Yvette's Inner Geek Blog

Last weekend, Ben and I primed the finished portion of our basement that is the family room with the big TV. Like all areas of the house that we have not yet painted, it had shiny, textured beige walls and ceilings. Ick.

We finally decided that we would be brave and paint it red. Yes, a lovely red that’s not too bright and not too dark… Behr has a color called "Cherry Cobbler" that we decided would be perfect. (Hurry up and buy it before we change our minds!!!)

So after spending a few evenings this last week touching up the (dark base) primer and painting the edges of the ceiling white (we’ll finish that last because we have plans for ceiling lighting), yesterday we started coating the walls with red.

It was exhilarating, and because the room is fairly large, took some time. 3 CDs and a movie’s worth of time, to be exact….

"I am Sam" movie soundtrack
The Barenaked Ladies’ "Rock Spectacle"
Green Day’s "Insomniac" album
and the first "Back to the Future" movie 

And after we finished, we noted how brilliant the room seemed, and how the light still reflected off the walls. The color is fantastic and I love it. But… a little more shiny than we were expecting.

In fact, just as shiny as the icky beige walls had been. WTF? Turns out that the beige walls were Satin enamel, just like the new Cherry Cobbler paint that we’d purchased. We never looked at the cans the previous homeowners left for us.

I don’t mind the shiny red as much as the shiny beige, but the sheen is driving Ben to the brink of insanity. What to do? Should we suck it up and buy another can or two of Eggshell-sheen Cherry Cobbler? Would that work? Or should we just sell the house and move into a double-wide to avoid the hassles of being a privileged homeowner?

I see a red wall and I want to paint it black…. 

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

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 didn’t realize that Green Day’s "Jesus of Suburbia" (track number 2 on the American Idiot album) was just over 9 minutes long. There aren’t many bands who can record a good 9 minutes of anything, but I think that they do. I know they’ve suffered some flack from people who feel that they exchanged their punkier Dookie days for more mainstream tunes, but I love ‘em as much as I did in 1994. One of my favorite lyric snippets from "Jesus of Suburbia" is this, especially the second line:

Oh, therapy can you please fill a void
Am I retarted or am I just overjoyed 

Not sure exactly why I like it, but I know that the pretty music certainly helps.  

It’s not that late, but I’ve already gone to bed and tossed and turned enough to make me give up and just get back up. Phoebe is keeping me company by sleeping in her basket next to me.

I needed music. In order not to wake my sleeping hubby in the room across the hall, I pulled down my old headphones and plugged them in to my computer speakers. They’re nice noise-cancelling headphones that I borrowed from my parents’ house when I went to college and never gave back. The leatherette that covers the padding is flaking off, so I don’t feel like my parents would really want them back at this point.

It’s refreshing to blare a little Ben Folds Five directly into my brain without having external noise. I’ve been using the standard earbuds that came with my iPod at work (I don’t listen loud enough to really block out much office noise) and when I listen at home, I just use my regular speakers. These old, flaky headphones really make me feel the music up close, without other distraction (even white noise distraction of an early morning sleeping house).

It wasn’t so long ago that I would put a CD in my stereo, lie down on the floor and lose myself for an hour while listening to music through these headphones. In my bedroom at my parents’ house, in various dorm rooms and college apartments, in the living room of my first apartment with Ben. I think more often than not, I came closer to finding myself while losing myself to the music. 

So tonight, this rare headphone experience is just the kind of magical calming treatment I need to help me settle down and maybe get some sleep.  I’m tired, but I know that my eyes need to feel heavier before I try lying down in bed again. Maybe I’ll just sit back and listen to music until the crap that’s causing my late night anxiety goes away.

And maybe I’ll listen to music through these magical headphones more often. 

"Helsinki Complaints Choir." What a great name for a song, video, book, almost anything. This is a lovely music video to watch as winter sets in that you may watch more than once. I know that I have! Link snitched from Neil Gaiman’s blog. Enjoy!

http://www.bnlmusic.com/splash.asp

This mish-mash of music videos submitted by BNL fans turns into an amateurly delicious collage to the tune of "Wind it Up."

Featuring naked ladies (censored, mostly), lots of air guitar and my friend Noah Ginex’s puppets! 

The novel isn’t coming along so much right now. I went to bed early last night and feel somewhat refreshed, aside from the fact that I somehow pulled a muscle in lower back and it still hurts. Also, I broke my alarm clock this morning.

Ben was already gone this morning when I hit the snooze button for the third time and the whole button caved in without making the noise stop. I had to flip the button to off and actually drag my ass out of bed so I wouldn’t fall asleep again. Did I just say that I was feeling refreshed today? Well, I mean that in comparison to yesterday, which was also better than how I felt on Tuesday.

Anyway, Ben wasn’t upset about my alarm clock being broken because, in his words, I can finally replace my "1984 standard."  Yeah, it’s like the ones you get at Wal-Mart for five bucks and has the most annoying sound in the world.

Maybe I’ll hunt eBay for a flip-time clock like my parents had when I was growing up. You know the type? Before the digital age, they looked somewhat digital. About as digital as fast food joints’ signs that they change infrequently outside of their stores, even though they say "ish san  ich is her !" 

Right, so that novel I’m working on. I’m taking it on a flash drive to work just in case, though I doubt I’ll get the chance to write much there. Tonight, however… I’m going to make the mad typing fiend come out again.

I’ve been hunched over at one of my two desks–home and work–for seemingly forever. Sure, it’s easy to sit up straight for a little while, but once you’ve misbehaved and your neck and shoulders start to ache, it can only go downhill until you rest more, exercise and stretch more. 

Great, it’s only Tuesday. I doubt this whole neckache thing is going to get better before Friday with all the time I have to put in at the computer. Grrr.

When I was a teenager sitting in front of my parents’ awesome Mac Quadra, I never imagined that I would complain about getting too much computer time. Of course back then, it was Crystal Quest or bust.  God, I miss that game.

Great, I just did a search to find that link for Crystal Quest and discovered that you can download it for the Xbox 360 (informational link). We have only the first Xbox.

The Mac Quadra is actually sitting in my basement and is still functional as far I know… but I can’t seem to find the keyboard, mouse, or power cables. There is a floppy disk somewhere with Crystal Quest on it, too. 

Not that I should be doing anything right now but writing a novel, relaxing my tense muscles and practicing my fanfare trumpet and wooden recorder for a Medieval music demo at a local school tomorrow evening (my fellow SCAdians will also be playing).

Heh, feeling a little more geeky after writing this post. 

I deliberated for a long time over which totally awesome portable music player to purchase. My initial reaction was the video iPod. Clearly I am a victim of  Apple’s awesome marketing tactics, because I had no reason to want it other than it’s the only one I’d really heard much about.  Good things about it, too.

Ben asked my why I wanted the iPod more than its competitors.  "What competitors?" I asked (only partially sarcastically).  So then I started researching.

30G is enough for me, I said to myself. That’s the max on all brands besides the 60G iPod video right now, anyway. Most of the competitors weren’t really competitors, and it came down to the iPod and the Creative Zen M. This morning when I woke up, I was ready to buy the Creative Zen. Better display, supposedly better battery life (though many disputes were made in everything online), more versatility with music downloads/file transfer, plus it has a built-in FM receiver and a voice recorder. It still has proprietary software, though… and I’m already using iTunes to play my music. Don’t worry, when I rip my CDs they import at MP3s, not AAC files.

The geek inside screamed "don’t go with what everyone else has just because they are the majority!"

The victim of marketing inside screamed "it’ll just be easier with the iPod, and you’ll never use the FM receiver. I know you! You’re a vicitim of marketing so of course you want that extra feature! And you know that a lot of those reviews were from people who are anti-Apple!"

In truth, I want to be the cool Apple guy, not the chode monkey PC guy from the commercials. And I’m not even a guy. So is there some underlying penis envy to go along with the serious Mac envy I have of the Art Department at work? Who knows.

I bought the 30G Video iPod and it will arrive on Tuesday.

A victim of marketing? Perhaps. At least I did some homework to know about my options. I will never know if I made the best decision unless I buy both (not likely) or until I actually talk with someone who has a player besides an iPod… and you’d think that some of my geek friends would have a different kind of player. But they don’t. They all have iPods. Even the Linux users.

Dude.