Category: nerdy

Hipsters on a plane

/ Matt Talley / 2 Comments

I was fortunate enough to share a seat row on a flight from Chicago to Seattle with a young female member of the hipster mafia.  She had all the proper accessories: skinny-jeans, a Mac book, plaid, roughed up messenger bag, an ironic tattoo, bed-hair and of course big goofy Steve Urkel glasses that had no lenses in the frames.  There were affirmative grunts to the flight attendant and 4 tiny (under 3oz for the TSA – thank you very much asshole London liquid bombers for making us all know what 3oz looks like…) bottles of hooch in Listerine containers to mix with her tomato juice.  The aroma of sweat, cheap booze, and stale pot smoke lingered faintly in the background – all while the aforementioned macbook placed a cheesy 1970’s horror flick – after which she cracked open “Dont Hassel the Hoff” and read with gusto – Not making any of this up!

There was no sharing of the seat arm.  No ‘excuse me’ for repeatedly bumping into me while arranging the contents of her bag or when reaching across my face and over my book for another clandestined drink mixer.  Nope, I was sitting next to a late 20 something 15 year old.  It was not awesome.

So this is what we have wrought?  All our blog posts about nerd culture, bikes, beer snobbery, bluegrass, how amazing old vinyl is, and laments for the way things were back in the days when Kevin Bacon’s Footloose was cool and before we got real jobs working for the man.  We caused this – you and I with our own smugness.  Our own blathering on and on about bike polo and hot nerdy girls.  Our fault.

This girl and maybe millions like her are the worker bees that will fund the twilight of SSI and try to figure out how to clean up the mess we, our parents, and our grand parents have made of things here on terra firma.  We’re fucked.  How in the bejesus is all that going to happen when The League of Hipster Youth is trying, this very minute, to figure out how to extend their stay in mom’s basement indefinantly so they can use “their” money for music, handmade bikes, Apple products, PBR, and primo hindukush?!  Again, we’re fucked.

The most awesomest desk ever!!!!!!!

/ Matt Talley / Leave a comment

The wife and I have desk issues:  Not problems with sharing, it that we own too damn many.  I have a 1950s copy of a 1790s Federal secretary, we use an Art Nouveau drop front secretary as a liquor cabinet, her sewing desk is a ’80’s maple laminate, there is an 7X3′ drafting desk in the basement, I am currently refinishing a solid oak university desk for her office and we pay the bills on a Duncan Phyfe drop-leaf.  We need another desk in the house like John Hinkley, Jr. needs an assault rifle…

For Stamps-With-Foot’s birthday, we went and perused jewelry stores, had lunch and coffee down town, window shopped for a new Persian carpet, and eventually wandering into our favorite antique market…  Damn!  I bought another desk.  In my defense though, this is the most awsomest desk ever!!  No, really.  It is a solid wood 1960 build of a Norwegian/English/Swedish cabinet desk – a modern interpretation of a Moore or Wooten folding wing desk.  It unfolds and slides like a fvcking Optimus Prime Transformer!  The minute I saw it, I felt all funny in my lower abdominal region…

Now, to get my little bride to agree to this purchase, I had to promis to sell the Federalist secretary and a 5-drawer quarter-sawn oak dresser, but it was SOOO worth it.  Additionally when I went back a couple of days later to pick up the desk, I also brought home an additional 2’ section of library card catalog.  The wife was not as pleased with that surprise…

Sorry, the pictures were snapped with my cell at the shop and do not do this beauty any justice at all.

Library book sale time again

/ Matt Talley / Leave a comment

It could be worse; I could have addiction issues with heroin or gambling.  Instead I am afflicted with a cookie habit and Biblophilia.  I have reduced the cookie bingeing to reasonable levels – I was at Santa-level consumption during the holidays – and I have been using the library more instead of haunting bookshops and trolling Amazon.  That said, the Seattle Public library bi-annual book sale always does me in.  Last year, I bought a full set of 1911 Encyclopedia Britannicas and missed a complete set of Harvard Classics by 20 minutes.  This year I went to buy 4 novels and see what their mountaineering/sailing lit selection was like…

Crap.  I left the sale with 3 boxes and a grocery sack of books and Stamps-With-Foot left with a bag full as well.  I got some GREAT stuff:  a first edition (signed) of Red Sky in Mourning, a KILLER 2 volume micro print edition of the Oxford English Dictionary, the Ed Veisturs’ K2 book with a spotless dust jacket, some fiction I HAD to have, and a cloth bound complete Britannica Great Books set.  We are now full to the brim and if one more book comes in, I will have to build some new shelves.  We are planning on a large book case/Murphy-bed combo for the office, but that is years away and at this rate it will be full on the first day it goes up.

Nerdy is the new black… Fountain pen love.

/ Matt Talley / Leave a comment

A local fellow blogger just published a post about fountain pens that I wish I would have beat her to! Now I have to stand in her shadow and try to come up with a witty observation or two . Damn…

I started using or trying to use a fountain pen back in college after hearing the writer and historian Shelby Foote discuss writing all his manuscripts out longhand with a dip pen. As a history major, that sounded like something amazing to do and I took a cligraphy class and wrote letters at the dawn of the e-mail age with a leaky black bakelite stylo. Though, like many things started in college, it fell to the way side as the rest of life swirled around me – picking up my lone surviving calligraphy pen every now and then to address Christmas cards or to add flair to a note or sign. I didn’t become a complete fountain pen convert until we lived in Germany for a couple of years: ALL the “smart” engineers had a nice pen to initial drawings and sign docs with (being engineers, there was the ubiquitous mechanical pencil as well). I wanted to be Euro/Old-World cool!!

I jumped right in and bought a couple of cheap cartridge pens and worked out which nib size and ink color was best for me. I now have a quiver of Lamy Safari pens with different nibs (from EB to EF) and a weighty stainless Lamy that my bride gave me for Valentine’s day one year. I use it for signing legal docs and for writing her love notes.

After trying Montblanc and Parker inks, my pens are now loaded with Noodler’s Ottoman Azure, Bulletproof Black, and #41 Brown. I have some blue Lamy refills – just in case, but the only time I have used them has been on travel when I ran out of the good stuff. Note: I find that Montblancs seem to find their way into the hands of the pretentious…

I have converted my wife as well. Any ‘Thank You’ cards or notes she sends out are written with either her glass pen or a compact Scheaffer. Though far from a luddite, I hope that more and more people switch back to fountain pens as the amount of auctual writing we do every has dwindled, I feel it is important to add weight to the words we choose to scribble instead of type.

For like-minded brethren go HERE

And for Shelby Foote/Civil War highlight reel:

 

F-ing Auto-complete!!!

/ Matt Talley / 1 Comment

The auto-complete function on my iPhone is making me crazy.  I keep sending inappropriate e-mails to friends, the dog walker and now a big-wig at my company…  My greatest hits include:

Boiling customer issue:
What I meant to say:  This is going to get ugly, I feel it in my bones
Auto-complete:  This is going to get ugly, I feel it in my boner

Discussing an author with friend:

What I meant to say:  I bought a couple of her books on Amazon, It was just too good a deal to pass up.
Auto-complete: I bought a couple of her boobs on Amazon, It was just too good a deal to pass up.

My ex asking me what my son can buy me for Christmas:
What I meant to say:  Hmmm…  Smart wool socks?
Auto-complete:  Hmmm…  Smart wool dicks?
The latest incident was sent to a director concerning a document package:
What I meant to say:  I put it in your office.
Auto-complete:   I put tit in young office.
His Reply:  Thanks buddy!
My reply: Not an issue.  Oh damn…

Since this “feature” is making me seem even more inappropriate than usual, I hopped onto in inter-webs to figure out how to turn it off.  I ran smack into a site listing MANY more examples of auto-evilness.  Thought I would share.

~Matt



My OCD results for 2010

/ Matt Talley / 1 Comment

2010 wasn’t a bad year according to the crazy/obsessive spreadsheet that I use to track my daily life –  It could be worse, some people spoke Meth to pass the time, I have spreadsheets.  While super-nerdy, I have never shopped my derriere on the street corner for a new template or some cool calc function…

Anyway, I wasted sometime in 2010 cyber hoarding and we got sucked into a number of DVD series that hypnotized us in front of the idiot box.  But, on the whole though I feel better about 2010 than I did about 2009, since I spent more than a quarter of the year rehabilitating my again repaired shoulder – the 4th time is the charm!.

Successes were:  I snuggled with my cute little wife, drank great beer, had a second wedding, read a bunch of really good books, ran a good bit, cycled some (not as much as I wanted/needed to because I was lazy!), My shoulder is now stronger than before the latest accident, traveled a little (work and pleasure), got to do some serious work around and to our home.  Here is how the numbers for the year shook out:

2010 2009
 2008
Running
 218 Miles 127.8 Miles 139.5 Miles
Cycling
 710 Miles 1271.3 Miles 945.5 Miles
Days Hiked
 3 Days 7 Days 10 Days
Books Read
 31 Books 23 Books 41 Books
Days Off
 33.5 Days 32.5 Days 98 Days
Gym
 45 Times 4 Times 33 Times
Miles Traveled
 34021.30 Miles 26,533 Miles 61,341.3 Miles
Camping
 0 Nights 3 Nights 8 Nights
Overtime Worked
 310.87 Hours 204.4 Hours 0 Hours

2011 looks like it will be a good year as well.  I have some building and woodworking projects that I am really looking forward to (skin on frame Kayak, kitchen cabinets, detailed carvings…), my shoulder feels great, Snowboarding is on the schedule, I have a short list of peaks to climb, we are finally getting the basement exercise room squared away, so I will be able to train while watching DVDs (I got a SWEET Classic Warner Bros. Cartoon set for Christmas), There are a couple of cyclo-cross and road racing events planned, I have committed to finishing the first complete draft of my own book, I have a fantastic summer with the kids planned, a climbing trip with The Big-Belly Orthopedic Redneck Climbers Assn MAY be in the works for August, I will get to see the family more, and I will get to read some books that have long waited for my attention (Life in a Medieval Village, Theodore Rex, Just My Type, America’s Best Travel Writing – 2008,…) and some great new releases (Keith Richard’s Life, Carriger’s Heartless, Bryson’s At Home, The Second Book of General Ignorance, etc…).  We also plan to spend the year simplifying our life and the amount of crap we have, paying down some debt, planting a HUGE garden, and generally living a lighter existence.  🙂

2010 2009
 2008
Running
 218 Miles 127.8 Miles 139.5 Miles
Cycling
 710 Miles 1271.3 Miles 945.5 Miles
Days Hiked
 3 Days 7 Days 10 Days
Books Read
 31 Books 23 Books 41 Books
Days Off
 33.5 Days 32.5 Days 98 Days
Gym
 45 Times 4 Times 33 Times
Miles Traveled
 34021.30 Miles 26,533 Miles 61,341.3 Miles
Camping
 0 Nights 3 Nights 8 Nights
Overtime Worked
 310.87 Hours 204.4 Hours 0 Hours

The Sights of Steamcon 2010

/ Matt Talley / 8 Comments

“Steampunk is for Goths that have discovered brown.” – I love that quote and it makes me giggle every time I think about it.  While I can really get into the Victorian Zeitgeist, making your own cool stuff, recycling old gears into art, bargain hunting at flea markets, and retro-fying 21st century gadgets – I think that it is the roll playing sub-set that has kept me away from embracing the movement.  Well, that and I already have WAY too much crap going on and not enough time/money to do any of it that well.  I can’t add another hobby, but like I said, I can appreciate some of the aspects of the movement/genre/fashion/cult/trend/??/….

Anyway, when I saw that the largest Steampunk show in the US was going to be held in Seattle this year, my interest was piqued.  When I later read that Gail Carriger was going to be signing her books and meeting fans, well that sealed the deal.  Don’t judge me! I picked up her first book, Soulless, at an airport bookstore on a trip and that tiny little woman’s writing is so God damn good that she hooked me (qwerky, well built characters and she uses English as an offensive weapon…).  I will drink some beer later, burp and scratch while watching some football or hockey as my man-penitence.

Stamps-With-Foot and I got up early on Saturday, I proptly forgot the camera, and we headed off to the wilds of the SeaTac Airport Marriott for our chance to say hello and gush at Ms. Carriger.  We did just that and found her to be very approachable, genuine, funny, and sincere – all that you could ever want an author that you meet to be.  Buy her books!  We then decided to take a walk and look at what and who there was to see.  HOLY CRAP! we stepped into a mess of nerdy, techy, historically inaccurate stew!  All ages, races and genders were present and I was shocked to see that the male/female ratio was 50/50ish.  It may be profiling, but…  at most tech, comic, or game conventions there are significantly more males of the species and the few ladies in attendance have their pick of which Spiderman loving, +2343 hit-point having, IT professional they will be going so be spending time with.  Steamcon seemed to appeal to both sexes equally and there were some truly beautiful people walking around in costume, shopping, flirting, and having a great time. The costumes were interesting and for the most part very well done: Victorian fantasy accessories, sexy boots, tiny hats, spats, ray gvns, a steampunk Geisha jet packs, a saddle(?!), parasols, wings, accoutrements that looked like they took months to build, some really good art, pith helmets aplenty, monocles galore, and some characters of questionable lucidity.  The people watching was A++.  I would wager that more nerd-nooky was had this weekend at that hotel than the combined amount in all of the western US up to this point in 2010.  I took a few pictures with the iPhone and below are the best of them.  Sorry for the pixilization.













Kindle, I Heart You!

/ Matt Talley / 2 Comments

I have made the leap into the arms of technology once again.  After months of internal debate, fondling display models and endless questions & comments, I bought a Kindle 3 this weekend.

My wife gave me the cash and “permission” to buy my e-reader crack of choice for my birthday.  We were in Portland this weekend and since Oregon has no state sales tax, I figured it was the right time to buy.  We did go to two different stores to find one in stock and were greatly assisted by the magic of the iPhone and its ability to look up store locations and phone numbers on the fly.  I opted for the plan-Jane cover and the wifi-only model: I don’t NEED a Cole Haan calf skin leather case, polished with the tears of a busty virgin for $100 and am never joinsin’ for a book so hard that I need 3G coverage.  After loading a couple free books, I bought a Steampunk novel and downloaded a newspaper to take a shake down run.  Results: Matt likey!! It is small, light, simple, and a pleasure to read.

I spent Sunday morning sitting at a friend’s table reading the International Times Herald, drinking coffee, and popping doughnut holes into my mouth.  It made for a really nice rainy Pacific Northwest morning inside.  I will include a gallery below of my e-reader lovely next to the Moleskine medium square-ruled notebook that I use for work

Fresh out of the box in Portland

Image 1 of 4

Stupid freshman mistake

/ Matt Talley

I feels extra-smart… Like i gots me some real serious book-learnin’, whew-ee!

My wife, Stamps-with-Foot, went online last night and tried to comment on my Kindle lust post.  She gave me a wry look and said that the comments weren’t working.  I glared at her with the same suspicion your IT guy at work gives you when something is supposedly “wrong” with your computer.  I issued the “move over” command – I have been studying how IT works and nerd-bravado is something like 72.61% of their technical skill set –  and took her laptop.  Sure enough, the comments were off.  Huh?  I turned them back on and in just a minute the very same thing happened with the next post that she wanted to make some witty quip about.  I then spent close to an hour, hunched over her netbook, figuring out what was up…

It would seem that when I updated the appearance on my blog template a month or so ago, I somehow turned off all the comments on all my posts.  I have had swarms of e-mail lately and zero comments, so I wondered what was going on; now I know – I clicked the wrong check box and that was that. I feel extra-smart.

BOOK SALE P0RN

/ Matt Talley / 3 Comments

Some people collect books out of compulsion: odds and ends, with no order to their accumulation.  We have our issues, but to call it a compulsion is a stretch.  Unlike many of our bibliophilic brethren, we can actually sell a book from time to time and are somewhat choosy where and on what we spend our money on.  I think that our current library sits at about 1,200 volumes, equally split between history and fiction.  With the purchase of our home and my subsequent attempt to return all the period architectural details and furnish the living room as the original owners might have done, I have started to gather a few editions that could have been found in our home that first Fall.  I have 1928 editions of:

Edgar Rice Burroughs – Tarzan, Lord of the Jungle,
Hermann Hesse – Steppenwolf  (German edition)
Erich Maria Remarque – All Quiet on the Western Front (1929)
Virginia Woolf – Orlando: A Biography
Margaret Mead – Coming of Age in Samoa
Agatha Christie – The Mystery of the Blue Train
The Common Book of Prayer
Felix Salten – Bambi: a Life in the Woods (Bambi. Eine Lebensgeschichte aus dem Walde)
Herbert Asbury  – The Gangs of New York: An Informal History of the Underworld
André Maurois  – Disraeli
T. E. Lawrence  – Revolt in the Desert

To add weight to the our pre-stock market crash collection, I been on the search for a complete set of 1909 Harvard Classics, the 1917 Harvard Classics Shelf of Fiction, and a set of the 1910 11th edition set of the Encyclopedia Britannica, as this is THE edition to have (for the Über-booky folk).  All taken together, this will give our parlor a true sense of period nerdiness.  None of the above volumes are particularly pricey ~ $6 each in decent condition and ALL of them are available for download since enough time has passed that the works are in the public domain.  The wealth of information contained in them isn’t the sole point for wanting them; it is also their tangible quality – the faded bindings, the smell of their paper, the care taken with the block-printed illustrations…  These are all books that have witnessed the same history as our little home and deserve a safe and revered place there.

This past weekend we attended the bi-annual Friends of the Seattle Public Sale, where we usually pick up some Travel Lit, a few mountain climbing related tomes and the odd cookbook.  Well, on this trip I hit the motherload!  I found 14 mountaineering books that are on my “List” and in the Sets and Rare Book Room I happened upon a complete set of 1910 of the EB.  I may have swooned.  I snapped up those bad-boys faster than a lawyer cashes a check.  The set is of Ex-library stock and there is some serious shelf wear on a couple pieces, but nothing that would keep them from being used for another 80 years.  For a grand total of $33, I walked out a very happy little hobbit.  I will work on the rest of the list as further opportunity presents and as time and money are available.

A few notable biblio-quotes:

“Anyone who has got a book collection and a garden wants for nothing.” & “A room without books is like a body without a soul.”
-Marcus Tullius Cicero

“The book can produce an addiction as fierce as heroin or nicotine, forcing us to spend much of our lives, like junkies, in book shops and libraries, those literary counterparts to the opium den”
-Phillip Adams

“I cannot live without books.”
– Thomas Jefferson (in a letter to John Adams in 1815)

“With thought, patience, and discrimination, book passion becomes the signature of a person’s character. “
— Nicholas A. Basbanes

One bad-@ss little kid!

/ Matt Talley / 1 Comment

You know his dad was the videographer/director.  It is a cute and slick short film that makes me want to bribe my kids into doing something half as cool:  A Star Wars film short using our dog as Yoda (some CGI green will be needed), my son as Luke and daughter as Leia.  Oh the sibling light-saber battles that we could have!  Stamps-with-foot (my wife) and I will have a cameo: I will be Chewy and she can be one of those saucy blue dancing girls with a thing for wookies….

Crap I gave up to be an adult:

/ Matt Talley / 1 Comment

Afternoon naps
eating just the frosting
sword fights with sticks
Nu-Grape Soda & Kool-Aid
being Chuck Norris
wearing Super Man Underoos
sneaking out
believing in Santa Claus & The Easter Bunny
skateboarding
#2 pencils
closing eyes when brushing teeth & washing hair
building Lincoln Logs, Legos, and erector sets insomnia before the first day of school
action figures
Penmanship
sneaking a peek at a copy of Playboy
wearing a backpack with both straps over shoulders
Trapper Keepers
just kissing a girl
not wearing sunglasses
jaw-breakers
playing Army
afternoon back-lot baseball
ugly church shoes
curfews
the violin
being a stuntman when I grow up
cheap beer
believing everything parents said was true
indifference to coffee
poor craftsmanship
casual friendships
smoking pot
wearing a cheap watch
fleeting crushes
unplanned nakedness
my own invincibility
a 1971 GMC Truck
having people notice when I did something cool or right
thinking I was a genius
counting irony as an emotion
having a really fun  job
delusions of being a professional climber & cyclist
dismissing the wisdom of teachers
English being the only language I’d ever need
having nothing to lose
indifference to insurance coverage
idle weekends
nonchalance about money
an uninterrupted night’s sleep
riding motorcycles
drinking a 12-pack of beer
ignoring news and politics
clothes with the names of pro sports teams on them
crappy fiction
20/20 vision
eating over half the pizza by myself
peace in the Middle East
linear thought as a rule
Not knowing what the IRS stood for
a full head of hair
watching the Three Stooges after cartoons on Saturday morning
reliving that which I supposedly left behind
plausible deniability

Horrors of horrors! I dropped my iPhone in the toliet at work!!

/ Matt Talley / 1 Comment

Son of a… How has my life turned into a sitcom? Crazy relatives show up at the house, I have hillbilly neighbors, my dog is cuter than me, and now I have dropped my iPhone in the fvcking toilet. It is like NBC has the cameras rolling on my life (could be worse – it could be a Soap opera: lying, cheating, poison, jail, drama, bad acting, eye-patches…). My company’s CEO just happened to be in the stall beside me (how does that occur in real life??) and giggled like a little school girl as I exploded with hateful curse words and looked on in horror as I had to fish the damn thing out. I turned it off, ran to the sink and washed it with foaming soap. I them wrapped it in towels, ran to the production line and put it in the heated epoxy/potting chamber. All was good for the first 10 minutes and then it turned itself back on?!?!? I turned it off again, but noticed that there was some color run in the screen. SH!T My company provided the phone and doesn’t have iPhone insurance, so if it doesn’t turn back on, I bought a new iPhone…

I just got through making fun of Adam Brown for his super-nerdy waterproof phone case. I really wish I was that geeky! This would be more funny story than possible expensive tragedy. I just e-mailed him for info since if the thing does turn on, I need to protect it. If not, then I will need to encase my “new” phone in a potty-proof wrapper.

Update 9-17-10:

The phone did great with the drying out process.  I turned it on a couple of days later and everything worked fine.  Two days after that, I hooked it up to my computer to sync and I was asked if I wanted to download the latest and greatest software.  Sure, why the Hell not?  After the download, the power and home buttons, stopped working if the phone was disconnected from the computer, but worked fine as long as it was plugged in.  I am sure it was some sort of weird latent damage caused by the dunking in the potty that showed up later because of the diagnostic check and cycling that accompanied the new download.  The phone is now a brick and after a HUGE rigmarole at work, I was given a new one, though it wasn’t free.  It looks like I get to share the cost of the new unit.  I guarantee that this one will be covered in layers of protective geeky love.

Minimalist self-rightousness

/ Matt Talley / 4 Comments

With a transcontinental move a few years ago and two international relocations in the last four years my lovely bride and I have done a fair job at parring down our worldly goods and keeping our propensity to collect superfluous crap in check.   Tyler Durden from Fight Club was 100% correct when he stated “the things you own end up owning you.”  When you have mountains of crap you have to first pay for them, then maintain and replace them when they break, and you must immediately run right out and buy the latest and greatest version.

This group realization for the need downsize is now in full swing (could it be… the economy??)  and you see more and more minimalism in both furniture design, production staging, fashion, bicycles, computers, etc…  I see the occasional article like the one recently about a guy who has whittled down his life to 57 things and he is super-smug about it – 57 things?  Really‽  I NEED a lot more shit than 57 things.  Go through my SSS kit, thrown in a spork, bowl, pocket knife, thumb drive, soap, shampoo, camera, a few cables, watch, wedding ring, glasses, computer, notebook and a couple of pens and I am standing there naked with over 60 things.

I can identify with his hypothesis that “we’ve been duped into buying things by an advertisement-dominated society for the last 50 years.” However, I need some of that stuff that I was brainwashed by the media to run out and purchase: iPhone, eReader, Global kitchen knives, my bikes, the super-cool Freitag messenger bag sitting next to me right now, etc…  One has to weigh true need, want, and desire for themselves to determine how much is too much and how much is enough.  I feel that the wife (Stamps With Foot) and I are doing fairly well, but we could still stand to par down some, (do we really need 4 computers, boxes of long-canceled checks, and my 4th grade notebook rantings?)

For years American suburban life has been all about keeping up with the Joneses: Big house, fast car, big truck, boat, HUGE TV, toys, toys, toys… The glut of articles and blogs and books about moving to a more minimalist life style is a sure sign that the Joneses may not be as important as they once were.  However, moderation in any movement is the key.  If I lump all the stuff I have read about making life simpler lately, it feels as if there is a thread of one-upmanship that pervades: “I can live with less shit than you…”  Some of the authors are crazy-smug (like the 57-things guy) about living on friend’s couches and having all their world possession in a backpack  (padding their $3000 laptop…)  Instead of the Joneses, there is now the Schwartzes: a section of our proletariat, riding fixed geared bikes, sporting skinny jeans, typing away on their MacBooks, drinking expensive coffee, texting away on $500 smart phones, getting ironic tattoos and swapping stories about how little they can subsist on

To my mind minimalism today is less about freeing yourself of all your crap and more about your attitude towards the stuff you have.   Do you NEED that new Blu-Ray player or do you WANT it?  Are you buying that to last forever or just until…?  Does it have a life-time warranty?  Are you actually going to use or wear it enough to justify a high initial price (price per wear principle). Can you rent it, borrow it (books), or do without it?

Now, before buying something new, I try to have the need vs. want conversation and while mildly successful, there are still some things that I just have because the are cool toys and I like to either play with them or look at them.  Would my life be simpler without ALL the bikes, 4 snowboards, a book press, 2 TVs, and a competition pellet gun??  Yes, it would, but that life wouldn’t be half the fun.  For me and for us, I think the trick to not falling into the pit of conspicuous ownership is to be careful with what we spend our money on, and whether it is a need or a toy we should buy the best quality available so that we get years of use and enjoyment out of whatever it may be that our hard earned greenbacks are being traded for.

Kindle Lust

/ Matt Talley / 6 Comments

I have a book addiction and right now I am jonsin’ for a binary fix: I have a mad case of Kindle lust:  one eye is starting to twitch, my mouth is dry, I am all itchy, and I can think of little else but e-ink.  I need a Kindle…..  NEED!  I complained about the size and Amazon made it thinner.  I reasoned that it sucked because I couldn’t arrange content and they released new software to allow organization.  I bitched about the high price and they dropped it, if only to mock me!  1500 books, my daily paper and Wikipedia access… Fvck it hurts!  I am starting to shake.

amazon_kindle_2_books

I am trying to be good, trying so hard.  My wife said, “No, we have other things to spend money on right now” (she is right) and she knows that I will spend hours every night for weeks downloading from Project Gutenberg and will buy a crap-ton of new stuff online – she KNOWS…  If I just go out and buy the thing, I will get it taken away like I am 3 years old and she will start using it smugly to ‘teach me a lesson.’   That and the sleeping outside alone (dog snuggles with her…) for the months it would take for her to calm down from my wanton disregard of our financial responsibilities would be too high a cost to pay if figured into the overall purchase price.

I am holding out for now, but God as my witness, the minute I can go to the library and check out an e-book with a Kindle, I am gonna go online and buy me some dirty e-reader relief, even if I have to prostitute myself out to a sweet old lady at the retirement home up the street for the cash!

kindle

I refuse to facebook

/ Matt Talley

My lovely little wife drug me into MySpace kicking and screaming. I made a profile, started collecting friends, heard from some kids I went to Jr. high with (still great guys), a couple of old girlfriends stopped by, I posted some pictures, I blogged a little, collected more friends, posted more pictures, spent hours looking at buddy’s and perfect stranger’s pages, etc… It all got to be too much. I have so much other stuff going on that I had to stop logging on. I am not sure the last time I checked my profile, but I haven’t added anything in 3 years or so. I have left my profile up just because, but I am pondering the decision to delete it as it seems that MySpace has become the denizen of pedophiles.

Now the pressure is on to “Facebook.” Somehow a noun has become an verb while I wasn’t watching, but I digress… I have fought the Facebook wave for the last three years. My wife has a page, my daughter has a page (I check up on her there) the ladies at work have pages and speak of being one another’s “Facebook-Friend” and ask if I will be one too… Really? Isn’t working with me and seeing me 9+ hours a day 5-6 days a week enough? I don’t particularly want my coworkers to see what my wife, daughter or deranged climbing buds might post on my Facebook page. In this age of information, I think that I would like to keep my private life just that. If I want to share something, I will blog about it – I like having complete control of the content and any comments that might come from the three people that follow my online musings – for the record, my wife isn’t on of them. She gets enough of my sardonic wit from sharing a life with me…

Nope, no Facebook for me.

The Magic Book Press

/ Matt Talley / 3 Comments

As a constant list maker and recorder I go through Moleskine’s like a fat kid tears into Halloween candy.  It gets pricy at $15 each and I had long thought about just making my own notebooks, but book binding/making is not a skill found on every corner.  A few years ago, while on a train through the Czech countryside a dear friend and book nerd started my binding education with a list of materials needed (I had just picked up a bone folder at an estate sale and it started the book making itch anew…) for my first notebook and a few sketches to get me started.  She stayed with us some weeks later and by the time she left for the airport I was the proud maker/owner of a monastery-bound 6” plain cotton paper notebook.  I had to improvise a bit during the construction because I lacked the one serious tool required to make books – a book press.  I used a combination of cement blocks and carpenters clamps to get the job done, but it wasn’t pretty or particularly easy.  I have been on the hunt for a simple iron press since then and while I have found a few online or in antique stores, they have been REAL pricey or in terrible shape.

I stopped by one of my favorite recycled building material places the other day and as I walked in the door, this sleek and sexy press appeared in my line of vision.  I was drawn to it and I got all fuzzy inside.  It was amazing!  Steel & brass, in perfect shape, not a spec of rust, it had not been refurbished, was the right size, and instead of the ubiquitous gear wheel on the top it had thick bar ended with globes of steel so that one might be able to exert serous pressure.   Laurel couldn’t look at it.  She felt that if she acknowledged its beauty that I would plop down the credit card right then and there.  She knew that I wanted it, that I NEEDED it.  I placed a hold on the magic press until I could find out a little of the piece’s history and negotiate the price the next Monday.

The press was built in the 1920s, imported from London, and used by a lady that had a part-time bindery in her home here in Seattle.  I bargained lightly (I didn’t want to lose the item) and got them to come off the asking price by 15% – it was worth every penny.  The final price included some serious bargaining with my better-half and I had to finally agree to give up my part of discretionary funds from our household budget until September: no eating out for lunch, no book buying at B&N, no new tools from Woodcraft, or Starbucks Coffee at break-time…  It’s going to hurt some…

book press

Spitting Coffee through my nose

/ Matt Talley / 2 Comments

I made an application that grabs the latest news from NPR, CNN, and my three favorite comics and delivers it to my Outlook In-box first thing in the morning – I know, I’m a dork.  Anyway, one of the ‘toons made me roll with laughter and I spit my fine latte out of my nose.  About two years ago I was cycling through the fields of North Germany, along narrow country roads, with a friend and neighbor who just could not stay warm on the ride.  The cold wind was just cutting into him so he pulled off, grabbed a paper full of glossy adverts from the ground and started layering them flat inside his jersey.  I laughed and laughed at him all the way home and would snicker for months afterward when we would ride together.  I had completely forgotten about it until yesterday morning when the comic below opened up in my morning Geek-mail.  Coffee should never be spewed from the nose: it is both painful and messy.  My laughter/coffee fountain was also a source of delight for the other cube-dwelling Engi-nerds that surround me.

yahuda stuffing newspaper

A Brush With the Far Side

/ Matt Talley

Small world – strange place…  So the other day I left a couple of messages on someone’s voice mail wanting some info about this or that.  The recording was one of those monotone/flat affect sort of messages that come standard with your phone and one that most people rush to change.  I thought it was odd considering the person I was trying to reach is one of those people who records cutsie messages with music in the background.  I got a call back the next day while working my garage/shop that went as follows:

Ring… Ring…

Me: Hello

Caller: Hi this is Gary Larson and you left a couple of messages on our phone the last few days looking for ______.

Me: Uhh, yeah, sorry I must have had the wrong num…, wait, uhh – Gary Larson – as in THE Gary Larson?!

Caller: Well, there are a number of THE Gary Larson’s, but yes…

Me: Ummm, oh….  Yeah sorry, I didn’t mean to bug you.  I will check the number and make sure to call the uhh right one from now on, sir.

Caller: Ok, great.  Have a good day, bye…

Me: …………..

Now, I am someone who has a comeback for everything.  As a child I was king of the ‘dozens (playground ‘Yo Mamma is so… ‘ matches) and I am almost never at a loss for words – sometimes to my own detriment…  I pride myself on my ability to deliver a polished opinion/thought/answer on command and under stress.  As one can tell from the transcript above, I failed miserably to seize the opportunity that serendipity dropped in my lap and tell an amazing artist how much I love his work and that at the very instant he called there was one of his comics in view, freshly pinned to the right of the shop door.  No, no, instead I sounded like I had just put down the 3’ bong and paused my video game in my parent’s basement before answering his call.  So much for my personal power of wit, self-control, verbal ability, and mental agility… dumbass…….

Comics for Cycling Geeks

/ Matt Talley

There is a special place in my heart for the daily comic strip.  I have a tool that feeds my three favorites to me in an e-mail each day so that I start my morning off with a little laughter.  One of my favorites, Yehuda Moon, is for bike geeks, but has been on hiatus for a couple of months. Rick Smith, the cartoonist behind the strip took some time off to recharge his batteries and I have missed my daily dose.

Yehuda is an old-school Luddite cyclist that commutes everywhere – in all types of weather, rides a heavy-weight steel framed steed, sports a wool sweater and cycling cap pulled low, is a militant cycling advocate, and owns a bike shop with a guy named Joe who loves carbon bikes, technology, and speed.  Joe serves Hardy to Yehuda’s Laurel.  I see a little of myself in Joe and a lot of me in Yehuda.  He pulls shenanigans that the evil inside me sing with glee – painting cycling lanes on main street in the middle of the night, relieving @sshat drivers of their keys, giving bike thieves a u-lock beat down, etc…

2008-03-11yehuda-red-light

On May 2nd, new panels will be available, but this week there have been a couple spin-off funnies available if you check at the main site.

2010-04-242010-04-262010-04-27