kids next door won't turn down the stereo.

11. I forget.

12. You don't know what time Taco Bell closes anymore.

13. Your car insurance goes down and your car payments go up.

14. You feed your dog Science Diet instead of McDonalds leftovers.

15. Sleeping on the couch makes your back hurt.

16. You take naps from noon to 6 PM!

17. Dinner and a movie is the whole date instead of the beginning of one.

18. Eating a basket of chicken wings at 3 AM would severely upset,rather than settle, your stomach.

19. If you're a gal, you go to the drug store for ibuprofen and antacid, not condoms and pregnancy tests.

20. A $4.00 bottle of wine is no longer "pretty good stuff."

21. You actually eat breakfast food at breakfast time.

22. "I just can't drink the way I used to" replaces "I'm never going to drink that much again."

23. 90% of the time you spend in front of a computer is for real work.

24. You drink at home to save money before going to a bar.

25. You read this entire list looking desperately for one sign that doesn't apply to you and can't find one to save your sorry old butt!

Posted by mattLandia at 10:34 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Darwin would be terribly dissapointed in me. You see, try as my body might, my corpus temporalis simply refuses to evolve into a functioning cyborg. When I was young, I thought for sure I'd have red electronic eyes and bionic fingers by the time I was 30. To my dismay, I am not evolving, rather devolving into a man tormented by pavlovian responses to the invisible cybernetic gremlins that live in all pc's. Consider the following:

1 - Anytime my Intel Pentium 4 microprocessor starts to choke on the volume of computations I've tasked it, it whines in complaint, as though to say "are you out of your damn mind? You really expect ME to do THAT for you right NOW?!" I'm sure you know the sound, the high pitched chugging rythm of millions of microscopic sledgehammers banging away at a slab of silicon. The second I hear this sound, my chest gets tight, my eyes dialate and feel as though I may in fact burst into self mutilating flames. And this is how I feel before my snickers and Dr. Pepper in the morning....

2 - I am haunted by the floating, white, demonic hourglass cursor! Enduring the hourglass cursor is the equivalent of sitting on hold with Comcast cable for 40 minutes only to have someone pick up and say "Hold eh-pleeze" and then accidently disconnect you. I never know when or where the hourglass will appear, but when she does appear, that digital sucubus (thanks Fred Toucher for reminding of me a good word), my head constricts into an ice-pick headache, I break into a manic sweat and grip my desk in a French Guinea death hold.

3 - "Error 404 - File Not Found". Is there a lower circle of information hell!? After minutes of trolling through Google looking for a decent article on "Articulated Cow Knuckles" I am empty handed at a closed door called 404. It's a wonder I'm not bald what with all my compusive hair pulling I suffer in response to an "Error 404". If I ever find that file... I will KICK. ITS. ASS. Seriously.

4 - The sk --ipping m ou se bal l. Ho w amI suppos edtoen ure a mous e that won''t ro llsmoo thly?!!! You call this contraption a "mouse"? This skipping plastic contraption is a shard of glass in my eye; a rabid cat in my speedo; a mouthful of gasoline soaked tacks. If you skip again you damn mouse, I swear I will hunt down your whole right-clickn'-center-scrolling family and throw you all into a raging hell pit where your only hope of escape is to reconstruct the Mona Lisa using nothing but PowerPoint clip art and a stick of glue.

Sorry, I was trying to wrap up but my pc was hanging up agai...

Posted by mattLandia at 05:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

I'm back! Although I never really made an official "mattlandia" announcement that I was taking a week or so off, I am happy to inform you that I am back, plugged in and ready to get back to it.

Boris and I took our first road trip together this week. We drove down to Pensacola to catch up with the family, particularly with my sister Allison and her Montana gang! (Joe, Jansen, Carly, Will and a soon to be named little one...). The trip was great, and can be summed up in one word: FOOD. I ate my way across three days of southern home cooking, packed another 10 pounds of leftovers on ice and kept stuffing my gord another two days after coming home! Grandma, at 91, still has very strong kitchen Kung-Fu and makes a mean lemon pound cake!

Everytime I drive down to P'cola, I have to slow down to 35 mph while cruising through the small panhandle town of Flomaton, Alabama. There isn't an easy way to get from I-65 to Pensacola without driving all the way to Mobile, so instead, I take a 45 mile shortcut straight down Hwy 29, through Escambia County to 9 Mile Road. The halfway point of this shortcut is Flomaton.

This time through, a few things caught my eye that made me pull over and take a few shots.

Posted by mattLandia at 09:51 PM | Permalink

Tonight, as I stood hunched over, staring into the glare of my white, sparse, embarrasing bacheloresque 'fridge contents, I wondered if there was any other way I could possibly makes eggs and bacon more interesting. (I know there are millions of single guys out there this very minute, sitting on couches with hands stuck in their waistlines, chewing their fingernails and wondering the same thing. I just KNOW it.)

Then inspiration struck. I recently had honey bacon off the menu at 'Sun In My Belly' in Atlanta, and upon consumption of said bacon, I proclaimed it the tastiest meat snack since Australian meat pies. "Tonight" I thought, "I will aspire to Bacon Mastery".

I took out a few strips of Black Pepper encrusted Bacon and laid them out on a cooling rack. I then placed the cooling rack on a cookie sheet. After searching through the old bottles of sauces and marinades I've never used, I found my bottle of Sue Bee Honey and a bottle of Aunt Jamima's Butter Maple Syrup, both of which I poured generously over my delicately exposed pork strips. Gingerly, I massaged the syrupy viscous goodness into the meat. My pupils dialated and my mouth began to drown in salivic anticipation...

I placed the cooling rack / cookie sheet into the oven (400 degrees) and waited in anticipation until the hissing spittle of dripping bacon grease could be heard through the oven door. I threw open the oven, heat blasting my glazed eyes. I was ravenous and had to know if I was rewarded.

I slowly lowered a full carmel colored strip of honey maple bacon into my mouth. Ahhhhhhhh...... My work was GOOD. I have climbed the Pork Meat Mountain and reached an exalted state of bacon.

Eggs will never be the same.

PS - You might want to consider covering the cookie sheet in foil, like I didn't, because the carmelized mixture of melted honey, maple syrup and bacon fat is requires a chisel and hammer to remove.

Posted by mattLandia at 10:35 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)