Month: March 2006

Change Is Good

• by GeekMan • In Breaking News •   2

Seasons change, people change, Blogs change.

As you might know, I’ve been working on a redesign for this site over the last few weeks, whenever I’ve had a spare moment, but now that I’m ready to launch it, I find myself questioning something. The unspoken rule of my site has always been humor first, second, always and forever, but while I’ve been offline over the last few months I’ve realized that by limiting myself to ONLY humor I’ve been keeping some of my other interests in the dark.

And my other interests are really afraid of the dark, too.

So, along with the layout change I’ll be rolling out this weekend, I think it’s about time that I also made a format change. Don’t worry though, most of the time I’ll be writing my humorous stories here with the sole purpose of entertaining you, but every now and again I might just surprise you with something else; a new Photoshop tip, a CSS tidbit, some of my photography or maybe even a non-funny opinion on current events.

And so, be ready for some big changes around here.

I know most, if not all, of you don’t care about any of this, but I felt that explaining it here first was the least I could do for my loyal visitors who might just be thrown off completely by the changes come Monday. However, I’ve been writing here for almost five years now and I’m sure most of you just want me to get with the funny and make you laugh or you’re just going to find a younger, funnier Blog to spend your time with. I know how you people think. I know you don’t really care about me. I know you just need your “fix”.

I know you don’t love me.

Oh sure, you say you love me, that you’ll never leave me, but as soon as some young Blog stretches her supple body and bats her pretty eyelashes at you, or flexes his strong, young muscles as you click on by, you’ll drop my old ass in a heartbeat. You know it’s true. You don’t love me, you never did.

[sniff]

Don’t touch me!

[muffled crying]

I don’t want your pity!

[sobbing]

Why do you close your eyes when we make love?!

[GeekMan flees in tears]

Fixing The Fixes

• by GeekMan • In Breaking News •   3

Riddles within conundrums, Batman.

This site might be all new and improved behind the scenes, but from where you’re sitting I bet it looks pretty much the same. Well, aside from the stupid question mark diamonds all over my archived posts. If you’re wondering what those question mark diamonds are, well… so was I. But after a teeny-tiny bit of research I’m no longer wondering.

Instead, I’m frustrated and angry.

You see, it turns out that when the backend of this site was updated to my new and improved blogging software the text encoding of my posts changed from ISO-8859-1 to utf-8 which caused some individual character substitutions due to inherent differences between the two disparate encoded character sets.

What you talking about, GeekMan?

Basically, due to the differences in how my new versus old blogging software, any of my old posts that contained quotation marks, apostrophes, ellipses, or other special characters, will now display the question-mark-diamond instead of the quotation marks, apostrophes, ellipses, or other special characters.

Sucks to be me, huh?

The easy way to fix this, of course, is to simply change the way my new software handles encoding my posts so that it matches the way my old software did it. In effect, change it from utf-8 to the old ISO-8859-1. But I like to be difficult, so I say nay to the simple, easy and effective way! Instead, I think I’ll try to find a way to change all my old posts from ISO-8859-1 to utf-8! And if I fail, well then, I’ll just cross that bridge when it floods.

BTW, anyone know where I can get a cheap inflatable boat?

We Can Do It, Together

• by GeekMan • In Breaking News •   4

Solonor is a cool guy.

Not only does he play a mean guitar, he also sings better than a drowning cat, is more handsome than Marty Feldman, is smarter than Gilligan and is sexier than Margaret Cho in a thong. I could go on complimenting him, but he might kill me if I do.

Did I mention how modest he is?

Anywaste, Solly (as his close, longtime, personal friends like me call him) was nice enough to help me out last night by doing some background work here on the site. In truth, he upgraded TMG from its aging blogging tool to a more up-to-date and modern tool for blogging. What does this mean to you? Absolutely nothing, I’m sure.

But it means a whole lot for this site.

You see, now that I’m using newer blogging software all I need to do is update the look of TMG and I’ll finally be finished with reworking the site and can get back to the business of writing again. I know, I know. You’re all excited. Try to calm down. Breath… Breath…

Hey! Put that back in your pants!

One last thing… anyone out there really, really good at CSS? I’m pretty good with it and I’ve got my new design pretty much done, but there’s a few things that have me confuzzled. I’m sure I’ll figure them out eventually, but I’m getting a bit impatient with things that just don’t work no matter what I seem to try. So, if someone out there was willing I could send them the files and they could maybe lend a brother a hand and make some suggestions…?

Hey! Hey! Get your hand out of my pants!

Designer Is Dummy

• by GeekMan • In Rants •   3

What was I thinking?

I spent the entire day yesterday designing a new look for this site, choosing colors, layout, fonts and graphics and only now, after I’ve committed too much time and effort to back out and start fresh, do I realize that my nice, clean and simple design is fricking difficult as all get-out to build!

Sigh. Sometimes I’m too smart for my own good.

So now, instead of having a funny story to tell to entertain you, I can only sit here and complain about how sad my coding skilz are and bemoan the fact that I can’t get layer X to align with layer Y in IE even though it looks just fine and dandy in Firefox. I tell you, it’s enough to make a real manly-man cry.

If I was a manly-man, that is.

Instead, I think I’ll just pull out some more hair, scream a bit louder at my screen, and chug along in the hopes that one day all this stuff will make sense to me. Stupid CSS box model, bane of my existence. You will rue the day you defied me. You hear me, CSS?! You will rue! RUE!!!

Man, I need a life.

Grape Juice

• by GeekMan • In Childhood Memories •   4

A little story, just for you.

When I was but a young lad of 8 or so, I was sent off to sleep-away camp in upstate NY. My second year of being sent to what I lovingly called ‘kiddie-prison’ I was introduced to a special ritual that had been passed down through the years, from camper to camper, until it finally reached my good friend David. Now David, it must be pointed out, was a good friend in the same way that Hannibal Lector was a good chef.

Meaning, they both scared the bejeebies out of me.

The method by which a Neanderthal like David managed to find the brain cells necessary to recall this ritual is of such astounding scientific importance that even now, decades after the event, some of our government’s greatest minds are attempting to discover it in the hopes of it leading to a cure for Alzheimer’s. Unfortunately for the Alzheimer sufferers of the world, at present the leading theory is, and I quote;

“Sometimes, even stupid gets lucky.”

Anywaste, back to our story. One fine day, David and his cronies managed to corner me outside of the main eating establishment of the camp, which was known far and wide as the “Mess Hall”. This building was called that due to its almost supernatural ability to cause all who passed through its doorway to become violently ill within 3 hours and empty their stomachs all over its floors, tables, chairs, walls and, in at least one case that I witnessed with my own eyes the year before, the rafters in the ceiling. The truly astonishing part was that the person who hit the ceiling for some odd reason actually stood up in their chair to do it.

And it was a 10 year old girl.

On the beautiful day at camp that I have been talking about now for about an hour, David, who liked to lovingly refer to me as, “Shrimp-Nerd”, cornered me outside the mess hall and thrust a plastic cup filled with fluid into my hands. This caused me pause for two reasons; first, when a timid, shy and tiny mouse is cornered by a giant, angry and menacing cat the very last thing the mouse would expect the cat to do is hand him a drink and invite him to dinner.

Secondly, the liquid was black.

I’m not talking brown and fuzzy, like a cola or root beer. I’m talking deep, deep, dark black. Like distilled midnight, or death’s blood, or liquid evil. It was a dark color the kind of which nightmares are made of and, not to put to fine a point on it, just by the look on David’s face I deduced that drinking the contents of that plastic cup would be Bad.

“Hey, Shrimp-Nerd. See what a good friend I am? I went and got you some grape juice to drink on such a hot day like today.”
“Gee, David. You shouldn’t have.”
“But I did, Shrimp-Nerd. And since I was so nice, you wouldn’t wanna make me mad and not drink it, would you?”
“Heaven forbid.”
“So?”
“So?”
“Ain’t you going to drink it?”
“Now?”
“Yeah, now.” [knuckles cracking]
“Oh. Uhm, ok…”

Have you ever eaten or drunk something that you thought was tasty only to realize after it was in your mouth that it was something so horrible that Satan himself had a patent on it for use in Hell’s Kitchen? You know, like when you drink some milk only to discover that it has the texture of cottage cheese? Or when you think you’re eating a piece of delicious bread pudding only to realize afterwards that it was actually week-old mayo that had been sitting in the sun?

Oh yeah, you’re all with me now.

Well, as I brought that tiny plastic cup of demon-diarrhea to my lips I knew it would be bad, I just didn’t know how bad until that viscous liquid made its initial assault on my poor, defenseless tongue. David and his crew had never laughed so hard and for the next two weeks anytime they saw me they would ask if I needed a drink. And every time they did my eyes would fill with tears and my body would convulse as I began to dry-heave for the next hour or so at just the thought of what I could only imagine was the irreparable damage I had done to my gastrointestinal tract. And what was the disgusting liquid I had been forced to ingest? A mixture of salt, soy sauce, vinegar, coffee, chocolate syrup and, of all things, ground red pepper.

And to this day, grape juice still makes me gag.

Better Late Than Never

• by GeekMan • In Breaking News •   4

Boy, am I ever late.

You know, I was hoping to have the new site design ready to launch today, but alas, my busy schedule and inherent laziness have once again conspired to keep me from making my grand debut.

Well, for a little bit longer, at least.

This week I plan on finishing the new layout and also upgrading my Blog tool from MT to WordPress. So, if you notice things acting a bit weird around here this week you can honestly say that it’s not you, it’s me. Now, I know some people out there have been wondering if I would ever come back, and looking through my comments (ignoring the 1,735 spam comments added in the last three months, of course) I see that many of you would have been more than happy to see me miss my self-imposed deadline and fail.

And yes, I’m looking at YOU Mr. Hentai.

But a pox upon you Mr. Hentai, and all of those others who didn’t believe I was coming back! Naysayers and disbelievers, all! Look and see, for I have not failed! I did not betray your trust! Gaze upon your screen and be awed, for lo and behold, GeekMan has come again!

Ahem.

Uh…

Stop laughing at me.

You know what I meant.

Stop… please?

No, I am not crying.

[sniff]

Dammit.

I hate you.