Gatorworks | Baton Rouge Web Design & Development

All of us at Gatorworks wish you and yours the very best for a safe and happy holiday season.

Now-a-days people tend to think that you can take a big red rubber stamp that says “Undead”, smack something with it, and voila- you’ve created a zombie. However, having been a staunch Romero follower since as long as I can remember, there are some rules and guidelines which must be followed in order to obtain zombie status.

Let’s go ahead and get the biggest and most glaring problem out of the way. It hurts for some people but you all know it’s true: Zombies do not, cannot, and will not run. Part of the zombie ethos is that a zombie is afflicted by the post-death syndrome of “Rigor-mortis” which Wikipedia defines as such:

Rigor mortis is one of the recognizable signs of death (Latin mors, mortis) that is caused by a chemical change in the muscles after death, causing the limbs of the corpse to become stiff (Latin rigor) and difficult to move or manipulate.

Zombies do not run.

Now, obviously if affected by this, it would be incredibly difficult for a zombie to move at anything faster than a crawl. Ergo, if it runs, it is not a zombie. Ok, let’s let that one simmer. Many people will abandon this article at that point and refuse to acknowledge that a being greater than them dreamed up the perfect monster (George Romero).

Another rule of zombies, they are extremely moronic but NOT unintelligent. In George Romero’s Day of the Dead, scientists were studying a placid zombie named Bubs. He - over time - gained the capacity to understand very simple things. Later in the progression of Romero films, the zombies began to learn that they would not drown, or they can use tools and/or weapons. That being said they never graduated to complex physics or theoretical mathematics but they can do simple things.

Zombies are driven by a hunger for brains. They can smell human flesh and that drives them to a location. Their senses work, and they can hear a human as well as we can, so any sound out of the ordinary would give a person’s position away.

Zombies do not have brute strength because they don’t need it. One of the key things about the zombies is not their ability as a singular zombie, but as a functioning horde. The zombie threat comes from the fact that there is a huge possibility for extreme widespread outbreak. The numbers alone are enough to cause a generous amount of anxiety in any believer. If you attack a tank with one person the tank would win, but if you storm a tank with 1000 people it wouldn’t be long until those people flipped that tank on it’s head.

While I’m trying to clarify what does and does not pass for a zombie, I’m in no way discrediting movies that have “zombie-like” creatures. Some of those movies rank very highly on my favorites list. 28 days later, 28 weeks later, and the Dawn of the Dead remake are some just to name a few.

My goal with this post is simply to clear the air. So next time, when one of your friends comments about a zombie on television you’ll have the knowledge and know-how to check and see if what he/she has seen really is a zombie indeed.

Happy Hunting!

I am a person that likes a challenge. This year, for Thanksgiving, my sister and I decided to get as close as possible to having a no-waste meal (i.e. buying fresh produce from a local Co-Op and using as little pre-packaged food as we could). A daunting task, but if you think about how much tinfoil, paper goods, styrofoam and leftover food are thrown away, to spend many, many years in a landfill, it’s not as inconvenient as you initially think. The average US family wastes $600+ worth of food annually, and that doesn’t include holidays.

On the way to our parents this past week, we decided to document the amount of food we made and compare it to the amount of packaged waste we had. The prepping and cooking were the hardest parts. But the culmination of thought and preparation when the meal hit the table made it all the more special. The results are pretty awesome. As seen here:

Feast and packaging pre-recycle.

So, after a long day of chopping, cooking, eating, and cleaning up, I felt really good about the small amount of waste, which was all recyclable, and the money we saved by buying local and organic. Next year I am going to attempt a NO WASTE Thanksgiving. Despite the traditional waste-ridden thanksgiving, you can easily accomplish an eco-friendly thanksgiving by attempting to reduce waste and save money in the process. Or not…

For a sustainable Thanksgiving reference:

http://coolfoodscampaign.org/thanksgiving/ten-cool-thanksgiving-tips/

It’s finally here…our  new website! You know they say the carpenter can’t find time to work on his own house, and unfortunately for a while there we fit the stereotype.  However, we feel our new site has been worth the wait, as it will now really showcase our firm and its abilities.  Other than showcasing our portfolio, we hope to really engage ourselves in the local and even national design community. We are very excited to be able to use this website to better communicate with our design and CSS peers.

Check out some of our fun features such as our last.fm stream that will show you the most recent song each of our team members have played here at the office. Feel free to take a look at our flickr stream or stay informed with our twitter feed!

We hope that you will continue to support our firm and the many other local design and tech firms.  I invite you to stay updated with the tech happenings specifically in New Orleans by following my friend Chris Schultz’s blog here:  www.voodooventures.com.  In fact, Chris has a great list of the different happenings down in NOLA in this post:  Hitting a Tipping Point in Louisiana.

I receive periodic emails from my friend Alex Velasquez over at Legacy Consulting.  I believe he usually tends to time his email blasts with holidays or generally recognized changes in the calendar year such as a new season or the beginning/end of a quarter of the year.  The emails are typically short and sweet, yet powerful.  I particularly enjoyed the one I received today from Alex.  It reads:

Inconveniences
Every success requires discomforts. It demands that we do things that we don’t like to do. So when inconveniences arise, look at them as necessary for growth and excellence. After all, we should desire pleasant results much more than pleasant methods.

It’s little tidbits of insight such as this that remind me of the tenacity that is required to be successful.  Feel free to visit www.consultlegacy.com for further information on Alex’s company.  Alex is also involved with the Wolf Creek Business Growth Institute where I will be sending one of my sales guys for training later this year.  Feel free to visit www.wolfcreekbgi.com for more information.