Month: August 2007

Extra Baggage

• by GeekMan • In Traveling •   2

Just so you know…

This conversation took place in the London, Heathrow airport when I was stopped by a security guy.

Airport Security Guy – “I’m sorry sir, but you’ll need to check one of those bags.”
GeekMan – “Why?”
ASG – “You’re only allowed one carry-on bag when going through security.”
GM – “But I’m only making a connection here.”
ASG – “I’m afraid that you still need to go through security, so you can only have one bag.”
GM – “Curious. You would think that someone, somewhere would have mentioned that little piece of information to those of us making connections here before we got on the plane in New York.”
ASG – “That’s not something I have control over, sir.”
GM – “Alrighty then. I understand that you have your rules and I’ve got to follow those rules, however I think we might have a problem.”
ASG – “What problem?”
GM – “Well, one bag has two computers in it and the other has camera equipment.”
ASG – “And…?”
GM – “Well, I can’t check either bag because the equipment contained in them is both fragile and expensive.”
ASG – “Ah. I see.”
GM – “Yes. So, in this situation, what would you suggest I do?”
ASG – “Well, if you could somehow stuff one bag into the other…?”
GM – “Interesting tact. However, I feel the need to point out that the process of ‘stuffing’ fragile equipment tends to cause problems.”
ASG – “I see. I had not thought of that.”
GM – “Any other suggestions?”
ASG – “You could fly back to NY and find a direct flight to your final destination.”
GM – “Let me get this straight. In order for me to make it through this security checkpoint with two carry-on bags you’re suggesting that after having flown 8 hours to get this far that I fly back to NY for 8 hours, book another flight that doesn’t come through London and then fly to my actual destination?”
ASG – “Well, that would solve your problem, wouldn’t it?”
GM – “That’s true, but I would like to note that following that plan would cause me to be fired and thus negate my need to travel in the first place.”
ASG – “Ah. Well then, that leads to my next suggestion…”
GM – “I’m not quitting my job.”
ASG – “Well, if you’re not going to even listen to my suggestions…”
GM – “Sorry, sorry. I didn’t mean to be so negative. It’s just that I don’t know what I can do about this and I’d really rather not miss my connection flight.
ASG – “Well, maybe you could just hand carry the camera…?”
GM – “And 4 lenses? That would be very awkward.”
ASG – “How about hand carrying the computers, then?”
GM – “Wait. Do you mean to tell me that there’s no restriction on things I can carry onto the plane as long as they’re NOT in a bag?”
ASG – “Well, yes.”
GM – “Amazing! So, I can bring both of my computers and this knapsack of camera equipment onto the plane as long as I’m holding them in my hands outside of the case?”
ASG – “Of course. It’s not how much you have with you, but how many bags you have that we regulate. You could strap a Volkswagon to your ass and we’d let you through as long as you were only carrying a small bag along with it.”
GM – “Brilliant! So, I’ll just take out both of these very expensive laptops and carry them throughout the airport for everyone to see, will I? Along with my knapsack of super-expensive camera equipment?”
ASG – “Sounds good.”
GM – “Do you happen to have any bumper stickers?”
ASG – “Pardon?”
GM – “Well, I’d love to stick a bumper sticker on my forehead that says, ‘Stupid, tourist guy. Please mug me.”
ASG – “…”
GM – “Sigh. So, I’ll just take these laptops out and check my bag, then?”
ASG – “Yes. And please be quick about it. I’ve got puppies to kick and kittens to drown.”

Remember, when traveling overseas always check on the rules and regulations of EACH airport you’ll be going to and make sure you aren’t going to run into a problem like, for example, having too many carry-on bags to make it through security. Otherwise, you might find yourself standing at an airport urinal crying as you try and fail to balance two laptops on your head so you can pee.

And airport security people are mean. Just… mean.

The Battle Continues?

• by GeekMan • In Childhood Memories •   1

What ever happened to Battle of the Planets?

That’s what was going through my head this morning as I found myself humming the theme song I last heard maybe 20 years ago. I remember how much I loved that stupid show, with its horrible dubbed voice-work and convoluted storyline that made no sense at all, not even for kids. I also clearly recall being infatuated with the only female on the series, Princess. Not because I liked her, but because every episode there would be some silly, contrived reason for her to do a flip or other acrobatic move that would flash her nicely animated panties.

Yeah, I was a Geek even then.

After a quick look around the net imagine my surprise when I discovered that there just might be a movie based on the original Japanese cartoon coming out next year. I mean, the thought of once again seeing Mark, Jason, Tiny, Princess and that annoying bastard Keeyop in all their bird-based spandex glory is nearly enough to cause me to dance in glee. As it is, I’ve spent about an hour digging through some old boxes of junk searching for my 7-Zark-7 and 1-Rover-1 figurines. And yes, I know they’re not really part of the original series and were just added to the American version by the distributor to make the violent show more “kid-friendly.” But still, I don’t care.

Now, if only I could remember where my bird-cape and giant “G” belt were stored…

Inked Up

• by GeekMan • In Geek Life, Traveling •   2

So, I got a tattoo.

Oh sure, I’ve thought about getting them in the past just like almost everyone else. I wanted to impress people with my coolness by having a geeky-yet-dangerous Pac-Man with devil horns etched into my right arm. Or a cool Atari symbol, or a space invader alien, maybe.

Man, the girls would have been all over me.

But this weekend, while I was in San Diego, I finally did it. I got a tattoo. And while it may not be as cool as having a 1/8th scale Master Chief on my back, or anything, I still think it’s cool to show it off to everyone. There was a bit of pain, and a drop or two of blood, but nothing a real man like me couldn’t handle by tearing up and nearly retching all over the floor.

But if you’re thinking of getting a tattoo yourself, I do have a bit of advice for you.

When you’re alone, in the dark and using a felt-tip, metal-sheathed sharpie pen, always make sure that the pen cap is securely connected to the pen before you try to jam it closed with the palm of your hand or you might, you just might, wind up stabbing yourself in the palm of your hand with the business end of a permanent black magic marker causing, not only excruciating pain as it punctures your skin and goes almost a quarter of an inch into your hand, but also leaving you with a semi-permanent tattoo to help remind you of your stupidity.

So, who wants to see my “Big, Black Dot” tattoo?

Saint Diego

• by GeekMan • In Quickie, Traveling •   1

So, I’m in California.

It’s nice, I guess. Sunny and warm, with nice breezes by the water and lots of beautiful girls in small outfits and sun-and/or-bottle-bleached hair. I’m working though, so I don’t get to go outside of my hotel at all during the day and by the time I can go out at night I’m too tired to even think about it. All of which means that I could be in Newark, NJ or on the fricking moon for all the difference it makes to me since I never see anything but the hotel ballroom and my sleeping quarters. And let me tell you, sometimes the sleeping quarters are in need of a major makeover. I mean, when was the last time florescent, lime green wallpaper was in fashion? And how about this hotels’ love affair with badly stained orange carpeting? Walking on the carpet makes me very glad that I brought my Mighty Flip-Flops of Safe Personal Hygienic Action & Adventure.

Now if only I could find a way to remove my pants without touching anything…

Recovery

• by GeekMan • In Family, Geek Life •   3

Can’t talk, drowning in pink death.

Baby girl stuff… frightening. Little dresses, cuteness overload. Tiny hats, itty-bitty socks, smaller-than-small shoes… So. Damn. Cute. I will melt. I’m going to be like putty, like jello, in her hands. She will “pwn” me and I will be her willing slave. “Daddy, buy me a pony!” “Anything you want, princess.” No! No! I must resist the adorabulessness of the Mighty Baby. I must be stern. Strong. Unbending. And the first thing I must do is play Halo to regain my manliness.

The second thing is I need to do is stop crying when folding little, pink shirts.

My Wet Baby Day

• by GeekMan • In Family, Geek Life, Home Ownership •   1

Or, Baby Shower Weekend.

We’re holding our baby shower this weekend and in order to keep costs down we decided to throw the party in our apartment. Of course, we’re really looking at this shindig as more of a housewarming party because it will mark the first time we’ve had a party in our place since the renovations were completed, but the bonus is that we also get gifts for the baby. Unfortunately, this means that we need to unpack and clean our apartment, two things that we haven’t been able to do for the last eight months. And let me just say right now that if you’ve never lived through construction in your own home then you don’t have any idea how fricking awesome it feels to wake up in the morning NOT covered in white construction dust.

I actually cried when I woke that first morning.

Another downside of throwing the party in our home is that, since some of the guests will be bringing their small children with them, we’ll need to “baby-proof” our apartment which is something that we just don’t comprehend how to do. For one thing, we have stairs without a baby gate, and no plans to install one even after our child is born. Although the lovely HoBiscuit is iffy on my reasoning, I don’t believe that one is necessary if we just take care as parents to teach our child that the stairs are dangerous and she should be careful or she’ll get hurt. I grew up without stair gates, so I figure our kids can, too.

But, I ask you, why stop there?

You see, I also plan on burning her fingers with a hot pan to teach her not to play with hot things. Letting her stick her wet finger in a wall socket so she learns about the pitfalls of electricity. I’ll slam her fingers in a car door so she’ll always remember to keep her hands and feet inside the vehicle at all times, and I’ll even let her eat rat poison so she can thank me later on in life for teaching her not to eat things unless she knows what they are. This way she’ll learn all of life’s little safety lessons as a child living at home where I can protect her and then I’ll write a book about how everyone should do these things to raise perfect and happy kids and the world will praise me because of my superior parenting skills.

What? Why are you looking at me like I’m a monster?

Anywaste, babyproofing the apartment is tough for us because we don’t even understand what might be dangerous for a kid. Having never been in contact with children under the age of 7, I’m completely clueless about what they might find “fun” to play with, but I’m pretty sure I’ll need to hide the neon orange box cutters we have laying on the kitchen table. And I’ll probably need to put away all the day-glo colored bottles of household cleaners that I have in a box in the living room with, “Yummy Kandy” written on it. Two things I do know for sure is that someone will need to guard the stairs and we’ll need to put little socket-blocks in all the wall sockets to stop curious fingers. Hey, come on now, you didn’t really think I’d let kids hurt themselves, did you?

Really? Wow. That hurts… wow. Just… wow.

Geekgasm 360

• by GeekMan • In Education, Geek Life, Home Ownership •   0

I still got it.

Right now, I’m listening to music that resides on my networked attached storage device which is being piped through my home network to my home theater system. Some of you might not think this is such a big deal, and to you people I say, “You just don’t know.” This is SUCH a big deal, and not only because I’ve got the music playing over the network. No, that wouldn’t be very exciting since most people nowadays listen to their music through their computers, so of course my doing it is not big news.

Unless, of course, you take into account that I’m not using a computer.

Yeah, that’s right. No computer necessary for my music listening pleasure. I finally figured out how to directly stream music from my “server” (the aforementioned NAS) to my home theater sans computer. Why is playing music (soon to include picture slideshows and even movies) without needing a computer so important to me? One reason is that my NAS is always on but my computer isn’t. In fact, my computer has to travel with me when I go on the road for work which means if I’m not home then poor HoBiscuit wouldn’t be able to play ripped music or watch recorded movies until I returned.

And that would be bad.

Also, streaming directly from the NAS means that my computer is free to do other things, like photo editing, without having the added overhead of processing and streaming the music. And let me tell you, the less strain on my computer while I’m working on 500GB image files, the better. Now, if only I could figure out how to get the movies to stream without needing a computer to do the heavy lifting of on-the-fly transcoding, I’ll be in Geek heaven. The mere thought of watching all my… ahem, ‘free’ anime on the home theater’s 106″ screen has my mouth watering in anticipation.

And ohmygod, larger than life Pr0n!!!11

Marauding Rugrats

• by GeekMan • In Geek Life, HoBiscuit •   2

GeekHaus Child Infiltration Test Alpha — Passed

This weekend marked the first time we, and our home, has had children under three over for a visit and although the apartment survived without any damage, the same can’t be said for HoBiscuit and I. In fact, the looks of terror on our faces as the small children ran rampant throughout our house was enough for the parents of said children to fall to the floor in fits of uncontrollable laughter.

They even pointed. And did spit-takes.

Saturday was our baby-test, where our friends with a nine-month-old baby came over to visit. Before I get into details, let me say that this little girl is very, very cute. So cute that I find myself questioning whether there might have been a mix-up at the hospital leading to my friends taking home the wrong baby. I mean, my friends aren’t Quasimodo and Medusa, but still… for them to have such an adorable baby must be some sort of crazy cosmic joke on me. I swear, if my baby is ugly I’m going to find a way to suck some of the cuteness out of their baby and inject it into mine. Heck, I might just do it anyway to give my little girl a leg up on the cute baby competitions at the playground. And I’m telling you, those playground mothers are fiercely competitive!

They scare me.

So, this nine-month-old bundle of cuteness comes over on Saturday and HoBiscuit and I are so frightened of her that we can barely bring ourselves to sit down near her. At one point, her parents needed to change her diaper and offered to allow HoBiscuit or me do it as ‘practice’. I jumped and ran away so fast that there was a whistling noise as the air rushed to fill the space I had occupied in the room. Later, after they had gone home, I felt the need to hose down my leather couch to remove all the drool she had left behind as a memento of her visit.

Yeah, I’m a little bit of a neatnick.

On Sunday some other friends came over with their 18-month old and two and a half year old boys. The main difference between these two boys and my other friends’ little girl, aside from the plumbing, is that the boys are what they call ‘toddlers’. That means they can stand up and walk under their own power.

O. M. G.

I never knew children were so fast! I honestly believe these boys were planning trouble before they arrived at the apartment. They had to have had a plan of attack that they worked out beforehand, with PowerPoint slides and topography maps and everything, because they almost instinctively knew where to go to make every adult in the room jump up after them shouting, “No! No! No!”

I think that was their favorite game.

And, I now know that one day the human race will definitely find a way of traveling faster than the speed of light, or perhaps inventing some sort of instantaneous transporter, because these two kids could get from point A to point B so fast I had to learn how to blink without letting my eyelids meet. They would literally be sitting down on the rug at our feet, happily playing with some cars or something and the very next millisecond they would be across the room trying to lick a power outlet. Meanwhile, mom and dad are doubled over laughing so hard at the scared-out-of-our-minds look on both HoBiscuit and my faces that they can’t even manage to stop the 18 month-old boy from grounding goldfish snacks into the carpet and then eating the powdery residue off the floor. Why didn’t I ever notice how horrible children were before HoBiscuit got pregnant?

Holy crap, what am I going to do when I’m a father?

Floodwatch

• by GeekMan • In Home Ownership •   1

So… heavy rain sucks.

This morning there was a massive rainstorm here in NY and the basement of our building flooded. Luckily for us, our apartment was spared any real damage, just a little seepage under our basement door, but three other apartments with direct access to the basement were not so fortunate. Our neighbors have about 3″ of water covering the floor of their apartment now, completely destroying many of their carpets, books, low furniture and any other stuff that was on the floor. It’s doubly bad for them since they’re in the process of doing work on their upstairs area and so are living in their basement. That means a lot of their stuff was in cardboard boxes on the floor waiting to be unpacked once the work upstairs was done.

Talk about a crappy day.

Plus, all of the building storage rooms, where many apartments keep extra stuff in boxes, were also filled with water. Again, luckily for us we only had plastic tubs in the storage areas, but many of our neighbors had stuff in cardboard boxes which means their stuff is most likely destroyed. The really strange thing about this whole mess was that we had a condo meeting last night to discuss some ongoing problems the building has been having with water leaks. Even weirder was that some owners expressed the opinion that as long as the leaks didn’t affect them they didn’t feel they needed to pay money to have it fixed.

Talk about Karma.

So now, as I sit in my dry basement I am thanking my contractor for insisting on using water-resistant and waterproof materials when he remodeled my basement. Even though those things cost me a little more money at the time, they are definitely worth the it now! Even more so since next weekend we’re supposed to be hosting a baby shower here at the apartment, and if we had flooded I’m not sure what we would have done with the 60 people coming over. Hmmm… maybe we would have been forced to hold the shower at Medieval Times, like I wanted to in the first place. Ah, just thinking about the serving wenches, leg-o-meat and jousting knights is making me smile.

Damn, maybe I shouldn’t have been so quick to thank my contractor after all, huh?