Yvette's Inner Geek Blog

The best thing about Monday nights? Watching new "Heroes" in HD on a big-ass TV screen.

The worst thing about Monday nights? The "to be continued…" tag after each new episode. 

It almost makes me want to stop watching the show and just wait for it to come out on DVD. Almost, but not really, because I crave that Heroes fix and can’t seem to live without it. Well, I’m sure I could… it’s just the most exciting thing I have going on Monday evenings these days. What could I do instead? Oh, paint the family room, I guess. Bleh. I’d rather watch Heroes.

But WTF?!? Is Hiro ever going to realize that HE is the Kensei of Legend? And who is Adam? When is West going to be bumped off for being too annoying? What is Jessica’s real motivation with Mohinder right now? You probably have the same questions (and more) that I do if you’re a fan. Sure, there are cheesy parts, and I really hate the horrible green-screening they’re doing once in a while, but overall it’s just really good TV.

*Sniff* and I won’t be able to get the first season on DVD until the HD format wars are over and we get an HD-DVD or Blu-Ray player or an all-in-one or whatever ends up winning. Because it would be too traumatic to watch a lesser quality DVD of Heroes after seeing it broadcast in amazing HD.    

/ end of TV geek-out for now. 

Wired has asked readers to submit photos of their geeky jack o’ lantern carvings, and the people have delivered.  Here are my top three favorites, with links to the owners’ photos and hopes that they won’t be mad for me touting their awesome dedication to a geek-filled Halloween.

 

 

There’s an article today on computerworld.com, under "careers," called Geek stars: The secret (nerdy) life of celebrities.  It lists forty celebrities with "some serious science and technology chops."

There are some I knew about and some I didn’t, but it’s an interesting little read. Obvious ones to geeks like me include Wil Wheaton, Natalie Portman, and Danica McKellar. One of my sister’s childhood heroes is listed (Bill Nye the Science Guy), as well as her could-be neuroscience colleague, Mayim Bialik.

I feel like they cheated by listing Weird Al… he was an architecture major. I don’t think architecture is particularly geeky or nerdy by itself (correct me if I’m wrong) but everyone knows he’s a geek otherwise. Dr. Demento’s Tom Lehrer is also on the the list, but he actually left Dr. Demento to pursue a career in mathematics! Most other people on the list started out studing math or science and then left for acting, music, or whatever.

Other quick notes: Sharon Stone is a self-described nerd? Interesting. Robin Williams is a big gamer and gadget freak? Well, he had to replace his crack habit with… another potentially dangerous crack habit (albeit with an admittedly lower death rate). Kurt Vonnegut and Huey Lewis studied engineering, Alfred Hitchcock studied mechanics and navigation, Trent Reznor studied computer engineering, Art Garfunkel has a masters in math, and Mr. Bean (Rowan Atkinson) studied electrical engineering. There are many more names that you may or may not recognize.

The most surprising to me was Hedy Lamarr, the Black and White movie actress whose name I really only know because it’s included in the lyrics of the "Little Shop of Horrors" musical number "Feed Me" (…How about a date with Hedy Lamarr?  You gonna git it…)

She was a pioneer in spread spectrum technology… the stuff behind two little things called Ethernet and cell phones. So maybe we could blame her for the resultant txt msg cultr and interweb sp33k.  It seems that she wanted to become an inventor, but was instead encouraged to smile and shake her booty for soldiers to raise war bonds.

Also, her full first name is Hedwig, which was also my great-grandmother’s name before it ever became associated with a snowy owl. She just jumped to my own personal "cool people" list.

I thought you might be interested in geek terminology from Croatia (Hrvatska).

Nerds are called "štreberi" (shtreberi). Geeks are actually called geeks, but they’re sometimes also called shtreberi, frikovi (from English freak), šmokljani (shmokljani), and more specified names depending of the area of their geekness.

 

P.S. Your geek test is cool.

(I scored 54,95661% and titled as a super geek

but you were right – I’ll try again!)

This is my adorable little Phoebe, who’s now about six months old. She’s growing too big for the basket in this photo, but loves to sleep in it while I’m sitting at the computer. That is, of course, if she’s not being an annoying little shit like right now and standing in front of my monitor… playing with a loose emery board, drinking from my water glass or pulling thumbtacks out of my newly hung corkboard.

I put a loose Spiderman 3 action figure in her bed one day and took a bunch of photos. He had been hanging from a plastic web that was suction-cupped to my filing cabinet. I left him on the desk because it was the lazy thing to do, and the next day, and the next, Phoebe wanted to play with him like she loves to play with her little colored toy mice (she’s kind of racist… she prefers the blue, orange and pink mice to the black, white or rattly ones). I afeared she might damage Spidey, but was also incredibly amused. He’s tucked away now until I put the camera on video or I desperately need her to get out of my hair.

She must have sensed that I was getting annoyed, because now she’s tucked herself into bed again. How fucking adorable can you get. It makes me sick with love.

I didn’t realize how much I could fall in love with this little kitten when I brought her home a few months ago. She squeaks, really, instead of meowing. She purrs almost any time I pick her up. She cuddles up with my bare ankles and my slippers every morning when I stand at the counter making coffee. She made fast friends with Loki, our middle-aged fatty, with whom she plays/plagues and who seems to enjoy the attention rather than be annoyed with it. She lies down next to him, literally right up against him, quite often. See the Lazr Kitteh photo below.

Of course Loki just lays on top of her to let her know that he’s done playing. Our other cat Isis now tolerates Phoebe much better, and we’ve even caught her playing with her little nemesis a few times. Mostly Isis still looks with disdain upon us giving Phoebe attention. We try to hold Isis, but she still has all of her claws and has never been much of a snuggler unless she initiates the attention.

I’m blabbering on like a crazy cat lady. I don’t have kids yet, so I guess all of that mothering love is being poured into my cats right now.  Look at these photos and tell me how I could not!

 

 

I’m at work and for some reason I thought I was archiving comments from the past few weeks that people have made on my blog. Instead, I deleted them. I am an idiot.

People whose comments I deleted: Madeleine, Monique, Liz, WithaK, Tina Kubala and ImaGeek2. Again, it’s not because I don’t love you. It’s just that I’m an idiot.

Can I blame this minor little cold that I have right now? Yes, I think I’d like to play that card. It’s not as bad as the cold I got a couple months ago, but I have been feeling a little light-headed. 

Thank you, Liz, for making me laugh with this little comic about the Norway and Atheism. Russell’s Teapot – Dra Til Helvete

P.S. Yes, "dra til helvete" means go to hell.

P.P.S. Thanks to the little guy in the upper right corner of the page, I now have Violent Femmes’ "Kiss off" song stuck in my head!

Ben and I spent some of Friday evening and all day Saturday cleaning the house. I did a pretty good job in the kitchen/dining room/living room and Ben worked some serious magic in the dungeon, I mean family room, where our big TV and his computer workspace live. I also put a couple posters/artwork in frames (didn’t hang anything yet) and hung some smaller things on the wall in the guest bathroom and hung a corkboard in my office.

I prepared a smorgasbord of sandwich fixins for dinner, for which my aunt Regina and uncle Alex joined us when they finally arrived from Minnesota. They’re staying with us for a couple days, then with some other friends around Utah, and then flying to Italy where they’ll be living for the next few-to-several years to be with my uncle’s family.

Yes, my uncle is Italian and made some fantastic aleo alio pasta for dinner yesterday. My dad came down for dinner with Prosciutto ham, pepperocinis and some Asiago cheese… so it was quite a delicious meal and the company was nice, too. Alex is also a big racing fan… not of NASCAR. Of Ferrari. And Ferrari won the championship yesterday, which made him clap his hands and do a cute, unexpected dance when he checked the score online (since we don’t get the Speed Channel on which it was broadcast). I couldn’t believe, after that, that he hadn’t seen the Pixar movie "Cars," so we watched that together after dinner.

Luigi and Guido, the little Italian cars from Radiator Springs, were even funnier given the earlier hoopla scene Alex had made about Ferrari. I also hadn’t realized how much Italian was spoken in the movie! Alex and Regina both enjoyed it. Apparently there will be partying in Italy for a month because Ferrari won the race. W007, I guess?

We had dinner early, around 5:30, so there was still time after the movie to play the Simpsons version of Clue, which I haven’t played for several years. It was fun, and I won the first round pretty quickly because I guessed the solution by chance. Then I won the second game through hard-nosed detective work. Alex and Ben were both already out of the game because they both guessed wrong before they had all the evidence. Silly boys.

I’m looking forward to pasta in a butter pea sauce for dinner this evening. Yummy food makes giving up my Saturday to cleaning a little easier to handle. 

The windows are open in our house this evening because it was a really nice, somewhat warm and sunny day. I can hear the local high school football game announcer because we only live a half mile away from the field.  

I’ve never seen the show "Friday Night Lights," which is apparently about football. The last football game I attended was in the fall of my first year at Miami University when I was in the marching band. In fact, the only other football games I attended were while I was in the high school marching band. Okay, there were also a few early attempts at socialization while I was in middle school that took place at Friday night high school football games.

I don’t watch football on TV, I don’t play football video games, and I’ve never had the experience or the urge to toss the ol’ pigskin around while growing up–even though I was somewhat of a tomboy.  And even though I love quirky and eccentric consumer goods, I never wanted a free football phone with a paid subscription to Sports Illustrated. Would it surprise you to discover that I still don’t understand how the game works? Even though I’ve attended two or three Superbowl parties and even dated two different guys in high school who were on the football team?

(One dumped me as soon as he discovered that I wasn’t going to put out. I didn’t feel bad at all because he wrote me a break-up note and was clearly not even of average intelligence. The other was actually a Varsity soccer player whose only role on the team was Kicker. We were in the same circle of friends and I went to prom with him… then he graduated and we parted as friends.) 

So hearing the sounds drift into my house this evening evokes different memories for me. When I hear the band play "Let’s Go Team" I smile and think about sitting with the other baritone and trombone players on the top bleacher in the band’s reserved section.

When I hear the announcer getting excited about some play, and the roar of applause follows, I think of laughing with my fellow band geeks and half-assedly playing a song or two and not caring at all about what’s happening on the field. When I hear the local band playing what must be their halftime show, I remember how incredible it felt to march in step in my crisp and scratchy white and red uniform with polished white Dinkles shoes; to stop in the middle of the field, tilt my silver marching baritone up in the air so it glittered in the bright lights; to place my lips on the suddenly freezing mouthpiece and blare my horn as mightily as I was able. It didn’t matter if I played the wrong notes here or there because it was a big band and I was there to have fun.

And then, after halftime, my band went back to the bleachers to play second fiddle to the "real" stars… the athletes.  I bet none of the football players ever had a right pinky muscle built up like I did from holding that heavy hunk of an instrument, though! I also had a killer upper lip muscle.

I need to get my scanner back from Ben so I can start including more photos. The one I’d like to include here is a dorky-cute posed picture of me in my marching band uniform with my instrument. Well, the school’s instrument. There are occasions where I really miss playing low brass. I wasn’t ever a great player because I didn’t practice very much, but I was tolerably good. Huh. I really didn’t think I’d spend the evening reminiscing about high school.

Maybe I’m feeling chatty because of the cool music I’m listening to: the Life Aquatic soundtrack, with David Bowie songs translated into Portuguese and sung by Seu Jorge. I had a really crappy morning, but at least it’s ending well.