And with that intro, here we go:

I’m the sort of guy who, despite his best intentions, is always late to the party. Well, I would be, if I got invited to parties, or actually even wanted to go to a party instead of staying at home trying to tweak a little more oomph out of my home computers (yes, plural as in many). The point, anyway, is that I tend not to be amongst the first to partake of new trends — even geeky ones.

The Oregon Trail by Broderbund

I’ve always enjoyed computer games since the days of playing Oregon Trail on the school Apple II and Pitfall on the Atari 2600. Though in more recent years I don’t spend nearly as many sleepless nights navigating repetitious dungeons or fighting countless enemies of little variation, I do still play the occasional desktop, console, or portable title. Unfortunately, I’ve been missing out on a good many titles for the latter two categories as the new systems seem to cost the crown jewels and the games aren’t cheap either, but that’s probably just as well anyway.

The junction between my opening paragraph and game playing for this particular post arrives on the subject of massively multiplayer online games, commonly referred to either as MMO’s or MMOGs. I’ve had some experience with these sorts of games wherein you, as the player, join potential countless others in an online universe for the sake of playing a game together. There are many categories of games that have taken the MMO mantle, from role-playing games (RPGs), first-person shooters (FPSs), space combat sims, and others.

Graal Classic by Cyberjoueurs

Mostly I’ve just played in the free-beta stages of a couple, now non-existent MMO’s though I have dabbled a bit in a few others. At that time the MMO was still a relatively new concept, one which relatively few gamers really got into, and the flagship of the MMO empire was the now defunct Ultima Online. Though curious about this semi-popular title, I never gave it a try, mostly because the notion of paying monthly fees for a game didn’t jive with my poor student status. Also, it had the stigma of being a game for Dungeons and Dragons fans, of whom I had somehow convinced myself I was much cooler than.

Time went by, more MMO titles came and went. Some, like Everquest (players called it Evercrack) were immensely popular, and plenty of others just kept afloat. Still, I stayed away, content to play games I only had to pay for once.

World of Warcraft by Blizzard Entertainment

Today the title that all MMO’s aspire to topple is Blizzard Entertainment’s World of Warcraft (players call it World of Warcrack – notice a theme?). Clocking in at several million active subscribers around the world it is the one MMO to rule all MMOs, or so the fans would have non-players believe. As a fan of Blizzard’s previous titles like Diablo, Warcraft, and Starcraft, I found myself much more strongly tempted than ever to give it a try. Still, for over two years I held out.

During that time my younger brother, Alex, got into the game. He began trying to push free trial passes onto me and yet I held out. Then, more recently, my good friend Stu also began playing it. A couple months ago I started my new job at KOR and I found out that my coworkers actually have their own in-game guild. Now, surrounded by subscribers, I’ve finally decided to surrender and give it a try. I’ve downloaded the 3.5 gigabyte (yes, gigabyte) client and am going to use the latest 14-day trial pass my brother gave me.

I’ll set foot into the game for the first time this very evening and not without some trepidation.

I can only hope I make it back.

Rearranged words resulting in fart jokes aside, I’d like to address a subject of great personal concern — how to pass time while driving to work (or anywhere farther than two blocks).

Driving inherently seems to offer surprisingly ample time to engage in complete and utter foolishness. Some people choose to express their foolishness while driving by absorbing themselves completely in conversations with their cellphones, others by dressing and grooming themselves, and others still by chasing after that peanut that dropped by their feet somewhere. It seems like everybody has a method by which to express their madness, lest they realize that they are, in fact, driving.

The bicycular nature of my commute for the last year and a half of my previous employment didn’t allow me the luxury of really establishing my own set of driving to work behavior. Something about being on seventeen pounds of aluminum with my body fully exposed by the frame encouraged my attentiveness on the road. The simple thought of becoming squishy with my guts on the wrong side seemed to have a very dramatic effect.

However, with my new job of the past month and a half, I have found myself once again behind the wheel on a daily basis, driving to and from the office, for at least a half-hour each way. Fully encased in a steel frame, surrounded by a hard candy shell (wait, am I describing an M&M?), I find myself once again free from the constraints of common sense and ready to join distracted drivers everywhere.

The only problem is, I don’t quite know what to distract myself with.

Thus far I have tried:

• Radio karaoke – flip through the stations, find a song you know, and scream along. Remember, people in other cars couldn’t possibly hear you however loud and off-key you scream (“Hold me close now tiny dancer!”)
• Air guitar – flip through the stations, find any song, and stroke that air guitar! Yeah, Wylde Stallionz!
• Drums on steering wheel/dashboard – if screaming and stroking isn’t your style, maybe you should try beating it (what’s with that funny expression?)
• Make faces at rearview mirror – it’s even funnier when the people in front and behind you think it’s at them.
• Jet-fighter simulations – my car has a distinctly flight-stick-like gear shift with trigger button to boot, so it was only natural.
• Doing fake movie voice-overs – “In a world where the traffic really, really sucks…”
• Arguing with the GPS – “No, you take a U-turn at the next light!”
• Drawing in the dashboard dust – it’s like an Etch-a-Sketch you have to wait a week to clear.
• Sliding the wedding ring off and on – my wife seems particularly displeased with this distraction…
• Wind tunnel impressions – Turn the AC on full, point the vents at your face, and make like it’s pushing back with gale force winds.

I’ll continue to experiment with ways to make the dreadful minutes pass, lest I realize I’m driving too. I’ll also gladly accept suggestions others might be practicing, or at least contemplating, and give them a whirl as well.

So come on then, clue me in.

Wait, no, that’s misleading.

I meant that Ali has been called away by her work to travel from our quiet town of Los Angeles (we’re very humble here) to company headquarters in Reston, VA.

She returns late Friday evening which means that starting today and for the next three days (give or take a few hours) I’m back to living the single guy’s life. To some men this means hitting clubs, bars, and discos every night, living large, partying hard, and staying alive. But not me — I’m a geek.

For me this will be a time to browse blogs, watch movies, and play videogames. Sure I’ll take advantage of this opportunity to make ‘underwear’ the official dress code for the apartment, order in a pizza with extras of my favorite toppings, and take up the entire bed when I sleep, but these simple pleasures are all I expect to take away from this experience. I won’t even be leaving the toilet seat up, though truth be told that’s actually to keep the cats from drinking out of it (Ali swears that they will).

Unfortunately, singledom will also require me to be the one to prepare my own meals (can’t afford to eat out all the time), clean up after myself and the felines, and provide warmth for the entire bed (stupid chilly June Gloom). It will also mean there won’t be anyone around to consult for clothing color coordination (yes, I will wear poorly coordinated outfits and never know it), present my culinary successes (and failures) to, or share fart jokes with (the cats just don’t see the humor).

In fact, this time away from the missus may not be quite the easy vacation from civilization I had hoped for afterall. I may just have to reevaluate my plans.

In that case, who’s joining me for drinks?

Here at my new job we were also given the preceding Friday off. I would normally spend such days off secretly resting in a webcam blindspot while the webserver was at work, catching up on sleep missed due to the webserver’s drunken late night karaoke sessions.

But not this time.

For the past year-and-a-half, completely unknown to my angry little roommate, I’ve been seeing someone on the sly. In the course of our courtship our relationship had gotten very serious to the point where we began making plans. Big plans.

So, on Friday, May 25, I waited until the webserver had tired of kicking me in the shins and as soon as I saw it rolling down the driveway (and over a squirrel) on its way to work I packed my suitcase and put on my suit:

I counted down a few minutes more to let the webserver gain distance, but not too long should it check the webcams and see me making a break. Blood pounding in my ears with every heartbeat I squeezed the handle of the suitcase as the final minute ticked by and I was out of there.

I literally ran down the stairs, nearly tripping on stacks of ads from local pizza places, and half-tumbled to my car before realizing…

I had forgotten my keys.

I dropped my suitcase, ran back up the stairs, and carefully peeked around the corner to see one of the webcams sweeping the hallway. The webserver was at work and was checking the webcams. It didn’t know that I had the day off, but in my haste I had left the front door open and it knew that something was amiss.

Looking again, I saw my keys on the dresser in the bedroom just past hallway webcam. There was a brief window when I could make it past the sweeping eye on the camera, hugging the wall to stay in its blindspot. I was almost doomed to fail, but I couldn’t stop now.

Channeling my best double-o-seven I awaited my chance and took it.

Into the hallway I slipped. Back flat again the wall, I shuffled quickly and quietly while staying outside the webcam’s range of vision. I slid into the open bedroom door and grabbed the keys not thinking of the noise they would make. The webcam stopped its sweep and I knew the jig was up. The keys tight in my fist I ran out the front door, flew down the stairs, and threw my suitcase into the car and was off like a flash.

From there it was down to my lady’s place where she awaited, a vision in a red dress.

We quickly loaded her belongings into my suitcase, worried that the webserver might be in pursuit, and soon were back on the road.

Our destination — the Norwalk County Courthouse.

Our mission — getting hitched, without a hitch.

Well, it was quite the adventure getting there. The high-speed chase, followed by the low-speed chase, then the moderate-speed chase, finished with a high-speed chase again. Also the cross-dressing, hitchhiking, escaped convicts and the relentless cyborg bounty hunter gave us quite the wild time. And, of course, the webserver who tried to stop the private wedding but was ultimately arrested on charges including being drunk and disorderly, public endangerment, and just generally being an ass (I heard they had to drop that last charge though).

In the end though, we made it, and Alison and I have started our lives together, free from the oppressive shadow of my power-mad roomie.

Not bad for a day off, eh?

But this post isn’t about those dinners. Instead it’s about the daily g33k dinner Google Groups e-mail digest I receive and more specifically about some information that Heathervescent, the grand g33k poobah, clued us in on.

As it turns out, an advantage of living in LA is that you can buy expensive designer clothing for a tiny fraction of the MSRP. This is accomplished through what’s referred to in the industry as Sample Sales. Those of you who now or at some point in your lives have spent time away from the computer may already know about these things but it was all news to me.

The sample sale mentioned in the e-mail took place last Saturday and was for the Axis and Mondo lines of Perry Ellis. Not that any of those names have any particular meaning to me, but the Internet assures me that they make very nice clothes.

Now, I’ve had no particular issues with looking like this every day of my life:

It’s the official uniform of the geek, day in, day out. If we could, we’d wear it everywhere: fancy restaurants, at the beach, in the shower. Not that geeks go to fancy restaurants or the beach very often. In fact, some don’t even frequent the shower as often as they should.

But I decided that maybe having some nicer clothes wouldn’t be an absolutely terrible thing and this was an excellent opportunity to pick up some fancy duds. (Note to self: don’t use terms like ‘fancy duds’ when actually wearing said fancy duds).

In the end I wound up picking up quite a few clothes, including button-down shirts, dress pants, jackets, and blazers and spending what seemed like a fair amount of money but what, according to the MSRP tags, is an insane bargain of epic proportions.

Of course, no blog entry about new clothing would be complete without accompanying photographs. So, if you would be so inclined, please play Right Said Fred’s ‘I’m Too Sexy’ on your mental jukebox and bare witness to my awesome chameleon-like abilities to become an uber-sexy fashion model just, like, that! (claims may not accurately represent actual product):

Derek Zoolander: Have you ever wondered if there was more to life, other than being really, really, ridiculously good looking?

I first began my association with the car almost two years ago. I was twenty-six, making decent though hardly substantial wages, and in need of a new ride. Perceiving that middle age was glowering over the horizon at me I decided that if I was ever going to drive a sports car I best do it now, lest I come off as a midlife crisis case cruising along in my roadster looking for hot chicks with really bad eye-sight.

After much searching I settled on the most stupid route and signed a four-year lease on a brand new vehicle. I thought I had found the car I would most like to be in control of, but never had I realized the car would start off more in control of me.

From the start I found myself highly susceptible to its mental manipulations. It constantly played songs like Born To Be Wild, Bad To The Bone, Lowrider, and Pina Colada (I still don’t understand that one), and pumped in whiffs of car exhaust through the ventilation system, so as to transform me into a sort of speed demon. The moment I took that beast onto the freeway all was lost and I began my career as a fuel-burning, fast-driving idiot.

Speed limits were taken as mere guidelines to be considered then promptly ignored. Slower-moving vehicles were seen as stationary obstacles to be weaved through like so many brightly-colored cones on a high school driving course. The occasional highway patrol car was the only thing capable of lifting my lead food, though I still kept it several miles per hour above the limit in open, sneering defiance.

Unfortunately, my high-speed joyride was doomed to end sooner or later and the first nail in that coffin came in the form of a ticket for driving in excess of 100 mph. That costly lesson would stay on my driving record for six years and includes a significant bump in my insurance costs for that duration. That ticket effectively curtailed my regular applications of the pedal to the metal to more brief and infrequent applications of the same.

Then came the seemingly endless gas price hikes. Driving hard and fast burns significant amounts of fuel and the car, as inevitability would have it, is not just a sports car but a luxury sports car. As such, it requires premium gas to fill its hungry, empty tank. Regular gas was already getting expensive, premium gas required me to will over an unborn child every time I filled up. I owe the oil companies an awful lot of unborn children.

I staved off the pain of increased fuel costs by taking up bicycling to work, a decidedly lower-tech but remarkably fun way of commuting. It worked for a good while to preserve my ability to afford the fun weekend drive, but even that had to come to an end.

The next two blows were the arrival of the webserver who brought along with it an inordinate number of expenses, and my new job which was too far away to bike to. I had to surrender my reckless driving days in favor of driving more sensibly and economically. I had to learn that not all open gaps in traffic meant that I should accelerate hard until I closed it. And I had to learn that cruise control is the easiest way to avoid subconsciously accelerating and maximize vehicle fuel efficiency.

I still hear the car instructing me to push the gas down a little harder and take my turns a little tighter, but I just mostly turn up the radio a bit and ignore it. Sometimes I do give it a little speed, just for old time’s sake, but it’s little more than just a taste.

The next step will be to find someone to assume my lease or purchase the car from the bank. Then I’ll buy a considerably more fuel efficient vehicle either new or used. Possibly a Yaris, Prius, or Civic Hybrid — any of those would make me happy. There are others I need to consider as well.

Fortunately, I can’t afford the Tesla Roadster.

Until then though, I’ll be the guy cruising along at 70 mph on the freeway to work, singing “If you like Pina Coladas.”

Despite the less than pleasant circumstances under which I began my search for a new job (the webserver has a bunch of really hot CPUs and it knows the worst places to stick them), I see this career move as a step in the right direction. I’m earning a salary more in line with current trends (and I might see more than four dollars a week of it) and for the first time in my life I have a job that offers paid vacation and sick days.

Of course, that probably means more days I have to stay at home and serve the server, but hey, vacation!

The first day went very well. My cubicle was already an upgrade over the last one. Before I had two walls and a bookshelf, now I have three walls and an entry way. I have a ton of desk space and my very own whiteboard to boot. My computer has two monitors, the newest processor, and a ton of memory. It’s like a miniature HAL-9000 — it’s the stuff geek wet dreams are made of.

My boss and coworkers are great too. Hard working as nerds often are but willing to talk about diverse non-geek topics like hybrid-car technology, online distance learning, and the pros and cons of different software version management packages. Renaissance people, seriously.

And the dress code? Chic geek, baby. Jeans plus polo shirt. Pocket protector optional. Sheah, and nuclear reactors are cooling rod optional.

I’ll be spending the next week and a half acclimating myself to the KOR way and training for whatever software project I’m assigned to. Despite my not knowing just what I’ll be working on though, I’m sure it’ll be awesome.

New job, great pay, top-notch benefits, world-class coworkers, and killer projects — I think I’m going to like this new job of mine. Being at the office sure as heck will beat the time I have to spend at home with my domineering server roommate.

But it doesn’t have to know that.

Kathy co-authors a very popular blog, Creating Passionate Users, which is about, well, creating passionate users. That is to say, a user community that actively contributes to the livelihood and wellbeing of the community itself. It’s a great blog, entertaining as well as highly informative, and well worth a read.

Now, as anbody who is involved in online forums, be they bulletin boards, newsgroups, or weblogs knows, the Internet is full of trolls. Not the really scary kind like:

But more the really annoying kind like:

Unfortunately, Kathy’s trolls have gone past being the annoying but generally harmless variety to being really scary ones who threaten physical violence, rape, and even murder. It has gotten to the point where Kathy is afraid to go out publicly and has resulted in her canceling her workshop at the O’Reilly Emerging Technology Conference (ETech).

This is a problem for the entire online community to face. While anonymity on the Internet has provided a great service to many, including giving voice to the repressed, it has also given rise to increasingly personal attacks against other users. Furthermore, the ignorant and misogynistic tones of many of these attacks are disturbing and speak only too well of how little we’ve come forward as a society.

Many, like notable technologist Robert Scoble have spoken out against these attacks. But the effort really lies in the community to stand up against the attackers by speaking out against such behavior, by ignoring the troll’s baiting, and even by banning them from their forums. Ultimately, the real solution lies in the education and enlightenment of those who would cause such harassment, particularly those who do it on the basis of some prejudice, and hopefully much will happen in that vein as time goes by.

In the meantime, we all have to do what we can to discourage these attacks and to do so without compromising the freedoms these attackers take for granted. This is something for our community to really pull together for.

Consequently I haven’t been spending much time in the refrigerator of an apartment I share with the webserver. This has led to fewer meals prepared in the kitchen and an increase in the frequency of meals eaten out.

So, breaking from my usual routine of a peanut butter and jelly sammich for lunch, I’m opting instead to go to the local hip restaurant/bar/disco, TGI Chilibees.

Admittedly, its been a while since I’ve been to a trendy eatery such as this and it was with some trepidation that I will be pushing the oversized novelty doorknobs forth to enter the hormone and pop-music rich confines of the establishment. I can only hope that my masterful ability to blend into any given situation will convince my fellow diners that I am one of them.

And so we proceed to the doors where we are greeted by one, no two, no three greeters, no wait, just one very hyperactive greeter who seems to control the very fabric of time and space itself.

“Hi hi hi, welcome to TGI Chilibees let me get the door for you enjoy your meal!” she says.

“Um, yes, thank you door opener greeter person… thing.”

I scuttle past the buzzing greeter and slip through the door where a large crowd of hipsters are milling about.

“Excuse me, are you all waiting?” I ask.

“What?” one gentleman in business attire and soul patch counters.

“I’m just wondering if it’s looking like a large wait,” I say.

“Yeah, look, you’ve been on my ass about that all week,” he responds.

“What, no, I just got here,” I say, growing panicked and confused.

“Hang on Chad, some guy is talking to me,” he says while looking directly at me. He taps something on the side of his head which flashes blue and I realize I wasn’t part of that conversation.

“What’s up?” he says.

“I just wanted to know if you were all waiting to get in,” I reply.

“Oh, none of us are eating here,” he says very matter of factly. He taps his head again and a flash of blue later he’s back to Chad and those matters of import over which Chad has been riding his ass all week.

Shuffling past the early twenty-somethings I notice that all of them are actively engaged in conversation but not with eachother. For a moment I’m deeply fascinated by this phenomenon but that moment passes quickly.

The hostess is an incredibly disinterested looking young woman dressed in the gaudy uniform all employees of the restaurant must sport and is displaying no less than fifty pieces of flair.

“Excuse me,” I say. “One for lunch please.”

She wriggles a lethargic finger towards the bar and shrugs. I shrug back and head over that way. I think we bonded.

I saw the bartender in a movie once. He was Guy Who Screams #42. He was particularly convincing when the swamp mutant bit his legs off. He looks in my direction and I mime a scream. He doesn’t seem particularly amused.

“So what’ll it be man?” he asks.

“Ah, well, what’s good here?” I ask back.

“Our most popular dish is the Grey Goose soaked 12oz Prime Rib with Grey Poupon sauce and Deep-fried Side Salad.”

I shake my head.

“Or there’s the Fire Blasted Whole Rack of Ribs with Tangy Chipotle Sauce, Onion Rings, and Deep-fried Side Salad.”

Again, I shake my head.

“How about the Spice-Crusted Swordfish with Chips and Deep-fried Side Salad?” he tries.

“Just gimme a BLT,” I answer.

“With a Deep-fried Side Salad?” he follows.

“No, no deep-fried side salad thanks,” I answer.

“And what do you want to drink?” he asks.

“Um, just a Coke please,” I answer.

“You got it,” he says. He grumbles something about cheapasses and low tips and spitting in someone’s Coke. I feel sorry for whoever pissed him off.

I’m resolved to waiting for and eating my food alone while catching some sports highlights on one of the fifty screens around the place when two bouncy, bubbly, and identical looking girls sit beside me.

“Hi!” they simultaneously greet me.

“Uh, hi,” I saw. “Are you two twins?”

“No, but ohmygod, we get that all (pause) the (pause) time!” Clone number 1 replies.

“Wow, crazy,” I say and they start to giggle. I’m suddenly feeling pretty good and so I offer to buy them a drink.

“Oh wow, that would like, be totally awesome. Yeah, I’ll take a Peppermint Mocha Vodka Skinny Dip Twist with a splash of Brandy,” Clone 1 says.

“And I’ll have a Staten Island Slippery Whistle Whiskey Cooler on the rocks,” Clone 2 says.

I have no idea what they just said but I turn to get the bartender’s attention and find that he’s already served the girls and slipped the tab under my very foamy Coke.

I turn back to the girls to continue my witty reparte to find that they’ve already depleted their beverages and are on their way out the door with the bartender.

Confused, I eat my BLT and find a hair in it.

I’m beginning to suspect that my social skills are starting to suffer.

Some people wonder this when they’re lying in the gutter, some when they’re on national television, and others still when they’re caught lying naked in a strangers house. But me, I’m wondering this right now as I find myself living in a dingy apartment with an overbearing and abusive webserver.

I work as a programmer, as those of you who’ve read the about page undoubtedly know. I work hard all day typing in line after line of code, writing documentation, and planning out projects. It’s a good life and I’m happy there, but it all ends the moment *it* gets home.

I’ve found it best to rush home, conveniently ignoring the occasional traffic light, stop sign, and screaming pedestrian, in order to get home before the webserver does. Once there I quickly put on warmer clothes because it likes the temperature unbearably cold. People who come to the door, when they still come to my door, look at me strangely for wearing an eskimo suit in Southern California.

Bundled up and barely mobile I set about preparing a meal for the webserver. I put my heart into every meal I make for that cold, silicon-based machine, but its logic gates are never open for anything like real emotion. Today I thought I’d try something colorful, breakfasty, and fun. I worked feverishly dicing onions and carrots, cubing potatoes, and tearing spinach. I sauted the onions in olive oil, added the carrots and potatoes, and finally the spinach, and some salt and pepper to make this:

Meanwhile, on a separate burner I prepared hot pork sausage patties, their delicious aroma filling the kitchen where I labored away.

Then I heard a click and I knew it was home. The webserver called out for me:

“Where the hell are ya? You wouldn’t believe the day I’ve had. Stupid techies and their goddamned Linux. I’ll fsck them.”

I tossed the food together on a plate and quickly brought it out for its approval.

“What” the webserver said, “the hell is this crap?”

“It’s kinda like breakfast,” I said, my voice cracking on ‘break’.

“Breakfast? More like barf-fast. How the hell is it breakfast, there aren’t even eggs with this thing!” it bellowed.

“I can whip some up if you like,” I started.

But it was too late, the webserver was clearly not going to eat my meal and I felt the hot gust of its exhaust fans as it walked out to go drinking with ENIAC and Cray.

So I ate alone and watched an episode of Firefly before falling asleep.

It was the webserver’s loss though, that food was good.