Today we respond to folks who emailed asking for advice on various topics. Letter number 1:

Dear The Hearn,
I've been dating this girl for like 7 months, and I'm totally digging her. But I think she's gonna break up with me. How do I know, you ask? I just sense a growing indifference towards me. Plus I caught her in the shower with my father. What should I do?

Worried in Wisconsin

Dear Worried:

I am known the world over for my expertise in two areas: my totally rad UNIX Engineering skillz, and my ability to keep the ladies on lockdown. I will use the latter to dispense advice to you now.

If you're worried about a girl leaving you, the easiest way to get her to stick around is to have an enormous wang. Unfortunately, it sounds like you came up short in that department, since Bonnie, or whoever she is, needs to get a frequent taste of your dad's sugarstick. The second best way is to put a large diamond ring on her finger. It is absolutely incredible how easy it is to keep a girl in your pocket once you bling her left hand up.

Don't wanna get married? That's not even a problem. The average engagement these days is something like 2 or 3 years, and you'll have gotten tired of her and dumped her long before then. On the other hand, it can get expensive. I recommend cubic zirconium. The only way she'll be able to tell the difference is if she goes to a jeweler and has it professionally examined, and if she does that, RUN. Throw her to the curb and move to Montana.

Because she is crazy.

---

Dear matthearn.com,
My baby mama keep axing me for money. I'm all, "Damn, beotch, you get $550 a week in welfare ('cause of her 7 kids) and I livin' on the street for 2 months now." I cain't even keep a job 'cause I can't afford to shower at the YMCA and my clothes smell like onions and crack. I needs help!

Broke as a Joke

<stunned silence>

Dear Broke:

Please submit your query over at The Temple of Black Jesus. Hopefully they'll be able to help you, since all I can say is:

• Stop smoking crack.
• Onions are merely a flavor additive. They are not a self-contained meal.
• Perhaps see about having your baby mama killed.
• $550 a week? The Libertarian in me is outraged, but the lazy jerk in me is wondering how I can get a piece of that action.

---

Dear Matt,
You are so rad. How can I be more rad like you?

Unhip in East Gabip

Now this is a letter. I agree...my radity is unbounded. Unfortunately, how my hipness is defined is impossible to qualify or quantify. My only advice can be: buy some really hot shoes, and learn to like Dewar's.

---

Dear Hearn,
My wife and I are contemplating a trip to Delaware to see the sights! We plan to be there for roughly a week. Do you have any recommendations on where to stay, and what to see?

Bob Jenkins of Casper, Wyoming

Dear Bob,

Delaware is a tourist's paradise! We've got the beaches . . . um, and . . . Hagley Museum! Yeah, that's a must see. And, uh . . . well, we're close to Philadelphia!

But seriously, there is a lot to see in Delaware. If you come, you can stay in the hotel where Amy Grossberg had her boyfriend kill their baby! If you're not into that kinda thing, the Hotel Dupont is always nice, although pricey. But, if you really wanna get the Delaware experience, I suggest you stay at the TallyHo Inn on Concord Pike. I think they even have nap rates!

As for things to see, well, the Delaware Art Museum is closed for renovations (or was, last I checked). You can go to Longwood Gardens, though! Except that's technically in PA. Winterthur is open, if you're interested in homes built and occupied by moderately insane rich folks. (Those last four words seem strangely redundant.)

Honestly, the best thing to see in Delaware (other than me) is probably Rehoboth Beach, particularly if your wife gets turned on watching guys making out.

Hope this helps! (Helps you stay away... Just kidding, Delaware. I love it here. The banking choices make it all worthwhile.)

---

Yo Hearndogg,

Yo man, I got all KINDS of wasted last month and I don't remember much, but now this girl Karin is all "we got it on" and I'm all "was it any good" and she's all "hell no and I'm late" and I'm like "is it mine" and she's all "do I look like a slut" and I'm like, "um, DUH" and then her dad broke my arm with a piece of, whaddayacallit, rebar. What do I do now?

Elliott in Arkansas

Buy her a ring and hope for the best, although in your case I suspect "the best" involves marrying the girl, divorcing her after 10 months, and paying $2000 a month in child support and alimony until the cops find out about that crystal meth lab in the basement and you get shanked in prison for not letting Bruno love you like he told you to.

---

Okay folks, be sure to send your advice requests to advice [at] matthearn [dot] com! I'll answer 'em when I get around to it, or something. Yeah.

posted at 6:48 PM

Went to dinner over at P.F. Chang's Chinese Bistro on Sunday, so I thought I'd write a Hearn-style (read: unfunny, amateurish, and rambling) restaurant review!

For any restaurant to be considered "Hellagood," the ultimate Hearn review rating, it must perform well in the following three categories:

• Ambience
• Service
• Food

Let's cover each in turn.

Ambience: Visually, P.F. Chang's is pretty nifty. Some neat asian-style statues, cool tile-work, and muted lighting give it a very hip look, although the bright lighting from the kitchen is distracting. Unfortunately, the aural experience is an absolute tragedy. The kitchen is largely open to view behind the bar, and kitchens are not quiet places. All the banging of pots and pans is audible in the eating area, which means everybody has to talk louder, which escalates into a deafening roar. We couldn't hear our waiter very well, and he was standing right next to us and nearly yelling.

Okay, sure, it's a bistro, so I guess I should have expected a cafe-type environment. That doesn't mean I have to enjoy it. There's a fine line between "cafe" and "cafeteria," and Mr. Chang has definitely crossed it. You could get the same atmosphere if you went to Hong Kong Buffet and bribed the manager to dim the lights.

Ambience rating: 2/10

Service: Our waiter, Jeff, was superb, and the rest of the staff seemed equally competent. He was crisply polite, and he wrote the order down. (I can't begin to explain how important this is. Attention all waitstaff everywhere: I am not impressed that you can remember 90% of what we ordered without writing it down. Your superb memory skills aren't worth a damn if you forget the little things, like that I wanted mayonnaise on the side, or if you bring me a scotch with ice in it when I order it NEAT. Write the order down, get it absolutely exactly right, and collect your 20-25% tip with a smile.)

The orders came on time, the drinks were as requested, Jeff made no mistakes.

Service rating: 10/10

Food: You can't see me, but I'm shaking my head sadly. After my complaints about the ambience, it was going to take some damn fine food to make me come back to Señor Chang's. First to arrive was the Won-Ton soup, which was actually quite good. It was hot and sweet, with chunks of chicken and shrimp. Next we got the Peking Dumplings, which were pork-filled, chewy, and all around mad flava-ful.

Unfortunately, we had also ordered entrees: "Mongolian Beef," and "Double Pan Fried Noodles with Chicken." The beef was actually not bad, although it just wasn't hot enough. I'd rather wait for a dish to cool than have to dig into it knowing that, by the end, I'll be eating cold meat. That's what happened. Plus, since the beef was somewhat blackened, it became tough, so after eating about half of the dish, it had cooled into beef jerky.

The double fried noodles...were not good (understatement of the month). Half of the dish was cold, the noodles were caked into an unchewable mass, the sauce was too sweet, it was just nasty. You know how you can get packages of dry chinese noodles with spices, and you just throw 'em in boiling water and they break up and soak up the liquid and become a very tasty (and cheap) meal? Okay, I think the recipe for the "double fried noodles" is: take the dry chinese noodles, and throw them on a plate WITHOUT COOKING THEM. Make a sauce consisting of a cup of sugar and a bottle of Kikkoman, heating until it has the consistency of baby poop. Then, cook some chicken in a microwave and sit it in the fridge to cool. Put the chicken under the dry noodles. Pour the sauce on top. Serve to an extremely displeased Hearnwife, who felt guilty just for ordering it.

It looked like some kind of Chinese Jesus had thrown up on a plate after being kicked in the balls by Buddha.

Food Rating: 4/10

So, the overall rating? (3+10+4)/3 = 5.67 out of 10. Considering that the entire meal, including drinks and tip, was upwards of $80 for two people, I don't think it's too much to ask for a bit more value. Not much you can do about the ambience; the place is just poorly designed. But the food, man...FIX THE FOOD, I beg you. Just don't let it sit around. That's nasty.

Hearn Review Rating: Plus ungood.

posted at 1:25 PM

Random thoughts while working an all-night change outage:

• 0032 - I am the man who will fight for your honor. I am the hero you've been dreaming of. We'll live together, knowing [something something] that we did it all for the glory of love.
• 0217 - While I'm on the lyrics tip, I have written a poem:

  'Twas the feast of St. Valentine
  And all through the world
  Many folks were getting nooky
  Every boy, every girl

  But Hearn is at work
  He's typing and tapping
  He drinks too much caffeine
  And spends an hour crapping

  He's moving some fibre,
  He's drinking some Coke
  He's catching some hell
  For the servers he broke

  He wants to be home
  In bed with his wife
  But that's not the way
  Of an IT geek's life

  But let us not weep,
  And whine, cry, or sob.
  I just mutter sometimes,
  "God, I hate this #&*$ing job."

• 0227 - I picked the wrong week to quit amphetamines.
• 0335 - At 3:30 in the morning, I expect a little understanding if I get a little loopy. Ya know? I mean, if I spontaneously start singing, to the tune of "Good King Wenceslas," "woot woot woot woot woot woot woot, woot woot woot woot woot woot!" I don't think it's too much to ask for my employees to just nod and smile. Is it really necessary to inject powerful anti-psychotic drugs into my stomach lining? What the hell, man?
• 0342 - The "Good King Wenceslas" song also works well when sung as "Badger badger badger badge, badger badger mushroom!"
• 0348 - Intake so far:
  • 4 units Wendy's Junior Bacon Cheeseburgers
  • 2 units Biggie Fries
  • 1 unit Biggie Diet Coke
  • 1 unit 20z Diet Pepsi
  • 1 unit Twix
  Remaining food:
  • 3 units Wendy's Junior Bacon Cheeseburgers
  • 1 box Girls Scouts Thin Mints
  • Anything I choose to buy from the snack machines, particularly the Honey Bun upon which I have my eye
• 0411 - Milo's online! He's had as little sleep as I! And has just driven 2 hours to DC and will be working until noon! This is the only explanation for our conversation so far:
  MiloBloom34 signed on at 4:11:05 AM.
  MattHearnCSC: The butt!
  MiloBloom34: Jewbie.
  MattHearnCSC: badger badger badger badger badger badger badger badger badger badger badger badger badger badger badger badger badger badger badger badger badger
  MattHearnCSC: I bought a lawnmower today.
  MiloBloom34: mushroom mushroom
• 0508 - Conversation between me and coworker Mikey:
  Mike: [coughs]
  Me: [Pats Mike on back]
  Mike: Thanks.
  Me: Don't croak.
  Mike: [short pause] Ribbit.
  [crickets chirping]
  Mike: Get it? Ribbit? You said "Don't Croak." Haha!
  Me: Got it. Not funny.
  Mike: Hey, whaddaya want at 5am? F#*$ you.
• 0615 - I can't believe I'm still going. At this point I've been up for almost 22 hours, which is nowhere near Jared's record of roughly 8 straight days, but pretty damn good for me. I'm frickin' tired, Mr. Bigglesworth. And when Mr. Bigglesworth gets tired, people die! Okay, that's not true, he just lays down next to the air-conditioning vent with his belly in the air so he can cool his Schweddy Balls. Switcheroo, for 2! [Hearn does happy mambo dance around the conference room]
• 0621 - I think they're releasing us. I'm not entirely sure because I've been hallucinating vividly for the last 30-40 minutes. Oh well. This shall be the last update to the diary! Time to sleep! Yay! Yay! Talk to you later....

posted at 6:25 AM

I just realized that I forgot to tell everyone about my wife's extremely traumatic experience on Sunday, and trust me, you need to hear this, because it was absolutely freaking hilarious it may have scarred her for life, so if you run into her and say the wrong thing ("How do you feel about squirrels?") and she stabs you, you'll at least know why.

Last week, we kept hearing sounds in the vents above the TV room. We assumed that Poly, who likes sitting next to the vent in the bedroom right above us, was rubbing her scent onto the vent and causing noises to reverberate throughout the house. We...were...wrong.

Sunday afternoon I had a concert to sing in Dover, so we left around 2. Concert went fine, as usual, because I am the bomb. Sarah, meanwhile, was sitting on the couch, working on choreography (definition: "the study of choral graphics and their effects on seizure victims"), watching a little TV, waiting for my sister to show up so they could hang. Suddenly, Veronicat (aka The Cheat), our psychopathic calico feline, came flying (not literally, as she is very fat) into the room, chasing something that Sarah first assumed was another of our four cats.

Sarah realized it was not a cat, but in fact a squirrel, when it jumped up on one of our purple chairs and charged straight at her. Thinking quickly, she chose a non-standard defense: screaming like Kyle did when we waxed his ass, and hiding under her blanket. Veronicat, who is now Official Hearndom Badass, cornered the squirrel in the bathroom. Sarah took a moment to compose herself and change into clean knickers, and called her father. Then she peeked into the bathroom to see what was going on; the squirrel had managed to wedge himself into a space between the sink and the wall, an opening of about one inch. Veronicat was hovering nearby, waiting for her chance to make lunch of him. While Sarah was contemplating him, he twitched his tail menacingly, causing her to scream again and run upstairs to hide under the bed, where she whimpered softly until her father could get there and sort things out.

Before he did, though, my sister Liz arrived, found out what was going on, and stationed herself in the broom closet.

Then Charles finally arrived, bearing with him a couple pieces of plywood to block off the path of the squirrel and force him to run out the front door. Sarah locked up the cats, and she and Liz took positions with a rake and a broom to defend themselves. Charles put on a thick pair of gloves and reached in after the squirrel, which took one look at his eyebrows and ran, terrified, out the front door, never to be seen again.

The excitement over at the House of Hearn is unending.

posted at 3:00 PM

So my good buddy Courtney sends me a link. I click on it. Hey neat, it's some "hunt down Osama" game. Sure, I'll play it. Doo-dee-doo, pick up the nukes...okay, this is boring. Closed.

15 minutes later, I'm getting IMs from half of my buddy list saying, "Neat game." What? I didn't forward that link. It wasn't that interesting. But the IMs continue, including replies from people I have on my buddy list that I haven't talked to in months (I guess I need to clean up my buddy list). What the hell is going on?

The "game" installed some spyware on my system that was going from person to person on my buddy list and sending them a link to itself, without telling me. I can't say as I'm a big fan of this. Great, I've got a virus. Turns out the software, buddylinks.net (and no, that link won't install the software on your computer, but downloading the games off their site will!), is developed by a group of folks that actually thought automatically sharing links with everybody on your buddy list would be a GRAND idea, particularly if those links installed the software that perpetuates the process! Disturbingly similar to an internet worm, if you ask me, which is probably something covered by federal hacking laws.

So after hours of deleting and reinstalling software, plus going to the buddylinks website to "opt out" all my screennames, I think I'm clean. Just to be on the safe side, I'm running Trillian for the time being. Corey found another way of disabling it through the buddylinks configuration files, but I was able to completely remove it from my system. We'll see if it returns.

Anyway, through me and Courtney and God knows who else, it's transmitted through most of my friends and their friends and THEIR friends, not to mention the entirety of CSC (although I'd like to think I'm not the only idiot that introduced it at work...I hope I hope I hope).

So I'm trying to think of a suitable response to the buddylinks folks. Should I send a nasty email? Probably will, yes. Should I attempt to file a class action suit? The idea has merit. Heaven forbid I should ask all my hacker buddies to LAUNCH A DENIAL OF SERVICE ATTACK, since that would be illegal. I could never tell someone, "PLEASE LAUNCH A DENIAL OF SERVICE ATTACK AT BUDDYLINKS.NET" and not feel the pangs of conscience.

posted at 9:11 AM

I'm having weird dreams again, although luckily not as weird as this one, since that one involved mutations into Claymonters, and scary black guys with bad acne. (I woke up crying like someone had waxed my butt while I slept.)

Last night's dream started out reasonably sane; I was involved in some kind of ESPN game show that had me playing football with Michael Vick. The only thing I really vividly remember is participating in an industrial-strength handshake, featuring multiple hand-slaps, fist pumps, and rump-shakes. I also made sure to have Michael give a shoutout to his biggest fan, my boy Kyle, for the benefit of the TV cameras.

Next thing I know I'm at the ESPN studios (I'm not sure how I got to Bristol, Connecticut, but it's a dream, dammit, get off my case for once), wandering around, chatting with the peeps. I may or may not have made love to Stuart Scott at this point. Suddenly, I'm auditioning for a job as SportsCenter anchor, although I don't have any prepared material, so I end up telling a couple jokes to some woman inside her house, and then I sang a Stone Temple Pilots song to her. I don't even know any Stone Temple Pilots songs.

Come to find out, I'm disqualified from the auditions because I went outside to get something out of my truck and missed part of the musical audition. And here I thought the only requirement to be a SportsCenter anchor was dance skills! (I remember saying exactly that to one of the actual anchors, who was hanging around, watching the festivities. He agreed.)

I think it all means I should quit this computer career and get a job calling hockey games on the radio.

In other news, ZICAM IS THE BEST STUFF EVER. The cold I mentioned I had? Gone. I was able to sing my usual Sunday church service PLUS yesterday afternoon's concert with minimal difficulties, although I was fairly dry. Total number of days sick: 4. This is well below the normal of 2 weeks.

I should qualify the above paragraph; I am still venting slight amounts of nose-juice, but nowhere near as much as I'd be without Zicam. Let it be said: If I didn't already have a dad, Zicam would be my real dad.

That's all we have for today, kids, but there may be more tomorrow! And be sure to check out this week's Strong Bad email (turn your sound on) if you like peeing your pants. I knows I does!

posted at 1:51 PM

I hab a cod agin. Er, I have a cold again, I mean. I swear I just got over one like 2 weeks ago, but here it is again, squishing my brain like a flower in an unabridged dictionary.

This, and extreme business at work, is why this week is rather light on updates. But fear not! I'm stuffing Zicam up my nose like it's butter. (Not that I actually stuff butter up my nose, as that would be delicious. I mean, uh, nasty.) It's not doing much for me yet, but the irrepressible Jared (see picture below in which he is riding me like a retarded pony) says it's the bomb. I really need this cold to be gone by Sunday, since I have a fairly massive concert to sing. Let's go over this week's topics:

• Janet's Hooter: Whoop-de-friggin'-doo. If I can be permitted to quote Jeff Kay on the subject:

  Why is this such a big deal? Seriously. It was a split-second flash of a woman's breast, for god's sake, not a live televised suicide.

• Super Bowl: Great game. The few interesting "behind the game" stories panned out in interesting ways, like the breaking of the "Win the Video Game Bowl, Win the Super Bowl" streak, and the whole "2004 Patriots are the 2002 Rams, and the 2004 Panthers are the 2002 Pats" thing. Adam Vinatieri missed two field goals (sure, one was blocked, but he kicked it awfully low for such a short distance), and made the game-winner, cementing his legacy as "mediocre kicker who you absolutely want kicking the clutch figgie." Jake Delhomme showed he has what it takes to play at this level. And most importantly, Matt is a frigging moron for not putting money on the Panthers (who were +7 and only lost by 3) because Bill Simmons told him not to.

Distant relatives?
• Politics: Kerry's lead is looking awfully insurmountable to me, which is a pity because he has the looks of a puckered up butthole, with none of the charm and charisma. The resemblance to Joseph Merrick is just uncanny. People keep quoting opinion polls showing that Bush is vulnerable, but I think it's his election to lose. Vote Libertarian!
• My job: Can anybody tell me why AMTrix 4.4.1 can't seem to communicate with MQSeries 5.3 on our development/assurance server? I've spent 3 days on it. No? Okay, let's move on.
• I think Congress should introduce legislation making it legal to stab in the neck any man you see peeing (while standing up) in a regular toilet when a perfectly serviceable urinal is available. If they haven't put the seat up, stab them in the back a few times first to make it more painful. If you have a great deal of surgical experience, you don't even need to kill them, just sever their spinal cord in such a way that they'll never stand up to pee again.
• Last week, HW was watching ER, and what do I see but Elizabeth Corday shacking up with some dude! It's only been like 2 years since Dr. Greene died, right? And she's already nailing the flavor of the month? (I have to say, she looked rather fetching in nothing but a sheet.) Is nobody else weirded out by this?

Okay, I think my work is done here. I'm going to go back to snorting lines of Zicam and eating hot pockets.

posted at 12:18 PM

Scene: Milo's place, just after the Super Bowl. Spanker: Jared. Spankee: Me, having just had my pills pounded by a small football.

posted at 10:42 AM