matthearn.com

I can’t remember if I’ve mentioned this in the past, but I am a genius. I am like Stephen Hawking and Yogi Berra rolled into one very strange tall gentleman with full use of his various limbs but very bad at sports. So maybe that was a poor simile. Or maybe it was just so smart it broke your brain. Who’s to know? Other than me, of course.

My brilliance was confirmed over the weekend when I attempted to mow my lawn. I have a fairly sizeable patch of property, so a few years ago a got a used riding mower that has taken every ounce of my considerable mechanical skills to keep running. I’ve replaced blades, batteries, and bearings; adjusted pulleys, decks, and brakes; and even managed to keep a tire inflated with that weird green tire patching goo they sell that’s pretty much useless in any automotive application.

I topped off the gas tank, fired the mower up, and pulled it out into the yard, at which point I remembered that a small bungee cord that holds on part of the mulcher had broken and a cover had been lost, such that the mower would throw “mow muffins” all over the place instead of turning them into a fine grass dust. I decided to simply replace the bungee with a piece of clothesline, and since I was going to be fiddling around only inches from the blades, I thought it best to turn the mower off rather than trust the little clutch that disengages the blades. I got the cover tied back on, sat down atop my trusty steed, and turned the key.

Nothing. Not a click. Not a whirr. Not the telltale grinding that indicates a bad starter, not the constant cycling of an engine that’s spinning but just won’t fire up, nothing. Usually when this happens it’s because I’m doing something stupid, like trying to start it in gear with the clutch up, or trying to start it with the blades engaged; Sears is smart AND lawsuit-conscious, so there are a million safety switches to keep you from starting the dang thing in top gear and flying off out of control at a breakneck 5.5mph. But I was satisfying all of them. Brake on, neutral gear, butt firmly weighting down the seat switch, and nothing. There’s a small ammeter on the dashboard that indicated that juice was being delivered somewhere, but where?

I suspected the battery might’ve been shot; I don’t start the thing between October and April, so the batteries tend to lose voltage as they wear out over the winter, but this one was only about 2 months old. After a few minutes of fruitless searching I was unable to locate my electronic multimeter (my genius does not extend to organization; my garage looks like a Katamari exploded in it) so I said to hell with it and decided to just bypass the battery and jump start the mower with my van.

I connected all the cables, turned the key: nothing. I heard a faint “click” when switching to the “running” position, which indicated to me that the mower could draw power if I could just get it going, but turning the key to “start” did nothing. I disconnected the jumper cables from the van and gently touched them together, getting sparks galore, so the battery seemed to be okay. I then had to spend a solid half an hour digging through my horrendously filthy garage to find the multimeter, which I finally located under various bicycle parts and something that smelled suspiciously like a raccoon turd. I stuck it on the battery, which reported 12.35 volts, about what one would expect. The plot, as they say, thickened.

I decided it was time to go inside and do a little research. I have the owner’s manual on my lappy, which includes a helpful schematic that looks like this (click to enlarge):

That looks crazy complicated, but it’s not too bad, particularly if you’re aware that only part of it pertains to actually starting the engine:

Basically what it says is that current flows from the battery, through a fuse and an ammeter, and then reaches the ignition switch, which when turned to “start” forwards that current through the clutch/brake sensor (to make sure the clutch is disengaged, and the brake on), then through the “attachment” clutch sensor (to make sure the blades are disengaged), and then to the solenoid, which is a special kind of switch then when fed a small amount of current, allows a much larger amount of current to flow through another circuit and activate the starter. In short, either one of the switches or sensors is broken, or the solenoid is broken. All of which are fairly cheap to replace, except that

1. They would take 5-6 days to arrive, and


2. We were having a barbecue on Sunday for which I’d prefer the grass be ankle-high instead of mid-shin.

Faced with the prospect of mowing 2/3 of an acre with a 30″ push mower (which would take 3-4 hours), I had the lightning bolt of genius that characterizes so much of my life: all the solenoid does is let those various switches and sensors tell it what to do, which is supply current to the starter. Theoretically I could just supply the current to the starter by pressing one end of a wire to the positive terminal on the battery, and the other end to the input connection on the starter. So I got some gloves and goggles, and did exactly that. VROOOOOM! It fired right up, and I finished mowing, being careful not to turn the sucker off no matter what.

The dilemma I’m faced with now is, do I order a whole bunch of new switches and sensors and a solenoid ($45), or do I simply get a nice heavy gauge wire and a cool-looking starter button to bypass all that stuff and just get this awesome switch and a thick wire. I think we know the answer.

I’ve been talking a while about my fitness and diet regimen (not that I used the word “regimen;” if you have been using the word “regiment” to describe anything but a military unit, you are a stupid-ass), and figured it was time to share a little results in the form of imagery:

The new hotness, right? And I’m still about 20 pounds away from my goal.

Quick update on what I’ve been up to vis-a-vis diet: I tried a “Protein Sparing Modified Fast,” which is basically eating nothing but pure protein and green vegetables, leading to a rather dramatic caloric deficit. I was taking in 1400-1500 calories a day, which is well over 1000 calories under what my body needs to just stay alive for 24 hours, and I lost something like 8 pounds in 10 days. Then my body said “Hey, enough of this crap,” and I spent most of this past weekend fighting what amounted to a 2 day migraine. Horrible headache, stomach issues, occasional diarrhea, and an odd sensitivity to heat on a weekend when the daily high was near 90F. Bad times. The only thing that made me feel better was, unsurprisingly, eating, so by Sunday I was having a sandwich or bowl of cereal every few hours just to keep me feeling hale. I gained every ounce of that weight back as my body soaked up water like a sponge. Now I’m back to the infinitely more reasonable LeanGains cut, and plan to stay on it solidly into the fall, at which point I hope to have rockin’ abs and a minor role in a CBS soap opera.

Hey all, no post today, ’cause I’ve been working on something Big and Political that I’ll post tomorrow or Wednesday. Spoiler: Republicans do not come off well. In the meantime, I figured you’d like to know the following important fact: I’m a Gryffindor, baby.

Which Hogwarts house will you be sorted into?

Surprising, right? You’d think a guy with the nickname “That Leviathan” would be in Slytherin. I guess the Sorting Hat really does take your choice into account.

Gryffind0r 4 LYFE.

Holy crap! I don’t sound like complete ass! Here is mp3 evidence:
The People That Walked In Darkness
Right?

I’ve got a great idea: Delaware should legislate the use of the “Clameur de Haro.” I originally thought that it should be enacted for the entirety of the US, but the more I consider it, the more it makes sense as a Delaware-only law, like how Delaware’s the only state that allows you to incorporate by simply putting “Inc.” after your name, or how it’s legal here to dump sulfurous gasses into the atmosphere as long as nobody’s allowed to smoke anymore.

If you aren’t familiar with the process of Clameur de Haro, here’s how it works. If someone is wronging you, you need to gather some witnesses (ideally by shouting “Hey! Witnesses! Come here!”), drop to your knees, put your hand in the air, and shout:

Haro! Haro! Haro! A l’aide, mon Prince, on me fait tort.

Which translates roughly to: “Haro! Haro! Haro! Come help me, my Prince, because somebody is all up in my BWEEZNASS.”

Then you just have to recite the Lord’s Prayer. In French. If you are unfamiliar with the French words, you can find them here. Once you have completed this task, the person that’s wronging you is required to stop, even if he or she is totally in the right, on penalty of fines and/or imprisonment. Of course, if you raise the Clameur without a valid reason, you are penalized as well (fines, imprisonment, and/or a sound thrashing with the branch of a sycamore).

Then you have to file your complaint with the Greffe Office, whatever the hell that is, within 24 hours. And until the courts have ruled on the matter, whatever your wronger (that sounds like a bell-laden laundry appliance, doesn’t it?) was doing cannot continue.

Wouldn’t this be great? Just think of all the possible uses:

• Keeping Rita from writing you a parking ticket
• Stopping people from going through the express lane with more than 15 items
• Calling a bar bouncer a fat nonce and then making sure he can’t punch you
• Preventing your wife from changing the channel while the Eagles game is on

We need to all write our state representatives immediatement and get them to work on this important piece of legislation.

Remember when I said a while ago (yesterday) that I needed to replace my online photography gallery? And I was tired of testing out different freeware/GPL ones because invariably they didn’t do exactly what I wanted and did a ton of other things I didn’t need? And remember the part where you DOUBTED ME? Okay, just Josh. Still.

Well, after hours (minutes) of careful work (mostly watching TV), I have duly encoded my own jam. Right now it’s only got a few things in it, and worse, some of the menu options don’t work. You can click “random,” but instead of showing you a random photo, it, uh, won’t do anything. Same for contact, because while I figure I could just simplify things and put my email address in there, I know better than to give you people my email address. When the internet has my email address, the internet emails me pictures of taints and ads for Cialis. So, um, hells no. Also there’s no descriptions yet, just titles and EXIF information.

Anyway: Matt Hearn Photography. It’s definitely the most pretentious thing I’ve ever created, and I have created some pretty pretentious stuff in my day.

I didn’t watch the Grammys (Grammies? I personally despise making it plural via adding an apostrophe (as in, “Grammy’s”) because that makes Baby Jesus cry) last night, so I don’t really have anything important to say. Apparently the Police got back together, which is pretty awesome, but I missed it because I was asleep, because I had a DEVASTATING WEEKEND OF FUN. More on that later. What’s important is that the Police played, but Juliet Huddy reported on FOX this morning that it seemed kinda boring, and we listen to everything she says because she is hot.

Re: weekend of fun: I was hella busy all weekend. I covered oncall Friday night, and then Saturday morning rode with Craig down to DC to meet Some Boyz for a Bachelor Fiesta! We started out at the ESPN Zone, or rather most of us did; Kyle and I trotted over to the Verizon nee MCI center to see about hockey tickets. They had none cheaper than $90, so we laughed heartily and said, dang. So much for hockey.

BUT! Kyle, being heck of inventive, called his wife, and got her out of the shower to get online and search for tickets for us. She found some via a place called StubHub, which turned out to have a location very near the arena, so she put the tickets on Kyle’s credit card and all was gravy. After Kyle got off the phone with her, he turned to me and said:

“I’m pretty sure she bought those tickets while naked.”

“I’m going to be thinking about that all game. Thanks!”

“Me too, man.”

I’m glad we were able to get seats, since our backup plan was to get tickets to the International Spy Museum, which was also nearby. Instead, we went back to the ESPN Zone and watched sports for roughly 4 hours while I drank martinis. THEN: To the arena!

I’ve been to many hockey arenas in my time (okay, 4) and I’ve never yet come across one that sells anything but overpriced beer, but let me tell you, The Verizon nee MCI Center has a bar. That sells gin. So I bought two. I’ve never been so happy at a sporting event since, and this is a hilarious story that I like to tell, I was at a Virginia Tech @ Rutgers football game with Kyle and Hiz Crew O’ Mizfitz, and I bought 4 large hot dogs. I got to my seat, ate two hot dogs, and then they played the national anthem so I stood up and removed my hat, then sat back down on the bleacher and watched the first few minutes of the game. After a little while, I said, “Man, those hot dogs were good. I wish I had more.” Only then did I remember that I had NOT eaten them all, and in fact had two more sitting immediately to my right. It was like Baby Jesus had shown a bright light of love down on me, in the middle of all that chaos.

Buying gin at a hockey game is very similar. Cost me $8 per drink, but that wasn’t much worse than the beers (I later paid $14 for two Michelob Ultras, which are notable for two things:

1. They are somewhat low carb (although not much lower than Miller Lite, to be honest), and
2. They have a taste that is surprisingly reminiscent of what the water from your well would taste like if your septic system started leaking into it.)

The game wasn’t memorable; there were a couple of fights, which is always fun, but it was hard to see what was happening since we were in the absolute last row of the place. Seriously. I’ve never been so far away from a sporting event and still had to pay $40 to see it. The Capitals lost.

Then we went back to Barrett’s (the emphasis is on the first syllable, which is much more manly than if he’d been named after a hair clip) for poker, at which I won everybody’s money. This was doubly frustrating for Kyle because

• I am not known for my poker-playing prowess, because I have all the patience of a fat kid in a chocolate factory, and
• I was WILDLY inebriated.

Then Craig drove me home, which was kind of him since I fell asleep once he was safely on the interstate.

The next day I got up, on about 4 hours of sleep, and had to go to church, then play in a piano recital for schoolchildren (it wasn’t a COMPLETE embarrassment), and then sing a short concert to benefit a Quaker school.

Then I came home and played with my son for a while because he was driving Sarah insane; he can now crawl rather expertly, and his desire to put the entire world in his mouth is unabated. This results in us having to grab him every 10 minutes and pull things out of his mouth, things like paper, foam torn from the upholstery of an old chair, cat fur, cat tails, wires (oh, how he loves electrical wires), cat food, carpet fibers, and Sarah’s toes. Sarah had been doing this, with small breaks for sleep, for 36 hours, and so I took over for a while so that she’d stop making her head spin around like she does. (She’s been fighting a flu/cold combination for about a week now and the pressure is starting to tell.)

And then I slept for about 11 straight hours, which might have been the highlight of the weekend if I hadn’t had to go to work in the morning.

My buddy Rick and his girl own a coffee shop in Kalamazoo, Michigan. Out front of it, they have a big sign where they can put letters with specials and other information. Usually they just put a funny quote in there; recently they had one that read “COME IN FOR A FRESH CUP OF WHOOPA$$”. Anyway, Rick comes to me yesterday and says “Give me something funny to put on our board.” This is the result:

I cannot tell a lie: this makes me happy in my pants.

Oh, I can tell a lie: the vacation update will be tomorrow, not today. Ha ha! That picture is funnier anyway.