When I was 10 years old and in sixth grade back in 1978, all my geek friends and I were totally absorbed in Battlestar Galactica. No other television show captured my imagination like it did, and very few shows since have. I've seen a few episodes since I've grown up, and while they now seem incredibly campy, they still bring back fond memories.

Now the SciFi channel is bringing out a Battlestar Galactica mini-series. I have some serious misgivings about this, especially since they've turned Starbuck and Boomer into female characters, and the Apollo character seems to be considerably wussified. It starts tonight, and I'll give it a try if nothing else to check out the special effects. They'll have to go a long way to convince me that changing Starbuck to be a female was a good idea, though.

I just read these stories about real Iraqi War Heros, not Iraqi War victims.

I went to see Matrix Revolutions this past Thursday night with my friend Paul Clemmons, his wife Ferlie, and a random freak named Mike. We chose to see it in the IMAX format at Opry Mills and paid our $11.00 a ticket. I have to say I'm ultimately disappointed with the movie. They chose to leave us with more questions than answers regarding the nature of their world, and as one reviewer on Mr. Cranky pointed out they turned Neo into the Neville Chamberlin of the future. The ending was very dissatisfying. I can only assume they'll try to fill us in with another Anime DVD or somewhere in comic books and such. Not that I really care, since I don't plan to add anymore money into their coffers anytime soon.

Just in time for the holidays, it's Kiss-opoly! My favorite is that one of the moving pieces is a bag of money. Be sure to scroll down and read some of the comments also.

Another Malleteer celebrity appearance. John Hildebrand, who lived in Mallet circa the mid to late 80's, has tried out for and won a spot on the Chicago Bulls Matador Male Dance Team. John is on the back row on the far left in the photo shown, with red suspenders and a red kilt.

If you happen to be watching VH1's new series "I love the 70's" and it's the 1972 episode, about 20 minutes into it they start talking about the movie Deepthroat. Actor/comedian Hal Sparks makes a comment of "Deepthroat, I think I saw that for the first time at Brian Spisak's dad's house." Brian Spisak is an old friend of mine from when I lived at Mallet back in the 80's. He grew up with Hal Sparks in Kentucky. Funny stuff.

Bumper sticker seen on the way to work this morning:

I can't go to work today because the voices said "Stay home and clean the guns."

I went to see League of Extraordinary Gentlemen last night since my friend P.C. didn't have the heart to warn me about it in the first place. I have never read the graphic novel by the same name, but I figured since Alan Moore was involved it couldn't be too bad. I was wrong. Dreadfully wrong. The movie was just plain out gawdawful. I've seen episodes of Scooby Doo on Saturday mornings that were much better. I was prepared to write a completely scathing review of it, but Roger Ebert beat me to it with this review that I completely agree with.

My favorite quote from his review: "...the movie plays like a big wind came along and blew away the script and they ran down the street after it and grabbed a few pages and shot those."

The only good thing about the movie is that some of the sets were really good.

I don't necessarily agree with or believe everything Bill Fleckenstein says, but I enjoy reading his Contrarian Chronicles on msn.com just for his whole attitude about Wall Street and the analysts that try to pump up stock prices. In this week's version, he explains how he came up with the term "dead fish" to refer to analysts in the securities industry. Funny stuff.

A bizzarre story of a farmer who has 300,000 used tires.

This Sunday, August 3, will my One Year Anniversary of marriage to my lovely wife, Marissa. We'll be spending the weekend at a Bed and Breakfast near Hohenwald, TN. Love you baby, and I'm looking forward to many, many more anniversary weekends.

Living in Nashville, I tend to see celebrities fairly often. One minor celebrity I seem to keep bumping into is Mark Collie, who is a singer/songwriter who has faded a bit from the limelight recently. Last night while I was leaving Publix in Hermitage and I saw him walking across the parking lot towards me.

I waved and said "Hey man."

MC: "Hey."

Hatch: "When are you gonna have another album out?"

MC: "Aw, I think the first quarter of next year."

Hatch: "Alright, I'll look forward to it."

MC: "Thanks, man."

With that he continued on and entered the Radio Shack. The funny thing is I had almost exactly the same conversation with him about 3 years ago outside the Longhorn Steakhouse off West End in Nashville.

From an email my wife forwarded to me today:

1. It is important that a man helps you around the house and has a job.

2. It is important that a man makes you laugh.

3. It is important to find a man you can count on and doesn't lie to you.

4. It is important that a man is good in bed and loves making love to you.

5. It is important that these four men don't know each other.


I asked her which of the four she thought I was but she hasn't answered me yet.

Update: Woot! I'm #4!

Only in baseball would something like manipulating the ventilation fans inside the Minnesota Twins dome cause this much discussion. It's an interesting premise, but so far all tests have been inconclusive.

Learn all about balloon animals at the Balloon HQ. Now I can be more useful at birthday parties.

My friend Jim Hefner sent me the link to The Free State Project a while back. Interesting, but slightly kooky. It sounds like something that would be right up Robert Heinlein's alley.

This is a cool flashlight. Someone buy me one.

Here's an update on the spray to foil automated traffic cameras. I found a website called Phantom Plate that sells the spray. From the example photo on their website, it doesn't look that difficult to make out the numbers on the plate, so it may not be too terribly effective.

My friend Eric "Bookdude" Morgan recently sent a link to the Starship Dimensions website. I know this marks me as a geek forever, but I think this site is just utterly fantastic. My favorite is at the bottom of the 1X page where it shows King Kong, Godzilla, and the Stay Puft Marshmallow man to scale.

Fortunately, I've never lived anywhere that uses automated cameras to catch people speeding or running red lights. Here's an editorial that mentions several ways to get around these cameras. I'll try to google up some more info about it soon.

I met my wife, Marissa, two years ago today while we were both helping serve hamburgers to the residents of Mercury Court, a low-income housing project in Nashville. I was putting pickles on the burgers while standing next to her and I noticed she wrinkled her nose every time a pickle came near her. So of course I started moving the pickles closer to her face every time I picked one up. Heh. We celebrate our one year wedding anniversary in a little over a month. Life with my two freckled girls has been great. Love you baby!

Ok, I threw away my old Atari 2600 a long time ago, but here's a replacement that is just a cool, if slightly goofy, idea.

I'm not sure why I find the whole Richard Scrushy saga so interesting. I guess it's because I grew up near Birmingham and I actually knew his sister at one point. It turns out his greed and excess was just as big as any of the other CEO's that have been brought down recently. Here's an article about it from Fortune magazine and another older article along the same vein. Hopefully there will be a new Richard Scrushy prison cell in Alabama soon.

SpaceX looks like a company that might actually be able to bring space launch costs down to under $5000 a pound. Hopefully it's not just another dot-com billionaire trying to find creative ways to waste his money.

My wife Marissa and daughter Victoria bought me tickets for the Music Man musical at TPAC this past Sunday. This is my 1st official Father's Day as a step-father but I have to say it's the best one yet! Heh. I played tuba in the orchestra for our high school production of the Music Man about 20 years ago and I've always wanted to see a full blown stage production of it. The show we saw at TPAC was well done, and the actress playing Marion had an amazing voice. Some of the actors voices were a bit hard to understand, but her's nearly blew everyone else away.

Over the weekend I purchased the Animatrix DVD. It's basically a collection of 9 Anime shorts based on the Matrix Trilogy. There was some really good backstory that helped explain some things in the recent Matrix:Reloaded movie. The relationship between Neo and the kid that bugs him in Zion is explained, plus the story of the ship the Osiris, which warned Zion of the impending machine invasion is covered. All in all it's a good DVD, especially if you're a fan of the movies. Picture and sound quality were very good. I haven't seen all the extras on it yet, but they look interesting as well.

There's a really good web site called It's Your Turn that allows you to play chess and other similar games for free against other people via a completely web based interface. I enjoy playing regular chess and Chinese chess (Xiangi) and occasionally I play their version of Stratego which they call Sabotage. If anyone wants to try a few games my user id there is Hatch68. Log in, create an ID, and invite me. I try to do at least 1 turn per day.

I went to see the Matrix : Reloaded last night on the IMAX screen at Opry Mills. Very impressive. The visual clarity of the film was so good that it was sometimes scary. The scenes taking place on the freeway were just incredible in the IMAX format. You could see every blackhead on Keanu Reeves nose during his closeups and that much resolution may not have been too kind to Carrie Anne Moss since she seems to have aged a good bit since the first film.

My friend Paul Novarese posted a link a while back to an article discussing the metaphyscial aspects of the movie. It's a good read and has lot's of links for follow-up reading.

Ok, I like the band KISS, and I wouldn't mind seeing them on tour this summer with Aerosmith. Tickets for the Nashville show went on sale today, and when I logged into Ticketmaster to check the prices I experienced a bit of sticker shock. The price just for sitting on the grass back behind the seats is $42.00 each! The cheapest price for any actual seat is $92.00 and they go up to $132.00 if you want to be anywhere near the front. Adding to that insult is that Gene and Paul couldn't even bother to get Ace cleaned up and out of the gutter for this tour and the fact that the show is on a Tuesday night and I just have to say that Gene Simmons and Steven Tyler can KISS my A$$.

The Sammy Sosa corked bat incident seems to not concern a lot of people in baseball. I think this article by a Sports Illustrated writer seems to best reflect my opinion on the whole thing. Sosa should never have had a corked bat anywhere near him, whether practicing with it or not. Basically Sosa is an idiot.

Read this article about the Real US Government Deficit and try to sleep well at night.

I'm about to finish my first week at my new job. I'm working at Edgenet, Inc. in Brentwood, TN. They write configuration software for the Fenestration industry. So far I really like it. More details soon.

Ok, so I haven't really been a fan of Star Trek for quite a while now, but I still get bored and watch a few episodes. I haven't seen many episodes of the latest Trek series, Enterprise, but I downloaded a few on Kazaa Lite a few days ago from the first season and watched them. One episode in particular, Episode 105, contained a real stinker in the "we don't have a clue about science" department, which is the real reason I can't watch Trek anymore.

In this episode, the Enterprise sends over a human engineer to an alien ship that has a far out and bizarre environment. This doesn't make him feel very well and he is forced to take a nap. An alien female offers him something out of bowl and makes the statement "this is the closest we could come to water." What?!? Give me a break! They're a space faring civilization and they can't make liquid water! It's only like one of the more common and easiest molecules to make in the Universe. Sheesh. Why can't Paramount afford to hire a college intern with a physics major to proof-read some of the crap they spew out as dialogue in their shows? That one statement made me lose interest in the whole episode and pretty much the series as a whole. Bleh.

Stephen Hawking - famous physicist, author, and Gangsta Rapper.

I had a 7 hour job interview today for a job here in Nashville. Seven hours! Hopefully it won't be time wasted. I have another job interview in Birmingham tomorrow.

Ok, so I haven't posted in a long time. I've been out of work for over 3 months. The job situation is looking very promising, although I could end up working in Jackson, MS for a few months. I'll start updating this more, I promise.

In my endless search to provide you, the reader, with more useless information gleaned from the net, I present the Ring Around The Rosie FAQ.

Here's a very cool Science Blogger. I bet my wife and Heff read it everyday. Heh.

Judge Rules Mutants as Non-Human

This is so bizzarre.

More Human Resource Follies.

It just gets better. This one came out within minutes of the previous one I posted:

To All GFS Employees:

Someone has spilled their lunch in the stairwell landing and up the wall. The stairwell I am speaking of is located adjacent to the elevator shaft.

We understand accidents can happen but asked that you please contact the front desk or myself so we may notify the cleaning crew to further clean this area.

Thank you,

Here's a completely un-edited email that was sent by the HR department at my company to all employees today:

To All GFS Employees:

Earlier today, new restroom toilet scrubbers were placed in both the women and men's stalls that did not have one. Within minutes of placing them at least one came up missing. If we were still located at the Maryland Way office some could blame the cleaning crew or other tenants in the building. In this case - impossible!

If this was taken as a joke or you really needed one outside of the office be so kind as to return unused or replace it with a new one.

Thank you.

Thank God for the HR department!

We used to play Scott Adams Adventures on the old TI-994A like crazy back in 8th, 9th, and 10th grades. I remember finally finishing Pirate Isle and we finished The Count in the bandroom on the band directors TI. Now you can download them and play them in windows.

Ok, I didn't go to the Y yesterday, as my lovely wife pointed out. I am going today though. Yesterday involved a "lack of fiber."

Here's your latest Hatch Health update. I'm feeling much better. No headaches and the mysterious pain in my neck has gone away suddenly as of yesterday morning. My last weigh-in measured 304 lbs. I should break under 300 by the end of the weekend. I've been walking a lot and so has Marissa. We're getting there, slowly but surely. This afternoon at the YMCA I plan to start doing some weight lifting. Bring on the pain.

There's a really cool looking 4 wheel motorcycle being shown at the Detroit Auto show this year. Follow this link and look at the first picture on the top left. Too bad I'm deathly afraid of motorcycles. Heh.

One of my favorite computer games back in the 80's was Starflight. We played it a lot at Mallet. We also played Starflight 2 a lot when it came out in 1989. Now there's a project working on a Starflight 3. Hope they're able to finish it.

We inherited a cat named "Purdy" when we bought our house a few months ago. Purdy is a female calico that has been spayed. She likes to spend a lot of time outside and sometimes disappears for quite a while. Yesterday she disappeared and wouldn't come to the door even though it was about 22 degrees outside. I'd love to have a GPS tracking collar for her just to see where the hell it is she goes to survive subfreezing nights. Of course she showed up this afternoon like nothing was wrong. I'm curious how that tracking collar has enough output for a satellite to pick it up. I wonder if it's a real product or not. Oh well, I can't afford one anyway.

To continue the swindler and schemers theme for the day, here's the story of Samuel Insull, the propigator of a historic Enron-esq collapse back in the 1920's.

I was watching Spiderman the movie on DVD last week after receiving it for Christmas and I may a startling connection. My friend Paul Victor Novarese has an uncanny resemblence to the character Flash Thompson in the movie. Coincidence? Probably.

A quick history of Charles Ponzi, of whom the term "Ponzi Scheme" was coined. Interesting stuff.