Yvette's Inner Geek Blog

Leap Day is the day I remember specific people’s birthdays: my little cousin Sophie is 12 (it’s her third birthday) and my friend Jon from college must be 28 (ooo, lucky number seven). I thought that Mozart was also a Leap Year Baby (learned somewhere during my early public school education) but I can’t find any evidence of that.

In other Numbers Notes, I find it interesting that I will be turning 29 in this Leap Year. And my fourth wedding anniversary is sneaking upon me. I hadn’t realized that being married in a Leap Year was considered bad luck in Greece. Oh well. I also walked under a ladder that year and spilled a ton of salt. Plus, a black cat has crossed in front of me almost every day for seven years.

February 29 is also the one day of the year that it is traditionally okay for a woman to propose marriage to a man. There are some interesting vintage postcards from the late 19th and early 20th centuries that really encourage women to put on their scarlet bloomers and grab a guy by the balls, which of course was totally inappropriate back then. (It’s much more common nowadays.) Way to embrace women’s suffrage… give them one "free" day year!

However, I’m amused by the fact that if a man declines a proposa under that tradition, he has to "soften the blow" by giving her a kiss or buying her gloves, a silk dress, etc.  I’d be proposing like mad during that time period just to get a bunch of lovin’ and cool swag. If a guy accidentally took me seriously, I would have said j/k because there doesn’t seem to be a traditional penalty for that. Other than breaking a guy’s heart… oh, cry me a river. Payback’s a bitch!

Wow, I suddenly feel very cynical. I assure you that everything’s just fine with me. *twitch* 

Have you ever poked around on Craigslist? You can buy, sell, or solicit anything. So it’s not surprising that my college friend Steev found a want ad for a Chinese Baseball Announcer. Or that he responded.

What surprised me is how long it took the interviewer to hang up on Steev during their (videotaped*) phone interview.

This is the same guy who used to torture telemarketers when they called by speaking gibberish (or saying "poopie") to them for as long as he has free time. The nature of their job made it h difficult for them to hang up on him, and he got the biggest kick out of that. Maybe he’s stopped by now?

Nowadays, if you’re in the Chicago area, you should go to see his live Saturday night game show called "Don’t Spit the Water" or one of his other Blewt! productions.  Puppets by Noah Ginex, whom I revere as an even greater fan of The Muppets.

*Is is still okay to say videotaped if the thing was recorded on a DVD or hard drive camcorder? What else can I call it? 

This has been around for a few months, but was just introduced to The One Semester of Spanish Spanish Love Song.

I especially enjoy the farmer tan and the shirt, plus these great lyrics:

1. Me gusta la biblioteca
2. Mi gato es muy "blank-o"
3. No remembro how to say eleven
4. …y cinnamon twists
5. Au revoir

When I mentioned how much I love my mouse at home, I should have also told you about my wrist cushion. It is absolutely THE BOMB.

I may complain about a sore middle finger from scrolling too much, but I haven’t complained about wrist pain since I started using the IMAK wrist cushion. It’s a slightly stretchy cotton-nylon shell that is filled with ergoBeads, whatever those are. It doesn’t matter what they are, because my wrist loves them.

I bought it about the same time as I purchased my Logitech trackball mouse because using the new mouse without one was, admittedly, a little awkward. And I’d never found a wrist cushion that I liked, despite trying several different types.

The IMAK cushion I purchased had been sitting patiently on the shelf of an office store, inconspicuous next to the colorful gel-filled mousepads and the various "adorable" comfort-inducing items with kittens and puppies and American flags on them.

If you’re in the market for a wrist cushion, this is the one to get.  The thumb-controlled trackball mouse isn’t for everyone, but  everyone needs a good wrist cushion. It probably comes in several colors and with fewer bits of lint than appear in this photo.

Someday I’ll probably upgrade to the wrist cushion for my keyboard as well so my left wrist will stop feeling so jealous. But I figure that my left hand gets out of doing a lot of the labor that my right hand endures, so it can just shut its proverbial mouth and be content with the fact that it gets to wear a pretty ring every day.

I have been scrolling pages on Teh interwebz too much lately and it’s catching up to me.

For as much time as I spend with my hand on my mouse (that’s not innuendo, thanks very much) and on the computer, I’m fortunate not to not (yet) suffer from carpal tunnel syndrome. Today, however, I realized that the underside of my middle finger is tender.

At work, I use a semi-ergonomic wireless Microsoft mouse with a scroll wheel. My middle finger logs many hours on the slightly raised bumps, pulling repetitively as my brain demands more, better, faster visual input on the screen in front of me. My right hand middle finger is much more of a workhorse than I give it credit for.

(My left hand middle finger also works diligently in tandem with my left hand thumb, resting on the Tab and Alt keys respectively as I frequently switch views on my taskbar.)

At home, my preferred mouse for the last couple of years is a Logitech with an optical Trackman Wheel. It stays in one place and I move my on-screen cursor around with a red track ball… and I absolutely love it. It took a couple days for my thumb to adjust to the new movement, and now I can go effortlessly between different mice without even noticing (like hopefully someday I will do with  Dvorak and QWERTY keyboards).

But it also has a scrolling wheel upon which I rely heavily for my internet needs. And isn’t it always embarrassing to talk about a seemingly benign injury that is related to a cushy desk job? Well, whatever. At least the underside of my middle finger gets a break when I’m playing the Wii.

On a side note, it absolutely drives me crazy to watch people surf the internet, wholly dependent upon their mouse to scroll down a page, etc. in a painfully slow manner. If I just described you, dear reader, please do not take offense. Just learn the faster way or let me do the fingerwork while we’re looking at something together next time, okay?

In the meantime, I better go check into what kinds of rehab I might expect to endure if I continue to abuse for my poor, tender middle finger. But I’m thinking that there also has to be a fancy gadget out there that will allow me to scroll down pages through eye movement!

There are 12 costumed people featured in Wired’s Geek Chic Gallery: Costumes of WonderCon 2008. Number 12 looks like he just wrapped a blue sheet around himself and is carrying a length of chain. WTF is that all about?

My expectations for "cosplay" (as the kids are calling it these days) are more along the lines of showing the only way that one can get away with wearing a wife beater to a geekfest like WonderCon… *SNIKT*.

I just took a bite of reheated leftover zucchini that tasted like fish. And… I don’t like fish.

It wasn’t straight zucchini, and it was only that one bite that made my taste buds freak out. The original meal was a Hawaiian Teriyaki rice bowl from Rumbi Island Grill that I had no problems with yesterday. (I order the full-size bowl so that it feeds me for 2-3 lunches–hooray!) The ingredients in the rice bowl are: brown rice, mixed vegetables (carrots, zucchini, celery, maybe a hint of onion or other squash), tofu and Hawaiian Teriyaki sauce.

Normally yum-yum. But why the fish taste today?

What natural or artificial chemicals are found in fish that make me gag, anyway? And is it possible that one of those checmicals is also found in zucchini, which I’m not particularly fond of anyway? I might be able to look this up on the interwebz, but I’m wondering if anybody who is reading this blog entry might have some special insight for me.

I hate the fact that I am picky about certain foods. But what am I to do when certain foods induce a gag reflex?

Any help with this scientific mystery is greatly appreciated. Thanks! 

If you’re in the San Francisco area, I hope that you’re going to WonderCon for me. I’m really hoping to make it to the San Diego Comic Con this year for the first time. I’ve never lived closer to California, and yet after 2.5 years in Utah I still haven’t visited.

I may be going to San Francisco for a couple of days to see the big sights (Golden Gate Bridge, Fisherman’s Wharf, Pacific Ocean, etc.) while my Norwegian visitors are here in March. The only other time I’ve been in California was in San Francisco, but I don’t have any memories because I was only a year old. Bummer.

How’s this for weirdness: as I was typing that last “San Francisco,” Shirley Simms was singing the name through my computer speakers–I’m listening to the Magnetic Fields’ 69 Love Songs: Part 1 and I didn’t realize that track number seven “Come Back From San Francisco” had started playing.

Now here’s something that we all have to wait for, no matter where in the world we live: the film adaptation of Neil Gaiman’s Coraline. I like the novella (though it’s not my favorite Neil Gaiman book), but the movie looks like it will be absolutely delicious… it’s an animated stop-motion film done by the same people who brought you that little cult classic called Nightmare Before Christmas. The Soundtrack will be by They Might Be Giants. Squeeeee!

Neil Gaiman just announced this little (official) teaser trailer:

January 2009 is very far away. I’d put it on my calendar, but I don’t have a 2009 calendar yet!

I usually save my smirks for later in the day, but a headlining CNN.com article caught my smirking attention this morning.  I’ve heard about the uncontrollable satellite that could come crashing to earth in the next couple of weeks, and that The Man was going to attempt to blow it up with a missile before it entered our atmosphere.

Here’s the first sentence of the article: 

"Pentagon officials said they think a Navy missile scored a direct hit on the fuel tank of an errant spy satellite late Wednesday, eliminating a toxic threat to people on Earth."

Everything sounds great, right? No danger to life as we know it? Hold a sec. Was the phrase people on Earth really just used? Eliminating a toxic threat to people on Earth? That sounds like a sci-fi B-movie to me. Or maybe a fantastic sci-fi cartoon. I hear it in the distance…

"I am Lrrr, ruler of the planet Omicron Persei 8 and controller of a toxic threat to people on Earth!"

Seriously, it doesn’t sound real. It’s weird, scary and humorous at the same time that stuff like that makes it into real news articles. Here’s another snippet, where you can guess which phrase made me smirk a second time:

"China is continuing to closely follow the possible harm caused by the U.S. action to outer space security and relevant countries," Foreign Ministry spokesman Liu Jianchao said Thursday."

If you guessed outer space security, give yourself a shooting star. I love that China is (supposedly) suspicious because of the USA’s potentially devious actions involving outer space.  I’ll probably never know anything detailed about our government’s full story with this whole thing (or, if you believe any of the conspiracies you see on TV and in the movies, if we’re really the good guys or if we have top secret alterior motives). Maybe China is just cranky about it because this news is stealing their New Year thunder. Or the Rat does not approve of outer space hulabaloo in his/her Year. For chrissake, people, the Rat only gets one out of every 12 years!

Overall, I’m happy to hear the reports of the spy satellite being shot down. I don’t know what naked pictures of me might have been on there, you know? And it’s a really good thing that the spy satellite didn’t fall into China’s territory, because they really don’t need to be seeing that stuff.

Speaking of outer space, I’m bummed that I didn’t get an opportunity to see the lunar eclipse last night. It was cloudy and raining/snowing. Or maybe it was a government cover-up so we couldn’t see the explosion of the spy satellite….

*cue the X-files music*