iMatt :: The Blog of Matt Clare

I get sent to my work E-Mail address a number of seemingly random EMails from Profs at Brock that go something like this:

I am writing to inquire about a potential project and colleagues gave me your name as someone to contact. I am currently working with NGO and industry to develop a………

In responce to extensive interest in my work, I’ve decided to draft a new company slogan:

Matt Clare’s Web Development: We don’t want your business. Please stop telling people we do.

There’s a whole department called Web Development at Brock to do this! I wish I knew who keeps spreading my name around, but I don’t ask because I’ve learnt not to get involved at all, or it’s my fault that they can’t find anyone to do the job. I generally latch onto sentances like “How would I do this at Brock” and respond directly to that sentance with “At Brock you would contact Web Dev, their extension is _____ you want to talk to ____” and I never end the E-Mail with my normal “If you need any help please let me know”.

I really like my job, I like who I work with, I really like working with academics day-to-day. That said, I don’t like St. Catharines, and I don’t do unsolicited work.

Now it’s on the record and Google-able. Maybe that will help with things.

I hate to point it out, but this story really does have legs.

Miss. Universe, Natalie Glebova, has had her picture in the number two position of Google News’ Canada channel all week! It happened on the weekend at the Tastes of Thailand festival, David Miller apologized on Monday, hopefully whomever zealously enforced this by-law lost their job. Miller and her both think it was silly, both continue their work. How is this a five day story? I hate to sound like the National Post every week other than this, but doesn’t anyone care about liberal corruption scandals?

The worst part is when Miller goes for re-election this is the story that some readers (pronounced, SUN readers) will remember.

I try not to talk too much about work (or use people’s last and first names at the same time, or libel myself or anyone else) but I figured I’d share a few pictures of my new office at work. They were taken before I put anything on the walls, but it’s not the wall that’s the important part!

Quite the automotive weekend. I was back in Markham to work on the Saturn, the transmission has been slipping in 4th — probably due to the heat and the Saturn’s 190,000+ KM and the fact that I haven’t changed the transmission fluid since 120,000KM. I spent Saturday trying to get the drain plug off and could not find anything that was the right size. My aunts and uncles started arriving around three for a small dinner party while I was still under the car. I had to make a third trip down to Canadian tire to again look for the right sized tool to remove the drain plug.

While I was on my third trip I had to wait almost ten minutes for someone to unlock the socket cabinet, apparently the call-button was turned off. While I was waiting my mother called me and asked me to go to 48 & 16th with my cellphone because my sister had got in a car accident and her battery was dying. This made the wait even more excruciating. Once I got there I was relived to see she was fine and that my father and uncle had already made it over.

Apparently, the other driver was leaving Tim Horton’s and was waived in to the outside lane and was coming across into the left-hand turn lane as my sister was braking. She hit his front left with her front right – she’s OK, he had a small scar on his forehead. The Cirrus is still drivable, but he had to have his car towed. It was interesting to see how the tow trucks swarm like diesel powered vultures, it was a good thing we were able to drive off. I took a few pictures while we waited for the police, and we found out that the gentleman who hit my sister used to live on our street and has a picture of my sister at a birthday party from years ago. The whole family of the person who hit my sister where really nice, if we were going to get hit by someone it may as well be them/him.

Sunday. Still unable to get that drain plug lose and now the ground was wet and it was preventing me from using my ramps to raise the car up. I took it to Canadian Tire and the guys loosened it for me after going through a whole bunch of tools. They didn’t even charge me so I slipped the guy from the counter and the guy who did the work a five each. Obviously, once this plug was loose I didn’t want to change the fluid and use that plug again. They guys at the first Canadian Tire had sold me a guess at the proper plug, but it wasn’t the one. So I had to go over to the other Canadian Tire, with the plug this time, and they were able to give me a new one.

The rest of the afternoon included a down-poor, another trip for ATF and some good scrapes on my forearm from removing the filter. I was able to finally fix the transmission and my drive back to St. Catharines without incident after about ten hours of work on this car. I got a quote before all of this and it was going to be $220 for the shop to do it with my fluid and filter – so time well spent.

Now, beer. Soon, sleep.

Bret and Corey over at FormulaPod.com sent me some proofs of their new T-Shirts. They look pretty cool (as in cool people would wear them, not people who listen to radio on their computer would find them cool). They should be ready shortly. As of right now they’re the 31^st ranked podcast in Canada, (that’s top 40! 😉 ) and the number one independent sports podcast in the US.

I’s still waiting to find some good non-sports non-geek podcasts that Adam Curry doesn’t host, when I do I’ll post a list of my favourite podcasts.