by Matt | Jan 4, 2010 | Friends and Family, Personal, Travel
Well gang, another year come and gone and now we’re into the double digits. “2k10” doesn’t sound right quite yet, but “10” doesn’t make sense either, and “20-10” just sounds weird. Oh well, at least it’s here. I don’t think I’m alone in saying that 2009 wasn’t exactly the best year on record. We had quite a few crazy moments family wise and the country/world had quite a few crazy moments all on their own. Hopefully 2010 will be a little better for everyone all around.
Personal update wise, we just got back from visiting my parents in New Hampshire. My dad is doing better and is 75% of the way through his chemo treatments. Eight down, four to go. We had a nice trip and actually had a breeze through the airports with short lines and little waiting. I was quite surprised. I got a couple nice presents, a few t-shirts from Think Geek, a nice paintball mask, a bottle of Crystal Skull vodka, all kinds of nice stuff.
For those of you who might be confused by my receiving a paintball mask, worry not. It’s actually something I’ve been enjoying playing lately. I went with a small group about a month ago and I’ve been hooked ever since. In fact, my “big” present is actually a paintball gun that I’ve yet to purchase. I did my research very thoroughly and decided on the Tippman A-5 as my first gun. Tippman is apparently known for it’s very rugged and durable guns and the A-5 suites my needs in the “awesome” category. They designed that gun in such a way that it’s completely modular and customizable. You can add things like barrels and handles and stocks and change it from a normal paintball gun into a replica of anything from an AK-47, to a M16 or MP5 to a full on Barrett .50cal. Check out some of the options here. Of course, those mods are a little pricey. I wanted to start out a little more reasonable. The way I figured it, I would need two things to get the most bang for my buck: a nice barrel and an electronic trigger. After reading review after review, I decided on a “Flatline Barrel” and the WAS E-grip. The barrel is actually kinda funky, it’s not strait. It has a slightly raised slope that actually adds backspin to the paintballs. Backspin, as you probably know, makes round objects travel further and straighter. If everything I’ve read is correct, this thing is nasty. It’ll add nearly 100 feet of range and keep it laser accurate. The grip, well, that’s just as awesome. The electronic trigger allows for single shots, 3 round bursts, semi auto and full auto firing. The upward rates of fire are over 25 balls a second. I found both of these in at Ultimate Paintball for about $400 in total. I normally would never spend that on myself, but I got $350 in total over the holidays and my birthday, so I just about break even.
Anyway, just wanted to wish everyone a good 2010, I hope everyone’s holidays went well and that you got to spend some time with loved ones. It’s tough getting back into the groove of working, especially after having a nice long break. Oh well, that’s what coffee is for, right?
Matt out.
by Matt | Nov 20, 2009 | Personal, Web
Lately I’ve been getting inspired by folks like Jason Santa Maria, Bob Haro and Jim Barraud’s Manifest theme. I’ve always been a fan of minimalistic design and after a couple recent projects I’ve been wanting to do something like that for myself.
But before I get too crazy, let me bounce an idea off you guys, more for technical reasons than anything else. While I enjoy minimalism very much, I also like the dynamic way that minimal designs can change. Does anyone think it’s possible for WordPress to be set up or designed to change it’s CSS file for every post? Has anyone ever seen that sort of thing before? I know JSM does it with Expression Engine, but with all the advances in WP these days, I wonder if it could handle the load. There would obviously have to be a “base” template in case a custom template isn’t defined, but can anyone think of a way to designate a template per post. There is the option to do that with “pages” to a limited extent, but posts aren’t that flexible. A page can be defined using a template different from the rest of your site so you can do things like have a portfolio section with a more unique layout, different from your blog.
It’s an interesting question. One that might be worth researching a little. Any ideas fellas?
by Matt | Nov 12, 2009 | Aggravation, Friends and Family, Games, Personal
After two solid days of play, and years of previous experience, I feel it safe to say that MW2 passed the “15-Minute Test” with flying colors. That’s not to say it’s perfect however and this post is more pointedly a rant about the sour notes in an otherwise brilliant symphony of gaming goodness.
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by Matt | Nov 3, 2009 | Personal
I love my wife, she’s totally awesome. For our anniversary this year she got me a whole geek smorgasbord of cool stuff. She gave me a really awesome grill tool set that came complete with padded velvet carrying case and everything. She also got me a couple funnier gifts that I think you guys would appreciate including the…
Ninja Salt and Pepper Shakers
Gin and Titonic
Motherboard Coasters
The ice cubes crack me up the most. I had a nice vodka tonic last night with a doomed steamliner and several iceburgs in it. Too funny. That store she got them at is pretty cool as well. They have an entire gift section for guys. Who couldn’t use a box of bacon toothpicks, lol.
by Matt | Oct 7, 2009 | Culture, Personal, Work
Seriously? We’ve completely lost a month. I have no idea what happened. Things have been universally crazy around the ranch for quite some time now. We’re helping Lauren’s family as much as we can, we’re helping my family as much as we can, and as a result we’re slowly getting run down ourselves. Both of us have started to feel under the weather lately and I don’t really think it’s any coincidence.
Work is going pretty well for the both of us. We’re keeping busy and with the super awesome job market out there, you can’t really complain when you’re busy. I’ve been plugging away on multiple websites for a while now. One of them is fixing to go live in about a week, the other two will hopefully be wrapped up around Christmas or New Years. I’ve managed to convince co-workers and bosses that our old out-dated CMS needs to go and that we should be trying to develop a new site in WordPress for all our next project. They seem very receptive to the idea and I’m working on just such a WordPress design as we speak. I’ve already created a site in plain HTML, as a contingency plan, in case it doesn’t work out, but I think I should be able to pull it off. What parts of WordPress I’ve yet to understand fully, I’ve been able to hack and slash my way through or borrow similar code from other designs and pick it apart to see how it works.
Our fantasy baseball league has wrapped up for the year, and congrats to Nagle for pulling off the complete and total domination of everyone else in the league, lol. I really had a good time with it and I’m looking forward to doing it again next year. Also, speaking of baseball, it’s my favorite time of the year. The playoffs start tonight and I get to watch a full month of the best baseball of the year. I love October.
Game wise, if you’ve been paying attention to the gamer-tag in the corner, you can see it’s mostly Halo and CoD. I picked up ODST via preorder from Amazon (saved $10 and got free shipping) and I’ve been enjoying that for a week or two now. Good solid single player campaign, although it’s a little on the short side. I played through on “Heroic” just to length it’s challenge a little bit. The “Fire-Fight” multiplayer survival mode is great, but I can’t get anyone to play with me. It’s one gigantic glarring omition is that it doesn’t have XBL matchmaking, meaning you can’t play with random online people. You’re forced to only play with people from your friends list.
That’s of little importance however since Modern Warfare 2 is dropping at the beginning of November, so I really only need to wait it out another month. Since every other game (literally) that was supposed to be released this winter has been frightened off by MW2, there’s really only one thing I’ll be playing, not like that’s a bad thing.
Caught a couple movies here and there. I watched Zombieland last weekend and really enjoyed it. I think I actually liked it better than Shaun of the Dead, which I’ve always enjoyed. I’m normally not a fan of Woody Harrelson at all, but he did a really great job in this one. I think so far this year my only solid DVD purchases will be Zombieland, Up and Star Trek. Seriously.
That’s about it. Sorry to be gone so long, everyone has just been super busy, but busy is good right?
Matt out.
by Matt | Aug 31, 2009 | Personal
Well, it was a crazy trip back up north, but we’re home now, safe and sound. I’m back at work catching up on emails. It was great to catch up with Chip and see how he was doing. It’s a shame I couldn’t get with Chris and Nagle as well, but schedules just didn’t work out. Not to worry though, we plan on going back up around Christmas, so we’ll definitely have to get together then.
We had a great time hanging out with the family and we got a lot accomplished for my parents, which was the primary goal in going.
My Dad has started his chemo this week, so we’ll all keep our fingers crossed that the reaction to the treatment is mild and he doesn’t get very sick.
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