Muujware.com: Matthew's Journal

Wedding Photos

Matthew — Wed, 31 Dec 2008 16:01:07 GMT

I’m almost done tagging and organizing the photographs. If you have not done so yet, add me as a Flickr contact so you can see all of my photographs. Also, don’t forget to join the Muujware group.

The Hyatt Regency (Update)

Matthew — Fri, 12 Dec 2008 17:06:47 GMT

This is an update to an earlier post

I'll be true to my word. The Hyatt Regency doesn't suck. (Maybe I should wait until after this weekend to make the final determination).

They refunded my money earlier this week, but I remained persistent and filed a complaint through their website asking what had caused the problem. Today I received a call checking to make sure I got the refund and apologizing for what they admitted was a mistake, although they still do not know the underlying cause. Anyway, they have supposedly upgraded the room to one with a better view, so I consider this a victory. It's a small victory, but a victory nonetheless.

The Hyatt Regency

Matthew — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 21:39:50 GMT

~~I will not retract this statement until I get my money back and receive a formal apology from Hyatt Regency. A defense to libel is the truth, which is certainly on my side.~~

Here’s the story:

I reserved a room at their hotel in downtown San Antonio, paying in advance to secure the rate, and was overcharged by $800. Due to the large amount of spending due to Christmas and my upcoming wedding, this could cause several important checks to bounce. Thank you so much, Hyatt, for inconveniencing me. I should have kept the reservation I had made earlier at the Omni nearby. It may have cost an extra $200, but that's still one quarter of what your hotel overcharged me.

So until I receive a refund and an apology, I will continue to speak out vocally against the Hyatt.

You think I forgot about the time you couldn't find my prepaid reservation and included Flashback Prom event tickets at your Austin Town Lake location? Remember how you wanted me to sign the receipt before I received what I had paid for?

In addition to my initial phone call about the matter, in which I was assured the problem would be rectified (excuse me if I have no confidence in their abilities right now), here is the only response I received on the matter:

I appreciate the time that you have taken to contact us regarding your stay. You may rest assured that we are looking into these matters and will contact you as soon as we are able.

If you should have any questions, additional concerns, or if this requires immediate attention, please do not hesitate to contact Hyatt Hotels Guest Relations at 1-800-323-7249. Our office is open every day, 6:00am - 2:00am central time.

Best regards,

Hyatt Hotels Guest Relations

Check back later for more updates.

UPDATE: December 12, 2008

Brain Teaser

Matthew — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 06:44:11 GMT

Here’s something for everybody to think about for a while. Maybe I need some sleep, but here it is anyway.

What is significant about the following sentence? “Arms rack carnage.”

Best of luck to all. I haven’t thought of a prize for the first person to post the answer. I guess that depends on exactly how much effort it actually takes to figure it out the correct answer. Note: In case you were thinking about using Google, until their crawler gets around to indexing this post, you won't find any results for "arms rack carnage".

Personal Note to All Internet Debaters

Matthew — Mon, 11 Feb 2008 23:28:50 GMT

I just wanted to tell everybody that, should you choose to debate something on the Internet, your point will be more likely to reach me if you do not start your argument with this:

Your ignorant!

No matter how good any of your points are, they simply will not get through to me. I will sit here wondering just what you mean by “my ignorant.” I do not even mind the attempt at name-calling as much as the complete lack of ability to communicate the simplest of ideas. It is like bringing a plastic knife to an artillery fight.

Oh, and this also applies to people playing games online that say “your gay” or “your a fag.”

Album Cover

Matthew — Wed, 30 Jan 2008 11:18:23 GMT

Mike posted an album cover meme and I followed suit:

Create your own album cover!

Step 1: Go to Wikipedia’s random article page. The first article you get is the name of your band.

Step 2: Go to the Random Quotations page. The last four words of the last quote is the album title.

Step 3: Go to Flickr’s Interesting photo page. Third picture, no matter what it is, is your album cover.

Step 4: PROFIT! (Okay, actually, you take those three elements and combine them using your favorite image editor, and voila!)

Here is my album cover:

I rather like how it turned out! Look for it at your local record store. You won’t find it, of course, but look for it anyway!

Big News

Matthew — Thu, 20 Dec 2007 12:36:01 GMT

Question: Why has Matthew not posted anything to his journal for a long time? Just what has Matthew been up to lately?

Answer: I have been spending most of my free time with my wonderful girlfriend, Bette, whom I love with all of my heart. To get directly to the point, on Tuesday, December 18, 2007, I asked Bette to marry me, and she accepted my proposal! Needless to say, I am absolutely euphoric!

I want to thank all of my friends, family, and even complete strangers for their support and congratulatory words. The response has been pretty overwhelming so far.

I’m sure I will post more details about our wedding as we make plans. We do not foresee the big day coming any earlier than next December, but there is a lot of planning to do and the year will probably fly by more quickly than we expect.

Oh yeah, now I need to get back to worrying about Christmas!

Whiteblogging

Matthew — Wed, 13 Jun 2007 11:07:08 GMT

I've been posting photographs of my whiteboard on the Interweb at whiteboard.themuuj.com.

Even though my handwriting is terrible, there’s something to be said about expressing oneself in such a raw manner. I do not have to worry about formatting or HTML or anything like that.

I may, however, need to buy some more dry erase markers in a wide variety of colors.

If my roommates write anything interesting on my whiteboard I may post those submissions as well. You can see some of Monty’s work in the “Pilot” whiteboard.

Also, various magnets may make appearances.

Update: I’ve moved the whiteboard images to this flickr photoset. If you feel the need to comment on an individual image, that is the place to go. However, whiteboard.themuuj.com will remain the permanent URL to these images, but I will probably just set up a redirection website there.

Happy Pi Day

Matthew — Wed, 14 Mar 2007 19:19:55 GMT

Today is March 14 (3/14), otherwise known as:

Albert Einstein's birthday
The day before the Ides of March
Pi Day

I hope everybody has a good π Day. I know I will.

Stinky Cheese

Matthew — Tue, 26 Sep 2006 07:16:54 GMT

“Weird Al” Yankovic’s new album, “Straight Outta Lynwood,” is now at your favorite record store. Or, it probably will there be when they open, if they are not already open. If it is not there you should probably find a new favorite record store.

Michael was lucky enough to find a single copy at Wal-Mart. The features on the DVD side of the DualDisc make this a great buy.

By the way, is anybody here brave enough to try to sing karaoke with “Pancreas,” “Virus Alert,” or even “Trapped in the Drive Thru” at some sort of social gathering?

Favorites are stupid (and other things)

Matthew — Fri, 22 Sep 2006 03:52:12 GMT

Time for a long and pointless story…

I was trying to browse the Internet on my parent’s computer when I was at their house recently. I did not get very far before Internet Explorer kept crashing. All in all, I do not find Internet Explorer to be particularly unstable. Early versions of Firefox crashed much more often than Internet Explorer ever did for me. So I assumed that it was some toolbar (probably spyware) that was causing the problems.

I download Windows Defender and let it scan the system. There were 12 potentially problematic programs. First listed was the VNC server, which I quickly told Defender to ignore since I was the one who installed it.

The rest were mostly random spyware applications. Anyway, my parents have a virus scanner and do a good job at letting Windows Update install everything it wants to, even though it repeatedly asks them to install the same update for Windows Media Player. I even tried doing the European thing and removed Windows Media Player, but Windows Update does not stop the complaining.

Where was I?

Oh, so my parents are not wildly irresponsible with their computer, and yet there was 11 bad programs lurking on their machine. On top of that, cleaning out all of those programs did not stop Internet Explorer from crashing.

That’s it! Time to move them to Firefox.

I’m not big on forcing any particular program on anybody. I will make suggestions, but unless I am in charge of IT somewhere, I do not go around switching people to other programs against their will. My mom likes WordPerfect and my dad is used to Microsoft Word, so both are installed on their computer. There’s even a few MS-DOS programs still installed, with a dot-matrix printer attached so that they can print (that has got to go soon, though).

Since my parents most likely use Internet Explorer exclusively at work, I had put off installing it on their machine, against my better judgment. Plus, I was not sure if their bank websites all supported Firefox. I particularly like when they tell you that you are not using the newest version of Netscape.

So I installed Firefox, tested their bank websites successfully. I also configured it so that tabbed browsing would not likely confuse them, because I did not have time to teach them how to use it effectively.

Honestly, I think the biggest change for them was “Favorites” changing to “Bookmarks.” I could write an extension to change it back, but that’s a pretty silly thing to worry about. Anyway, this brings me to my point:

Favorites are stupid!

I am almost certain that Microsoft called their Internet links “Favorites” in order to differentiate them from the competition (and possibly avoid intellectual property infringement). But 95% of the links in my bookmarks are certainly not my favorite websites. They are just links that I do not want to lose. My favorites are on my bookmarks toolbar, which Internet Explorer simply calls “Links.”

Wow, that seems incredibly backwards. They are all links, and only a few of them are favorites. Incidentally, I have recently renamed the “Bookmarks Toolbar Folder” to “Favorites,” mostly because I can.

Anyway, I want to urge Windows users out there to upgrade to Internet Explorer 7 when it comes out. If you are using an otherwise-working operating system that Microsoft refuses to support (such as Windows 2000, and Windows 98/ME to a lesser extent), do yourself a favor and switch to Firefox or Opera. Many web developers would love to see Internet Explorer 6 disappear from the Internet.

If I ever get around to updating Muujware.com’s design, do not expect it to look good or even work perfectly on Internet Explorer 6, because that browser will be dead to me. Actually, I will probably use Dean Edwards’ hacks from now on.

Another Cult Classic in the Making

Matthew — Thu, 14 Sep 2006 06:46:42 GMT

Today, I saw a movie that I had been looking forward to seeing for a long time, but almost missed because I had seen no major indication that it had been released.

The movie, Mike Judge’s Idiocracy, only opened on 130 screens, and there was absolutely no promotion for it whatsoever.

If you are in or near one of the following cities, you should consider seeing this movie:

Los Angeles
Atlanta
Toronto
Chicago
Dallas
Houston
Austin

I mean, you liked Office Space, right? And you probably liked King of the Hill and/or Beavis and Butthead, right?

Here is the basic premise: (from Wikipedia)

Luke Wilson plays a supremely average guy from the year 2005, who is used as a guinea pig for a government project which places him in hibernation for 500 years. Upon waking up in the year 2505, he discovers he is now by far the smartest person in the world.

The “dumbing down” of humanity is a result of natural selection favoring the stupid. After seeing the movie, I believe that in order to save humanity, we must take a page out of the book of Futurama: the smartest among us should be forced to pair off and mate. Think of the future, people.

I Feel Vindicated

Matthew — Fri, 25 Aug 2006 04:09:33 GMT

You have probably heard about Pluto’s recent demotion.

For years, I’ve been arguing that our solar system only has eight known planets, and Pluto was basically a big ball of ice. I never liked the idea that Pluto could being considered a planet.

Then I heard that the International Astronomical Union was going to promote some other Pluto-like bodies to planets. I was outraged. That is, I was as outraged as one should get over something like this that really doesn’t matter at this point, even if it may matter more in the future. Anyway, I was outraged. Worse, one of the new “planets” was nicknamed “Xena,” and not “Persephone,” or better yet, “Rupert”

But it looks like they decided to do the right thing¹ and officially designate Pluto to be a “drawf planet”

What more, my recordings of Holst’s The Planets is now complete² without having to add a movement written by someone who was not Gustav Holst.

¹The right thing being defined as what I think is right, of course.

²With the exception of Earth, which doesn’t deserve its own song (and yes, I realize the work is astrological, not astronomical).

A Question for Airport Security

Matthew — Fri, 11 Aug 2006 03:21:17 GMT

With the sudden increase in security checks at airports, I have a question:

Are they checking luggage for snakes?

I personally refuse to get on any plane without Sam Jackson on board.

Internet Keyboard

Matthew — Fri, 04 Aug 2006 07:09:29 GMT

This is what I imagine the average Internet user's keyboard looks like:

Incidentally, I don't know who the keyboard belonged to before I got my hands on it, and I have no idea what is on the keys. I do know that it is a Dell Quiet Key keyboard, which ironically causes the computer to beep randomly when typing.

Wireless Xbox?

Matthew — Sat, 29 Jul 2006 08:03:11 GMT

I came across a strange box while at the hardware store:

View full image.

The following questions came to mind:

Is that a Wireless Xbox?
How is it powered?
Why do the controller wires run to the back of the machine?
What, if anything, plugs into the front?
Why do people in art departments choose aesthetics over realism when it comes to pictures like this?
Why am I making such a big deal out of this?
Did anybody see me take this photograph?
What would they think I’m doing?

This is why Jedi aren't allowed to play golf...

Matthew — Sun, 11 Jun 2006 07:46:58 GMT

(View video at YouTube)

I understand that this sort of thing may be physically possible, but part of me thinks there might be a greater power at work here.

Submit More Poll Suggestions

Matthew — Wed, 05 Apr 2006 00:50:40 GMT

I want to get a long queue of polls put up so I will not have to worry about them for a while.

Post comments with any ideas for poll questions (and answers) here. I'm closing the previous thread.

Live-Action Simpsons (No it's not a new movie)

Matthew — Sun, 05 Mar 2006 09:19:34 GMT

Check out this live-action version of the introduction to The Simpsons. I’m not 100% certain about its origin, but it seems that it was created by the SKY 1 television network to promote the show.

I imagine that there will (unfortunately) actually be a live action Simpsons movie some day, just as there has been multiple live-action Flinstones movies and numerous other cartoon-to-film adaptations, many of which are barely watchable. Let us just hope that it doesn’t happen any time soon.

It's Peanut Butter Wiki Time

Matthew — Wed, 15 Feb 2006 22:20:07 GMT

I've been using PBWiki to host a private wiki for about a month, and I've been really happy with the results.

I'm considering opening up a public wiki, and I wanted to see if anybody was interested in providing content from time to time. Also, an overall theme/topic for the wiki would be a good idea.

One possible use would be to replace the “Muffins Aren’t Fruit” page. That certainly would not be enough content, but it might be a good starting point.

Or perhaps if somebody had an idea for a more useful topic. Just post your ideas in the comments and I will ~~steal them and make them my own~~ implement them and give proper attribution.

Longhorns!!!

Matthew — Thu, 05 Jan 2006 05:38:28 GMT

This year’s Rose Bowl between USC and UT was one of the most tense (and most entertaining) games I have watched this year. It’s great to see the home team win the big game.

I should also point out that as of this moment, the UT website has the results of the game on the front page, while USC does not. I guess the UT webmaster was watching the game.

And Vince Young is freakin’ insane. How on Earth do you defend against a guy like that?

Thomas Pedley, Attorney at Law

Matthew — Thu, 03 Nov 2005 21:56:14 GMT

I would like to publicly congratulate T. J. for passing the Texas Bar Examination. You can find his name on the “pass list.” He and his wife have now both joined the ranks of Clarence Darrow, Ben Stein, and most importantly, Harvey Birdman.

This almost makes up for the Astros losing the World Series.

This System is Begging For a Jedi Knight Game

Matthew — Sat, 24 Sep 2005 11:18:45 GMT

Albino Blacksheep has posted a new commercial showing off the control design of the upcoming Nintendo Revolution console.

I kept waiting for the commercial to flash to the Star Wars kid swinging the controller around along with full saber sound effects. The closest they came was some good old-fashioned sword fighting.

While I can't help but think that people (myself included) will look like complete idiots playing this console, I'm intrigued by some of the possibilities. I wonder if they will make a new WarioWare game to take full advantage of the controller design. I'm certain that a new Mario Party is in order.

And unlike some light guns, it seems that the sensors are separate units, and therefore will not cease to work properly on extremely large high-definition televisions.

I'm really wondering how the Revolution will stand up to the XBox-360 and the Playstation 2π (known to everybody but me as the Playstation 3—which is dumb since “3” is not even half of a complete circle and cannot hope to compete with the other systems).

They FINALLY Posted Something Useful...

Matthew — Sun, 31 Jul 2005 04:44:05 GMT

The Microsoft Internet Explorer team has finally posted some useful information on standards support in Internet Explorer 7.

Here is the post so you can read for yourself.

The CSS fixes and updates are most welcome. Personally, I wasn’t hoping or asking for CSS 3 support, but instead a reasonable CSS 2 implementation. If the features mentioned in said post are implemented, web design will be a lot less stressful (well, for those of us who care about accessibility and standards). All I have ever wanted is clean, semmantic (X)HTML (as opposed to the tag soup that currently make up this website) with stylesheets to make it look pretty.

It seems that Internet Explorer, in addition to fixing the nastiest of the bugs that plague version 6, will implement the biggest features that non-Microsoft browsers implement consistently. Basically, websites that look slick in Opera, Mozilla, Firefox, Camino, Safari, Konqueror, etc. (sorry if I missed any of the other well-behaved browsers) have a snowball chance in heck of looking decent in Internet Explorer 7.

The updated HTML support is nice, too. It will be great to use the <abbr> element and have it work with most browsers. Remember, all acronyms are abbreviations, but not the other way around, so <acronym> is not sufficient to use for everything.

The fixes for the <object> tag will also be great, as a designer can, for example, have a Shockwave Flash animation fall back on an image, and finally fall back on text. It is also good for those who have dropped the non-standard <embed> tag and the deprecated <iframe> tag, as well as those on the edge who want to drop <img> in preparation of XHTML 2.0.

However, there was no word from the team on proper XHTML support (that is, application/xhtml+xml as opposed to text/html) or updated DOM support for JavaScript. I’m also curious about some of the bugs in CSS parsing that designers use to work around Internet Explorer bugs, such as the popular “* html” CSS selector hack (which matches <html> in Internet Explorer when it shouldn’t match anything). If enough CSS bugs are fixed and new features are added, these hacks need to fail in Internet Explorer 7. (But what we really need is an @agent¹ selector in CSS for explicitly defining which agents the “hack” rules apply to).

So now all I have to worry about is converting Windows 98/ME/2000 users to Firefox, as Microsoft has made it quite clear that Internet Explorer 7 will not be released for those operating systems. This is a shame, as I still have several Windows 2000 machines around here. Then again, I have moved to Firefox and do not plan of moving to Internet Explorer 7 (except for the purposes of testing). The screenshots I have seen do not impress me too much, and the toolbar inside the tabs seems goofy. It will be even weirder once the fifty toolbars (Yahoo, MSN, Google, Ask Jeeves, etc.) get installed as a part of some other program.

¹Example of a theoretical @agent selector:

 @agent CSS3 {
 /* rules only for CSS3-compliant browsers */
 }
 @agent MS-IE7 {
 /* rules only for Internet Explorer 7 */
 }
 @agent Gecko-1.9 {
 /* rules only for Gecko-1.9 browsers (such as a future version of Firefox) */
 }
 /* all other rules */

Sci-Friday

Matthew — Fri, 15 Jul 2005 23:22:35 GMT

In less than an hour, Sci-Fi will be starting all new seasons of Stargate SG-1, Stargate Atlantis, and Battlestar Galactica.

The latter two shows had big cliffhangers last season (which were their first seasons), so this day could not have come soon enough. I think Kyla and Michael would agree.

I’m a bit worried about SG-1, since Richard Dean Anderson’s role is being reduced so he can spend more time with his family. Still, I am looking forward to Season 9.

After tonight, I will also start looking forward to the third season of Arrested Development, which has been renewed.

Also of note are new episodes of Harvey Birdman: Attorney at Law.

I could still go for some new episodes of Aqua Teen Hunger Force, or at the very least, volume 4 on DVD.