Seeping Matter

Today during lunch I listened to the press conference at BYU where they formally announced their plans to unaffiliate themselves from the Mountain West Conference.  Tom Holmoe, BYU athletic director, did most of the talking.

Since I realize there are hundreds of thousands of you loyal readers who probably did not catch the press conference, I will summarize it for you.  Understand, sometimes Tom didn’t do a very good job of saying what he really meant to say, so I might paraphrase a bit.

Holmoe:  “Let me cut to the chase.  With the University of Utah leaving the Mountain West for the PAC 10, or 12, whatever, we were pretty stoked because we thought that finally now we would have a chance at being second in the conference.  Then Boise State came into the Mountain West, and frankly, they scare the poo-poos right out of us.  So we are announcing today that, starting in 2011, BYU football will be independent.  I mean, it’s worked well for Notre Dame, so it should work for us too.”

Press:  “What about TV coverage?”

Holmoe:  “Since USC totally hosed themselves ESPN has looking for another overrated football team to make a really big deal out of.  They’ve chosen BYU, and we are really excited about that.  Really excited and happy.  Happily excited.”

Press:  “What motivated you to make this decision?”

Holmoe:  “The primary reason for us to do this is exposure.  For some reason we agreed to an exclusivity deal with The Mtn network a few years ago and hardly anyone can see our games on TV even if they live in Utah.  Now we will have all our home games broadcast on ESPN and will have rights to rebroadcast all of our games on BYU TV.  Since our games will be seen by a much larger audience, the broadcasting rights will be worth a fortune and we’ll be able to attract big-name schools to play us because of the revenue they can get.  And we won’t have to share the revenue with our conference either.  So, each game will be televised, to a larger nationwide audience, with big-name schools playing us, so that’s a lot more money, tons of money.”

Press:  “Uh, I thought the primary reason was for exposure, not money.”

Holmoe:  “That’s correct.”

Press:  “But it seems quite clear that you are excited about all the money.”

Holmoe:  “Well, as you know, being a private faith-based institution we hold our students to a much higher honor code standard than most other universities.  And, as you might also know, our football players are pretty much the same as they are at any other school.  That means we have a high incidence of honor code violations here.  Having all of that money should, uh, help to alleviate that situation, if you know what I mean.”

Press:  “We don’t know what you mean.”

Holmoe:  “Well, let’s just say that sometimes, a person might feel like a football player has violated the honor code in a way that is negative towards that person, whereas if that person was a bit better off financially, they might be able to better understand that, no, that really wasn’t an honor code violation per se.  I’m just speaking hypothetically here, but I think you understand where I’m coming from.”

Press:  “What about your other sports?”

Holmoe:  “Our other sports will be playing in the West Coast Conference.  They have several advantages for us.  They are nearby.  Their schools are all faith-based institutions like ours.  They are so small and desperate that they would accommodate our playing schedule which excludes Sundays and General Conference weekends.  And USU is not in that conference.”

Press:  “But, couldn’t USU be invited into that conference?  I mean, being faith-based isn’t a strict requirement for the WCC.”

Holmoe:  “Based on, er, conversations we’ve had with the WCC, I don’t foresee that happening.  Ever.  Or at least as long as BYU is in the WCC.  We plan to hold them down, I mean, play in a different conference from them, as long as possible.”

Press:  “How long has this deal been in the works?”

Holmoe:  “We’ve been working on this for several years now, at least the past five years we’ve been working on it, trying to figure out how to get BYU into a BCS game through some other means than raw merit.  This deal should help with the money, or exposure, we need to do that.  You know, the way USC did all those years.”

Press:  “But, we thought this was primarily a reaction to Utah leaving the MWC, Boise State being invited into the MWC, and BYU not getting invited to the PAC-10 or the Big XII.”

Holmoe:  “That’s correct.”

Press:  “But you just now said you’ve been working on this for several years.  What gives?”

Holmoe:  “We have ways of, uh, knowing what the future holds.”

Press:  “You mentioned the deal with ESPN.”

Holmoe:  “We’re really happy and excited about that.”

Press:  “Yes, you said that.  But ESPN has lots of channels in their network; is it contracted which of the ESPN network channels you will be on?”

Holmoe:  (silence)

Press:  “So, do you know which ESPN channels you will be playing on?”

Holmoe:  “Well, which channels do they have?”

Press:  “Well, ABC, ESPN, ESPN2, ESPN U, ESPN 3, ESPN ‘El Ocho’, for example.”

Holmoe:  “Well, I would imagine ABC, pretty much all the time…”

(looks at the ESPN guy who is shaking his head)

Holmoe:  “Well, maybe not ALL the time…”

(ESPN guy is still shaking his head)

Holmoe:  “Well, I think ‘El Ocho’ is guaranteed, and the other channels based on merit, you know, if we are playing really well, and there aren’t any other games to show then…”

(ESPN guy nods head)

Holmoe:  “Yeah, something like that.  But probably mostly ABC or ESPN.  Or SpeedTV.”

Press:  “So, now that you are independent and Utah is in the PAC-10, who is your big rival?  USU?”

Holmoe:  “No.  Not USU.  Absolutely not that despicable USU.  Probably Notre Dame, they are our big rival now.”

Press:  “But they don’t really consider you a big rival.”

Holmoe:  “Oh, they are.  You will see.”

_{Note:  Holmoe did not actually say any of these things, in case anyone is wondering. In particular, if Holmoe’s attorney is wondering.}

matt Sports College Football, Humor

Apparently LeBron James announced the other day that he will leave the Cleveland Cavaliers to play for the Miami Heat.  Apparently this is a big deal.

I guess I can understand it.  It’s kind of like a person being a part of one street gang, and then going to join a different street gang.  NBA teams are pretty much the same as street gangs as far as I can tell.  You can think of them as advanced street gangs.  When you are a young man growing up in the inner city, the gangs recruit you this way:  “Sure, for now you will have to wear Oakland Raiders clothing and hold this handgun sideways when you kill people.  But, you know we are like the farm league for the Indiana Pacers.  Someday you could be an NBA star if you just work your way up the ladder.”

Anyway, one of the leaders of the Cleveland gang had his feelings really and truly hurt by all of this so he wrote a letter to make himself feel better.  Now everyone is making fun of his letter because it uses the Comic Sans font.  I never use Comic Sans, but I guess I missed the memo that says, “Do not use this font.  Ever.”

So I’m not going to make fun of that dude for using Comic Sans.  I’m also not going to make fun of him for an entire letter comprised of paragraphs which almost without exception have only a single sentence in them.  I’m also not going to make fun of him for not knowing how to use capitalization or punctuation or quotation marks.  No sir.  I am not that kind of person.  Instead, I’m going to make fun of him for a completely different reason.

Here is a direct quote from his letter.  Note that, since this is one of the places he (ab)used quotation marks, I also have to quote the quotation marks, so this will seem a little weird.

““I PERSONALLY GUARANTEE THAT THE CLEVELAND CAVALIERS WILL WIN AN NBA CHAMPIONSHIP BEFORE THE SELF-TITLED FORMER ‘KING’ WINS ONE”“

Hmm.  Interesting.  And also, how exactly does he plan to do this?  I mean, since he doesn’t actually play the games.  And also, he says he personally guarantees it; or what?  What happens if a team LeBron plays for actually wins a championship before Cleveland?  Usually, a guarantee comes with an “or” clause, e.g. “or your money back,” “or I will eat my hat”, “or I will write another letter in Comic Sans with poor punctuation and post it on the internet.”

I also don’t understand the “self-titled former ‘king’” phrasing.  Is he saying that LeBron himself refers to his own self as “the former king”?  Because otherwise, doesn’t it seem weird to claim that LeBron gave himself the “king” title, and yet this guy is going to claim that he doesn’t have that title anymore?  Or maybe he doesn’t understand what “self-titled” means.

Of course, if you read further in the letter, you will see this:

Some people think they should go to heaven but NOT have to die to get there.

Sorry, but that’s simply not how it works.

I fail to see what this has to do with anything.  But it definitely discredits the entire letter.  As everyone knows, Moses was taken directly into heaven without dying first.  So apparently, sometimes it actually does work that way.

matt Sports Humor

It takes about one year for my big toenail to grow back.

I’ve verified this on two separate occasions.  The first was in college, when we were having a killer waterfight with the girls who lived across the parking lot, and we were just about to enter complete domination phase when I smashed my big toe into one of those scallop-topped concrete edging stones and broke my big toenail right off.  It looked like normal a year later.  Then, last year when we hiked Maple Mountain, I broke my big toenail halfway off at the root and have been sort of managing that situation ever since.  It almost looks like normal now, and it’s been almost a year.

I’m sure, like me, you will not be surprised to know that I’m not the first to notice this fantastic phenomenon.

A quick search revealed that the ancient Yrgyuilf tribe also noticed this phenomenon.  Located deep in the heart of the Amazon jungle near the equator, the story goes that this simple tribe had a problem:  They could not tell time, because they had no seasons, being near the equator, and they had not noticed the sun yet.  They also owned everything they had.

One day the tribe elder had a revelation.  He called a tribe council.  ”I’ve figured out our problem!” he announced.  ”We’re all depressed and unhappy!”  A murmur ran through the tribe.  Yes! they thought.  I hadn’t realized it until now, but yes! I am depressed!  And  unhappy!

“Probably the reason we are so depressed and unhappy is because we own everything we have, and we don’t have a bunch of crap we don’t really need!” the crowd exclaimed.

“What will we do about it?”

“We need a reason to spend money that we don’t have, and go into debt, on a regular basis!” someone suggested.

“Hey yeah!  That’ll work!”

“But … but, when should we do this?”

“Wait — isn’t that what Christmas is for?” someone asked.

The elder took control of the situation.  ”Excellent, everyone.  We’ve figured out what is wrong with us:  we are depressed and unhappy, and we didn’t even know it until now.  The reason we are depressed and unhappy is because we don’t have any debt or crap we don’t really need.  Celebrating Christmas will solve our problem, as it provides the opportunity to spend money we don’t have on things we don’t need.  Only problem is, we need to know when to celebrate.”

A wise old man stepped forward.  ”Once,” he said, “I stubbed the crap out of my big toe and my toenail broke right off.  It took a long time to grow back.  We could call that time period, uh, a ‘year’.”

“We will celebrate Christmas every year by spending money we don’t have on stuff we don’t need,” said the tribe elder.  ”I feel happier already!”

As the council continued, they decided that each year, they would select a young virgin and smash her big toenail until it fell off.  When it had completely grown back, it would be time to celebrate!

It wasn’t long until they realized they could use similar logic for other measurements of time:

• How long after I sprain my ankle until it doesn’t hurt anymore?  One month.
• How long after I pull a tooth out of my head until it doesn’t hurt anymore?  One week.
• How long after I shave until my whiskers grow back?  One day.
• How long after I bean you in the head with this rock until your headache goes away?  One hour.
• How long after I prick my finger until the bleeding stops?  One minute.

Figuring out a measurement for one day took some time, as the young virgins in town didn’t seem to be growing their whiskers back.  After some deliberation, they figured that a male virgin could work.  It took a while, but they eventually found a male virgin that actually could grow whiskers back, and they celebrated because now they could measure days.

This worked quite well for the Yrgyuilf tribe for a while.  It created jobs as some people were in charge of rounding up the young virgins for timekeeping purposes, and others would regularly prick their fingers or bean them in the head with rocks in order to know things like whether it was time for lunch.

After a while, they started having trouble finding young virgins and also had to simultaneously deal with a significant teenage pregnancy epidemic, so they decided that perhaps any old person could be used for measuring time.  Surprisingly, experimentation showed that it worked about the same.

Eventually someone asked the question, “How long is forever?”  They had a hard time deciding how to measure this, so they eventually settled on three different options:

• If you bash someone’s skull in with a rock, forever is how long it takes for them to wake up.
• If you sever someone’s legs at the hips with a chainsaw, forever is how long it takes for them to grow back.
• If you impale someone through the heart on a sharpened post, forever is how long it takes for their heart to start beating again.

Since it was so essential to get this experiment right, they searched and searched and eventually found three young virgins to help them complete this experiment.  Unfortunately, it was about this time that the tribe pretty much disbanded.  Three of the original Yrgyuilf tribe members are still there, spraining each other’s ankles and pricking each other’s fingers and smashing each other’s toenails off and beaning each other in the head with rocks in order to measure time while they are waiting to see how long forever is.  They’ve stopped measuring weeks because they are all out of teeth and don’t know how to do it anymore.

The rest of the tribe members moved to the city and became dentists.

matt Science Humor, Interesting

When a mommy and a daddy love each other very very much, like my wife and I, sometimes they have a life-changing event which starts with a very simple conversation, like, “Honey, do you think we should get a new MacBook Pro?”

At least, that’s what happened in our family.

One night, we were just laying there together in bed.  All the kids were asleep.  I turned toward my wife and softly said, “What would you think if we got a new MacBook Pro?”

She got a bit of a twinkle in her eye as she turned and snuggled in toward me.  ”Why do you want one?”

“Well, I’ve been thinking, pretty much it is time for me to get a decent laptop.  Even though I don’t want to spend the money, and even though we are trying to do the Dave Ramsey Dance, I think it is holding my career back.  I don’t think it is wise to continue without one.  I think it is an investment that we need to make in my career,” I said in the most romantic way possible.

She kind of bit her lower lip, then said, “Well, why are you thinking of a MacBook Pro?”

“Their laptops are simply the best hardware available,” I explained seductively.  ”I would dual-boot it with Boot Camp so it ran Snow Leopard in one partition and Windows 7 Ultimate in the other partition.  Then I could create a domain-joined account in the Windows 7 partition with a separate virtual drive that holds all of the company data that I can protect with BitLocker.  That way I can use my laptop to work remotely and also have excellent Mac hardware.  I’m getting excited just thinking about it.”

“Oooooh, baby, I love it when you talk to me like that.  Let’s do it!” she said.  So with that, we turned off the lights and went to sleep.

Some time later, the long-awaited day came.  I was at work when my wife called.  ”Honey, it is time,” she said.  ”The MacBook Pro is here.”

I rushed home to this:

They are prettier after they are born.

I must admit it didn’t look like much. But I know that true beauty lies within. Within the box, I mean.

Sure enough, we didn’t have to wait long before the laptop started making its way out.

It's crowning!

When they first come out they have this weird whitish covering on them.

Now THAT'S a good looking laptop! He (she) is so handsome (pretty)!

It's a boy (I guess)!

We decided to name him Steve, for obvious reasons.

matt Technology Career, Humor, Mac

I don’t know if you guys knew this, but I’m dang funny.

I’m not kidding around here.  Well, actually, I sort of am.  But really, I’m hilarious.

I mean it.

In fact, I’ve been told that I’m too funny.  I tell too many jokes.  People don’t appreciate that.  I totally get it, too.  It hurts to laugh too much, plus you start to cry and you blow snot all over yourself.

In Heinlein’s book “Stranger in a Strange Land,” the story of the human Michael Smith who was born and raised on Mars and brought back to earth to learn how to behave like a human, one of the hardest things for him to learn was to have a sense of humor.  As the book goes, Martians had no concept of humor and the humans had a hard time teaching Michael about humor and why people laugh.

Initially Michael was told that people laugh when something is funny, which means it is something happy or something that makes him happy.  Yet Michael knew that people also felt happiness through love, and friendship, and achievement, and yet those sorts of things didn’t make people laugh.  It wasn’t until some time later that Michael came to the realization that things are funny not because they are happy, but because they are painful.  People laugh to deal with the pain, the irony, the frustration, the sadness.  Not because they are happy.

Jerry Seinfeld says, “What’s the deal with airline food?”  We laugh because we are thinking, “Yeah, no kidding.  Airline food is lame!”  Brian Regan says, “I before E, except after C, and when sounding like ‘A’ as in ‘neighbor’ and ‘weigh’, and on weekends and holidays and all throughout May, and you’ll always be wrong no matter what you say!”  We laugh because we think, “For sure.  I can never figure out how that rule is supposed to work!”  I say, “People hate to laugh because they blow snot all over themselves.”  You laugh because you think, “I know, that is so embarrassing, and now I have to wash these clothes.”

We don’t laugh at jokes about airline food because we love it so much.  We laugh because it is so annoying.  Michael Smith (or Heinlein, technically) was right — we laugh because it hurts, not because it is happy.

This is why I’m finding it odd that some people don’t like me making such funny jokes because my humor is too cynical and sarcastic.  According to Heinlein, it wouldn’t be so darn funny if it wasn’t a little painful.  And we know that Heinlein could not be wrong.  After all, he wrote Starship Troopers, which was a great story before Paul Verhoeven ruined it.

In other words, it isn’t the cynicism or sarcasm that is inappropriate.  It is the humor that is inappropriate.  It’s like I’m trying to tell you, I’m literally too funny.  I can’t help myself.  I start out trying to have a serious blog post and the next thing you know you are scrubbing snot off your monitor.

Sorry.

matt Humor Humor

So last night was the big finale of “Lost,” the TV show sensation that proved you don’t actually need to have a workable plot to make uber-gazillions of dollars selling flashing pictures to people.

I haven’t actually watched the finale yet.  I may or may not, but the murmur I’ve seen on the interwebs about it today indicates that the finale is probably pretty much what I thought it would be.

A month or so ago I read about this in my issue of “Wired.”  I like Wired, but admittedly the authors are guilty of a bit of fanboyism with some things.  Like Google.  And Apple.  And, apparently, Lost.  They did a big write-up where, among other things, they discussed with the writers of “Lost” many of the unsolved questions in Lost up to that point, and asked the writers if all the questions would be answered.  The writers pontificated, talked in circles, praised themselves and their genius, and in many other ways answered, to paraphrase:  No, not really.

I was going to post a link to the Wired article, but I changed my mind because they used a potty word.  But you can get pretty much the gist of it here.

Anyway, I figure I better chip in here, to help people understand the finale of “Lost.”  I think I owe it to the global economy to just cut to the chase here and end the debate.

Episode 1: A bunch of people miraculously survive a jet airliner crash-landing on a tropical island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, only to find they are deserted there.

Episodes 2-(Finale-1): The writers attract a devoted following as they create more questions than answers by throwing everything into the show they can think of.  Lifelike inanimate objects.  Unexplained wild animals.  Intricate past and future lives.  A mysterious sequence of numbers.  Others.  Dharma Initiatives.  Moving islands.  Magnets.  Time travel.  Alternate universes.  Nuclear weapons that don’t kill people.  Dead people who are not dead.  An island that needs protecting.  As best I can explain it, the writers would get together on Monday, do drugs all week long, and on Friday they’d take whatever they happened to write down or remember from the week and make that into a show.

Finale: Panic sets in as the writers realize that people want an ending.  Then they remember:  We’re artists!  We’re elite!  We don’t have to explain ourselves!  If the audience can’t understand our art, that makes them uncultured swine!  And we can even tell them this and they will worship us all the more!  We don’t have to explain anything!

Somewhere in here, in an incredible act of hubris, they actually tell people in magazine interviews that they are doing this.  And even more incredibly, most people hear this and say, “Oh, yes!  We ARE uncultured swine!  Thank you for not answering any of our questions!”

Anyway, I hope this clarifies things for you.

matt Humor Humor, Rants

Have you ever sent your child to school when they had a sore throat?

You probably thought it wasn’t too serious.  You probably didn’t want to have to deal with them being home sick.  You probably didn’t want to have to take a day off work or cancel your lunch date with your girlfriends.  (By the way, if that last one applies to you, I hope you are a girl, or not married.)

Anyway, you sent your child to school with a sore throat.

Well, guess what, Mr. Selfish-Pants?  Your child has strep throat!  Yep.  You didn’t even know it.

And then, since your child has strep, and since your child is in class with my child, now my child has strep.

And guess what else?  Maybe my child reacts differently to strep.  Maybe instead of just getting strep throat, my child gets a much more severe infection.  Did you know that thousands of children under the age of 12 are hospitalized each year for strep infections?

I’m not really sure if that is true, because I just made it up.

Nevertheless, maybe my child has a severe reaction.  Maybe my child ends up having some form of vasculitis or a fever or severe muscle and joint pain or pneumonia or swelling in her abdominal organs!  Maybe my child ends up severely ill and hospitalized for days and days while doctors try to figure out what is wrong!  Other than the fact that she gets to take narcotics, almost nothing good has come out of this!  All because you sent your child to school with strep throat.

That’s not all.  Maybe I had to miss several days of work to help take care of my sick child in the big scary hospital.  Maybe this happened right at the end of a project deadline, so as a result maybe my project missed its delivery date.  Maybe that means that our software product is not going to ship on time.  All because of you.

If that were to happen, maybe Microsoft misses its earnings projections. (In seriousness, please see below. Really.)  As a result of reporting bad earnings, our stock tanks, costing thousands of Microsoft employees and other shareholders thousands or even millions of dollars.  Revenues in Best Buy stores in the Redmond, Washington area drop 50% over the previous year due to unrealized bonuses.  The economy plummets as the S&P drops hundreds of points in a single day due to Microsoft’s bad numbers.

People all over the country lose their jobs due to the tanking economy.  This death cycle continues as one company after another fails to meet revenue targets.  More and more people lose their homes.  Homeless rates skyrocket.  Anarchy reigns as people band together in small militias to stay alive, using force to raid convenience and grocery stores for food and water.  Larger militias take over entire towns and enforce their will through starvation of those who will not align under their rule.

Martial law is put into effect as the entire country becomes a military state in attempt to maintain some semblance of peace.  Basic freedoms guaranteed by the constitution are lost as the military takes over.  Local militia groups band together under an evil leader and take over the government by military coup, installing that leader as a supreme fascist dictator in a new communistic government.  Millions are needlessly slaughtered in public executions in order to bring the rest of the populace under control.

Then a huge asteroid is discovered, hurtling through outer space and heading straight for Earth.  And since the government has been overthrown and the new government no longer has any money, we can’t hire the world’s best deep-water drilling team to come and learn how to be astronauts in two weeks and fly up into outer space, slingshot around the moon at 35 g’s and drill into the asteroid, put nukes in there and blow it up.  The asteroid hits earth and everyone and everything on earth dies.

All because you sent your child to school with a sore throat.  You selfish, selfish, selfish, selfish, selfish little self-centered selfish-person, you.

DISCLAIMER: I work for Microsoft, but I don’t speak for Microsoft. I already said this before, but I’m just making sure you know, in case you don’t know how to tell when I am joking around. Seriously, I have no idea how our earnings will go. I have absolutely no inside information. I’m just a peon. Whatever you do, don’t make investment decisions based on my blog posts. If you saw my portfolio you would know what I’m talking about.

matt Humor Editorial, Humor, Rants

On Twitter I just announced that I’m starting a new fund:  the “Build Matt a Private Indoor Lap-Swimming Pool” fund.

I’m so excited about this new venture.  If successful, I’m sure it will bring me a lot of joy, and hopefully it will do the same for all the contributors.

Here’s how it works:

• I want a private indoor lap-swimming pool.
• I don’t have any money.
• Other people have money.  Maybe even YOU.
• You contribute money to my fund.
• I build a private indoor lap-swimming pool.
• I’m happier.
• Maybe you will be happier.

I know you are eager to contribute and become a Partner.  Here are the different levels of contribution:

• $10000 – Gold Partner
• $5000 – Silver Partner
• $2000 – Bronze Partner
• $1000 – Iron Partner
• $500 – Tinfoil Partner

Minimum contribution is $500.  Gold Partners get their names printed in a little plaque that I might display inside the pool.  And they also get a 50% discount on swimming at my pool between the hours of 1:00 a.m. to 5:00 a.m.

Talk about win-win.  I know you are excited, so feel free to contact me for more details on how to contribute.

matt Humor Humor

Uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.

So, uhhhh, hmm…..

Wulllllllllllllllll…….

I, uhhh, was told, uhhh, at work that, uhhhh, they, uhhh, wish I were, uhhh, as passionate about, uhhhh, my job as, uhhhhh, my blog.

Uhhhhhhhhhhhh, hrrrrmmmmmmm.   This is, uhhhh, a problem, hrm.

So, uhhh, that’s it.  No more, uhhhhhh, interesting posts.  Only, uhhhhh, boring posts.  From now on.

Uhhhhhhhhhhh, bye.

matt Humor Humor

So I just finished some online banking and stepped away for a moment.  When I came back I clicked the Logout button and got an error message saying this:

Your request can not be completed because your Web Access session has expired. Please click OK and login again.

So let me get this straight.

I cannot log out because my login has expired.

This means that I am effectively logged out.

What I should do is log in again.

Then I will be able to log out.

Did I get understand that correctly?

matt Humor Humor