Some days, you just get by.

Tired
Fearful
Small and crawly

on no sleep
(troubles, troubles)
and a too-early dentist appointment
made in good faith a year ago
kept in resignation
and out of more fear
(bad gums, the family curse).

And then
after a day of throwing down too many
cups of caffeine
(all flavors)

and an afternoon of pushing through too many
scary jobs,

tired and fearful,
small and crawly

you straggle home
exhausted
from An Event
(really, it was lovely—
we were just fagged out
and not in a gay way)

and The BF
gives you a tutorial in alpha channels
and makes all the bad things
disappear.

This
is why
I love being a nerd

This
is why
I love being in love with one.

xxx
c

Image by Colleen Wainwright and Brenton Fletcher

TOPICS: 21 day salutes, communicatrix, fear, life, Nerd Love™.

1. Conveniently located to Los Angeles’ fashionable East side.
2. Get to watch Vegas-style timed musical fountain whilst walking to/from personal transpo device.
3. Better porn than Hustler store.
4. Retro-calming, Holly Golightly-esque, “Nothing bad could ever happen to you in a place like this” design vibe.
5. No rats.
6. Close proximity to wide variety of foods legal on the Specific Carbohydrate Diet.
7. New! Urban equivalent of Wal-Mart greeter at front door!
8. New! Validated parking with ANY purchase!
9. New! Apple staff can ring up (credit card) purchases via handy/scary device around neck.
10. New! Apple staff can print out receipt on spot or email it to your .mac account.

Which leaves only one question: what is keeping you PC boneheads from drinking the Kool-Aid and getting down with the program?

Silly PC users…

xxx
c

Image by Chet Yeary II via Flickr, used under a Creative Commons license.

TOPICS: 21 day salutes, Apple, List-o-rama!, Los Angeles, Nerd Love™, The Grove.

Yes, when Chief Nerd and Bottle Washer takes a day off, she engages chiefly in elective nerd activities. Yesterday’s project was a long put-off expansion and reorganization of communicatrix HQ—adding file cab #2 and getting the G5 back online at full operating power.

This is notable for two reasons:

First, nerds have unaccountable phobias like everyone else. Mine is change. When the G5 had a hard drive cramp way, way back in July of last year, my solution was to move everything onto my 12″ PowerBook and ignore the fact that it took me a third again as long to get the simplest task done. Why? Because I was too scared/lazy/stubborn to bring the G5 into the Apple store, which makes no sense because it was still under warranty/not that heavy/no comment. And then, even after it was abundantly clear that there was nothing wrong with the drive that a clean install couldn’t fix, I still resisted loading everything back on because…oh, well, because clearly, I am out of my mind.

Second, pulling everything—and I mean everything—apart meant that I was offline for the better part of 12 hours, also known as a nerd eternity.

I could post a photo of my spiffy new setup (or the heinous tangle of wires it seems I am cursed with until the lights go out), but this morning, when I got back online, I woke up to this wonderful photo of my newly 40-year-old sister posing in some parking lot with Robert Plant. It was so random, I had to run with it.

So happy belated birthday, my beautiful Elizabeth, and may this decade be your best 10 years yet.

xxx
c

TOPICS: 21 day salutes, celebrity, Nerd Love™, Robert Plant.

To you, it is a collection of keys (and affinity tags) on a key ring. (Okay—carabiner.)

To me, it represents dozens of man-hours of thought:

One ring or two? Or three? And what diameter?
Fob choice? Fob size?
What is too heavy? What is too light?
What feels good in my hands?
What feels so good I’ll forget about it?
Is that too good?
Is that bad?
What would be useful?
What would be more useful?
Is yesterday’s ‘useful’ no longer so?
Where to forgo elegance for functionality?
What is the nature of elegance, anyway?

The difference between being a baby nerd and a grownup one is that grownup nerds know to enjoy the process or abandon it altogether, because the “goal”—perfection—will continue to recede in the distance as you move toward it.

The key ring of my 20’s is not the key ring of my 30’s is not the key ring of my 40’s.

In my 50’s? There may not be a key ring at all.

And maybe that is what I am working towards.

If, indeed, any of this is a working towards anything…

xxx
c

TOPICS: 21 day salutes, communicatrix, Nerd Love™, self-development.

10:15 am: Nerd gets e-newsletter from Vonage announcing deal for 20% off phone service for prepayment.

10:17 am: Nerd has phone service through 2/7/08 and $59 dollars in pocket.

10:20 am: Nerd mentally spends entire wad on six additional URLs for future blogs…

xxx
c

Image by Fatty Tuna via Flickr, used under a Creative Commons license.

TOPICS: 21 day salutes, Nerd Love™.