Month: August 2006

Pressed For Words

• by GeekMan • In Contests •   2

I’m starting a new PhotoBlog.

Wow, just writing that for the entire world to see is exciting in a “major loser coming out of the nerd-boy closet” kind of way. I’m actually tingling all over in awe of my own Geekiness. And right this very second, as I type these words out, I’m smiling in a cheesy consolation-prize-winning-game-show-contestant way. I could be wrong, but I also think my nipples are hard.

Yep. Hard like little, hot, pink diamonds.

Anywaste, in order to do this new site justice, I’ve gone out and designed a brand new website, complete with its own URL and all the other Geeky stuff that you don’t really care about. However, since I didn’t want to use MovableType as the main Blogging tool for this new PhotoBlog, I decided to give WordPress a try and installed it on this new site of mine.

Because I’m so cutting edge like that, yo.

Now, here’s the thing. I don’t know diddly about WordPress. I’ve read all the info on it and it seems pretty straight-forward when it comes to designing templates and themes and everything, but I can’t seem to wrap my tired mind around the conceptual discussions about WordPress themes that I’m reading on the web. Which is basically my way of saying that I understand, in theory, what I’m supposed to do to make WordPress look the way I want, but I don’t seem to be able to implement the design properly in practice.

Which is where YOU come in.

I’m looking for someone who can explain to me by example how to make my PhotoBlog design into a WordPress theme so that I can then create other themes in the future. I’m not looking for a tutorial about WordPress themes on the web (read them), or for a technical jargon infused dissertation about how the guts of WordPress works (read those, too). I just want someone who can look at my design and then explain to me, through email and/or IM sessions, how to take that design and make it into a WordPress theme, without my having to learn PHP. I want to learn how to create WP themes so that I can make them available for EVERYONE to use whether they understand the inner workings of WordPress, PHP, HTML, CSS or not.

I know people are doing this, I just need to learn how.

And, as a reward for helping me learn the proper way to create WP themes, I would then create for you a WP theme for your Blog. That’s right, help me and I’ll try to make your site look pretty… or prettier. Or not so Blogger-template ugly. Whatever. Hey, it’s a free site redesign by a guy who makes a nice living doing graphic design work for big companies. Who knows? You might even like the new design enough to use it! So, if you’re interested in giving me a hand please email me at geekman(at-symbol)themightygeek.com.

So, who wants to help me out?

Easy Days

• by GeekMan • In Experiments •   5

I’m being lazy today.

I’m just sitting around the house, playing Halo, surfing the web and napping. All in all, a completely lazy in a good way day. So, instead of writing another long, convoluted story here today I thought I might just ask you a question instead. And you can answer in the comments if you want. Or just ignore me and click over to something you find more entertaining. So, since I want to get back to playing Halo ASAP, here is the Mighty Question of the Day.

What is the dumbest lie you ever tried to get away with telling?

Double Standards Suck

• by GeekMan • In Geek Life, HoBiscuit •   2

I am losing the domestic war.

If you’re not married, if you’re not living with someone day in and day out with nowhere else for you to go but where you and this other person share a living space, then you have no idea what I mean by domestic war. You won’t understand the daily battles fought over whose turn it is to do the dishes, or why a neat pile to one party is a mess to the other, or how important… no, vital control of the TV remote is to having a quiet and happy home. You don’t know about the thermostat skirmishes won or lost due to the availability and proximity of a blanket to the couch and you will have no understanding of how, by letting your significant other win even a small victory over something so trivial as who is going to get up from their comfortable seat and close the window, can lead to your downfall and thus to your imminent pussyfication.

And it is more and more imminent for me every day.

This became quite clear to me last night when I was sitting on the couch watching football and HoBiscuit decided to join me. And by join me, I mean that she literally crawled over me, inserted herself between me and the arm of the couch that I was sitting against, pushed, twisted and squirmed until she fit there with her head on me and her legs over the arm of the couch, and then kneaded my stomach with the back of her head until she was comfortable.

And then she began to talk.

Now guys, think back to your youth when you used to think your father was an idiot. Remember how, when your mother was talking or telling him to do something, he never seemed to actually hear what she was saying? And later on, he always asked you what your mother had said because he couldn’t remember? Well, I don’t think it was because your father was stupid, I think it was more like a survival instinct because as soon as HoBiscuit started talking to me, I couldn’t hear her anymore.

It was like magic.

One second she’s yammering away about something unimportant to me, like maybe how she hates work or how she saw this great dress on sale or something, and the next moment I can’t hear a word she’s saying but I can hear Al Michaels saying the Cowboys are kicking the Saints’ asses.

Like I said; magic.

Anywaste, at some point HoBiscuit stopped talking and started napping, on my stomach remember, and it began to get a little uncomfortable for me. Not wanting to startle her, I gently tapped her on the shoulder and asked her to go lay down somewhere else because even though this might have been a comfortable position for her it was becoming increasingly uncomfortable for me. Without even shifting her weight HoBiscuit said, “But I’m so comfortable and you’re such a nice pillow that I think I’ll stay right where I am.”

Which got me thinking.

You see, if she had been sitting on the couch enjoying one of her favorite TV shows and I had come along and pushed and prodded my way onto the couch as she had, and then used her body as a pillow like she had with my body, and then started talking to her about things that were not important to her like she had just done to me then I don’t think she would have been quite as understanding and complacent as I had been. And then, to top it all off, if her body felt as uncomfortable as mine was feeling at that moment with her head on my stomach, and she asked me to get off of her and I didn’t get off her, I believe she would not have been pleased and we might have even had a fight of some sort with her calling me insensitive and uncaring or something. In other words, she believed she could get away with this type of behavior while at the same time I could not.

Basically, she was perpetuating a double standard.

I believed that this was wrong. In fact, I felt so strongly about this that I even mentioned my whole reasoning to her. I explained, at great length, my position that she shouldn’t be able to get away with this type of behavior and what made her believe she could get away with it when I could not. And do you know what she did? She opened one eye, looked up at me from my very pained belly and said, “Because I’m cute and you love me.” And then she went back to sleep.

Point. Set. Match.

Worst. Comedian. Ever.

• by GeekMan • In Breaking News •   6

I know I’m going to regret this in the morning.

Click here to see my first ever attempt at doing stand up comedy in front of strangers. Now, just so that you’re properly warned, the material I used for my stand up routine was racier than most of what I write here on the site. That’s not to say it’s full of curse words or anything, but it might not be safe for some office environments. Also, I apologize in advance for the crappy clip. The quality of the video I recieved was slightly below “amazingly blown out” and the audio was so bad that I could barely make out some of what was said, but I did my best to clean it up before posting it. And at least you can get the general idea of what I’m doing and saying.

Which is just enough to let you know how much I suck.

What The Frick Happened?

• by GeekMan • In Breaking News •   3

Yesterday evening this site died.

I had nothing to do with the demise of TMG and to say I was surprised by my website’s death just doesn’t quite capture what I felt when I visited here and saw over 9 months of my online life was missing. Even worse was that only a few hours later, the entire site disappeared and there was nothing here but a 404 Error page.

Boy, was I ever surprised by that!

After 24 hours of frantic emails to my web host provider the problem seems to have been fixed which is good, but what isn’t good is that it even happened in the first place. And the real kicker? All of this happened two days after my stupid post about quitting!

Now don’t I feel stupid?

Anywaste, everything seems to be alright now, but because of this whole mess I think I’ll try a different host for a new site I’m thinking of creating. You know, just in case. And I also think I’ll post the little note I was going to leave here when all this drama began yesterday, just so I’ll remember exactly how I felt when I believed 9 months of my online life were erased by mistake.

I’m very angry.

Right now my website has reverted back to a version of itself from over 9 months ago and I don’t know why. Somehow, without my permission or knowledge, my web hosting provider decided to do something to my site and now I may have permanently lost almost a year’s worth of posts, pictures and updates. All that work and now it’s just gone. Poof. Just like that. Even worse, they haven’t answered my emailed inquiries in over 6 hours and, like most web-based services, they don’t have a contact phone number.

Which leaves me with nothing to do but wait.

There’s no real point to this post except to let all of you know that I haven’t voluntarily disappeared and if I don’t post for a while it won’t be because I don’t want to, but more likely it’ll be because I can’t. If these guys, who I have to say have been great to me for the last 5 years, have actually screwed me by erasing over 9 months of my internet life then I am going to be looking for, and moving to, a new provider which may take me a while. If they can somehow retrieve the lost files and get me back to where I was yesterday before this glitch then I’ll be back much sooner, although I might still want a new host when my current contract runs out. For now though, I’m so pissed off I could scream.

Screw that. I think I will scream. AAAAARRRGGHHH!!!

So, anyone know of a good web host provider they’d like to recommend?

A Question Of Self-Pity

• by GeekMan • In Experiments •   11

I’ve often wondered what would happen if I were to stop posting.

Not that I plan on giving up this website, mind you. Nor am I considering disappearing and never writing anything on the web ever again. Far from it, actually. Truth be told, I really enjoy bearing my soul for laughs to an uncaring, unseen mass of people who have nothing better to do with their lives but judge me based on my words. And all the writing I do is in the hopes that someone out there will find it in their heart to like me enough to acknowledge my existence, if only for the short moment it takes for them to type “U R fun-E” in the comments.

Which, I’m dismayed to say, no one ever has.

So don’t worry about me quitting, because that’s not going to happen. I’m no quitter. Nope. Not me. Hey, if I were a quitter I would have quit long ago. Back when quitting was the fashionable thing to do. As was sudden reappearances under different names on different websites just so the quitters could get their daily fix of adulation. Nosireebob, I’m no mindless trend follower like some people I could mention but won’t because they’re no longer on the web so mentioning them would serve no purpose except to fill my site with dead links and thus piss you off.

And yet I still wonder.

I wonder if anyone out there would actually miss me if I were gone. Would someone who reads my words on a semi-daily basis, you for example, actually shed a tear if one day TMG was nothing more than a “Page Not Found – 404 Error?” Would you send out a search party to find out what had happened to me? Would you even furrow your brow in a questioning way? Or would you simply shrug, click over to your favorite pr0n site and say, “What a loser” as you unscrew the top of your favorite lotion?

What would you do minion? What. Would. You. Do?

One Of The Heroes

• by GeekMan • In Breaking News, Geek Life, HoBiscuit •   1

I’m on TV again.

Yesterday, HoBiscuit and I were part of the live studio audience watching a taping of the Colbert Report. We were lucky enough to get seats right in the front row and I even got to give Stephen a high-five twice while he was mugging for the crowd.

Oh, happy day.

When we were shown our seats I happened to notice that a couple of rows behind us in the audience was the plush, leather chair that Stephen had been “saving” for soon-to-be ex-Senator Joe Lieberman. This discovery caused butterflies to gather in my stomach because I knew that I had a very good chance of getting on TV if they showed a wide angle audience shot of the chair during the show. Now, it wasn’t the thought of being on TV that made the butterflies swarm, but rather the knowledge that not knowing I might actually be on TV that morning I happened to have dressed for comfort instead of dressing as if I were going to a job interview.

So of course I’m in the shot.

Which means that I am now forever immortalized as “That Guy On The Colbert Report Who Dressed Like A Retarded, Color-Blind Golfer.” Let this be a lesson to you, boys and girls. If you’re going to leave the house, for any reason whatsoever, always, always dress as if you’re going to interview for a job as the new CEO of Berkshire Hathaway. In fact, today I’m going to my local Men’s Warehouse and ordering 8 fancy suits for myself. Why 8? One for every day of the week and a spare, of course!

I’m gonna like the way I look, they guarantee it.

For those who watched the Colbert Report last night, you might have seen me on the lower right-hand side of your TV set at the very beginning of the audience sweep to Lieberman’s chair. I’m looking off camera (to your right, my left) at Stephen who was very funny even off camera. He’s also taller than HoBiscuit thought he would be, which makes it easier to understand why she has such a crush on him. It might also help explain why she handed me divorce papers right after the show citing my “irrefutably inferior breeding stock,” the “obvious fact that the plaintiff should be with a real man with huge balls like Stephen Colbert instead of a pathetic, balless Geek like the defendant” and also the “impossibility of continuing the farce of pretending to be in love with someone as undeniably stupid as the defendant no matter how much he pays.” Plus, she claims my account is in arrears.

But hey, I’m on TV!

The Loser Patter Song

• by GeekMan • In Poetry •   1

I am the very model of a loser Blogger wannabe
I’ve written words of mockery, parody and comedy
I know my place in this world, so I post my past historical
From Barbizon to riding bikes, in order categorical

I’m very well acquainted, too, with matters mostly mythical
From D&D to Spider-Man and Bread so egotistical
About website designing I am teeming with a lotta news
With many cheerful facts about the CSS you oughtta use

With many cheerful facts about the CSS you oughtta use
With many cheerful facts about the CSS you oughtta use
With many cheerful facts about the CSS you oughtta use

I’m very good at black & white and even color photographs
So famous in my own mind that I’m always signing autographs
In short, for words of mockery, parody and comedy
I am the very model of a loser Blogger wannabe

In short, for words of mockery, parody and comedy
I am the very model of a loser Blogger wannabe

I know our Blogging history; GreyMatter, Blogger and MT
In answer to monotony I’ve argued with anatomy
By questioning my cognizance I create my crazy omnibus
My misanthropic messages make hurtful humans humorous

I can misinform my minions using ancient haiku Japanese
And set the stage to write the scene of begging sex upon my knees
Then hum a happy tune of which I’ve heard but once or twice before
And whistle all the songs from that infernal bastard Solonor

And whistle all the songs from that infernal bastard Solonor
And whistle all the songs from that infernal bastard Solonor
And whistle all the songs from that infernal bastard Solonor

I leave for you this catalogue of my manic mental mayhem
Where I’ve written every detail in the hopes that you’ll enjoy ’em
In short, for words of mockery, parody and comedy
I am the very model of a loser Blogger wannabe

In short, for words of mockery, parody and comedy
I am the very model of a loser called The Mighty Geek!

Hot Ride

• by GeekMan • In Geek Life •   2

Pain sucks.

This weekend HoBiscuit and I made the idiotic decision to ride our bikes further than we ever have before by riding from our apartment down to Coney Island. Before we left I checked the distance on not one, but three separate maps to make sure we wouldn’t be going far enough to cause us undo pain. Especially since this was going to be the furthest we’ve ever ridden since we bought these bikes two months ago. According to the maps, Coney Island wasn’t all that far away and would take only 20 minutes by car so we figured riding our bikes there would be easy.

Stupid, stupid maps.

What the maps didn’t show us was the difference between being in an air-conditioned car driving at 45MPH down the street versus pedaling a stupid bike up a fricking ginormous hill under the broiling hot noon-day sun. The maps also failed to take in to account my sensitive nuts, which were so upset with me for the punishment I was putting them through that by mile 6 they had transformed themselves into what felt like tiny, crushed glass and barbed-wire filled sacks of pain.

Did I mention the streets here are bumpy?

And my taint, the part of the body that’s ‘tween your nuts ‘n anus, was burning up like my bicycle seat was made of red-hot magma. It really felt like my shorts were made of sandpaper and my legs were covered in rough bark. I honestly believe that if I wasn’t sweating like a horny teenage boy locked in a small room with a naked Carmen Electra then the hair on my crotch would have burst into flames.

The burning. The burning. Oy, the burning.

Now, since I have a speedometer on my bike I know exactly how far we rode and let me tell you something, maps lie. You see, according to the maps we were only going to go twice the distance we normally ride on the weekends, meaning we would be going about 12 miles. But the truth was we rode over 22 miles on a day where the average temperature was 88 degrees Fahrenheit with 65% humidity! We did 10.75 miles… each way! And the worst part wasn’t even the ride to Coney Island. It’s that we went all the way down there with the thought of a delicious Nathan’s Famous Frank in mind for our lunch only to become so discouraged by the stupendously long lines there that we simply bought ourselves a couple of Powerbars and Gatorades at a nearby Duane Reade for lunch! And then we turned around and rode back home! And we both want to do it again next weekend!

OMG, we’ve turned into health nuts. Someone kill me.