The Internet is "baloney"
Wednesday, July 27, 2005
Wired has an article titled We Are the Web that takes an interesting look back at the birth of the Internet as we know it and how far we've come since then. It might be a little technical for some, but it's a good read, nonetheless. There's even a section about the blogging phenomenon. One of my favorite quotes from the article:
Any promising new invention will have its naysayers, and the bigger the promises, the louder the nays. It's not hard to find smart people saying stupid things about the Internet on the morning of its birth. In late 1994, Time magazine explained why the Internet would never go mainstream: "It was not designed for doing commerce, and it does not gracefully accommodate new arrivals." Newsweek put the doubts more bluntly in a February 1995 headline: "THE INTERNET? BAH!"
It's amazing to think about the Internet and how it affects our lives now. This may not be the case for some, but in my opinion, computers have become nearly useless when an internet connection is not available. It has completely changed the way we obtain information and increased the rate at which we are able to do so. Knowledge about anything and everything is at our fingertips. It has also changed the way we communicate. 10 years ago we had telephone and mail. Now, in addition to that we have: e-mail, IM, message boards, newsgroups, VOIP (Internet phones), video communication and probably more that I'm not thinking of. The Internet has become a necessity of life. I have a few friends that do not have internet access at all and some use dialup (which is worse than not having internet access, in my opinion). I don't know how they do it.
posted by Matt @ 7/27/2005 01:44:00 PM,
Yee Haw!
Friday, July 22, 2005
It was theme day at work today. As you can see the theme was western. I don't typically dress up for these things, but I already had the cowboy hat, so I thought, what the heck? My costume wasn't nearly as good as some. One guy built an out-house out of cardboard, painted the thing and all. One girl had a costume that made it look like she was riding a horse. I wish I would've taken some pictures. I'll post some if I can get a hold of any, though. This picture was originally taken so Heather could see how big of a dork I am. Then I figured I'd let the whole world know how big of a dork I am.
posted by Matt @ 7/22/2005 02:30:00 PM,
Heather-ism
Tuesday, July 19, 2005
So I'm on the phone with Heather earlier tonight. At one point during the conversation we were talking about my trip to visit her in about 9 days. Here's how the conversation went:
Heather: I'm so excited to see you.
Me: I know, I'm pretty stoked. (This is something I say fairly often, but probably not to Heather all that much.)
Heather: Stoked? You never say stoked.
Me: I say it all the time.
Heather: Like when you stoke the fire?
I just sat there in complete silence. There was nothing I could add to that. After about 10 seconds of dead air, we both started busting up laughing. She's so awesome, she says some of the funniest things.
To Heather: I'm not making fun of you, baby. I love you!
posted by Matt @ 7/19/2005 10:15:00 PM,
My Sunday afternoon
Sunday, July 17, 2005
Disclaimer for Maggie and Katie: There are a few funny things in this post. Yay!
Story #1: My friends Evan and Brooke asked me if I would help them pick up a crib that was being given to them by Brooke's cousin who lives in Bountiful, UT. Of course I said yes. I'm always willing to help out friends, even though I have a sticker on my truck that says, "Yes this is my truck. No I will not help you move." For those of you with trucks, just an FYI. These stickers do nothing. If anything, I've helped more people move since getting the sticker. But I digress... We got to Brooke's cousin's house and picked up the crib. He's a pretty funny guy. For starters, his name is Loren. A name like that pretty much ensures that the guy will either have a good sense of humor or be a complete social outcast. Luckily for him, it's the former. He gave us a tour of their newly acquired house. It's a really nice place. The kind of place that would go for ~1 million dollars in California. My friends and I always think in these terms, since we're from California. We do this because it reminds us how long it will be before any of us will ever be able to afford buying a house in California, so we don't get over-anxious and decide to move back before we're financially prepared to do so. Just as the tour was finishing, his phone rang and it was his sister (Brooke's other cousin, obviously). I can't remember her name, but it started with an M. He mentioned to her that Brooke and Evan were there. Then he finished his conversation and ended the call. After he ended the call, he pointed out to Brooke that even though he mentioned that Brooke was there, his sister didn't bother to ask him to say hi to Brooke. She just blew it off and that was that. Brooke didn't believe him and laughed as though he was joking. To this, he proceeded to call his sister back to confirm. He started by dialing and trying to hand the phone to Brooke, but she wouldn't take it. Then he just put it on speaker phone. When his sister answered he said, "This is Loren again. When you called a minute ago, I mentioned that Brooke was here, right?" She answered, "Yes." Then he said, "I just wanted to confirm that you didn't bother to say Hi to her, correct?" Keep in mind, that the whole time he's doing this, Evan and I are busting up laughing. His sister laughs at his question, but confirms that she didn't say Hi. Then he says, "Brooke thought that I was the one being the jerk, when in fact it was you for not saying Hi." Brooke's face is completely red at this point. Then he puts Brooke on the spot and tells his sister that she's on speakerphone and Brooke is right there. They both give an awkward "Hello" and he says that's all he wanted and says goodbye. I was dying. It was so something that I'd try to do to someone. Brooke was so embarrassed.
Story #2: We bring the crib back to Evan and Brooke's house. Evan and I assemble the crib. After that we're all sitting on the couch talking about my upcoming wedding. Evan makes one of his trademark jabs at marriage. I think he was talking about how he had the perfect idea for my bachelor party, but it was ruined. Tom Petty had a concert scheduled in Phoenix the night before my wedding, but it was cancelled. Brooke said, "Matt doesn't want to go to a concert the night before his wedding." I replied, "Have you met me, Brooke? I'd do almost anything to go to a good concert." Then Evan says something like, "Come on, it's his last night of fun before the old ball and chain." Then Brooke says, in the stereotypical nagging wife tone, "You tell Matt how great marriage is!" Oh man, me and Evan both lost it. She was ordering him to tell me that marriage is great. And the best part was, she was being serious. After a moment, she saw the irony in what she was saying and she started laughing too. It was a good joke that we revisited several times after that.
Story #3: Not funny, but I have to mention it, nevertheless. I'm driving home from Evan and Brooke's house. I'm on the 15 going southbound. Anyone in this area knows that Utah freeways are under constant construction, and today was no exception. They have at least 20 miles of the freeway lined with the huge orange pylons. Not the skinny ones or the cones, but the ginormous ones. So I'm driving along and up ahead of me one of the construction workers pulls out of the dirt median and into the fast lane, which I happen to be in. There's one car in between he and I. He speeds up quickly enough that he doesn't interrupt the flow of traffic and we continue to drive along for about 5 minutes or so. The whole time, he has his orange lights flashing on the top of his truck. Finally he decides that he's where he wants to be and proceeds to pull back out of the fast lane and into the median. He doesn't slow down to do this, so we were probably going about 60 mph, he simply makes a quick dash to the left trying to cut in between two of those giant orange pylons. As he's doing this, he clips one of the pylons and sends it spinning into the middle of my lane. The car right behind him was close enough that the pylon came flying out after he'd already passed the truck. This means that I'm headed straight for this orange monstrosity. I had enough time to react, but my options were limited. I put on my breaks, but I didn't slam onto them because I'm aware that there's someone following me pretty close. My next instinct is to swerve to the right to avoid hitting said pylon. Just as I begin to do this, I glance over my shoulder and there's a car right beside me in my blind spot. The pylon is still moving to the right at this point, so my only other option is to swerve to the left. Unfortunately, the freeway is lined with these stupid things, so I don't have much room to my left either. I swerved as far as I could to the left but the front passenger side of my truck hits the pylon and sends it spinning into the lane next to me. The car that I almost ran over slams into the pylon and sends it flying back to the left and into the median. This all happened within a few seconds and then it was over. Luckily, I don't think anyone had any serious accident because of it. I was a bit shaken up for a few minutes. Then it turned into anger. I'm seriously thinking about filing some sort of complaint. That would've been quite the lawsuit if there was a multi-car pile-up because some jackass that works construction on the freeway isn't smart enough to know that it's not a good idea to dart in between pylons onto the median while driving at 60 mph. /rant
posted by Matt @ 7/17/2005 10:27:00 PM,
Me and Kaytee
Friday, July 15, 2005
Hanging out with Maegan's sisters family. This is Kaytee, Maegan's niece. She's such a cutie.
posted by Matt @ 7/15/2005 05:49:00 PM,
My work life
Wednesday, July 13, 2005
I work at a company that makes dental practice management software, among other dental and medical products. I've been here for about a year and 8 months now. Although it can be frustrating at times, it's a really great job. I don't think I've ever had a job that wasn't frustrating at times, so I can't really complain about this one. I started out doing technical support in one department and I was there for about 5 months. I then moved to another support department and was there for about 3 months. After that I moved to another department that supports "high tech" products, such as digital x-ray equipment and software. After 6 months there, I got a position in our training department as the "In-House Training Specialist." They like to add the word "Specialist" to job titles in this place. I am the person that trains new employees on how to use the software before they start doing tech support on the phones. It's a pretty good gig. Training groups last about 2 weeks long, and that time usually goes by very quickly for me. Our support departments would be considered call centers, so we have some weird things happen here that probably happen in most call centers. For example; we started a new training group this past Monday. There were 12 technicians in this group, which is the biggest group I've trained so far. As of Tuesday morning, we have 11 people left. One girl didn't show up after the first day. Odd? I think so. The first day isn't all that difficult. They essentially spend the first half of the day with HR, filling out forms and watching videos about harassment in the workplace. The second half of the day, I spend a little time getting to know them. Then we start learning some pretty simple things, like the basics of using Windows. This is pretty simple stuff and most people get bored because everyone knows the basics of using a computer and Windows. If you don't, you shouldn't be allowed on the internet and you probably shouldn't be allowed to own a computer either. There's really no excuse. But anyway, we don't do anything that difficult on the first day. As of right now, nobody knows what happened to this girl. She just decided to stop coming, I guess. The temp agency that she was hired through hasn't heard from her either. I always wonder what made them go through all the trouble of finding a job, going to the interviews, filling out all the paperwork and then made them stop going to work after the first day. I had a similar situation in my last training group, but this girl went the entire two weeks of training before she decided not to come back after lunch one day. I don't understand it. Were they shocked when they found out it was a job and that they would have to work or something? I'm not sure what's going on. If anyone has any insight on this phenomenon, I'd love to hear it.
P.S. I've pretty much got my blog template the way I like it. If there are any quirks that you run into, let me know so I can fix them. Thanks.
posted by Matt @ 7/13/2005 03:20:00 PM,
Blog changes
Tuesday, July 12, 2005
So, I'm currently working the template for my blog. I found this one at blogger-templates.blogspot.com. This guy has some pretty cool Blogger templates. Decent templates are kind of hard to find, so if anyone stumbles across any websites that have some decent templates, please let me know. I'm modifying the template that I got from that website, however. I'm trying to make it a little more me. So far, so good. I like how it's turning out. Feel free to leave your feedback, if you like.
posted by Matt @ 7/12/2005 11:33:00 PM,
Yay for us!
Friday, July 08, 2005
So I finally get to be with Heather for a few days. I'm so much happier with her around. I planned on taking a picture of her when she was walking out of the gate area, but I completely forgot because I got so excited. I'm really happy I get to marry Heather.
posted by Matt @ 7/08/2005 07:55:00 PM,
Time, work and a photo
Thursday, July 07, 2005
So Heather's flight gets in tonight at 9:15. I'm pretty much looking at the clock every few minutes, which isn't making the time go any faster. Especially since it's 12:50 right now. I've kept pretty busy at work today so far. I'm getting things ready for Monday. I work at a company that makes dental practice management software. They also have technical support for that software. I started out doing tech support, and last February I got a position in our Training department. When we hire new support technicians, I'm the one who trains them on our software so they can support it. It's about a 2-3 week process, depending on which department they're going to. I'm really glad my next group starts on Monday. My time goes by faster when I have a training group. After I get to see Heather this weekend my training group will start and the time should fly. By the time the training is over, I'll be taking a trip to Arizona to see Heather again. Yay! So, while I'm not one of the few people in the world that can say they love their job, I am thankful for it. Although I really wish I was done with it for today, because that would put me that much closer to seeing Heather.
And here's the photo I was trying to post yesterday. It seems to be working fine now.
posted by Matt @ 7/07/2005 11:49:00 AM,
Magleby's Fresh
Wednesday, July 06, 2005
Gettin' some grub at Magleby's Fresh with Ben and Brittany.
posted by Matt @ 7/06/2005 06:46:00 PM,
Working hard, or...
This is me working hard.
P.S. This was posted from my phone using Blogger Mobile.
posted by Matt @ 7/06/2005 02:05:00 PM,
I'm a blogger
So, I've never really done this kind of thing before. I'm not much of a writer, to tell the truth. I know several people who blog on a regular basis, one of them being my fiance, Heather. I thought it might be fun, so I'm going to give it a shot. I have a photoblog, digitalshutter that I try to update frequently, although you wont be able to tell that if you visit it now. We'll see how I handle this kind of blog.
So, here's my story. I'm currently living in Utah. I've been here for almost 2 years now. I'm from California and I love it there, but I'm really glad I was talked into moving out here. If I hadn't, I never would have met the girl of my dreams. Heather is going to school at BYU, although not at the moment. She's currently living in Arizona with her family for the summer. She's working and trying to save some money. We will be married on August 20th, 2005. For those of you counting, that's 6 weeks from this coming Saturday. We're both very excited and extremely happy. It's been hard, however, being apart for so long. We planned trips so we would get to see each other about every 3 weeks over the summer. Unfortunately, it's been almost 5 weeks since we last saw each other. I'm happy to say that Heather will be here in Utah tomorrow evening and will be here for the weekend. I get her for 3 whole days! I'm getting pretty excited to see her, so tomorrow is going to be a long day. I tried to add a photo for good measure, but it's not letting me for some reason and I'm giving up.
I'm pretty sure that most if not all of what I post on here will have something to do with her/us.
posted by Matt @ 7/06/2005 11:27:00 AM,
