Author: Matt Talley

Yucky Pilsner

/ Matt Talley

We had another tasting at the house recently and it was just as unscientific as the first one. Laurel is a pilsner fan so it was decided shortly after the last testing that we would try to find the best Pils brand available. I HATE Pils, so I offered to be the beer wench. Laurel’s dad was spending some time in The Czech Republic before coming to our place for a visit, so he agreed to get a sampling of Czech Pilsner – since that particular poison was born in a Czech monastery a few hundred years ago. He outdid himself by bringing a case of one liter beer 500+ miles on a train and then lugging it around Hamburg to our place.

Things started well and we had a fine turn out of participants as well as seventeen different beers to try. Mat and Karin brought aluminium foil for hats – lest other testers read your mind and it influence their decision and we provided beer related snacks. Donald, a chef by trade, cooked gourmet treats for the guests to have with the beverages.

Things started off well – I had a system where I assigned one glass to one person and would wash it real quick after a sampling had been drunk. After the second or third beer, Laurel stopped drinking and helped me with the serving. The testers started getting loud and opinionated after the fifth beer or so with the German testers saying hateful mean things about the Czech pilsner. Anytime we offered a German beer they knew right away and gave a little cheer. Consequently, as there were no Czech testers to balance it out, the German beer trounced the Czech versions, but two did make it into the top five.

A spreadsheet referencing each testers score for each beer and the overall ranking can be found here. The top five beers were:

#5 Warsteiner Pils
#4 Staropramen Svetlý (Pale)
#3 Bitburger (tie)
#3 Krusuvice (tie)
#1 Beck’s Gold

With hats, pizza, score cards, and beer. Click on the pic on the right for the best shot of the night.

There was continued drinking after the testing and things degraded further. At one point a brother of an invited guest decided it was a fine idea to grab a VERY expensive bottle of tequila and swig it like cheap bourbon. He threw back somewhere near $60 worth before the then half-empty bottle was taken from him. Shortly after we had to officially close the testing down for the evening. I would like to think that this proves, unscientifically, that Weisse beer is better than Pilsner and that the general public is better behaved and happier when they consume Franziskaner than when sucking down a Beck’s…

Bang for my buck

/ Matt Talley

As I grow older I have really come to embrace the idea of quality over quantity in most aspects of my life, especially concerning things I spend my money on – be it food, bikes, pots & pans, furniture, etc… I have also started to notice that I have entirely too much crap! I have been on a mission to simplify my life and free myself of all the junk the swirls around me and it has become easier by focusing on quality and workmanship. There was a day when I would go with the cheapest version available, but one truly does get what one pays for in almost all things. Buying the cheap version is a false economy as it will only have to be replaced, sometimes very often, and in the end I would have been better just forking out the money for the better model in the first place. Case in point – IKEA furniture: you can buy it cheap, but you are going to buy the same bookshelves over and over, especially if you move a lot, have a clumsy roommate, or stack too many books on the shelves again and again. Wouldn’t it make more sense to pay up to three or four times as much for a solid wood model that will stand up to any abuse that you or your demonic children can throw at it? I have recently applied this principle to the items that I carry every day as they get the most use and abuse: shoes, clothes, kitchen knives, sporting goods, tools, and so on. A couple of recent epiphanies in this department are:

Watches: There was a time when I owned 5-6 watches of varying quality and would wear a different one when the occasion or my mood changed. Before I realized it I had $600 worth of cheap watches, none of which kept time very well and I was constantly replacing batteries. What makes more sense is to buy something like an Omega Seamaster as it keeps amazing time, is tougher than a coffin nail, looks great with a suit, in shorts, at home in the mountains, the beach, or at work.

Pens: Every aspiring manager/megalomaniac wants a gold tipped Mont Blanc Meiterstuck fountain pen with a bold nib – loaded with antique Burgandy ink. While I do believe that a good pen is necessary to complete any man’s accoutrements, I am of a mind that Mont Blanc is overkill. For most things, especially at work, I am a pencil man, but I do have a nice MF-nib steel LAMY fountain pen, loaded with cobalt blue Noodler’s pigmented ink. It is nice to use for signatures on legal documents, lists, writing letters, Christmas cards, love notes, etc… I am also a HUGE fan of the Fisher Bullet Space Pen in steel with the detachable clip with a fine point blue cartridge loaded in it. Just like it says in the marketing – the thing writes on anything and upside down. My LAMY is always in my pack or pocket or you will find me scribbling in a Moleskine with it

Pocket Knife: No man should ever leave the house (unless headed to the airport) without a pocket knife. There are 20 tasks a day that are made possible, better, or easier with a blade: opening mail, cutting a trace on a circuit board, trimming the odd stray thread, voiding a host of warrantees, eating fruit, cutting an article out of the paper, trimming nails, removing stickers, and on and on… A Victorinox Officers Model or Tinkerer are perfectly acceptable, though my current obsession is a William Henry Westcliff Folder with a carbon fiber frame and damask blade. It makes me feel light headed and funny in the lower abdominal region…

Glasses: I am as blind as a garden mole at night and I can’t read signs that are further than ten feet away in bright sunshine without some sort of corrective lens, so I have worn glasses of varying degrees of stylishness since I was fifteen (I won’t discuss the 1980’s YSL red leather covered specs that were my first pair. Those frames coupled with my ultra-cool hair-helmet, spike bracelet, and teal blue Miami Vice outfit – God, I was sexy!). As my glasses are one of the first things people notice about me when I first meet them & I am now a bona fide adult, cheap clunky frames are no longer an option. I don’t mind paying a good bit for a classic frame that is both light and stylish as I generally keep them for three to four years. In the same vain, my sunglasses have prescription lenses in them as well. I chose finally to go with Oakley’s after years of cheap ones and a couple pairs of not so cheap shades that were ultimately crap. I have had this relationship with Oakley for the last eleven years (three different styles) because they weigh almost nothing, look great on my funny shaped head, and they have a great guarantee – forever! I have tested it by cracking a couple sets of frames – ugly bike crash and I sat on one pair once too often – and Oakley replaced them right away with no questions at all. Great customer service!

As an additional note, I don’t buy a thing anymore without a lifetime warrantee or one for some ridiculous amount of years. All my packs, tents, appliances, bike locks, glasses, electronics, everything… is warranted until I either leave this world or am a very old man.

Spring in Nord Deutschland

/ Matt Talley

It is springtime here in the Far North! You cannot imagine how much the winter here SUCKS! Last week was amazing: 20°C, bright sunshine, blue skies, cool breezes, the flowers were in bloom, I had a three day weekend, birds were singing, the apple tree outside my window blossomed, etc, etc, etc… Time for a Bar-B-Q! We had a little get together in the back yard – friends and neighbors – cooked some Fleisch on the grill, drank a couple or four cold beers, laughed about the guy across the street with the giant TV (80”+…) and his propensity to walk around his place without pants – his boys swinging in the breeze – to the horror of the two buildings on our side of the street. Winter was hard for us, but with the coming of spring is a renewed love of our adopted city.

In the back yard of our building – notice the wine AND beer. I am an equal opportunity consumer.

Taken at Planten am Bloomen in the heart of Hamburg

This is the finist flower shot I have ever snapped – A large matted print will soon hang in our livingroom.

Single-Speed love

/ Matt Talley

Gabby, my new two-wheeled mistress. Hold your curser on the pic to see what she looked like on our first date…
My Singlespeed/fixie:

I fell in love with singlespeed/fixed gear bikes a long while ago. What’s not to love? They are quick, light, there is nothing on them to steal or screw-up, and they have a certain cool factor that is generally limited to things like Triumph bobber motorcycles and Hellbilly music. After my admiration started to border on obsession, I thought about picking a new pre-built and ready to ride Raleigh, Alta, or Giant up from a local shop. When I casually mentioned this “plan” to my loving wife, she MAY have exploded… She may have also pointed out that I have 3.5 (the .5 part is my unicycle – see “Nerdy” post below…) other bikes taking up space, time, and money in our lives and that there was NO WAY that I was going into a store and drop 500-800€ for a new “toy.” After some time had passed we reached an agreement of sorts: I could built a “new” bike if I spent less than 150€, slowly over time, and invested some sweat-equity in the project. Seeing an eventual path to my goal and not wanting to start Armageddon over a steel-framed bicycle, I agreed to her proposition.

I started right away looking on eBay for a suitable candidate bike, but the sellers there were all pretty savvy and I would have blown my budget on the frame alone. I checked most of the used bike shops in town – I stopped counting after sixteen – and while some had just what I needed, their frames didn’t match my budget. I pined away for a few weeks and finally decided to stop looking for the ‘perfect’ frame and to maybe start checking at junk shops for something that I could make do with. The very afternoon I made that decision, Laurel and I were out walking and found a wrecked bike in the trash. It was in BAD shape: Missing the front wheel & misc. parts, a shattered rear wheel, rust and dings everywhere, but the frame was straight, the forks were still there, the chainring was OK, and other than being filthy and banged up, the cranks were just what I needed. It was like Manna from Heaven. I took it home, cleaned it up, and stripped it down to the bare frame that same night.

For the last couple of years I have been a daily visitor to fixedgeargalley.com for my morning dose of bike-porn. Many of the bikes there started their lives as crappy or moderate road bikes that were switched to single speeds. Some of these bikes are God-awful ugly: pink and lime green or with strange attachments bolted willy-nilly to the frame and bars, but the majority are sleek, well built, and very functional. The site served as my daily inspiration to complete my own bike. After looking at the entire 6000+ bike image library, I had a pretty good idea about what I wanted for my own bike in terms of look and function.

It turned out that the found-frame was two sizes too big for me and that the steel forks were an inch and a half out of true, but the frame was solid with no serious imperfections and no rust bad enough to cause structural problems. The drop bars were in good shape too, so I flipped them over and chopped them off to make narrow bullhorn bars. Work got hectic at that point and the frame hung on the wall in my basement for a couple of months, as I told anyone who would listen about my new project. For my birthday, my most dependable riding buddy bought me a bike jersey at the local messenger/track bike shop. Somehow this speciality shop had evaded my attention until that point. There I found what amounted to singlespeed Heaven. For that same birthday, my wife gave me 50€ to buy whatever bike parts I desired. Off we went on the afternoon of the 34th anniversary of my birth and I picked up a flip-flop hub, a 16-tooth freewheel for one side, and a 16-tooth fixed track gear for the other. I may have fondled it, wearing a perverse smile, all the way home.

I spent a couple of hours the next week building the rear wheel from a rim that I have had for a while. I had some trouble with calculating the correct spoke length and used the late Sheldon Brown’s online calculator to set me straight (Sheldon forgot more about bikes than I will ever know and his site was a crutch I used during the whole build process.). I went to a local BMX shop for new spokes and when I found out that they wanted 50€ for them, I laughed at them and left. The wheel and bike frame continued to collect dust until after Christmas with me picking up a few parts here and there: used brakes, a new seat, used seat post, and a used chrome track fork. I found that the original stem/neck on the bike suffered the same fate as the original forks, so I picked up a cheap lightly used one. The track bike shop, Suicycle, ended up building the rear wheel and supplying the new spokes for the same price quoted by the other shop for just the spokes. I was more than happy to let them do it as it saved me time and aggravation.

Shortly after the holidays, we sold my wife’s super-cool Moulton travel bike for a profit and went to buy her another bike that better suited her sense of aesthetics (long story…). While at the shop she spotted some pedals that I had been looking for. They were 75€ new and we got a lightly used pair and a used MTB handle bar for 30€ total. Oh, it was a happy day! She found a great bike for a lot less than she sold the other for and with some of the leftover funds I got some parts for my project. As I built the bike up I realized that we had been sold two LEFT side pedals… Laurel had business near the shop and was sweet enough to go there twice; the first time they didn’t have a RIGHT side pedal and the second to argue about a refund. I ended up buying a new set of similar ones at a local roadbike shop.

I had changed my mind about the cow horns. I wanted something sleeker and bars better able to fit between cars as I made my way through traffic to work in the mornings. There is a current fad among messengers and messenger wannnabes to chop the bar down to ten inches and your thumbs rubbing the underside of the stem. That is somewhat squirrelly for my taste and doesn’t afford me the space to mount brakes. As I have two kids to put through college, I need breaks on my bike. I cut the MTB bars down to fifteen inches, chose 2-fingered MTB break levers, and installed rubber grips to make for both a functional and nice looking setup. I did end up using the cow horns on my folding train-commuter bike. They turned out VERY nice.

A couple of weeks later, I spent a Saturday sanding, priming, and re-sanding and re-priming the frame. Over the next couple of days I put two nice, even rattle-can coats of matte black automotive paint on it and hung it up in my attic to dry. When the painting was done, I made one touch up, and then hung it in our shower with a wallpaper dryer on it all night to help cure the paint. The next day I cut the fork threads to length, installed the bearings, enlarged the brake calliper mounting holes, greased everything (including inside the seat tube) and put it all together in our living room, making sure to fit it as closely as possible to the geometry and measurements of my race bike. Everything did not go exactly as planned: My special ordered chain didn’t fit and my rear break calliper was too short. Those two things took a couple of days to sort out while my bike patiently waited for me in our living room. Did I mention that I have the most understanding wife ever?! Not only did she give me cash for my obsession and go to shops for/with me, bought me bike tools for Christmas, and in addition to not flipping out to bike parts all over her dining room table for a week, she was supportive of my little obsession the whole time.

On the first semi-sunny day (not a frequent occurrence in the cold north of Deutschland) that we had after I finished the build, I took the bike out for a ten mile shakedown ride on Hamburg’s streets, sidewalks, bike lanes. HOLY SHIT!! My new single speed/fixie is all that I could have wished for. It made me want to be bad… I found myself weaving through cars at red lights, passing perhaps too closely to pedestrians, shooting through spaces not ordinarily thought of as bike-friendly. I am old enough to realize that this behavior was something that would get me in trouble at home, but it was just so much damn fun!! The steel frame was smooth on the cobblestones, it was really responsive, and it tracked great when riding with no hands. The bike is light enough that hopping a tall curb took very little effort, the small bars were really comfortable to ride with, and I got a bunch of compliments while in a bike shop and while waiting for lights to turn. The only slightly negative comment that I have is that it doesn’t exactly stop on a dime, but that has to do with the brake lever that I used and can be fixed with an upgrade to BMX levers and stiffer brake pads.

In the interest of full disclosure, I spent about 100€ more than we agreed upon, but in my defence the forks were half of that and the bike still cost about a third of what a new bike would have cost. In addition to learning an absolute ton about gear ratios, inside bike builder tricks, wheel building, and rider fitting – I also had a hobby to occupy my time for almost a year, time that could have been spent bugging my wife and getting on her nerves. One COULD almost reason that a year free of certain aggravation might be priceless… If you see my wife and she is still ticked about the cost overrun, you could remind her of this, you know – if you want…

Like all my other bikes, this one has a woman’s name: Gabby – after Gabrielle Reese the pro volleyball player and model. She is named so because like her namesake, she is too tall for me, is quick, responsive, beautiful, agile, sleek, and if you don’t pay her the proper amount of attention while riding her you will likely end up on the pavement broken and bleeding.

I took pictures of the build process, and have put them here, if you want to take a look and the specifications for my home-brewed bike are below:

Frame: 80’s model 12 speed Raleigh roadbike, originally white.
Forks: Chrome Heson track forks from Holland.
Stem/Neck: Aluminium one piece from Italy.
Chain: Shimano BMX.
Pedals: Wellgo Commuter/SPD Shimano knock-offs
Crank: Solide 170mm aluminium from France.
Front Wheel and hub: 700cm Mavic Reflex by Wheelsmith and Dura-Ace hub.
Anti-theft front wheel skewer.
Rear wheel and hub: Mavic Wheel & flip-flop Phil Wood hub.
Handlebars: Bontrager MTB flat bar cut to 15 inches.
Brakes: Shimano 105 front and a 1970’s German Weinland for the rear.
Levers: One for each child. No-name 2-finger trigger.
Cables: Shimano
Chainring: 42 tooth aluminium that was found on the bike, flipped.
Sprocket: 16t freewheel and 16 tooth fixed
Saddle: Selle Italia Filante.
Seat Post: No-name fluted aluminium with shim.

Still ride’n Nerdy

/ Matt Talley

It is official: I have become an enormous dork. No, you say, not Talley… Well, lets add it up and see: I haven’t biked or lifted or run for shit this year and I have gained ten+ pounds of lard. I have not scaled one single peak or boarded one run. On the upside, I read 37 books – mostly non-fiction, am a board game winning machine, have been writing a Linux script to make my job easier on my off time, have become the master of the spreadsheet at work, and I spent a good deal of my Christmas break playing Guitar Hero: Legends on an X-Box 360. I have even been surfing the web for cool nerd tattoos. I have to admit that it has gone so far that I asked my wife to buy me a calculator watch for Christmas… I am so ashamed… All I need to do is start going to D&D gatherings and become a cyberthug on some obscure web forum and the damage will be irreconcilable…

How did this happen? Can I stop its progression? As I see it, I am a just a bit over the cusp, but if I can pull back a touch I may be able to return to the land of a flat belly, big arms, and cycling while maintaining just enough geekiness to excel as an engineer.

The Un-Friendly Skies…

/ Matt Talley

I have been in the aviation industry for a while now and I have done more than my fair share of flying. In the time that I have spent flying for a living I have had my share of delays, missed flights, crappy third-world airports, rescheduled and cancelled flights, mechanical problems, chatty drunks, turbulence, irate passengers, screaming babies, “customers of size,” and one very scary emergency landing. I am a bit of an old hand in dealing with air travel and very little phases me. Recently, I had an experience that left me shaking my head in wonder at the heartlessness and compliancy of a major US airline: Continental

I was flying into Arkansas for a summer visit with the kids. I arrived without issue in Newark and after an eight hour layover; I expected to make a connecting flight to Little Rock that night at 8:00. About 7:30 I and the other assembled passengers were told by a gate agent that our flight was postponed due to inclement weather until 9:00. Around 8:40pm the gate agent left and we did not see another one for the rest of the evening. Our flight was postponed an additional 3 times with the departures screen and at 12:30am a cancellation notice was broadcast over the intercom system. We were instructed to go to a Continental Airlines Customer Service Desk for flight rescheduling or to call the 800 reservations number. I stood in line from 12:30 to 3:30am. I phoned the Continental Reservations office while waiting in line and it took over an hour to get through – I am sure because of the volume of calls from my fellow passengers stranded in line with me. I was told that I had been automatically rescheduled to the 8:00pm Sunday flight. I was also told that there were no available open Continental flights out of Newark for Saturday. When I asked to be moved to another airline, I was told that it could not be done over the phone and would have to be taken care of at the service desk. So… I stayed in the line, which at 3:00am stretched down an entire wing of the terminal and was 400+ people strong.

At 3:30am the staff at the service area shut down their computers and left the desk with roughly 170 people still in our line – the bulk of the other customers waiting had been sent to another gate in another hall. A cynic would say it was because the airline wanted to split the herd so that we wouldn’t stampede when the shutdown came. People in the front of the line were begging for assistance we were told very loudly by one representative that she had been dealing with “us” for over eight hours, was tired, and was going home. Some of the passengers in that line including myself had already been in-transit for over 22 hours and knew all about being tired… When the Continental employees left, the lights in the area were shut off and we were all left to fend for ourselves with all the food establishments closed. There was no attempt to make any kind of arrangements for passengers, even those of us travelling internationally: no alternate accommodations, no blankets, no pillows, no snacks, and seemingly no thought given to those of us left in line. In addition, we were told that if we left the airport that we might not be able to enter again as our tickets were for cancelled flights and that it would be best if we stayed put until new tickets could be sorted out the next morning. The lights were then turned off and all Continental personnel left the area. There were a couple people who took some really damning pictures of the state of things that night: passengers huddled together still in line at 5:00 am, A couple asleep on the floor beside the wife’s wheelchair, a mother sobbing (who was a Continental flight attendant on maternity leave…) because she had run out of diapers and baby food for her infant.

The Continental Service Desk did not open at 4:30 like we were told it would as the service representatives made their hasty exit. We had to wait until almost 6:00am before staff reappeared. I was rescheduled for a 7:00am flight to Houston and then an additional connection flight to Little Rock. When I spoke to the reservation representative to schedule the flight out of Newark, I was told that my return flight had been upgraded because of my SkyTeam Elite status (all those miles flown have to count for something) and because of the continued delays. I appreciated this gesture. When I arrived at the gate we were told that no flight crew was available for the 7:00 flight and it was rescheduled four times before we finally got a flight crew just before mid day. Although numerous passengers requested assistance we were not provided with blankets or water or any flight information until 10ish when an airport representative arrived and assured us that we would leave Newark before noon. He also arranged for soft drinks and peanuts for us after a near mutiny by the gate agents and a bunch of screaming by passengers demanded some help.

My connecting flight from Houston to Little Rock was also rescheduled due to a mechanical problem with the First-Class entertainment system. I arrived in Little Rock almost twenty-four hours after my originally scheduled arrival and after nearly forty total hours of travel time. Once in Little Rock, I learned that my luggage was still in Newark and I did not receive it until later. Great…

A couple of weeks later, after a great visit with my son, I started my journey home to Germany. After arriving at the Little Rock Airport I found that my flight had been cancelled and I again was rerouted through Houston. Continental Airlines was at that point not on the top of my list of my favorite US carriers… The gate agent in Little Rock had no record of any promised upgrade. I was told to discuss it with Customer Service in Houston or Newark. My flight from Houston to Newark was completely full and I was told that I needed to discuss any promise of upgrade with the Newark staff. After arriving in Newark I went back to the Customer Service area and was told that I would have had to have been given a certificate at the time of the incident that there was nothing that they could do. I was told to call the Continental WECARE number to make any sort of complaint. It was if I had at that moment ceased to matter, the woman just sort of shoved the card with the WECARE info on it at me and turned to finish a conversation about her house with a co-worker. Continental has this slogan that the print on all there posters and ads: Work Hard. Fly Right. Really?! Neither was my experience with Continental Airlines or their staff in Newark!

I called while sitting in the Newark airport waiting for my next flight to notify Continental Customer Service of the incident and was told that upgrades on flights to Europe are NEVER given and are not even allowed in this type of situation. I was shocked by this and felt that the customer service agent that rescheduled my flight had purposely lied to me so that I would be happy just long enough to exit the airport where I was no longer a Continental concern. The WECARE telephone agent offered to send me an international care package for my inconvenience, but after checking she could only offer to mail me a US domestic one to my home in Germany. Great, two free drinks and a pair of headphones for domestic flights in a country that I don’t reside in and on an airline that I have grown to detest. By the way, my bags got lost on the trip home too. At least Continental is consistent…

This experience was so crappy solely because of the almost complete lack of customer service that I experienced at multiple levels. Delays are understandable, but a lack of empathy for passengers stuck in transit is shameful. I wrote Continental a letter, not looking for a handout or for a perk, but to draw their attention to a breakdown in their organization in Newark. I had hoped that it would be addressed and that other passengers that have the misfortune of delayed or cancelled flights in Newark in the future find the process to get them to there destination much less painful and frustrating than the process that I experienced. After nearly a month, I received a semi-well crafted form letter, complete with an auto-generated signature that calmly spelled out how everything that we experienced in Newark was “completely out of Continental’s control.” I almost choked as I read the customer service manager’s response. In addition to her letter following the basic tenets of an unsatisfied customer response letter: Empathize with the customer, restate their position/experience back to them as a sign that you have taken interest, apologize for their upset, assure them that ‘management’ would be notified, and ask them for their continued support. She had the balls to state that, “Continental employees worked tirelessly around the clock… in an extraordinary effort to accommodate our customers as quickly and safely as possible…” Really?! I doubt that any of the 400 or so people left abandoned at the Continental Customer Care desk overnight to sleep on the cold, stained concrete floor would agree.

As I said, I wrote my first letter in the hope that it would cast a light on a single failure at a single point in time for hundreds of passengers who were in Continental’s care. I did not ask to be reimbursed for anything or for any sort of freebie, as that was not my intent in writing them. It was my hope that this failure would be acknowledged and steps would be taken so that it would not happen to other travellers in the same situation with that airline in the future. The response I got just tells me that it was not an isolated incident and that there is a flaw in the Continental customer service system. I was not pleased.

I have a problem letting things go… It is one of those things about my personality that could either be considered endearing or a flaw… New Travel Rule: Stay the Hell away from Newark and only board a Continental flight in a case of Rapture, but pack a snack, because you will be routed through Houston and will be the last to arrive at the Pearly Gates.

Cell Phone Spatial Awareness

/ Matt Talley

I have noticed more and more that people get really wrapped up in their own little techie universe (I do it at times), and sometimes we forget that there are other people out there and all about the manners that Mom and Dad taught us.. We have all stood in line at the grocery store behind someone on the phone with their girlfriend or buddy: They are loud, ignore everyone around them, often don’t acknowledge the checker’s presence, and discuss things publicly that should be reserved for their home or Dan Savage’s sex advice column.

Normally, I just chalk it up to poor home training, but I draw the line at the movies. How hard is it to remember to hit the power button?! Every time I have been to the movie in the last three years (I go a lot) some unthinking prick’s phone starts going off and they fumble like a monkey with a math problem trying to shut it off. Recently, a girl in Hamburg got a call, answered it, and talked for a few seconds thirty minutes into the show. If that wasn’t bad enough her phone rang again not five minutes later and she answered it AGAIN?! Even my pacifist wife shot her an icy look, full of daggers, and was ready to fit her for a pair of Las Vegas-special concrete shoes. As everyone around her glared and she finally got the message and grudgingly switched the thing off. Is it rocket science to turn off the FVCKING phone before the movie starts?! If I can learn to put down my beloved CrackBerry and disconnect from my Borg-like BB hive for the greater good, then it shouldn’t be that hard for the rest of the world to have a touch of common courtesy.

I know I am ranting here (this is my corner of the web and I am allowed to do that when I pay for the bandwidth) and I get that part of this is a kind of unconscious rudeness, as most people don’t realize what they’re doing or that there are others around them as they discuss So-and-so’s erectile dysfunction while standing in line at Blockbuster (true story – I heard the conversation in Newport Beach) or on the commuter train. Essentially, those people subject us, against our will, to their conversation and if you dare to ask someone to keep it down: you get the stink-eye and told to mind you own business, as they flip you the bird and tell the person on the other end of the conversation how rude you just were to them. Apparently, I missed the memo that said as of a specific date loud, obnoxious cell phone use in public is OK. So that I don’t just go on and on about this: please think when you are on the cell. Be polite, put the phone down if you have to interact with sales people or staff, don’t pollute the common space with personal details, and PLEASE turn your cell/handy/Razor/BlackBerry/Treo/etc… off before the movie starts.

puffy red nipples?!

/ Matt Talley

Laurel always has the best costumes, no matter what occasion it is. She decided to have a costumed birthday party and went to great lengths to become the Corpse Bride. I was the groom, Victor. My costume was OK (spats are cool!) but, her’s was GREAT- visable rib bones and all. Brauning was the Sumo wrestler and the funniest part of it wasn’t his puffy red nipples – it was that his hair will look exactly like that in 20 years – exactly!

Outside Mag is slipping

/ Matt Talley

I read about ‘Jack’s Big Adventure’ in the January 2006 issue of Outside. Apparently, Young Master Osbourne has decided to quit smoking tons of herb, roll off the couch, and got healthier (?). As part of this six month plan he decided to climb El Capitan in Yosemite. This is also part of a reality TV show called, Jack Osbourne – Adrenaline Junkie. The author of the article said something about him eating 5.10s for breakfast. It struck me as an advertisement for his TV show stuck in the middle of a magazine article. One would think that a magazine that has contributors like Rick Ridgeway, Paul Theroux, Ian Frazier, Mark Jenkins, Tim Cahill, E. Annie Proulx, Edward Abbey, and Jon Krakauer would appall such tactics. I was more than a little disappointed. For something like 27 years Outside Magazine has seemed to be committed to good writing and publishing feature articles from the above mentioned authors on a variety of outdoor, travel and adventure topics. The magazine has won 3 consecutive National Magazine Awards for General Excellence and has been nominated for the award sixteen times, so what in the HELL is an advert for Jack’s new TV show doing in the middle of it and labled as as artical?!?!

I would like to see Jack on the sharp end of a rope on ANY 5.10 in the Valley or in Joshua Tree (or any 5.8 in the ‘Gunks…). Yes, it is great that he lost some weight and his whining quotient has dropped considerably – but, being hauled up a route – no matter how classic – isn’t really climbing.

What I have become

/ Matt Talley

About four years ago I woke up one morning, biked into work, had my Starbucks Tall Mocha, plopped down in front of my computer and spent the entire day drawing a satellite LMB load simulator for a terrestrial aircraft mock up lab. I ate take-out pad-Thai at my desk while drawing the wiring schematic, engaged in some Dibbert-esque banter with the engineer sitting in the next cubical, and rode my commuter-bike home listening to an audio-book on my MP3 player. Although I lived 300 steps from the Pacific Ocean, I didn’t run to catch the last sweet surf breaks before dusk or head to a beach bonfire with a six-pack and a bottle of red wine, my flip-flops going clickety-clack. Nope, I took a shower and hopped on my home computer to check CNN, e-mail, and look for the cheapest 500Watt power supply I could find for a new computer that I was building. While searching for said computer part, I accidentally popped onto an adult site. Annoyed, I clicked back and muttered about just wanting the damn part… BAM! It struck me, I am a nerd. I had been more interested in a computer part that boobies. I was horrified at what I had become and spent the next two or three months trying to prove to myself that it was only a temporary affliction and it wouldn’t leave any permanent residue. I was wrong. I have been forever tainted. Instead of fighting it now I accept that I can fix almost any electronic device, have become my entire family’s call-in computer help desk, find Weird Al Yankovic mildly amusing, and can discuss the nuance of data rate transmission with aplomb. I try to balance this new life of the geeky-stain with climbing, running, and cycling. I have a hot GGG wife and friends that pull me back in when I am seized in a fit of super-nerdy and try to discus free-market economics while drinking beer or like the time I decided to run a 10 gigabit optical line into the house for faster download times. There are no Geek/Nerd/Dork recovery meetings, no 3.14159265358979… step programs, and no pills I can take for this affliction. I will have to just live with my shame and strive for balance