Simply Matt

Well, it’s been a very long 4 days for all of us Walkers. Emma had a procedure done last Thursday to try to induce labor. It sort of worked. We ended up in the hospital that night (all night), and Emma was contracting, but not progressing. We went home, and had to come back Saturday afternoon. This time, Emma was in active labor, and Carmen was born at 10:10 am on Sunday, August 10th. Here is a quick video. I have a bunch of pictures to upload once I get to a better Internet connection.

P.S. Don’t pay any attention to the title of this post. It’s a geek joke for my buddy Brad Bell.

Okay…not really.  I’m not even sure that I like him.  I’m hoping that he has many, many black faux-turtlenecks.  Otherwise, he’s wearing the same clothes day after day.  That’s just gross.

Actually, I just finished watching the video of Apple’s iPhone SDK roadmap announcement.  They’ve done so many things right over the last few years that it’s starting to make me feel like I’m in the Twilight Zone.  When I first started working in IT, Apple and Macintosh computers were like the overpriced Yugos of the computer world.  Back then they were married to the RISC architecture, which in and of itself is not bad.  I think it was everything around the chip that made it an unholy nightmare.  I remember having to spend 3 hours one day trying to upgrade from 7.5.3 to 7.6 in order to get a certain peripheral working.  It sucked the life right out of me.

However, recently, everything has been going much better.  First was Apple’s decision to switch to a Unix-core operating system, OS X.  Then, more recently, they switched to an Intel-based hardware architecture.  Of course, all that goes without mentioning the iPods and iPhone, which brings me back to the iPhone SDK.  It makes me want to get an iPhone, just so I can make it tell me how darn sexy I look.

If you’re interested, check out the video.  It’s about 1 hour and 15 minutes long.  Probably not for the faint-of-heart.

A little Kid Rock there to get the party started.

So, I wanna be a cowboy. Who doesn’t. Have you ever seen John Wayne swagger? When you swagger like that, people think one of two things – either he has jock-itch, or he’s a bad, bad dude. And the way he says “Pil-grum.” ** swoon ** It’s man-love at first sight (you know, where you shake a hand and do that little one-armed half-hug).

So, what’s brought this kind of talk on, you ask? Winchester. The Winchester 1300 Defender pump-action 12-gauge shotgun, to be exact. Here’s a picture if you’re interested.

But alas! My wife, Emma, is all up in arms (pun intended) over my newfound love affair. I mean, I understand her concern and all. She’s witnessed me fall out of a chair, trip over my own pants, and hurt myself in the most amazing ways. She knows about the time I accidentally drilled a hole through the side of our house. But let’s put that aside for a moment. I grew up in the country on a farm. My brother and I learned about guns at a very early age. In fact, I think my dad gave me a new .410 single-shot shotgun when I was just 12 years old. I loved that thing. I really do know what I’m doing around guns.

I like to look at the practical side of things. Crime is up in this town, and our mayor and city council don’t have a clue. They’re more concerned about setting up a citizen review board to knit-pick what our boys-in-blue do rather than coming up with ways to combat escalating violent crime. (Just as an aside, if you want to cut crime, I think you should start giving cops the authority to shoot anyone that has their pants hanging off their butt. It would send a message. That’s all I’m saying.)

I’m very concerned with protecting my family. Emma doesn’t quite understand that. The way I figure it, the reason she doesn’t understand is because she’s not the one in charge of protecting said family. That falls on the man of the house. I literally lose sleep over this some nights. I’m pretty sure that the sight of me in my underwear at 2-o’clock in the morning is not going to be enough to stop someone that breaks into our house. Although, I could be wrong. It seems to stop my wife all the time!

I’m going to keep working on her.  I’ll keep you posted on my progress.

Pil-grum.