Well, I knew it was inevitable. I was on such a roll with 9 straight days of posting an image of the day for Project 365, and then... [insert sound of contestant going over $1.00 on their 2nd spin of The Price Is Right wheel]. Occasionally missing a day will probably happen fairly often with the upcoming wedding and honeymoon, but I'll still post an image for each day even if it's a couple days late. D A Y 1 0 Yesterday was the 2 week count down mark to the wedding which meant it was bachelor party day! I had a great time with friends old and new. We started out at Top Golf for a little target practice in 34 degree weather. Pretty freakin' cold for golf, but we actually had a pretty good set-up as [best man] Jerry arranged to get us a couple tee boxes in the executive suite where the wind was blocked on 3 sides and heaters made it pretty comfortable. On top of that we had our own personal waitress to bring us snacks, dinner and drinks. Oh and did I mention we had a big HD flatscreen LCD TV with the NFL play-offs on while we Tiger Woods'd it up. As a guy, does it get any better than that? I submit it does not. Later in the evening we headed down to Stan's Blue Note down on Lower Greenville to finish out the evening at a familiar hang out before calling it a night in the early morning. This might not have been a stereotypically crazy bachelor party, but that's just the way I like it. For me, I've known most of the guys in the photo below for 10+ years now, so it it was it was just about being around a bunch of guys being guys and enjoying each other's company. I want to send a special thanks out to my best man Jerry for setting up and coordinating the bachelor shindig. And thanks to all the guys that came out and made this a truly fun and memorable night. Pictured in the image below from left to right is (front row): Ed, Monty, Mike (back row) Dan, Ray, the bachelor himself, Dave, Jerry, Jeff, Jim and John.

Jerry caught this shot of me unloading on a hole-in-one no doubt.

D A Y 1 1 Weather forecast for Dallas... light today, dark tonight. The moon is trying to peek through a thin vail of clouds tonight and looks pretty cool.

A group of us from TI had a post-Christmas white elephant gift exchange at Pei Wei for lunch today. Here's Robin sportin' his little piece of heaven that he, umm, won? Won doesn't seem like the appropriate word in a white elephant gift exchange. I think "got stuck with" is more appropriate. This photo was taken with my iPhone.

Oh, and in case you're what wondering magic wonder I took home, I got [cork]screwed. Yep, I was the [un]lucky recipient of a cork screw bottle opener with a top shaped like a water faucet. Golden, I know.

Day 8 - Sharp as ever. I think X-acto knives are the greatest invention since the abacus. They have - for me - rendered scissors virtually useless. I'm fanatic - if not obsessive - about cutting straight lines (I'm OCD, remember?), and when paired with a ruler or straight edge, I'm unstoppable. At TI, we have a grave yard of sorts where old X-acto blades that have lost their edge go to die.

Day 7 - Keep adding 'em up Some of you out there may not know I've been leading a dual life for a while now. Yep, a Jeckyll and Hyde. I'm an Industrial Designer for Texas Instruments by day, photographer of the best clients in the world by night and on the weekends. What's an industrial designer, you ask? I think it's best described as combination of art, engineering, and psychology. The artistic part is being able to visually conceptualize and communicate those concepts via sketching/computer rendering/model making/etc. The engineering part is knowing how to manufacture the design you create. The Psychology is understanding the (sometimes unspoken) needs people have and creating the tools for them to meet those needs. Blah, blah, blah... I'll skip the rest of the boring details. Here's a calculator I designed for TI. Basically I designed what it looks like, where the keys are located, artwork, color... the physical product. Who knew there was such an exciting thing right? Who doesn't want to design a calculator? It's kinda fun, though, to walk into a store and see them using it at the cash register. Unfortunately, the local Pottery Barn hasn't figured out how to calculate a discount for me on it yet.

Check out Apple's latest revolutionary idea - a laptop with no keyboard. UPDATE NOTE: I removed the video because it was set to auto play whenever you visit the blog and that gets really annoying. You can still see the video here. Watch it twice and read the scrolling news headlines at the bottom of the video. Genius.

And in other random useless news, check out Name Voyager to get the low down on your name and find out when it peaked in popularity. Looks like my parents were riding the Matt wave at the height of it's awesomeness when they named me back in '72. Thanks to my friend Robin for sending this little gem to me. Robin and his wife Crystalyn are expecting their first baby girl any day now which is undoubtedly how he found this site as he was checking the stats on the name hey chose.