Sweet Baby Jayne
11 Feb 2009 Leave a Comment
in Channeling my Inner Geek, Off the Needles
A few weeks ago I fielded a request from a high school friend who is expecting his first son in April. The request was simple: use my mad knitter skillz to create a baby size Jayne hat for the baby’s birth announcements.
The Pattern: Jayne Beanie with modifications.
The Needles: US 3′s
The Yarn: Sisu and Lanett
The Verdict: It’s awfully cute. And thanks to my model Oswaldo for pitching in!
I hope the parents like it!
Oversubscribed.
11 Jul 2008 1 Comment
in Channeling my Inner Geek, Tech News
In the beginning (at least what I term the beginning of my consciousness of the internet – circa 1996) there were only a few ways to “chat” online. I remember my friends in high school talking about AOL Chat Rooms, but we didn’t have AOL. Although my dad was an early adopter of technology, I really didn’t discover the internet until I went to college.
So in the beginning, I discovered Talk. Then I found ICQ and then AOL Instant Messenger which I still use today. Then I discovered the wide world of html and coded my first web page (Hello World!).
Then I have trouble remembering what came next. All of a sudden I was reading blogs…lots of blogs. Then I had a blog. Then I had multiple blogs. Then I was using an aggregator for all my chat services – first Trillian and then Adium (gotta love the green duck). Then GMail arrived. Then came social networking. I joined MySpace. In grad school we all joined LinkedIn. Recently I joined Facebook. Then yesterday I jumped in whole hog and joined both Twitter and Plurk. (Let’s not forget that Flickr, YouTube, and Ravelry happened in there….)
And THEN I needed something to manage all of this crazy content. And I took the recommendation of one of my tech gurus and signed up for Netvibes and spent some time configuring it.
And frankly? I feel oversubscribed. Excused me while I go bury myself in updates.
A tribute to my own personal hero.
26 Jun 2008 3 Comments
in Channeling my Inner Geek, Fabulous Friends
Since moving to Kansas City, I have met some wonderful people. One of the first to welcome me here was my dear friend PlazaJen. Now Miss Jen has many redeeming qualities – we enjoy a rollicking good time together with knitting, liquor and tasty desserts frequently! But one of her most endearing traits (at least to me) is that she gets all twitchy at the improper use of grammar and unchecked typographical errors. As an armchair grammarian myself (as opposed to those professional copy editors and advertising experts I know), this delights me to no end.
The grammar and typographical discussion reared it’s ugly head a few weeks ago when Miss Jen spotted this billboard. Not only did she take a picture of the board and post it, she picked up the phone and called the company to report it!
Lo and behold, she had reason to get twitchy just a few days later. And this time she even KNEW someone over in the marketing department. He was grateful to learn of the error and noted that it was both corporate and in national release and that he’d be passing it on to the corporate officers.
See? She’s correcting the world… one error at a time!
P.S. If you want to see how stupid people can be, join the “This is Broken” group at Flickr. Just make sure to take your twitch medication before you do it.
When Find/Replace Bites You in the Ass
25 Jun 2008 2 Comments
in Channeling my Inner Geek, Office Games
Since Monday I have been working at a new temp job. Normally I don’t share too much about the jobs I take on, just in case someone happens to stumble across my little corner, but this job is pretty cool. I happen to be working for AMC World Headquarters for the next few weeks, in downtown Kansas City. Though the commute does leave a bit to be desired, the downtown area doesn’t. We’re in one of the highrises right near the river, and our building adjoins the Kansas City Public Library, where I can go on my lunch hour to read and enjoy!
The people so far have been very nice and the accomodations are really top notch. As I write this I’m sitting in a corner cubicle, with a sliver of a window, looking out from the 14th floor at the blue sky and the neighboring highrises. They’ve set me up at my own desk, with a dedicated computer and given me run of any number of spreadsheets and applications. Today I’ve been a super-sleuth, getting all geekily excited about using Excel (both my skills gained in grad school, and new ones they’re teaching me). And you can’t beat the perks – soda fountains and popcorn machines on every floor!
The title of the entry actually refers not to something I did, but to something one of my supervisors did. The work I’m doing today is with spreadsheets of employees, using SSN’s as identifiers. Well let’s just say that the boss did a bit of a find/replace that rendered about 300 SSN’s utterly useless. It took me a while to figure out why I was getting SO many errors between spreadsheets, but now I’m back on track and happy as a clam that I sleuthed out the problem. I know… I’ll just be over here getting my geek on….
Stay tuned tomorrow for a tribute to my new personal hero – she’s changing the grammar and typographical errors of the world one billboard/sign at a time!
It comes but once a year….
10 Jan 2008 3 Comments
in Channeling my Inner Geek, Fabulous Friends
And today is delurking day. You know what to do!
The King of all Non Sequiturs
03 Oct 2007 Leave a Comment
in Channeling my Inner Geek, Deep Thoughts
This morning Chris at Rude Cactus asked people to stop by, delurk and leave links to blogs that they are reading. If you’ve seen Chris’ blog, you’ll know that his blogroll is impressive. I managed to leave a link to a blog I read that wasn’t on there, but I noticed the comment above mine recommended the blog Scrine. Holy non sequitur Batman this site is fabulous! I could spend all day there. What did I have to do again today? Oh yeah, work.
ETA: I have to say that I’m rather proud of this.
Random Facts I learned today.
11 Jul 2007 1 Comment
in Channeling my Inner Geek, Deep Thoughts
1. “The forest canopies of the earth hold roughly half of all the species in nature.”
2. “They hold it as a rule of thumb that if you fall fifty feet to the hard ground you will very likely die.”
Both quotes courtesy of Wild Trees by Richard Preston.
3. Did you know that Diet A&W Cream Soda has caffeine? I didn’t. Who knew?
4. How to prevent my Firefox window from automatically resizing when I surf. Yes I’m a geek but it’s VERY annoying.
From Grupenet:
In Firefox, go to “Options” under the “Tools” menu. Find your way to the “Content” section in the Options. Next to the “Enable Javascript” option you will see an Advanced button. Click on that and in the dialog that pops up uncheck the Move or resize existing windows option.
What Happens After High School
20 Jun 2007 Leave a Comment
in Channeling my Inner Geek, Fabulous Friends
Sometimes you wonder what became of people after high school. Then sometimes, you find out they’re the hottest sensation on YouTube and people around you at work are talking about what they did.
That would be the case here with Nintendo Punchout by Team Awesome Rocks. You can find the original and the outtakes on Youtube here. For reference, I was a high school drama geek with Little Mac, Bald Bull, Referee Mario and Pit.
Which superhero are you?
12 Feb 2007 Leave a Comment
I was filling out my Valentine’s Day cards today and getting them ready to mail (yes I know I’m late thankyouverymuch) and I realized that instead of getting the heart stamps last week, I went superpower with Superhero stamps. I don’t know if Superman, The Flash and Plastic Man count as romantic, but they sure do look awesome on my letters.
The Ultimate Geek Accessory.
18 Jan 2007 Leave a Comment
in Channeling my Inner Geek, Off the Needles
Thursday is game day, and every gamer needs a Dice Bag. From left to right: for Blogless Will, myself and Knitmeister S.
