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.

Thirty-three candles
Worth seventeen syllables
Happy Birthday, Liz

Yes, dear Internet, I am still alive. I just turned in my last project of the fall semester. At this time I would like to quote the first line of Neil Gaiman’s blog post from today:

How the hell did it get to be December the 18th? Ohhh. All the links I meant to post. Arghh.

Links, words, pictures, regrets, promises, poetry, brain-fizzling recounts of my days. These and more are on the list of things I should have blogged about during the last couple months. But didn’t. I’m sort of braindead right now, and probably shouldn’t be blogging, but lack of sleep and/or food with nutritional value is affecting my judgment. (Sorry, she says, in a cute little Canadian accent.)

I’m not going to do a 3.5 month hiatus justice in one post, so here’s the Cliff Notes version:

• 19 credit hours at UVU that kicked my butt
• Filled my brain with useful skills in Flash, ActionScript, Flex Builder, Advanced Photoshop, Audacity, how to file a formal complaint with the department head about a horrid class, how to get an A- in a class you almost dropped because you were failing two weeks into it
• Subsequently made my brain squishy by playing stupid Farmville and watching most of seasons 1&2 of Babylon 5 for the first time
• Took up subversive embroidery
• Turned 30
• Watched Evil Dead and Evil Dead 2 for the first time
• Blog broke
• Blog restored with a little miracle (named Ben)
• Freelance work picked up (triple fuckin’ YAY)
• Created 3 different working(-ish) website mockups for innergeek.us that I mostly hate now
• Saw one movie in the theater since August (Zombieland)

There are some good things on the list, like learning SKILLZ and moving closer to finishing a second degree (in Teh Inernets, in case you were wondering). And lots of stuff I feel guilty about doing instead of blogging or generally being a useful human being. I mean, I couldn’t even keep up my Twittering. That’s saying something.

Anyway. If you haven’t already given up on me, thank you. You are the bee’s knees. (WhateverTF that means.) I plan to get my shit together over the next two weeks. I’m not traveling for the holidays unless you count Avoiding The Mall Entirely as I drive out for groceries and such. That’s not even possible, though, because I intend to catch at least one movie in the theater which is unavoidably located by the Mall. Crap. Will re-evaluate this scenario later.

Happy 8th night of Hanukkah to my Jewish friends, and Happy Your-Upcoming-Winter-Holiday-Here to everyone else. I hope to interact with you more now that I’m done with the Fall of 2009 that is suddenly and thankfully over.

Happy Square Root Day! Even Scientific American is talking about it! This holiday comes only 9 times a century (and 9 is my favorite number), so please do something to celebrate.

For example, choose to eat square foods—preferably made from some sort of root. You could cut a potato into a cube, then cut it into 15 slices and fry them up. Eat the slices in groups of 3, 3, and 9. If you don’t have any square and/or root foods available, just try to eat or drink in groups of 3 and 9.

Or watch the trailer for the upcoming Tim Burton Movie, 9, and send it to 3 friends with the instructions that they should each send it to 3 friends. (But that’s it, okay? It’s a mathematical celebration, not a chain meme.)

It’s also a great day to learn shortcuts for typing the square root symbol (√)!

Mac OSX: option + v

Windows: alt + 0251

Number code: √

Character code: 221A

If you choose to celebrate Square Root Day, please leave a comment to share what you did!

In related news, I would like to publicly apologize for disappointing my friend John on Febrary 13. I neglected to blog about 1234567890 Day. Perhaps this little factoid will help with my redemption: I cherish the memory of my mixed 4th/5th grade class pausing to celebrate sequential numbers at 1:23:45pm on 6/7/89.

March of ’09 is pretty special because it’s the only month in each century wherein one may celebrate both Square Root Day and Pi Day (3/14). It’s also my dad’s birthday!

Dad is a scientist and fairly geeky in his own right, so I happily explained to him over the phone what a special day it was to have a birthday. He told me to have fun with whatever fumes I was huffing. Happy Birthday, you crotchety ol’ smartass! Love you!

I’m adding to my most recent Update Vomit post with some photo evidence. First, a self-portrait taken late in the evening on Christmas Eve. The bow on my jester-like Santa hat had been hastily placed by Ben onto the FedEx box that contained Rock Band 2, which arrived at 5:30pm on Christmas Eve. Poor FedEx guy wasn’t even at the door long enough for me to offer him a cookie.

Cute as we look there, the rest of the night was spent fighting for control of our band’s tour schedule.

Phoebe had a hard time with our new arrival since it took attention away from her. We would have let her participate, if only she’d had opposable thumbs or a less whiny singing voice.

Loki would rather watch us play Rock Band than participate. Also, can you get him another beer while you’re up?

While in Colorado last week, my Aunt Jeanette lovingly donated her hair stylin’ services to me after hours. She liked the way the color was turning out.

Did I mention that the color was purple? The demi-permanent color streaks have sadly washed out quite a bit already. Next time, I going for more purple and more permanent!

And finally, here’s my sister as she watches the transformation. Not only is she smarter than me, but she’s also a much better dresser. (Geekiness, though? I win, hands down.)

I should figure out how to make an automated “Gone Fishing” message appear when I haven’t blogged in a while. Then you would know that an update-vomit* is on its way!

What I did over my Christmas vacation

• Hosted a kickass adults-only Christmas party with kickass white elephant gift exchange and kickass imbibing of beer, cheese balls, and sugary snacks. The being-feverishly-knitted-at-the-time hat was stolen from me at the gift exchange, so I ended up with a Miracle Bread Stamper, Utah-shaped cookie cutters, and three packets of official Mormon orange jello.*
• Had a somewhat crappy pre-Christmas that I was in no mood to blog about.
• Had a good and snowy Christmas Morning at home, failed to go caroling at Senior Centers with friends in the early afternoon, and then Ben and I spent the early evening with a former coworker who is undergoing cancer treatment.
• Played our newly acquired Rock Band 2 (for Xbox 360). A lot.
• Played Killer Bunnies with friends and cursed the impracticality of the rules. It gets a FAIL for intuitive gameplay. Though the ways that bunnies died were amusing (for most of us, anyway).
• Played Rock Band 2 with friends, for which gameplay was more than intuitive; It was AWESOME.
• Met with my government-issued Employment Counselor to discuss taking classes at Utah Valley University—the cost of which would be covered because I was laid off from a company that sent jobs overseas. Signed some papers that were immediately wrapped in 4 rolls of red tape.
• Celebrated New Year’s Eve at home with Ben, with Fuzzy Navels and another new game, this time for the Wii: MySims Kingdom. It started off slow (survivable with a light buzz and sarcastic/inappropriate comments) but actually turned into an enjoyable game for me. Lots of collecting things and some puzzle-solving—a perfect blend for my OCD tendencies. Ben zonked out on the couch for a little while, and for some reason we watched the ball drop on TV. Every year we turn off the TV at 12:01 and wonder why it’s a tradition to watch it, and then make our first official resolution: Not to bother watching NBC’s “Rockin’ New Year’s Eve” next year.
• Saw The Curious Case of Benjamin Button with Ben on New Year’s Day and most definitely cried in the theater. There were a few small incongruencies that didn’t make sense to me, but other than that it was a great movie. Also, see: Brad Pitt Is Hot.
• Flew to Denver on Jan. 2 where I met up with my mom and we spent a few days visiting my sister and her Norwegian holiday house guest (who happens to be my “little brother” from my year in Norway, whom Monique invited out after they became friends through that magical place called Facebook, and whom she is not dating because that would be some sort of weird incest even though they’re not related).
• Bought an ugly sweater at Monique’s favorite Arc thrift store in Denver.
• Attended an Ugly Sweater Party at Monique’s house and finally met a bunch of her grad school and French Club friends.
• Tried a weirdly delicious spiked blueberry lemonade at Bar Louie in Denver, which accompanied a $1 Tuesday Night Special burger ($3.50 with my desired toppings).
• Saw Marley and Me with Monique and her roommate. It’s a good thing we had some extra restaurant napkins on hand to catch all the chick flick crying that was going on. It’s been a long time since I’ve gone to movies regularly, but I don’t think there’s ever been a time when I’ve seen two tear-jerkers within one week. It’s like if there were a Lifetime Channel movie theater or something. But seriously, Marley and Me was better than I expected.
• Flew home on Wednesday, dropped off my bags at home, and drove up to the Sundance Resort for my training/orientation for the upcoming Sundance Film Festival. I have more to share about that, and won’t diminish its coolness by including it in this update-vomit.
• Met with a UVU adviser and registered for a full courseload of classes that, if completed, would award me with an associates degree in business management. Because I already have my BA, all the general education requirements were waived so I’m free to start taking electives in Digital Media. I’ve already attended a couple classes, but that is also worthy of a separate blog entry.

Next time there might even be some photos of some of the aforementioned events. Hey, it doesn’t take a BA in English/Creative Writing to know that you have to give your readers a reason to come back!

* There actually was a little vomit involved in Denver after eating some presumably shellfish-tainted restaurant chicken. Monique was sick, too, and is also allergic, and the non-allergic person who also ate chicken was not affected. I’m sorry to bring vomit to my blog. It’s a new high for me, to be sure.

** Distributed by the church. Seriously. “You can’t BUY that, you know,” said the giver. (I don’t like jello [brand name Jell-O or generic gelatin] much in the first place, but I certainly won’t touch it if it has shredded carrots mixed in. Is that a vegetable? Dessert? Trans-fat? I haven’t seen it in person, but many Utahns have reported that rumor to be true. I think I’d rather have a stapler in my jello.)

I wasn’t able to watch the new Muppets Christmas special, Letters to Santa, when it aired last week. Thank the Muppety Gods for hulu.com, which has the streaming video available with limited commericals until the end of the year.

Unfortunately, the special wasn’t as good as I’d hoped. It was more painfully contrived than any other Muppet special I’ve seen and in that way it felt a lot more Disney than Muppet. Still, there were a few cool things in the 44-minute special.

[SPOILERS AHEAD] Read more…

Earlier this week I went to the local post office to mail some letters (haven’t gotten around to Christmas cards yet). There was a small seasonal mailbox inside labeled “Letter’s to Santa.” As I noted in a Twitter update a few days ago, I was happy that someone else had already blacked out the apostrophe because I didn’t have a pen with me.

Improper use of apostrophes makes Santa cry, Post Office employees. Stop making Santa cry.

The crowd wasn’t bad, so I was still in a good mood when I reached the front of the line. The woman behind the counter was friendly and my transaction went smoothly. “Happy Holidays,” I bubbled as I took my receipt and turned to leave. The woman leaned in to me a little before I took off and said in a half whisper, with a little knowing nod, “Merry Christmas.” Then she smiled and called the next person in line.

I walked away a little befuddled. If she had just said, “Merry Christmas” as a normal greeting without the hushed tone or added body language, I would have gone on my merry way without thinking twice.

But she leaned in as if Merry Christmas was our little secret. Perhaps to suggest that I should feel comfortable saying Merry Christmas to her instead of Happy Holidays. Perhaps assuming I’d wanted to say Merry Christmas in the first place.

But I didn’t. I wanted to say Happy Holidays—which includes both Christmas and the New Year for most people, yet doesn’t assume that the recipient celebrates either. It could mean Hannukah or the Winter Solstice or an end-of-year holiday from work or school. It’s typically said with warmth and good intentions, just like Merry Christmas and Happy New Year and Happy Birthday are.

I occasionally say Merry Christmas to people with the same warmth that I say Happy Holidays, and I’m certainly not offended if someone wishes me a Merry Christmas (or Happy Hannukah or Kwanzaa or Chinese New Year or whatever).

Something just rubbed me the wrong way about how the post office employee made me feel like my parting words should have been Merry Christmas instead of Happy Holidays.

I went to the post office again today, but only to drop off Christmas packages to which I’d already affixed shipping labels. Nobody had a chance to say Merry Christmas or Happy Holidays to me. I did note, however, that the same “Letter’s to Santa” sign with the blacked out apostrophe was still there. Bah Humbug to that.

Given that this is typically the kind of email I receive,

HI I WANT TO BE THE GREAT GEEK OF WORLD ,WILL YOU HELP ME OUT ?

–
ASHISH KUMAR RANJAN
IT,NIT PATNA

I really appreciate the people who take the time to email me with praise, constructive criticism, their personal geek stories and geek test suggestions, and serious questions about a range of topics. I recently received an email with questions regarding the making of one’s own Christmas lights and don’t really know what resources to suggest. If there’s anyone out there who can help out Celia, please leave a comment. I’d appreciate it!

Yvette,

Your web site is delightful; a bright beacon of geeky goodwill.

I just spent way too much time cruising Craig’s List looking for a local electronics shop and/or resources.  What I found instead was some surprisingly mean-spirited bickering (reminiscent of some of the troglodyte emails you posted on your web site – your responses were hilarious, by the way).  I feel the need to embrace more of my inner geekiness through playing with LEDs (I’m not, however, ready to enlist in the Navy to study electronics, as suggested by several helpful individuals on Craig’s List).  I want to learn how to safely make my own christmas lights, basically.  Can you suggest any links or other resources?  I’ve got “Electronics for Dummies” but I’m not ready to build a robot, just make some cool bling for my living room.  I couldn’t find a links page on your web site (was I imagining that there used to be one a few months ago?)

Thank you for offering such playful, welcoming energy to the countless geeks out there who may not realize how desperately they need it (myself included)!

Celia

I consulted my husband on this matter while he was busy playing with wires and electricity and power tools upstairs. He said there’s a booklet series he’s seen at Radio Shack called “Electronics Handbook” that looked as though they were written on graph paper and featured small circuits that might be useful if you’re looking for timing circuits or driving LEDs. So that might be a place to start.

If you want to purchase LEDs in bulk, there are lots of websites out there like Mouser Electronics where you can find those. However, if you just want to create strands of LEDs like the ones that you can find at the store… it will be much cheaper and easier to purchase them at the store.

Hope that helps, and if any other readers have comments I hope you’ll post them here for Celia to see. Thanks!

I was so excited about being NaBloPoMo’s Blog of the Week that I managed to skip a day of blog posting yesterday. Whoops.

But the house finally has some lights up in electric holiday fashion, and the tree is also up in the living room. Ben wants to add some more lights before we put on the ornaments… but it’s very pretty even without ornaments, as it turns out. Usually we start decorating the tree as soon as it’s up so we rarely leave it partially naked like it is now.

Yesterday we took in our friends’ three girls so that their parents could get some Christmas shopping and wrapping done without them around. We probably fed them too much sugar, but we had a lot of fun playing the Wii and watching one of my favorite Christmas specials that they’d never seen: A Muppet Family Christmas.

The only copy I have is a VHS tape that I bought in college because my taped-from-TV version had worn out… but unfortunately the “flashback” scene of the Muppet Babies singing “Santa Claus is Coming to Town” is edited out because of licensing issues. Bummer. And now that Disney owns the Muppets, the chances of seeing them on DVD together with the Fraggles (still owned by Jim Henson Company) and the Sesame Street Muppets (now owned by the Sesame Workshop) are pretty slim.

The girls have grown up watching the Fraggles on tape and, more recently, DVD, so they were really pumped about seeing some new Fraggle material. (Um, unless the fact that it was actually made 21 years ago disqualifies it as new.)

They were extremely disappointed that there wasn’t more Fraggle interaction and that they weren’t discovered by any Muppets except Kermit and Robin. They also thought that the Christmas Carol medley at the end went on a little too long. But they loved the rest of it, and the oldest (who is 13) recognized Jim Henson’s cameo at the end. That made me happy.