Yvette's Inner Geek Blog

Nine minutes. That’s about how long it takes to reach orbit from the Kennedy Space Center in 2009.

I didn’t go online intending to watch the space shuttle Discovery launch at 11:59 pm E.T., but I noticed CNN.com’s link to live coverage at the right time and tuned in. (Can I say “tuned in” if it’s online? Whatever.)

It was cool, awe-inspiring, I-wish-I-were-there-inducing, and at moments… a little boring. I’m embarrassed to write that last part, but it’s true. I couldn’t tell you how many shuttles have launched in my lifetime, or how many different shuttles actually exist right now. The 25th anniversary of the first Discovery launch is on Sunday—but I only know that because I just heard it on the news.

It’s weird that shuttle launches aren’t a Big Deal anymore. People I’ve talked to who watched the first lunar landing—in what, 1969, I think?—fondly convey memories of amazement and awe, no matter what age they were at the time. And here I am, someone who mostly keeps abreast of the news and is somewhat interested in Space Things, finding out about a shuttle launch only ten minutes beforehand. Is my level of embarrassment valid? Or have we, as a society, tired of routine Space Things and only become interested when there’s an explosion, a scandal, or a selfish reason like news of a realistic chance to walk on the moon?

I may not have been alive to watch the Apollo 11 land on the moon, but I do remember a lot of excitement surrounding my first space shuttle memory. And I’m not talking about the excitement around the movie Apollo 13 when I was in high school.*

January 28, 1986, my combined first/second grade class hunkered around a little black and white television in our classroom with the lights off. Mrs. Schumann had prepped us with information about the upcoming space shuttle launch and probably told us about her experience watching the lunar landing. This launch was exciting because of NASA’s Teacher is Space project; a civilian teacher had been specially selected and trained to join the mission.

The TV screen was small, and the picture was somewhat grainy, but I watched with interest as the space shuttle Challenger lifted off and the news anchor narrated with terminology I did not understand. And then a lot of puffy, trailing clouds appeared on the little screen, and after a few moments I heard my teacher gasp; my fellow classmates and I knew something was wrong but we didn’t know what. I don’t remember exactly how long Mrs. Schumann left the TV on after the explosion, but I remember her standing up abruptly to turn it off and that she was visibly shaken.

That evening’s ABC news broadcast, which of course I found on youtube, summed up my shared educational experience like this:

“Brought in for the new age’s first formal classroom lessons from outer space, our children were suddenly taught instead the old lessons: of mortality; of the real risk which gives any victories their meaning.”

Since first grade, I’ve seen a fair amount of news coverage and replays of successful shuttle launches, as well as the other explosion in recent memory—the Columbia. But I haven’t watched any of them live since 1986. My experience tonight was much different, watching streaming internet coverage in color all by myself in my living room late at night. Everything went according to plan—no explosions, not puffy trailing clouds. But there was still terminology I didn’t understand, and it freaking knocked my socks off to realize that a space shuttle could enter into orbit in under ten minutes. It takes me longer than that to get to the freeway from my house!

But you know what? Routine, boring shuttle launches are cool. Slightly boring, but therefore successful. They are victories for a growing-at-pace space age. And I hope I have an opportunity to see a shuttle launch in person someday.

*I definitely saw Apollo 13 in the theater. It was pretty cool, but I was more impressed by Contact a couple years later. The second time I saw Contact, my date wanted to make out in the theater… which really annoyed me because he hadn’t even seen the movie yet! So what’s geekier: going on a date to see a sci fi drama with the intention to make out the whole time, or going on a date to see a science fiction drama and not wanting to make out? (And yes, we liked each other, so making out in general was not the issue.)

I forgot to mention the whole POINT of our trip to Boise, which was going to Colleen’s housewarming party on Saturday evening! Their house is adorable, with a backyard full of foliage and a very nice deck. We met their cool and laid-back Boise friends, snacked on snacks, drank some beer, and disappointed Colleen’s ten-year-old by not bringing Mario Party 8 with us so he could play it on his new Wii. Sorry, kiddo! We’ll bring it next time if you don’t have it by then.

Okay, so. Sunday morning, after being a little disturbed by how well I could hear the male and female voices in the hotel bathroom next door, Ben and I walked a few blocks to Boise’s Basque Block on Grove Street. Say what now? That’s right, Boise is home to the largest community of Basques (approx. 15,000) in the United States. We met up with Colleen, her hubby, her son, and her mom for brunch at Bardenay, a very cool restaurant and distillery.

It was a beautiful morning, but we opted to eat inside. After living in Utah for a few years, Ben and I were perhaps overly impressed by the beautiful bar taking up the length of the restaurant without any barriers or weird liquor laws. But we were rightfully impressed by their selection of breakfast cocktails on the menu. I opted instead to drink coffee and eat “Bardenay French Toast,” which was a miracle breakfast food dipped in orange/cinnamon batter and dusted with powdered sugar… served with a side of Basque-style chorizo and rosemary red potatoes. Except I substituted eggs for the potatoes because, truth be told, I’m not a huge fan of potatoes. So, no, I didn’t eat any Idago potatoes.

The meal was still delicious, and the company was lovely. We parted ways, promised to come back to Boise, and took a nice stroll back to the hotel parking garage. The Basque Museum and Cultural Center was right across the street from Bardenay, but it was closed, so, with a sigh of relief from Ben, we kept walking. He hates going to museums with me because I find EVERYTHING interesting. Sor-ry!

According to Colleen, the sheep-friendly Idaho hills attracted the Basque people. I can see that. I visited my grandfather while he was still alive and living in Hossegor, which is a resort town in Southwestern France very close to Basque country. I’ve tasted Basque cuisine and driven through the hilly countryside, where at times the car was stopped on the narrow road by a herd of sheep passing by with a lone (and very tan) sheepherder. Like to the point where we couldn’t open the car doors because the sheep were thumping against the car on all sides. So I can see how the Idaho countryside would attract people from that area.

(When I was 13 and stayed in Hossegor for a few weeks, my step-grandmother took me to a Basque museum/store where I learned about the culture and famous tradition of high-quality weaving and subsequently fell in love with the style of traditional Basque linens (linge Basque in French). It was something like the Basque Eco-museum in St Jean de Luz, but that was established in 1999 which was a few years too late for me to have visited. Maybe I saw an early version of Jean-Vier‘s headquarters before it was an official museum. My mom gave me a set of linge Basque table linens a few years ago after her last trip to France, but I’ve never used them because there hasn’t been an occasion special enough, you know?)

Right. Boise’s Basque Block evoked some older memories beyond the cool factor. Another cool thing in Boise was this faux-crack on the side of this building (maybe Colleen can enlighten us in the comments section with what building this is?). It had little misting jets to cool down passersby—not to worry, we did not let them dampen our spirits, hardee har har!

We finally made it back to the car and returned to Interstate 84 less than 24 hours after arriving in Boise. Based on the information we received at the Twin Falls Visitor Information center on Saturday, however, we elected to take a detour along Route 30, the “Thousand Springs Scenic Byway,” which followed the Snake River. So we ditched I-84 at Bliss, population 275.

Bliss was podunk and sadly desolate; truly the antithesis of its name. Its few businesses were in disrepair or perhaps closed forever. If it ever had a prime as an amusing stop for motor tourists like us, that time has long past. We saw one resident while we stopped to stretch our legs and take a photo of the welcome sign, and he was driving a bright red truck with two happy dogs in the truckbed, kicking up clouds of dust from the dirt road next to the silent railroad tracks. There was also a shrieking killdeer bird hanging around the sign that clearly wanted us out of his insect territory, dammit. So we drove on and left Bliss in the dust, so to speak.

We stopped at a “Fossil Beds” National Monument outside the tiny town of Hagerman—which boasted “Library of the Year” on a sign outside its library that was seriously smaller than a bookmobile. The “monument” consisted of a roadside sign and a gorgeous view (my photos do not do it justice). I’ve never seen black rocks before, and these looked particularly brilliant against the bright green hues from a rainy spring. Back in the car, this is what the road ahead of us looked like. Not too bad, eh?

There was another fossil bed scenic view not too far away, with a wooden plankway to a spot overlooking a crook in the Snake River. It was serene and quiet and I kind of wanted to build a house on top of all those fossils (that were supposedly somewhere in the striations of the cliffs; they were too far away for me to make anything out) just for the view. Oh, and the birds. There was a pelican in the water and what we determined (with the help of a sign nearby) was an osprey flying overhead. But it might have been an American White Pelican based on what Teh Internet is telling me today. Either way, that thing was huge.

There was a smaller bird that kept shrieking at us from the top of a telephone pole to leave his habitat, just like the killdeer in Bliss, so we moved on. We wanted to stop at Shoshone Falls and get back on the freeway before dark.

Shoshone Falls, according to the Twin Falls Visitor Center Man, has been dry for the last six years because of drought. This year there the falls were running again, and we happened to be driving through during the peak three weeks of rushing water flow. So we veered down a windy road lined with rocky cliffs and ponied up three bucks to enter a park… and suddenly found ourselves facing the 212-feet-high “Niagara of the West.” Once again, my photos do not do this place justice. There are lots more on my Flickr photostream.

The roaring water, the fine mist swirling around faces and through parched desert-lungs. People of all kinds lingering, drawn to this place for their own reasons. We hung around for a while, enjoying the day, enjoying the view, and enjoying each other’s company. We haven’t celebrated the anniversary of our first date since we were married, but May 11, 2009 marked ten years of us being a couple. As the sun started to set, we returned to the road—one decade of adventures, misadventures, accomplishments, and changes of direction behind us, and hopefully many more in our future.

I’m going to start posting some of the emails I receive, along with my reply, here on this blog. This is in addition to the place I’ve set aside for crazy emails. I’ll start with an interesting question I received that goes back to the days before the Geek Test was Internet Famous.

Hello Yvette,

Thanks for your great website! Many years ago on the front page there used to a picture of a cat’s head. This kitty was making a comedy face and was named Fairuza in the filename. Who is this cat and what is this picture? When and where was it taken? I’d love to get more information on this great picture! I attached the picture. Please reply soon, thanks! have fun, Mike

Hi Mike,

The first thing visitors saw on my first version of innergeek.us was the cropped head of a kitten that Ben and I named Fairuza (after Fairuza Balk for a reason that I can’t quite remember). You were one of the first people in the world to take the Geek Test if you remember Fairuza on the front page!

This photo was not photoshopped other than to crudely remove the background. I took it in the fall of 2000, a few weeks after our newly adopted cat, Isis, had kittens. (We didn’t know she was pregnant when we took her in, but watching five kittens grow from soggy mouse-sized creatures into curious kitten-shaped mammals was a fun and rewarding experience.) We took a lot of photos (especially considering that we were still using film-based cameras back then) and I must have caught Fairuza mid-yawn for this one.

Here’s a recent photo of Isis mid-yawn. Sucky lighting, blurry photo, but can you see the resemblance? She’s making a crazy face for the camera… all pirate-eyed and practically screaming “Yarrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!”

Fairuza went to a good home with a woman who renamed her Tiny.

We found homes for the other four kittens. I would have liked to keep one of them, especially since Isis was a great parent, but we lived in an apartment and already had Loki. So we remained a two-cat family until last summer, when Phoebe showed up outside my employer’s office.

So though I no longer have an awesome Fairuza face on the front page of my website, there are still plenty of places where I gratuitously place my cats’ funny faces. I guess it’s fitting that that’s how everything started out.

Will I take the red pill or blue pill?

When the line of salt is poured on the hangar deck, will I be on the right side?

Am I a Mac or a PC?

Among the important decisions one can make in life, the Mac vs. PC choice has drawn a hard line since its inception, and there’s little wishy-washiness permitted from either side. The new Mac ads and Microsoft’s response ads reinforce this notion of Identity via Platform. You either ARE or ARE NOT.

So what is one to do with a mixed background? I know that there’s a small percentage of people out there like me, who were not raised with hard-lined indoctrination.

My family’s first computer was a Macintosh 512K in 1985, but in school I was exposed to the Commodore 64 and the Apple IIe. Friends had IBMs with fancy color screens and floppy disks that were actually floppy. My family graduated to a color-screened Macintosh Quadra 610 at about the same time my high school put new 486 PCs in all the classrooms.*

In 1995, I helped my mom computerize her dental office with PCs that ran Windows 95, and subsequently inherited one of those PCs during college. Ben has built all of my computers from scratch since then, and I’ve watched him play around in Linux environments. In my last job, I worked closely with the art team (who of course used high-end Macs) and learned lots of Adobe tricks and developed a minor case of Mac Envy.

So that brings me to my current dilemma: My computer needs a serious overhaul, which under normal circumstances would mean that Ben would buy some new parts and reuse what he could to build me a new desktop. However, I’ve determined that a laptop will suit my needs better than a desktop right now. And Ben doesn’t have the manufacturing facilities available to build one for me.

For the first time in my adult life, I will have to choose a Mac or a PC.

I know the arguments. I’m familiar with the “Mac tax” and of the issues that come with the various PC laptops out there. I’ve recently touched and played with more laptops in-store than should be legal, and I’m trying to keep my biases at bay. I’m trying to be practical. I’m trying not to let the shiny, clever Get a Mac ads affect my choice (which is hard, considering that I am in their target demographic and they nailed it, man).

What it really comes down to is that I feel like my future identity will be shaped by the laptop I choose. Mac people want me on their side. PC people want me on their side. Open source purists chide me for not being geek enough to even consider Linux.**

There are four choices, as I see it:

1. Pick a side. Accept the identity of Mac or Windows PC.
2. Go underground and choose Linux or some other obscure OS.
3. Accept a dual life and learn how to be both a Mac and a PC.
4. Choose nothing and become a Luddite.

“Be grateful you even have a choice,” I hear my ancestors whisper from Beyond The Great Divide, because  they didn’t have the luxury of choices like these, and they probably also had to climb up a hill both ways in the snow to get the the outhouse, which wasn’t even an outhouse but just a deep pit in the ground that was surrounded by angry bears just waiting to come after them the minute they dropped their pants.

Dear readers, if you’ve been lucky enough to make The Choice, which probably means that a bear never caught you with your pants down, what choice did you make? Did you struggle like me? Has your identity been shaped by your choice? Do you really wish you’d been attacked by a bear just so that you would have been spared reading this whole blog post all the way to the end?

Thanks in advance for your comments.

* Ben was actually a student and an IT employee at our high school who helped install and maintain the school district’s network. I have a cute photo of us together in the high school server/computer repair room. Didn’t know back then that I would marry him and that we’d always have at least one room in our house buried under tangles of cables and scattered computer bits!

** Unfortunately, sometimes majority rules and this is what happens to open source purists who dare suggest that one has to be like them to be a real geek. Comic yoinked from Dueling Analogs.

I pulled out my Utah voter’s guide yesterday and went online to do some final research on the local candidates before heading to the polls. I tried to create a sample ballot online, to make sure that I was covered on all the local issues… and discovered that the County Clerk didn’t think that I was a registered voter. Whaaaaaat!?!

I registered to vote when I was 18 in Ohio, where I voted in two presidential elections. I registered again when I moved to Utah in 2005.

I called the Clerk’s office and spoke to a very friendly guy who confirmed that I was, in fact, a registered voter in Utah. However, my old apartment address was still listed in the system. Whaaaaaaat!?! I had filled out the required paperwork to change my address and sent it in (stamp and all) in July!

Well, they never received it and/or never processed it. I was pretty mad, to say the least. Ben was exasperated because I didn’t check my status before Election Day, and I promise that if/when I move in the future I will not make that mistake again.

The guy at the Clerk’s office was sympathetic, but obviously there was nothing he could do to make it better right away. He told me that I could go to my old precinct to vote or fill out a provisional ballot in my actual precinct. Because I wanted to vote on a bond for the new public library, I decided to take a chance with the provisional ballot.

So I went to the new elementary school down the street around 3pm and found my Place of Voting in their adorably tiny gymnasium — with no line! There were several electronic voting machines set up and a few people voting on them, but I had to stand at a familiar portable voting booth to fill out my paper provisional ballot.

In a way, I’m glad I did. It felt amazing to manually fill in that circle next to Barack Obama; I smiled to myself and felt a wave of giddiness. Even though I live in one of the most conservative parts of a very conservative state, and my vote for Obama would surely be smothered by other Utahns’ votes for McCain, I still felt connected with everyone else in the country who was filling in a circle or using a touch screen to Vote for Change.

Sure enough, I was one of the 18% in Utah County to vote for Obama instead of McCain. Many thanks to the rest of the country for choosing, in my opinion, the best candidate. I hope that my friends who preferred McCain will eventually feel the same way. (Even if you don’t, let’s just stick to being friends despite our differing opinions on politics and/or religion, okay? There are lots of other things we have in common.)

But don’t mistake me for being a straight Democratic voter, because I’m unaffiliated. I will vote for the Republican, Democrat, Libertarian or Independent who is the best candidate (or, if none are available, I’ll pick the one who’s least crazy). Thankfully, I think that my reasoning behind my political choices has improved over the years.

In 1988, I was aware of the election but I don’t remember my parents talking politics. I secretly supported Dukakis because I had a 4th grade crush on a boy whose family supported Dukakis. In 1992, my 8th grade best friend and I rooted for Perot because he was the little guy (literally and figuratively) and had heated discussions with the mayor of our little town who was also our social studies teacher — arguments based on what, I don’t quite remember. In 1996, I watched the election coverage from my host family’s television in Norway but didn’t know enough about the candidates to prefer one over the other. I felt an increased sense of patriotism because I lived outside of my country that year, and I felt that it was important as a maturing teenager to at least be aware of major political events. And it was okay for me to stay up until 3am on a school night to do so.

In 2000, I watched the presidential debates and voted for the first time. I was confused and disappointed when Bush won the election. In 2004, I voted a second time, participated in the collective groan across the nation after Bush was re-elected, and wondered what was wrong with my country.

November 4, 2008 marked the first time I’ve voted for a candidate because I truly believe in him as opposed to voting for the candidate who is Dear God Anyone But George W. Bush. I was truly grateful to at least have a choice this year between two people who can form complete sentences and pronounce difficult words like “nuclear.”

Ben and I stayed home and watched NBC’s election coverage on and off throughout the evening (broadcast HDTV is still beyond delicious, btw) and gleaned more details from CNN.com as votes continued to be tallied. When Obama surpassed 270 electoral votes and McCain conceded the election, it was a unique feeling. My candidate won the election.

Thank you, America.

To my Mormon friends: Profanity ahead. You’ll probably want to skip over this one.

For some reason, this past week I started been murmuring a little cheer to myself that I learned in my first (and only) year of university marching band some eleven years ago. The band was large, so each section had its own little cheer with varying levels of obscenity.

In my under-appreciated low brass fellowship of baritone and euphonium players, our quietly charismatic section leader was able to convince even the one girl who otherwise didn’t swear to loudly quote George Carlin after every band practice and before every game:

“Rat shit, bat shit, dirty old twat. Sixty-nine assholes tied in a knot. Hooray, lizard shit, fuck!”

We even had this little logo on the front of our bright-ass neon yellow t-shirts (which doesn’t look nearly as hideous in this photo). Now you know what the initials stand for.

So thank you, George Carlin, for all you’ve contributed to the world of comedy, profanity, and freedom of speech. I’m sorry that I was never able to attend one of your comedy shows in person.

(Fast forward this 1984 “Carlin on Campus” YouTube clip to 1:17 to see his bit that includes his famously profane sports cheer.)

A few years ago when I worked in Cincinnati, several of my coworkers and I kept small fish tanks on our desks. The day that I was laid off, Ben and I had carpooled and I had the car. The first thing that Ben saw when he got into the car was the fish tank on the passenger seat floor, and he said sarcastically, "What, were you laid off?" He was shocked when I said yes.  

So today, after being completely caught off guard by my small company’s 22-person lay-off, I stopped by PetSmart to buy a fish.

Ben and I had already decided to eat at the Chinese Buffet right after work, so it was easy for me to suggest that I pick him up rather than meet him there. I didn’t tell him I was laid off until he got into the car and saw a betta fish swimming around in my dashboard cupholder.  

He thought I was kidding at first, but we had previously agreed that if one of us were ever laid off we would tell the other person by bringing home a fish. I didn’t really have a chioce. Ultimately, Ben appreciated the fact that I upheld our pact.

And now we have a fish on our kitchen counter as a symbol of new opportunity and our inside joke.

When I was growing up, I had a friend who was born around Christmas but always had a half-birthday party in June. The concept of a half birthday fascinated me, mostly because it had never occurred to me that there was a point in every year when I could officially start including the "half" in my age.

My parents didn’t think my half-birthday was anything worth celebrating, but still. It was exhilarating to say "I’m nine and a half" and know for certain that the extra half year could be mathematically proven.

Well, today is my half-birthday. It’s been a long time since I included the "half" in my age when asked. I’m not having a party and I’m not extraordinarily excited about the day, but I can’t let April 9th pass without remembering that it’s the halfway mark to my next birthday.  

Which today means that I have 547 days left in my twenties.

(I started counting days to milestones on my thirteenth birthday. "Only 1,095 days until I turn sixteen, Mom and Dad!  Aren’t you excited?!")

Many of my friends are around my age and are dealing with turning thirty in their own ways. Some are more affected than others, which I suppose is to be expected. Ben took it pretty hard last October, but I think he’s easing into it a little more now.

My life now is much different than I imagined it would be ten years ago, but not really in a bad way. I wonder how I’ll feel in six months with I hit T minus 365 days.

Does it mean that I’m a writer if, when I de-clutter my house, I find bits of paper and napkins with story ideas scrawled on them? And journals or semi-personal notebooks that I had forgotten ever existed?

One of the more interesting things I found amongst the multitude of Boxes of Unknown (ultimately knowable as school papers, awards, notes and miscellaneous bits of memorabilia from elementary school through college) was a hand-drawn postcard I made and painted with watercolors.

As you can see below, I obviously intended to send it to my religious (Catholic) grandmother but somehow ended up keeping it instead. Perhaps I selfishly decided that I couldn’t bear to part with my own artwork, or maybe my mother didn’t think it was a good idea for my grandmother to know that I had gone to a Methodist Sunday School lesson after spending the night at my best friend’s house. It’s dated a month or two after my eight-year-old chihuahua mix dog, Sprinkles, escaped from a kennel while we were on vacation and was subsequently hit by a car.  

I’m sure that my grandmother would have appreciated receiving this postcard if for nothing more than to know that I was thinking about her. She passed away almost two years ago so it’s too late to surprise her with it at this point.

But if there’s a heaven, and if the Internet is available up there, I hope that she knows I’m thinking about her now and I regret not sending her that postcard fifteen years ago.

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?