Category Archives: Katie and Matt Blog

Update on Life

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It’s been a while since I’ve put anything up about our life, so here’s a quick update:

New food:
I have really developed a taste for Salt & Vinegar chips, Coconut Sobe, and dark chocolate. We recently bought a grill, so Katie has been coming up with all kinds of yummy grilled recipes. I’ve also discovered Mongolian Grills, while Katie is always finding some great Indian places to eat at.

Side jobs:
I have been working on our church’s website (http://www.mercyplace.org). I also designed a site for UT Brownsville’s School of Education (http://soe2.utb.edu). I also helped Nashville State Community College finish up a site that was mostly done (http://www.thecasefiles.org).

Music:
I recently scored the 2-disc special edition of U2’s Best of 1980-1990 from Ebay for $4. Man, awesome collection of hits and B-sides. I also got a CD by a guy named Christopher Lee Freeman, who does a mixture of sitar music with hard rock. Nice. I’m also awaiting the release of Kula Shaker‘s 3rd album. They are a Hindu rock band that my Mom actually turned me on to a couple of years ago. That’s all stuff that Katie and like to listen to. I love to piddle around MySpace and listen to buzz bands like Gnarls Barkley and OkGo. And metal bands like Firewind or Rob Rock 🙂

Entertainment:
We have checked out a new show called Heroes. It’s a really good show. My wife doesn’t always watch it, but I love it. We are also loving this year’s Amazing Race. I’m still trying to get into Lost, but it’s hard. I just can’t take weirdness for weirdness sake. I am starting to become a Stargate junkie, so I better back off from that (SG-1 and Atlantis). We also rented Serenity recently. A really good sci-fi movie, and even Katie said she enjoyed it. Uhhh… other than that, I can’t remember any good movies we’ve seen recently. Just a hand full of mediocre ones.

Random Other Stuff:
I have a MySpace page now.
http://www.myspace.com/grandeped.

This is Going to Sound Crazy…

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But I’ll go ahead and say it anyway – there was an explosion in our neighborhood last night. Like a literal “KA-BOOM!!!” I was having trouble sleeping because of a pain in my neck that won’t go away. Like a literal pain, not an irritating person. Although, people like that have kept me up before. I finally fell asleep late, and about 2:30 – BOOM! It wasn’t a gun shot, and it wasn’t a car back-firing. It was too loud for that. It echoed off of the hills around our neighborhood. It left your ears ringing. It even woke up my wife (she is a heavy sleeper – once slept through the house next to us catching on fire). But I walked outside, and nothing was happening. No one else was outside, everything was quiet. Except for the street lights were out. Our power was on, but the streets were dark. And then they came on again. I guess a transformer blew somewhere or something, but there was nothing on the news. Strange.

New Version of the Site

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Katie and Matt Blog

My wife has been letting some people know about this, so I thought I might add a link. I have been working on a new version of this blog for a while now. I finally stumbled on a design that I like, so now I actually have to start getting it functional!

I’m re-designing the site based on a concept called AJAX, which is what Google uses to make their Gmail and Maps and other stuff so fancy. I also want to change a few things, like the ‘what I am listening to now’ into just ‘favorite albums’ (because we never really have time to change them). Also, seeing that we are very irregular in posting stuff, I want to create a feature that allows people to get an email (if they want) whenever we add a new post. Yes, I know all of you tech people out there know how to use the RSS feed for this site, but that hasn’t proven very popular. And it needs fixin’, too (if you use the RSS feed, you are being led to a REALLY old version of this site).

If you want to leave comments, you should try to do it on the new page. It’s all in fancy AJAX now – no pop-ups, no reloading pages.

Also, I have to point out that you might get errors on the page if you happen to access it after I mess something up 🙂

Three Year Anniversary

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Katie and Matt Blog

Not of my wedding, but of this blog. Also, I noticed three things:

  • The record for most posts (8) was set in the first month of this blog, so I really need to break that.
  • I’ve never used the ‘Web Site’ category, or the ‘Politics’ category for that matter. I wonder why I created those?
  • I’ve never used the cool buttons that change font colors. Guess it works.

Just some random stuff. So now what can I do to break the post record?

Pluto Has Been Demoted

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Katie and Matt Blog

It’s a sad day in the cosmos. A group of really smart people got together and decided that Pluto no longer counts as a planet. Do they realize what this means? Millions of third graders’ solar system models will now be totally worthless. Do you hear me – totally worthless!!!

Oh, well. It’s not the first time something has been demoted from a planet. It also happened in the 1800’s to an asteroid. One that I can’t spell right now.

I feel sorry for the ancient Mayans. Their doomsday prophecy about the universe being destroyed after the 10th planet is discovered has been set back by… well…. who knows how long now. Now what will they do to scare themselves about the end of the universe? It’s not like they had global warming to worry about.

Bush Loves U2

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If you don’t know much about U2’s songs, you may not find this as funny, but it might still make you laugh. YouTube.com is great for videos like this.

Also, I found this on the web. If you know what this is about, you are an official trekkie:

Star Trek Expendabilitiy

UPDATE: See more Trek “inspirational” posters here.

Stupid White Lines

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Katie and Matt Blog

Apparently, those suggestions about “not crossing double white lines” that was briefly paused on in driving school are actually laws. I got a ticket the other day for driving over a white line! I was switching lanes to get into the exit lane on my way to work, and apparently it’s not cool to do that too soon, even if it means clearing out some more room in bumper to bumper traffic. Arlington, Texas for you. It’s okay to run red lights in front of cops (I’ve seen that), and it’s okay to whiz past cops at well over the speed limit. But drive over those white lines, buddy, and you’ve got another thing coming!!!!

(I’m not bitter, am I?)

Slow Speed Chases

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Katie and Matt Blog

There seems to have been a lot of slow speed chases in DFW recently. The latest one, with an 18-wheeler taking like three hours to wind around the metroplex, went right by the exit we take to get to our house. It’s just a sign of how weird some people are getting. The guy in the truck that was forcing the driver to keep going knew that they had no tires, barely even rims left, and that the police weren’t just going to give up chasing, but he just kept going. And going, and going. How long before Energizer makes some cheesy commercial about these chases?