Yvette's Inner Geek Blog

The secular celebration of St. Patrick’s Day, as I see it, has three real purposes: 1) for kids to eat green cupcakes until they’re sick, 2) for adults to drink green beer until they’re sick, and 3) for everyone to pretend they’re Irish for the day as an excuse to be loud and wear gaudy clothing.

Happy St. Patrick’s Day, everyone! Enjoy this women’s church suit and hat by Donna Vinci that suitably merges the religious and secular purpose of this holiday for the sake of fashion. I’d need to consume at least three leprechaun-shaped hats full of green beer in order to wear that out in public, even on St. Patty’s day. Click on the photo to see more detail, including the really crappy Photoshopping.

Too many years later, here is an updated Geek Test! It’s version 3.14 in honor of Pi Day.

I uploaded it late last night and have updated a few minor things on the site. It’s driving me a little crazy because there’s so much I still want to do regarding the site, not to mention how the test is scored… but getting a more relevant-in-2010 test online was a big step for me. Dear self: just take baby steps from here and you can do it. Like the addition of social networking/sharing buttons at the bottom of the page. Done, but tweaking is still required.

For now, the geek tests in other languages are still in version 3.1 but will hopefully be updated soon.

Now go get your quiz on. It’s a little bit longer than before, but not by much. I hope you enjoy it! Please let me know if there are any glaring omissions in your opinion.

Happy Pi Day! May your day be filled with delicious pies and other round edibles as you do math for fun and recite π to as many decimal places as you can. Stay tuned for a slightly refreshed geek test sometime today….

I wanted to take a moment to address Beth’s comment/question from last week regarding how to deal with her daughter getting picked on at school (presumably for being a geek). Am I really a geek? Yes, ma’am, I believe I am. How did I deal with that at school?

Well, that’s not a question with a straightforward answer. First of all, getting picked on—and being called a geek, nerd, dork, or many of the other horrific things kids call one another—is part of a larger problem of bullying and social ostracization that runs rampant through schools and beyond. Geeks aren’t the only ones who are picked on by any means. Kids who are “different” in any way tend to suffer, and there is usually not an easy way to deal with the pain caused by anything from a day of not fitting in to being an outcast for years. But that’s not to say that they won’t eventually find a friend or a crowd that gets them. Which is what the growing geek subculture is all about.

Personally, my biggest school social challenges were in seventh and eighth grade at my small and somewhat-rural middle school. I was a good student who tended to be a teacher’s pet, which meant that I unintentionally rubbed a lot of kids the wrong way. Maybe I was precocious and annoying, maybe I had no fashion sense, maybe I was too chubby or clumsy or weird, maybe I tried too hard to fit in, maybe all of the above. Boys rarely talked to me, but I had a decent group of girlfriends in sixth grade—who suddenly started snubbing me in seventh grade for reasons still unknown. It was traumatic, to say the least. And then in eighth grade I developed a strong friendship with a different girl only to have her also suddenly turn on me by the end of the school year and take another of my precious few friends with her.

I don’t remember anyone calling me a geek specifically, but who knows what they whispered about me behind my back before I turned to see disgusted loathing in their eyes. I may not remember the exact words they used, but I remember those looks and how they much they hurt. After all, I didn’t know what I had done to deserve such outward hatred. The worst part about the kids who were truly mean to me was that Read more…

I finally have a better understanding of what Chat Roulette* is after watching this clever video from Casey Neistat. Spoiler: there are perverts who troll this random video chat mechanism! Sch0cking! I have to admit that I’m mildly curious to check it out, but definitely less so after learning more about Chat Roulette Maps. Oh, internet.

*Which, as “chatroulette,” for some reason brings to mind the word “charlatan.” Also, it took me a while to realize it was not a French-sounding “CHA-troulette.”

Here are three good things about today:

1. My replacement Logitech Trackman mouse arrived in a timely fashion and has enabled me to return to the world of Scrolling. Without having to buy a new mouse!
2. I ate a surprisingly delicious BBQ pulled pork sandwich on ciabatta bread from the UVU cafeteria for lunch.
3. My husband and I are retarded for each other.

Inspired by a Julia (a very lovely Canadian and fellow Sundance Film Festival volunteer)’s blog, 3 for 365. Thanks, Julia!

I don’t obsess (too much) over my web analytics, but I was surprised to see, oh, about nine times the usual volume of traffic to my site on Tuesday thanks to a prominent link to the Geek Test on reddit.com in the geek category.

Huh, I thought to myself while browsing through the couple hundred comments. Just imagine how much nicer this would all be if the test weren’t outdated.

There are little bumps in traffic here and there as fresh-faced geeks discover the Geek Test, but traffic has been pretty steady for a few years. Blogging regularly seems to have helped a little. Visitors at this point I think are mostly checking back now and then for an updated version of the test that I keep promising. I mean really, what’s my problem? I’ve developed a pretty nifty cycle of guilt, energized motivation, and paralyzed action about the whole update thing. It stresses me out and at this point it’s quite embarrassing. When I tell people about the Geek Test, I do so sheepishly with qualifiers and apologies in advance for its spiderwebs and creaky joints.

Well, that’s going to end on Sunday.

I’m not promising a huge revision of the test or a revamp of the site. I’m going to publish a minor update that will mostly just prune the out-of-date references and fix some glaring omissions. But you know what? It’s going to lift a weight off my shoulders and reduce my anxiety about  The Big Update.

There’s still time to weigh in on what Geek Movies you would add or remove from the list. I may open another section up to discussion before Sunday, but for the most part I’m going to tackle this minor update it with the resources I already have. And when I say minor update, it really doesn’t sound scary at all!

Smiles are best when you’re not expecting them, and sometimes you accidentally find a smile in the most unlikely of places.

I feel like I’m channeling Delerium* right now: Isn’t there a word for this sort of thing? For seeing a smile in a garbage can and some dishes on the counter, or for seeing a rabbit in a cloud, or for seeing shapes in tea dregs at the bottom of a cup?

It’s like found art, but different. A found smile?

*referring to a character from The Sandman series of graphic novels by my favorite author, Neil Gaiman. I’m not actually a huge fan of the Sandman artwork—it’s too garish and early 90’s for my tastes—but the story and writing are OMNOMNOMNOMamazing.

That title sounded really spammy, huh? You must deal! With! It! Because this is the most awesome music video you will see for a time period to be specified at a later date. It puts Doc Brown’s breakfast machine(s)* to shame… with a little help of some post-production tricks, I’m assuming.

*Edit to add that I am talking about Rube Goldberg machines here. Thanks for the reminder, Zeph!

I have been using a Logitech Trackman Mouse for over four years, and I L-O-V-E. it. It’s ergonomically perfect for my small hand, especially when used in conjunction with an Imak Ergobeads Wrist Cushion, and I love that I don’t ever have to pick it up and move it around like a regular mouse. Though a thumb-controlled trackball may not seem intuitive to standard mouse users, you should give this model a try. (Unless you need a left-handed model, which they sadly don’t offer.)

Anyway, the reason I am once again gushing about my personal love for this Trackman mouse (and don’t forget my 5-star review of the Imak Ergobeads) is because… hold on, I’m getting verklempt… it developed a problem. It wasn’t anything personal, I know. But one day, a couple weeks ago, the scroll wheel stopped working.

You don’t know how much you depend something until it’s gone, of course.

I followed the natural problem-solving course for this type of thing: curse, restart the computer; test a different USB port, curse when that doesn’t make a difference, but ultimately be thankful for not having a USB port problem; uninstall/reinstall the Logitech software driver thingy, curse some more. Then, moving on: deny that there is a actually a problem; wake up angry the next morning, curse; bargain with the devil (which only leads to developing a terrible cold, btw); get depressed and actually think to onseself there’s nothing on the internet today; and, eventually… accept the loss of a functioning scroll wheel. And mutter one final curse before looking up the warranty information—you know, just in case.

Five year warranty, the internet said. I did the math and decided that I was cutting it pretty close—but I filled out the form on Logitech’s website anyway. Logitech’s return email, received within one day, was this: Read more…