Category: Geekery

My OCD is showing, twenty-four-seven

One of those “buzzwords” we’ve learned to live with over the years is “24×7” (aka 24/7) which, of course, indicates twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. I’ve never really liked this term, but that’s just a personal quirk. There’s nothing inherently wrong with it.

I’ve bumped into an expansion of that term that bothers me a fair bit, though. It’s cheesy, and what’s worse is that it doesn’t even make sense. If 24 is the number of hours in the day, and 7 is the number of days in the week, if you want to expand that logic then you’d have to use the number of weeks in the year, right? So where does “24×7×365” come from? Last time I checked, there aren’t over three hundred weeks in a given year. By all rights it should be “24×7×52,” and even then I wouldn’t exactly be happy with it… but it wouldn’t make me quite so actively unhappy.

I can hardly expect any sort of widespread, meaningful change just because some random nutjob on the Internet has pointed out the inherent absurdity in play. Complaining about it provides some amusement value, though.

17 July, 2006
Mouse Identification Training
The product is called “VMware.” It is, in effect, a server that allows you to host a number of virtual computers on a single machine. The geek value for something like this is through the roof, which makes the following instructions found in the upgrade documentation terribly amusing.
8. Select your mouse.

Here are some helpful mouse identification hints:
- If the connector is round, your mouse is a PS/2 or a Bus mouse.
- If the connector is trapezoidal with nine holes, it is a serial mouse.
- If the connector is a flat rectangle with a slot, it is a USB mouse.
I’ll grant you that their instructions are wholly accurate. However, I question the judgement of the person who thinks (s)he has any business at all installing or upgrading a sophisticated piece of software but doesn’t know how to tell one type of pointing device from another!
17 July, 2006
Bizarre Coincidence, Wot?

This week marks the 17th anniversary of my arrival in Portland. I moved here from Concrete, WA when I was 17 years old, so I’ve made the Rose City my home for an entire half of my life now. Before Concrete (the town in which I spent my senior year) I spent a brief time in Anacortes, WA preceeded by another brief stint in Des Moines, WA. Oddly enough, my girlfriend currently lives in Des Moines, albeit not on a small boat like I did. My junior year (and my absolute favorite year of school, ever) was spent in Bellevue, WA and my sophomore year took place in Kent, WA.

We moved to Kent from Hillsboro, OR after Mom hooked up with her newest husband at the time. Now, here’s where it gets weird. I attended Poynter Middle School, located just off Cornell Road. Our apartment was right across Cornell from the school’s athletic field. (I used to watch Robotech in the morning until the moment the credits rolled, at which point I’d grab my things and scamper at high speed so as not to be late for school.)

Yesterday I started work at Resource One, which is located… well, let’s just say it’s incredibly close. Check this out:

(Image courtesy of Google Maps, with minor edits by Yours Truly)

The green arrow is my current workplace. The blue arrow marks the approximate location (it was a long time ago, so maybe I got the wrong building) of the apartment that Mom, Sis and I lived in… about twenty years ago. The purple arrow indicates the middle school I attended at that time. (For reference, if you could “scroll” the image above so you could see what’s just off to the right, you’d find the Hillsboro airport.)

Consider that I’ve barely set foot in Hillsboro more than a couple of times since I moved away, and then consider that I’m now working a figurative stone’s throw from where I used to live. Freaky, isn’t it?

6 July, 2006
Highly Motivated

This’ll be it for today. That’s not a guarantee that I will (or won’t) make more tomorrow, mind you.

First up we have a trio of posters inspired by City of Heroes screenshots I found on my computer. I hope that the humor is accessible for non-gaming folks:

The last entry for today has a bit of backstory. If you don’t know how I came to be “the little grey duck,” the following poster may confuse you:

When I was a teenager, one of my favorite phrases was “not this little grey duck!” It got to the point where people began calling me “ducky,” which (of course) caused me to drop that catchphrase like a hot rock. The damage, however, was done. The “ducky” has been following me around ever since. When the Internet Age began, however, after bumping up against a few all-too-popular pop-culture nickname choices, that “little grey duck” came to mind after long consideration and… the rest, as they say, is history.

It’s all about turning lemons into lemonade, right?

29 June, 2006
More Motivation

Y’all should know better than to encourage me, you know.

Rehabilitation is anime-themed, but I don’t think you don’t need to be an “otaku” to get a laugh out of it.

Mementos is based, oddly enough, on a serious bit of rumination.

Obsession may go over some folks’ heads. Suffice to say that I used to take my music collecting very seriously.

I have the sick, sad feeling that I’m not done yet. I should also get off my lazy kiester and put these into the gallery where they belong… if I do, I’ll redact this and the other entry accordingly. (Edit: Done! Thumbnails! Woo-hoo!)

29 June, 2006
I’m enthusiastic. How about you?

Take one down-and-out computer geek, add one good-quality image from one of his current favorite anime series, mix using an all-too-cool online tool, and what do you get?

I don’t know about you, but I’m enthusiastic about the results.

Okay. It’s your turn now… you know you wanna.

(Edited to add: One more before bedtime.)

(Probably more to follow during the next few days. You’ve been warned.)

28 June, 2006