In which you all rise up from the dead… just like Jesus!
My mom and step dad sent me this sweatshirt recently:
Silly folk. Silly sweatshirt. Yay!
Category Archives: Geek
First indoor plumbing, and now this!
In which there’s a geek fest.
I got an email today from Dr. Derrick over at ISU. (I don’t think we know each other, but he called me Mush.) Anyway, the point is the geeks will be partying at an event called IgniteIT and he invited me and asked me to let other geeks know.
Geeks! Partying! Here! In Iowa!
IgniteIT is one night in a three-day event called the Emerging Technologies Conference, hosted by ISU and packed full of neato geek guests. I mean, shit: Neil Stephenson is gonna be there. (He wrote Diamond Age and damn near makes fun of the futility of being mayor or Des Moines on his website. Heh.) Neil won’t be at IgniteIT, but I might might be. I mean, room full of geeks! Hello! Sign me up!
Now go read the definition of Latitudinarianism and think about what you’ve done.
I. Have. A. Job.
In which I’m EMPLOYED!
This morning I drove over here and met with M.S. for an hour. We had a great meeting. They need an all-around office chick, to do their data entry and bookkeeping and billing and various other officey stuff.
I start tomorrow!
I would have offered to start immediately but they need time to clear off a desk and put a computer and a phone on it for me. (I said if they can at least find a box, I can freakin’ build it myself if I have to.) I’ll start with bookkeeping and billing, mainly, but it sounds like there is so much to do there that I won’t have any trouble keeping myself busy. I think it’s one of those environments where a little pro-activity goes a long way. I noted several little projects during our tour of the facility, including writing content for the web site, selling old equipment on eBay, putting inventory away, and taking naps on the big couches stuffed between two of the cubicles. (Hah!)
The tour of the data center proved to me once again how much of a geek I truly am. I love racks filled with servers, their little lights flashing merrily. I love piles of computer parts. I love wires and routers and servers with hand-written signs on them that say something like, “This is the phone server! Don’t mess with it!”
It’s part-time to start with an agreement to discuss it again in a month, but I think I’ll be able to work up to 3/4 or full-time quite soon. The starting wage is low because it’s something of a trial period, but again, discussion in a month. They’re pretty sure they need an office chick, but haven’t had one in so long they can’t remember for sure. I can tell they really need me. I’m gonna make life so much easier for them!
I won’t be doing any engineering stuff – it’s an office job – but not only am I employed again, but I’m at an ISP! Oh, how I love the Internet… and the people who sell connections to it.
Indian Food & Second Life & Knitting & Second Life
In which I cook Indian, freak the fuck OUT — omg! you have no idea! DUDES! — on a virtual world, and talk about the perils of knitting. In the process I manage to put a rather astonishing number of links into a single entry. (Mouse over ’em for snap-ups!)
This morning (and I use ‘morning’ loosely here; you should cleverly interpret it to mean ‘early afternoonish’), I got up and immediately cooked a feast!
Chana masala. Egg curry. Long-grain Basmati rice. Papadums. Yogurt, chutney. So good! OMFG, so good. We all ate heartily.
Then I got back on the laptop and booted into Second Life. (I was up until five-thirty this morning wandering around in there.) It’s so, so fun. I want to move to San Francisco and work at Linden Labs, like, toute suite, swear to God. And I don’t even like living in SF!
This world, this Second Life, it’s everything sci-fi ever taught me to want! It’s virtual. It’s wonderful. It’s a/the progenitor of the metaverse, and that’s HOT. Sweden is building an embassy there. You can fly in there! How did I not know about this until now? Has my entire head been up my arse since 2003? It’s practically better than knitting!
Oh, and on the subject of knitting, I’ve divided my sweater for the front and back around the armholes. This means I’m actually lurking up on being halfway done with it! Yay!
The bad news is that the bamboo circulars I bought (from Knit Picks, along with the yarn and pattern), which were supposed to be size 10, are not in fact size 10 at all — they’re more like 9.75s. This means I have to knit the entire sweater with them, including the collar and the arms (which will be a pain in the arse), or my gauge will change noticeably. Luckily the circulars in question are long enough that I can use the magic loop method, but it still kinda pisses me off. I guess it’s taught me to use my needle gauge to check new needles for accuracy of size upon purchase, at least. Pah.
In other news, I submitted a resume to Robert Half Technology last week — for a tech position they’d listed on Monster.com as “Web Administrator’s Dream Job” — and they called me back and left a message Friday night! I’ll be calling them first thing Monday morning.
I suppose moving to Cedar Rapids wouldn’t be too terribly bad; it’s only an hour and a quarter from Fairfield so I could still come see my friends on weekends, and it’s almost practically a city (by Iowa standards, at least) so if I lived there I might could find myself a working band and have access to quasi-decent restaurants!
Cell Phone Geekage! Proceed With Caution!
In which Katanas are cooler than Razrs, neener neener neener!
My brother, who rocks, sent me a cell phone for my last birthday. It was a pink Katana and I love the holy living shit out of it. Well, now he’s gone and gotten himself one too, and he sent me an email so loaded with phone geekery that, for your edification, I reprint it here:
“I just got me a blue Katana. Wow this phone is badass. I only got to play with yours for like 20 minutes, so I didn’t get to check out how bad it was. You are the luckiest sister ever.
“There are some pretty badass FREE apps you can get… go to wap.getjar.com on your phone’s browser, select ‘browse software by platform’, select ‘java’ then select any of the phones that have 240X320 next to them.
“You should definitely get “Opera Miniâ€. It lets you browse real websites on your phone!! You can even look at the ‘box, I’m reading tiny little Rants right now!! (So is dad the only one who uses it?)
“Also, you should look into an app called “Reporoâ€, I guess it lets you text message and IM for free, with like MSN, AOL, Google, and Yahoo… I haven’t done it yet but it looks cool. I’m thinking that the free texting would be an alright deal for you.
“I can’t stand how fucking cool this phone is… I kinda wanted the black one for the knight rider effect but the blue one had my name all over it. All my friends are jealous and I’m soooo glad I didn’t get the stupid Razr.”
So there you have it, straight from my little brother: Razr = stupid. So sorry, Razr people.
The Opera Mini browser totally fucking rocks. Go get it!
In other news, here’s a song I sang at the holiday benefit last month. It’s a little wobbly at first, but it tightens up.
I Still Ain't Got No Job
In which I didn’t go to jail.
I have made $0.07 from my Google AdSense ads so far. (That’s about $25 a year. Whee.) Go, me.
It’s getting c-c-cc-cold here. I am not diggin’ it. I much preferred yesterday’s chinook, in which I wore a long-sleeved cotton t-shirt and was comfortable, but right now there’s a winter storm watch for the area and I bet everything freezes solid tonight.
On the work front, I applied for the webmaster position at Overland last week. BvB, the other singer in my band (The Band That Never Gigs), works there, and tells me that she’s pushing to get me an interview. HELLO EMPLOYEE DISCOUNT!
I’ve also applied here, but they haven’t even acknowledged receipt of my resume, so no high hopes there.
Oh, in late breaking news, cops now love me. This totally freaks me out. For instance: the night before last, I drove a drunk friend home. This was after after-hours, so it was probably around three or four o’clock in the morning. I was sober, but I had a… questionable… item or two in my bag and my friend was most likely carrying; who knows. I have a brake light out, plus cops scare the shit out of me in general; when they turn their lights on I basically have a heart attack each and every time. I knew I was going to get pulled over, and depending on the behavior of my drunk friend I was possibly going to get Fucked With. My heart started going about 210 bpm and I was already dreading my name in the next day’s police report.
Anyway, this cop followed me for three blocks… and then turned off without pulling me over. I could not fucking believe it. And then, last night? A cop followed me down an alley as I was walking to my car, then waved when I turned to look at him, and then waited for me to get into my car — like, to make sure I was safe or something? — and then he drove away. It’s weird, OH YEAH it is, but I’m grateful. They can love me all they want, fer sure. Better that than pull my ass over!
I distinctly remember telling someone yesterday, “That was funny! That’s totally going on the blog!” but now I can’t remember what the situation was. Perhaps sleeping twelve hours a night affects one’s short term-to-long term memory transference?
I’m still into knitting, like, a lot; and also: my Wee Mee:
I gave her a bulkier sweater, boots instead of Birks, and a seasonally appropriate coffee cup. SO FREAKIN’ CUTE!!!
In other news, my band, The Band That Never Gigs, is doing a gig in December! A benefit for a guy with brain cancer, but a gig nonetheless. And tomorrow night I start rehearsal for JAM’s annual holiday benefit concert because, you know, hey, it’s for a good cause, even if he *does* try to make me sing Bette Midler’s From A Distance.
In other other news, I love Gmail on my cell phone. It rocks.
Loved all your jokes in the last entry’s comments. Thank you! *smooch*
Adding Social Bookmarking Links To WordPress
In which we add bookmark links to our pages.
Please, if you don’t use WordPress, excuse me while I geek out for just a moment. If you do use WP, use my code! 😉
To add del.icio.us, Digg, Furl, Technorati, Blinklist, and reddit bookmark links to your pages:
1. Copy this code and insert it into your pages. (I put mine into my single.php template.)
2. Download this file, unzip it, and FTP the resulting folder to your template folder (i.e., /wp-content/themes/your-current-theme/.)
Now you’re easily bookmarkable!
– – – – –
Thanks to Exploding Boy for the idea, most of the images, and some of the code.
To this guy for making me want it in the first place.
And this guy for the del.icio.us image.
Late For Dinner
In which I’m incredibly rude.
Last night I stayed late after work, moving goblinbox.com to its new server. Bread called and wanted to meet for a drink and then dinner. I said I’d be right there… then I got distracted fucking around with this or that thing. I finally realized what time it was — forty-five minutes later — and ran out to the jeep, and Bread was there and boy was he PISSED ALL THE WAY OFF AT ME.
I so deserved it.
We drove to a restaurant for pizza in our seperate rigs. When we were seated, I apologized furiously for being so late. I’m a geek who needs to watch the time.
In other news, I’m totally moved to the new box but Keef wants me to wait ’til the new DNS server’s working. So the move may not be for another day. Or two. Or three. We’ll see.
Doctors Make Lousy Patients and I Take Lousy Care of my Home Computer
In which I bust out a Phillips and unscrew some things.
Several months ago I rebuilt my home computer because I’d let my administrator password expire and I couldn’t get into Windows.
(Don’t laugh! It’s rude.)
Anyway, at some point during that little project, my CD-RW stopped working. Which meant I couldn’t install any software from CD. But I got most of what I need installed from files I’d copied from my external USB drive, and I could surf and that’s about all I do with my home machine these days.
Yesterday I decided I wanted my sound card to work. Actually, it’s onboard – not even a seperate card. So I busted out my canned air and blew half a pound of dust out of the tower and R&R’d my CD-ROM with one my dad had left me.
And then I found the driver disc that came with the motherboard and ran the installer. And still got ‘your sound card is in use’ and ‘there are no drivers installed’ errors. Bah.
So I went to MSI’s site and downloaded a K7 mainboard sound driver at random, which is dangerous because you really ought to be sure you’re installing the right drivers but WTF. And now I’ve got sound! Yeah!
Too bad my iTunes library is still on my work machine.
I take better care of my household garbage than I do my home computer. It’s pitiful, really. I leave the sides off the case and it’s always full of dust and I’ve never installed that auxillary fan it needs and all the wires are hanging out and my hard drive isn’t screwed in and it’s a total mess.
In other news, I broke down and brushed my hair last night because it was starting to itch.
Home At Last
In which vacation, like all good things, comes to an end.
We left Laramie and went back to Boulder, taking I-25 this time since the highway we’d taken up was an eternally long strip mall. We went to BearMountain’s house to get Truck, but his luggage was all up at Ron’s. Mr B bitched and moaned about it, but drove back up so Truck could get his luggage.
We stayed in a Super 8 in Nebraska that night because by 8 pm Mr B had been driving for twelve hours and was fucking done with it. The motel allowed dogs in for $5 per night each – I simply adore hotels and motels that take dogs! Mr B and I enjoyed the spa and the pool briefly while Truck lounged in his room, then the three of us went across the street to a Mexican restaurant and sat in the entirely leather bar for dinner and drinks. (The table tops were leather, the chairs were leather. It was bizarre. It was Hannibal Lecter bizarre. It may have been the bizarrest thing I’ve ever seen. I’d have taken pictures but I didn’t have my camera and my phone was dead.) After our meal, we couldn’t resist the tavern just up the street with the martini glass-shaped sign so we waddled up there. The women’s restroom in that bar was the tidiest, nicest, neatest restroom I’ve ever seen in a bar: there were rugs on the floor, the walls were tiled, it was spotless, and on the back of the commode were three fresh rolls of paper and a container of antiseptic wipes. On the counter near the sink was a tray containing lotion, matches, and a can of hairspray. Trust me, it was strange.
The next morning we rolled out a smidge before noon.
We arrived home Sunday around six. The Amazon Blonde came out to collect Truck. I unpacked, made sandwiches, ate, and went to bed. I’d have gone immediately to sleep too, but Mr B nagged me until I ravished him. When he wanted to cuddle I snarled, “If you wake me up one more time, I will poison your meatloaf!” He chuckled and rolled away until only our feet were touching. “Will that do?” he asked. “Yes. Now stop twitching, for God’s sake, I startle awake every time you move,” I said, and was asleep within 45 seconds.
Truck was coming down with something on the drive home, and by Sunday had almost no voice. I spoke with him on the phone today, and he’s got pneumonia. No shit.
In other news, I went to Farmer’s Telephone today to pay my landline bill, and learned I can now actually get 256k line-sharing DSL at my house! For $30 per month. (And a $115 modem and a $60 setup fee.) Yes, that’s outrageously expensive. Yes, I’m totally thinking about it. I mean, 256k is 200k faster than the 56k dial-up I’m on now.
In other other news, on my vacation I bought the coolest sunglasses ever and a pair of new moccasins.