MyGeekLife

I have a million things I should probably write about. However things are crazy as always, so I dont always get the chance to organize them into a post. Shit, I still need to finish my post about Pookie coming to visit, what almost 6 months ago? Jebus. At the same time, things are crazy as always at CENSORED. I’m now getting home well close to midnight, which means I usually go straight to bed. Some mornings, I have time to do things, others, I dont. It depends on what day of the week it is. Most directly, its really affecting my Tiki Bar schedule. Combine into that the fact that it looks like I may have a little bit of travel coming up, Portland is finally getting some hot summer days, and oh yes, I’m for some insane reason looking into buying a house, and well, there’s just not enough hours in the day.

But I did have time to fuck with the theme of my blog… Go figure. I was initially happy with the previous theme, and I liked all it could do. And then I got tired of it again, like I always do. Its a perpetual cycle. So I found this one, and customized it a bit. The Missus™ likes this pic, and its very me, so I chose it for the background. Now, if you’re not reading this directly on MGL, but through ButtBook, or AssJournal, you may want to head to the source, in order to see what I’m talking about.

And on an unrelated note, I would like to say for the record that I am going to miss Benny, Zach, and Adrian on a daily basis. Friends like them are a rare gift. Brent Albrecht too. And his mom. (YEYAH!)

Yesterday, my new computer finally arrived, after a week of waiting (and a bit of buyer’s remorse.) Today, I’ve spent most of the morning/afternoon setting it up… but wait, it’s tuesday, tuesdays are usually reserved for Meep/Mr. Geeklife days of fun. Notso today. I’ve been allowed to pretty much coop myself up in my room setting this thing up.

So, what did I do last night/this morning?

1. I took apart my 9 year old G4. (a bit bittersweet, but it is back in it’s cave, just sitting there.)
2. I dusted my desk and peripherals. It was gross…
3. I attempted to unravel the rats nest that pretty much had accumulated due to my futile attempts at keeping said 9 year old G4 up to date.
4. I plugged in the G4 and Targeted it without a monitor.
5. I excitedly got the 27″ iMac out of the box.
6. I started plugging everything in and started it up… BOOOONG!
7. As much as I dislike the “welcome music”, i sat through it and watched it like it was my first time seeing it.
8. I/it began to migrate my data from the Ole G4 to the New iMac. (it took about 2 hours. (that’s it!)
9. I ran software updates.
10. Went to bed around 3am.

11. Woke up around 10am.
12. Started working again on setting this up… primarily consolidating files.
13. Moved iTunes library and updated iPhoto and Mail.
14. Resynced my iDisk.
15. Ran to Bridgeport to exchange the wrong monitor adapter so I can span my screen.
16. Finishing up minor settings.

All while watching episodes of Futurama.
This iMac is huge, my desk is beautiful and my wacom tablet finally works perfectly!
I’m a happy geeky girl.

When I was still in elementary school, I got an AM/FM radio for christmas. It was from Radio Shack. I listened to the DC rock radio stations with it. And it was amazing. When I entered middle school, I upgraded to a portable radio with headphones. That was pretty awesome. I then got my first Walkman. I listened to Janes Addiction, Metallica, and the like, all copied cassettes from friends. Then, another christmas passed, and I got my first bookshelf stereo. It played records, tapes, and had a vertical CD player. I now had moved into the world of CD’s. But they were by no means portable. At the same time, I was experiencing the revolutionary idea of the GameBoy. It was at this same time that I bore witness to a car phone. A phone, in a car? Amazing. I was getting completely sold on this technology thing.

And of course, at the same time, computers. Apple //e’s, //GS machines, Macintosh plus and centris series machines. Typing as opposed to writing. My handwriting began to degrade as I began to type more. As I look back, I realize that my dislike for pen and paper note taking may have had more to do with my less than 4.0 GPA than my ability to pay attention. If they’d given me a laptop, I’d have done amazingly. Yep.

Now, we proceed through college. I have computers, I have portable CD players, I have video game systems. I work in a video game store. DVD goes mainstream and becomes affordable. Broadband internet is becoming commonplace. Wireless networking hits the market. Netflix starts shipping DVDs. I buy my first CD burner. Its SCSI (centronics to DB-25) and burns at 4X. It was $350. VHS leaves the living room for me.

(On a sidenote, I havent had a VCR hooked up in four years. However, I still have one in the closet, and I Have several boxes of VHS movies in the basement. They’re completely antiquated, but I cant bring myself to get rid of them. Dunno why.)

Then we welcome in digital cable, tivo, flat panel TV’s, affordable external hard drives. I’ve gone through Gameboy, gameboy color, gameboy advance, Neo-Geo Pocket, to name a few. And then, The Christmas of the cell phone. I have a phone. In my pocket. Its amazing. A cheap flip jobby from verizon. Its awesome, but I’m tough on it. I move up to a Nokia. Then to a motorola. Then a Razr. They’re all good, but they’re just phones. At the same time, ipods exist. I get the first one for christmas. Its life changing. No more CDs. No more tapes. It plugs into the aux input on my stereo. I can surf through hundreds of albums with my thumb. I can use it to boot a computer. Brilliant. Then, newer ipods. Soon, ipod Nanos. Then ipod shuffles. And ipod touches. And of course, iphones.

The iphone. Apple combines everything thats been done right in the last 20 years, into one device. They take the best parts of the palm, and blackberry world, add one part ipod, 2 parts newton, and 2 parts apple brilliance. The world spends tons of money on the thing. They call it the Jesus Phone. I wait till the second generation. Its so cool. It just works. And the apps. The apps are amazing. Games, reference, productivity, weather, news. You name it. It turns into its own viable platform. A self perpetuating hardware and software ecosystem thats a damned phone. And a music player. And anything else you can make an app for it to use.

Tonight, I played with the latest offering. Glass and stainless steel. led flash, HD camera. Insanely fast processor. Oh, and did I mention that you can call someone with it? No, not a telephone call. You call them in the classical sense. But then you press a button. And their face appears on your screen. Then yours appears on theirs. You can show them what you see, and vice versa. All of a sudden, we’ve gone from talking into a brick, to making conversations personal again. I can talk to someone face to face. With a little magic box. Star trek. the Jetsons, and a million other forward thinking science fiction shows faked this because, well, the future will have this. And of course, we all assumed that someday we would. But I was distinctly aware that tonight, I used it for the first time. I used the future today? Such a strange concept.

All I know is that the next time my parents go to visit my niece, I’ll get to see her, and talk to her. Face to face, in person, in real time. Thanks to a small magic brick.

All of the technology I’ve witnessed over the last 30 years, and it culminates in a sense, with this telephone. Except that phone does s0 much more than we ever imagined.

Sofa King Awesome.

Yesterday a certain company that makes fruit related technology began pre-orders for a certain 4th generation phone. Its a pretty spiffy phone too. So I, like several million others, decided to buy in advance. And of course, it was a giant cluster fuck. There were lags, errors, servers melting down, and all kinds of bad juju. It seems that no matter how much demand is expected, we the public always manage to outstrip the demand. Seriously, do we all need new phones so badly?

Anyway, I woke up at 10AM in order to get the Missus out the door to work, and sat down to order me some phones. I needed two. One for the mother parent, one for me. No changes to contract, just our eligible upgrade to a new unit. Simple, right? Not so much. I spent almost 6 hours in front of my computer, attempting to complete two transactions. Sometimes it would error out early, sometimes I’d get almost there. But completion of a transaction? Yeah, not so much. However, I did succeed.

I completed one transaction around 2:45. and the second one at 4PM. Pure victory. During that process, I witnessed multiple feeds from multiple friends. Some couldnt succeed. Others had address issues. Yet others tried to succeed on their lunch breaks. Fail abounded. AT&T blew through their allotment. Then it was announced this morning that MotherFruit had her initial run already sold. According to published numbers, over 600,000 phones were sold in one day. Wait. What? We moved almost a million units in a day? Wow. Then figure all the people what will wait in line on launch day. A million phones in one initial launch? I think so.

Yeah, this is gonna be good. Of course, I have to travel three thousand miles to get mine, since it was shipped to Virginia. But, thats a moot point, since I was going there anyway. Yay for my planning ahead. Heh.

Lets just come out and say it. In the world of digital entertainment, I’m a gamer. I enjoy video games. I always have. Way back in the day when we had shit like Intellivision, and Nintendo’s Game & Watch, I was playing games based on digital content. Over the course of my life, I’ve had:

The original NES, multiple controllers, and hundreds of games

A Sega Saturn, and tons of games

A Playstation, games duh.

Multiple PS2′s

A Sega Dreamcast

An Xbox

An Xbox 360

The original Gameboy

Gameboy color

Gameboy Advance

Sony’s PSP

a Neo-Geo Pocket

And those are the systems I remember putting decent time into. I think I also had a super nintendo, and an N64, somewhere in the mix. And not to put too fine of a point on it, but I also happen to have done my time working for the Electronics Boutique (EBX/EB/EBGAMES/GameStop) during college, in order to put food on the table. Yes, I qualify as a gamer. However, I wouldnt call myself a zealous gamer. Yes, when I worked in game retail, I did my share of midnight launches for consoles and games. It was fun and an adventure. However, I was being paid to be there. Since then, I think I went to one midnight launch. GTA IV. I needed GTA IV. Grand Theft Auto has been a staple of my gaming lexicon for a decade. It was important. Since then, I’ve picked up stuff later on, or through Gamefly. My recent attention getters, Mass Effect 2, and Borderlands, were both from Gamefly. It wasnt until Red Dead Redemption, that I actually hunted down a game on launch day (Thank you Fry’s!)

In the last couple months though, I’ve watched the Missus. She went from casually watching me play, to wanting to watch me play, to being excited to see me move through a game. Then, she decided it was her turn. Being not dumb, I handed her the controller and said, “Okay, so play.” I had no idea what to expect. Maybe she’d like it, maybe she’d have a fleeting fascination with it. Who could have known?

In the beginning, M struggled a bit with controlling a first person shooter. She had trouble with the concept of looking and moving at the same time. But she enjoyed the gameplay and the challenge of it. Over time, she really liked Borderlands. She grew into it, and even co-oped with me in multiplayer. Then she finished the base game by herself. Then she started in on The Zombie Island of Dr. Ned. She kept talking about wanting an Xbox360 of her own. So we found her a good deal. When she opened it up and set it up, configured it, got her an xbox live account, and so on, she was giddy with excitement. When we got her the Borderlands strategy guide, she hugged it as we walked around frys.

Today, we went to GameStop. She traded in two old games, and picked up her own copy of Borderlands, and Lego Indiana Jones. I picked up the component cable for her system, for hi-res graphics. She was awash in video gaming and loving it. She couldnt wait to get home and get it all put together. Once all was said and done, she killed, while I made dinner. Then, we settled in to watch netflix on the Xbox after dinner.

My girlfriend has discovered modern gaming. She likes a first person shooter. She wants to play the Lego games, and she’s voiced an interest in playing Red Dead Redemption. She’s excited by the interactivity, the story lines, and the adventures contained therein. Its a good thing.

I wonder though. Was I ever this excited by video games? Some of my favourites, I played endlessly. But I dont know if I ever got excited. Hellcats Over The Pacific, Sim City 2000, Bushido Blade, Colony Wars, GTA3, The Wip3out series, the Tony Hawk series, Monkey Island, the other lucas arts games. I vested hours, days, weeks, into these games. I enjoyed them greatly. But I dont know if I ever truly got super excited. In a sense, I look back on them in similar fashion to books I’ve read, that I loved. I fondly remember GTA3, with the same affection of William Gibson’s Neuromancer. I think back on the Monkey Island adventures, in the same way I remember Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World. I could equate my fond memories of Rudy Rucker’s cyberpunk novels to the same fond memories I have of the original Medal of Honor games. I could even equate my love of Kirkman’s The Walking dead to my continuous enjoyment of the series of WipeOut games over time.

But I cant move to say excitement is the right word. More along the lines of quiet enjoyment. I quietly enjoyed sitting in my chair, playing the game, much like I enjoyed reading the book. Sure, the parallel is a little loose, but in some sense the narratives were there in the games, as much as they were there in the stories. The books created a frame of mind, a mental construct with an emotive content. I can say that the games too have given me that frame of mind, and the mental construct with an emotive content.

As I nurture M’s gaming hobby, I can only hope that she derives the same kind of enjoyment out of the games that I have. Likewise, I can only hope that developers keep putting out games that are as rich and immersive, and pull her in, as the games I’ve played over the years.

Games are good. Gaming is good. And I support the healthy inclusion of video games into human existence. Be them violent, or not.

meep, melew, megz legz, meg, my o’ meg, megmeg, aunt megmeg, megT, tee, meg o’ my heart, megamania (never call me that!), duracell, hazel… these are just a few of the many nicknames i have been given over the years.

the ones i hold most dear are the ones that have been bestowed upon me by loved ones… i suppose that would be all of them.

but anyway, hi! i’m meep.

i am very much a geek (or i wouldn’t be dating mr. mygeeklife)
i went to bradley university in illinois to study graphic design
i graduated from both high school and college in the mid to late 90s.
i’m a boomeranger (i moved home after college and again in my late 20s)
i tried being a vegetarian for awhile, then moved home.
i love to cook
i also love to bake cookies
i’m primarily a beer drinker, but enjoy my weekly taboo at thatch.
i love hostess twinkies (a guilty pleasure, yes.)
i enjoy working out at the gym, especially early in the morning.
i love to sleep.
i (recently found that i) love sonic cheeseburgers (omg!)
i love the color green (in almost all shades/tints/highlights)

but most of all, i love my hart. it’s great that i get to date my best friend.

of course the long and sordid history (hee hee!) of how we managed to not screw it up is a story for another time. right now, i must sleep. class is at 6am tomorrow morning, not to mention the hour of cardio afterwards… g’night!

Yesterday, my relationship hit the 6 month mark. I’ve been with this amazing girl, in a relationship, for half a year now. I’ve known her way longer than that, but still the day bears noting. The picture doesnt do it justice. This smart, funny, talented woman picked me. Mind you she’s wearing my “Lime In The Coconut” shirt, holding a beer, and sitting next to a barbecue grill, but this is indicative of just a few of the things that make her Miss Awesome.

I honestly cant imagine being anywhere else, with anyone else. She makes sense, balances me out, and most importantly, she puts up with me when I’m tired, A.D.D., frustrated, sniffly, surly, and not at my best. She takes me as I am, even when I torment her with Mr. Jinx, the foul mouthed puppet I found at Target.

My amazing girl appreciates the nerd things in life. She appreciates why I enjoy video games, computers, and snowboarding. She understood my sentiment when for Valentines day, I gave her a circuit board heart, that I spent several hours soldering components to, so it would blink when she turned it on. She sees the intrinsic value in a twinkie, and knows why rubber chickens are funny. She road tripped all the way to Seattle with me, so I could go christmas shopping at Archie McPhee, because I love that place. She squeals and shoots back when I attack her with Nerf darts, yet wont walk more than ten feet with me without holding my hand. When I bought a winter coat, she repeatedly mentioned that I was handsome devil, while I struggled to find the words to tell her that I cant take my eyes off her.

As time passes, I lose a little more of my hair, and a little less of my stomach, yet she continues to get prettier. She appreciates my need to sit in front of the computer and read the news and my RSS feeds, and always smiles when I make her coffee, knowing that the only reason I keep a coffee maker and coffee in the house is because its for her. She’s keen on my moods and my nuances, and knows that when I’m having a bad day, surprising me with packets of hard to find kool-aid flavors will cheer me up. She chastises me for wanting that damned Boba Fett hoodie Mark Ecko sells, and then periodically asks me if I’m ever going to get it, because she knows how much I like it. She puts up with me when we go shopping, because I cannot leave a store without checking the toy aisle. She text messages me after work, to wake me up, so I can come downtown and have drinks with friends, because she knows that regardless of how tired I am, I need it, and she’s right. And of course, she almost never fails to be sitting next to me at the Tiki Bar on Fridays.

She professes an enjoyment in watching me play absorbing and sometimes violent video games, and then decides to play them herself. She’s discovered the stress relief of sitting in front of the tv and killing pixels. I let her order first at restaurants, and more often than not, she orders exactly the same thing I was going to order. In the car the other night, we both burped, at exactly the same time, in the same pitch, for the same amount of time.

She steals my old t-shirts, my snack cakes, my xbox controller, and most importantly, she’s stolen my heart. Every now and then, the internet topic “how to date a geek” pops up with tips for the ladies about how to find, date, and understand/keep a keep for a boyfriend. My girl needs no pointers, lessons, or tips. She has this topic nailed.

My girlfriend is pretty damned awesome. All of you motherfuckers should be jealous.

(Mr. Jinx still thinks he has a shot at winning her heart and stealing her away from me. The furry blue bastard is in for a fight. He may be the Muppet Show answer to Don Juan, but I saw her first.)

Yesterday, I spent my day with The Missus™ doing “stuff.” Today, I had set aside for LeAnne. As always it was up to her to get in touch and let me know when it was time for us to do “stuff.” About 3:30PM she called me and said, “I’m gonna be over in a bit.” I said okay, and continued to watch my movie. She showed up shortly thereafter with a big pink bag. She grins and says, “I have a present for you!” Not expecting this, she explained that she got me this item as a belated birthday and christmas present, since she had no idea what to get me during the holidays. Now, I dont expect presents, and I certainly didnt expect one in may. But knowing Crash, she’s devious, mischievous, and crafty. I expect the unexpected from her. I however, didnt expect this.

Yes, that little sister of mine found a limited edition Akuku decanter, cup and swizzle set by that master of all things tiki, SHAG. I almost fell over. Tiki Farm made these in 2002. 8 years ago, they sold out. I’d seen them online, but I never expected to see one in person. I certainly never expected to own a set. But no. Annie found it and picked it up as a surprise for me. Complete and in the box. Should I mention that its signed and numbered out of a set of 500?

Yes, as shown, its set number 374 of 500, and signed by Mr. SHAG himself. You really cant get more tiki than that. Holy wow. I was literally without words. Now, I’m in the position of figuring out how I’m going to display this treasure. How, just how am I going to put these up for people to see, as part of my collection? Come new house and more space, I think I may need some kind of display case or shelf, where I can put my mugs up for show, so that people might see them. This will have to have a place of honor, and be lit up for all to see. For sure.

And, not to let all of this supersede the most important fact.

The crazy purple haired girl I call Crash (Annie, LeAnne, Annie-Kitty, etc) is about the awesomest sibling one could ever have. You should all be jealous that she’s not your sibling. She is, in a word, awesome. She means the world to me, presents or not. However her ability to come up with an amazing surprise is definitive testament to the level of awesome that she brings to the table.

As of this writing, I can easily reaffirm something I’ve said for ages, and will continue to stand by. I have the best little sister ever. So there.

Today is my Saturday. Yes, Tuesday is my Saturday. I work Thursday through Monday. Weekend days off are a rarity, and I dont see them. Instead, I work the weekend, and have weekdays off. Luckily, The Missus™ also has the same days off. Its good to spend time with one’s girlfriend, at least once in a while.

So yes. Today has been my Saturday. It hasnt been crazy, but its been fun. I slept in, read the news, and goofed off with M. Then, after committing hygiene, we wandered through several of Portland’s better adult stores. Why? Just for the hell of it. We then made it to the Lloyd Center Mall (yux) where we wandered around looking at randomness. In the process, The Missus™ was rewarded with a bounty of new underwear from the great franchise underwear purveyor of the western hemisphere, Victoria’s Secret. This was a plus. While out, we also ducked into Hot topic. I remembered hating them for many years, due to the fact that they took my punk rock heritage and repackaged it for the mainstream masses. Anyone could now get unnatural hair dye, and spikes for their jackets. Curse them for making my rebellion main stream!

Today’s trip to Hot Topic however, was bittersweet revenge. Their inventory of stuff was crap. They sell no hair dye, most of their shit was marked down, they cater to mainstream culture and there were even t-shirts for country musicians on the wall. Hot Topic repackaged my rebellion in order to sell it to the masses. They themselves were then normalized and rendered irrelevant by the same faceless millions that they hoped to sell the rebellion to. What a waste. Hot topic isnt punk, industrial, or goth. They never were. Its a franchise retail brand that tried to be, and then catered to the masses when being punk and goth wasnt popular anymore. Oh, but Twilight is. Bullshit vampire knock offs are everything now. H.T. had an entire wall of that shit. In short, if you want a blue mohawk and spikes on your leather, go somewhere else. But if you want a Twilight snuggie, Hot Topic has you covered like a motherfucker.

Okay, so I needed to rant there. I see that now. I think I’ve made my point. Well, maybe I need to get in one or two more jabs. While in hot topic, M discovered the small stash of Invader ZIM stuff that Nickelodeon is still licensing, in order to milk money out of the aforementioned masses, in order to turn a profit off ten year old cartoons. She couldnt leave without purchasing an iphone case, earrings, necklace, beanie, and so on. If it makes her happy, I’m for it. Conversely, I’m sorry, Mister Scolex, at the pillaging of your creativity. Oh well.

Anyway, I also wandered into the local skate shop, and was disappointed there too. Is nothing from my younger years, the way I left it? Dammit. At least I was able to walk into Nordstroms and find my shaving soap. Yes, Nordstroms. I had to brave my way into a department store in order to purchase a $22 jar of shaving soap. Because I cant use aerosol shaving cream. Because all you morons dont know what quality is, and shave with crap. I buy quality shaving soap. Which means department stores. And scary, patronizing sales people. Are they always that plastic? Fucking creepy.

In the end, while I bitch, and wax poetic about how much I hated the mall, I realize that I spent the day with The Missus™, treated her to new undies, actually DID get my shaving soap, and even swapped out one of M.’s earrings without tearing her earlobe off. I’d call it a good day. Now? I’m going to make mac & beef, play some borderlands with my laydee, and look forward to another day off tomorrow. Nooch.

Way back, on March 9th, I sent a note to the folks at Airwalk. Their website gave details of a shoe I wished to purchase. It was called “The Vic.” It was evocative of the skate shoes I remembered when I was a kid. I wanted them immediately. The website provided almost no information regarding availability, pricing, or well, anything for that matter. I checked their linked retailers. Nothing. So, I went back to the source. I let them know that I very much wanted to purchase their shoes. All I needed to know was where to send or spend my moneys. I heard back, nothing.

Today however, I got an email back. It copied the initial text of my email, and gave me a one sentence answer.

“They will be available at www.airwal.com this fall.”

Okay, so they’ll be available at an incorrect website this fall? Right. But, lets assume for a moment that the person meant airwalk.com. Gotcha. Wait, you have no online store, only links to dealers. Will you be rebuilding your website this year? I dont know.

I would assume that if a manufacturer is getting unsolicited and excited requests for their products, they might show a little enthusiasm themselves. Now, of course I appreciate the reply, but a one word, misspelled reply conveying no return contact info, and even less information regarding my request, might be interpreted as not caring, or having little interest in their customer base at large.

Now, bear in mind that Airwalk was at one time one of the premier skate shoe companies. They attempted to reach a broader market by using stores like Payless Shoe Source as an outlet for their wares. Time has shown us that this plan didnt work, as Airwalk has in time, lost the skate shoe market, and at this point, is carried by very few retailers. None of these are outlets for skate shoes. Given this, I would hope that Airwalk considers their retail options carefully. If they wish to trade on their skateboarding heritage, it would be smart to earn back the loyalty of those of us who once bought and used their products. I say this in that it might help them to regain the brand loyalty of other skateboarders, and such, in the long term.

But, thats just me, and I could be wrong.