OUR HOUSE IS WIRED!

Jeff is in the living room, serving up mp3s from his computer [in here in the computer room with me] into the Mistress [our huge speaker system in the living room].

SWANK.

In here I've got a nice little set of Altec Lansings that do quite a serviceable job at aurally blasting mp3s in my general direction. I've got Three Doors Down cranked up to drown out whatever Jeff's listening to in the living room. Hopefully he won't get into a loudness pissing contest, because the NHT 2.5is will terrorize my little computer speakers and make them hide in the closet and beg for mercy.

Y'know, maybe it's just me, but when I was preparing to enter in the work world, I had it drilled into my head over and over that professionalism isn't just about a mindset—it's about how you present yourself, in all forms of communication.

Now, granted, I often deliberately break professionalism rules to make a point—but when I do so, it's obvious, and the points are generally well-made. However, I really have to wonder about people who seem to have lived with their heads in the sand for the past decade…so much that the way they present themselves is so lacking that you have trouble taking them seriously.I've run into this with a person that I've got dealings with at work right now. Obviously, I'm going to be circumspect and not name names, but this person could use some back instruction on how to conduct business in today's world.

The decision: do the spraying ourselves, or call in an exterminator?

The problem: we spotted a healthy and happy black widow spider with a huge web right outside the guest bedroom.

I don't like spiders, and I especially don't like them making happy little nests right outside my guest bedroom when I've got three guests coming to stay with us in the next 30 days.

Either way, her days are numbered.It's been a quiet day at work—things coming in slowly but steadily, so the day has passed quickly. I'm ready to go home, although I'm not totally sure of what I'm going to do when I get there. Perhaps clean the kitchen or something eminently useful like that. Or maybe I'll just sprawl out on the guest bed and read for a couple of hours—that sounds pretty good.

I totally forgot to set meat out to thaw, so I guess that we'll be having leftover chili tonight. We'll live.

Here's my question for the evening: what makes a geek, a geek? What is it, exactly, that gets you entrance into this peculiar little world?

And, I suppose my true question is…why am I in it?

I ask myself this sometimes, and tonight after Heather and Jess visited, I've really been asking myself those questions. It's sometimes difficult for me to listen to the wondergeeks talk about what they're doing with their lives, because I always feel that in comparison, my life comes up lacking.

This, I think, is because I'm torn between what I'm good at doing, and what I feel that I should be doing. The two aren't the same, and I know it.

Lately, my life has been so boring that I haven't felt like posting anything. I've been doing the same usual boring stuff (washing dishes, going to work, reading the same websites I always do) so I've had absolutely nothing of insight to say.

But, I've been rescued. Jess has something to say about what I should post on domesticat. (302K, mp3 format)

And now for the big news….I am once again shorthaired. yeah, yeah, we all knew this was coming, didn't we? I got to have fun with the stylist today—I got the usual question, "Ummmmmmm, are you SURE you really want to do this?"Yep. So I went from having small wispy bangs and one-length hair that was halfway down my back…to hair that now touches the bottom of my earlobes. Everything below that in the back is buzzed with a #8 guard.

Ladies and gentlemen, I'm proud to announce that yes, I have a neck again, and it is visible. :)

I'm sitting here at my desk, looking totally busy, with Fatboy Slim's "Kalifornia" humming in my ears. I'm pondering lunch—I'm supposed to meet someone for lunch today but I don't know if it's going to work out or not.

I'm a bit disgruntled—one of my new favorite sites (kuro5hin.org) got nailed by some dumb-ass 3l337 skript k!dd3z, and as a result they've taken the site down. Sigh. I really liked kuro5hin.org—it was like Slashdot, but without a lot of the crap, and it was a lot more focused on geek life and culture instead of just 'Open Source Rooolz!'

(Sorry. I like Linux. I even have a penguin cap. But I'm not as rabid about it as some people I know. I agree that it's a good OS, and that micro$quish has major flaws, but I do graphic design professionally. The Gimp, the image editor for linux, just isn't robust enough yet for my uses.)