#nerdworldproblems – Page 2 – Life in the Cheese Drawer

internet hipster!

July 28, 2014 kate Comments 2 comments

i wrote this for my column in the newsleader way back in 2002! some of my predictions did not hold true…
I have a confession to make: I am an internet geek. While some people may shy away from the internet and all it holds, I grasp it and embrace it, holding it and all it offers dear to me. You want to hear the geekiness? I used to find coupons that would get me $50 of merchandise free, I know what mp2s are and I remember when Hotmail was owned by Hotmail, not Microsoft.
Lately, however, the quality of the internet has rapidly declined. How so? Well, the afore mentioned $50 coupon? I’m lucky if I find a coupon for free shipping these days! So many web site upstarts were blossoming in 1998-99, free stuff on the internet was easy to find. One web site would offer up to $25 of free merchandise, and all I had to do was pay shipping. Another web site had an offer where if I created a “wedding web site” (I wasn’t getting married, nor am I married now, but what do they know?), I would get $50 free merchandise from a high-quality internet site, and all I had to pay was shipping. Once, I actually found a $20 coupon that INCLUDED shipping; I was ecstatic.
I can’t find anything these days. Amazon.com boasts free shipping on purchases over $100, but when am I going to spend that much? The mp3 craze is so high that finding any mp3s on the internet is nearly impossible, even those you pay for! (Copyright issues: another subject.) Yessiree, the internet is darn near impossible to fanagle any free stuff out of these days. Those were the good old days, when I could get $50 of items for $3.50.
Not only is finding free stuff a futile battle, but pop-up ads are insane. It used to be that only “risque” web sites had pop-up ads with advertisers taking you to their other web sites. Now, everyone and their neighbor is trying to find a good way of advertising on the internet. Advertisements don’t work online. No one pays attention to them, and this is the problem web-companies have; how are they going to sell advertising if research shows web site ads are useless? They have to find some way to fund their web sites, so they inundate us with pop-up ads and monkey target practice and musical dancing bears and $20 free if you click the arrow which is moving so slow a two-year-old could click it. The latest ads are pop-up ads which are almost transparent and have no X to get you out of them! No X means I have to search for five minutes before I can close the ad. Sure, no X means that I have to look at the ad while I’m trying to close it, but it also means that I’m so frustrated I wouldn’t buy from the advertiser anyway!
This is not a good thing, though, because it means to fund these web sites, soon the owners are going to start charging us to view their web sites. I see in the future no more free internet. OK, the internet isn’t totally free now because of the $20/month we pay our internet service providers, but pretty soon we’re going to have to automatically pay X amount of dollars to have internet-based e-mail (Hotmail, Yahoo, etc.) and pay a monthly fee to see certain web sites. The Wall Street Journal already charges to look at the entire paper online.
The new trend is going to be upon us soon. You know the old-age adage: “I remember when Twinkies were a nickel, movies were a dime, a bottle of pop was eight cents and gas was 15 cents a gallon.” When I feel I’m ready to spit out an adage of my own to my kid(s), it’ll be “When I was a kid, my e-mail was free, I didn’t have to pay to find out weather information from weather.com and they actually gave me stuff for free, even if I wasn’t married!”

mmm cake

March 9, 2014 kate Comments 0 Comment

after using my new computer setup for a couple days, i realized i was getting nauseous while sitting here. i looked online as to what it could be, and found that a lot of people who switch to LED monitors have issues with how they’re lit. so nate and i switched out our monitors, and i’m using his ginormous 27″ LCD as my main monitor and his LED as my secondary. how annoying. further annoyingness is that it’s taking me forever to find the right color settings. #firstworldproblems
and here’s a cake i made for work tomorrow! i bought a cake decorating set with a crapton of tips for $2, and i decided to try it out since i had some extra frosting. i should have done the entire cake with that frosting tip. that would’ve been cool looking.

aaauuuggghh

February 9, 2014 kate Comments 0 Comment

my taxes are not filed yet, but after this week i should be able to send them off to uncle sam.
and i am still waffling over which mac to get to replace my 8 year old imac. now i’m wondering if i should get a macbook and just hook it up to a couple monitors if needed. i do hate my current laptop. and then the cheap thing to do would be to just get a mac mini and use my current monitor, keyboard, and mouse. decisions decisions and #firstworldproblems
(and still, at the same time, my current mac works just fine and i don’t REALLY need to replace it… )

a rant

January 24, 2014 kate Comments 0 Comment

my brand new house has a ton of phone jacks all over. i have no use for them. you know what i do have a use for? ethernet cat5 jacks all over. you would think that builders would get a clue and start wiring houses for internet as well as cable and phone.

that said, my netflix/amazon prime streaming quality has been so bad lately, that last night i got finally got fed up with it. because of the no ethernet jacks, i’d been running the ps3 wirelessly, which apparently decreases signal strength when it has to run through two walls. i ran a 50-foot cat5 out and hooked it up.
aahhhhh *clouds part, sun shines*
now i have an unsightly cord running from the office to the far side of the living room, right where i can trip over it. when nate and i finish off the basement, cat5 jacks are definitely going in.

sherlockian

January 6, 2014 kate Comments 0 Comment

i recently rewatched all the episodes of BBC’s sherlock so I can be prepared for when the show’s 3rd season/series airs on the 19th.
i love the show, i love that it’s modernized, and i love that it’s british, but for the love of all that is human, i swear i miss half of each episode because 1. i am not british and understanding the accent takes some time and 2. he talks so dang fast sometimes! so while mr. cumberbatch is doing his best to sherlockify his acting, i as a consumer only catch about half of what exactly was sherlock’s explanation of how something happened.
that said, i am super excited for the 19th. that and i’ve got one more episode of arrow to watch until i’m caught up on that, which airs new episodes on the 16th.
since i have basic channels now as well as a normal work schedule, do you know how awesome it is to actually look forward to a weekly tv show? i watched LOST the day after each episode aired on my computer, but it wasn’t quite the same as looking forward to a show’s first airing on tv while sitting on your couch. it’ll be like watching TNG or herk/xena again 😀

house on hold – a houseblog update. (or, grrrr)

November 6, 2013 kate Comments 0 Comment

i have been living around boxes for a month now. after packing for moving last weekend, this week i had to root through boxes to find clothes to wear to work. let’s just say the week-long delay has not been fun.
then, i got a call from my realtor today saying that they STILL hadn’t gotten the RD loan approval yet. my loan officer had sent in three RD loans at the same time and has gotten then other two back while nate’s and my loan is still waiting. unfortunately, RD offices aren’t accepting inquiry calls (of course), so she can’t call to figure out what’s going on.
this was seriously like deja vu all over again; last year we had the same problem trying to get into our apartment. what is wrong with my karma??
i had a truck lined up, my days off (again), and assumed everything was well because i hadn’t heard anything monday or tuesday. arrrgggh!!
after a convo with the loan lady, and given a date of NO LATER than three more days, she said, well, this is ridiculous. she contacted our realtor to see if we could get in tomorrow anyway, since the house is vacant. after waiting about 45 minutes, i got a call back from the realtor, telling us the builder said yes, we can move in as long as we assume responsibility if anything happens between tomorrow and when we actually close. (and transfer all utilities over to our name.)
so, we’re on for tomorrow again. ready to move! tonight i packed up some more stuff, and there’s still a ton of stuff that needs to be packed up. i have more stuff than i thought.
(ps – tomorrow i will be posting from my phone, unless i can get over to my mom’s house to use her internet. internet comes on tuesday – ugh, what a wait!

)
[see – i closed my parenthesis!]

commence kablpomo!

November 1, 2013 kate Comments 0 Comment

because my house life is a shambles right now, with boxes lining the walls and conquering the porch every day as i try to kick off my shoes, kablpomo seems a little hopeless to me. nanowrimo seems light years away, although i will attempt to do some writing on my devil’s syrup book this month, and i haven’t cracked a book in at least week.
at this point, because everything’s all over the place, it’s easier to come home from work, throw my stuff in the corner (because, really, does it make a difference since everything’s a mess anyway?), pet a cat, and plop on the couch to spend an hour deciding what to watch on netflix.
then spend an hour surfing reddit.
then spend an hour creeping people on facebook and twitter.
then spend an hour finding the best price on an obscure movie i watched 28 years ago.
then time to go to bed, and if i bring my phone, spend another hour on reddit.
what did i accomplish? well, i got my money’s worth of bandwidth from charter.
when did my brain make a switch from thinking reading and writing was fabulous to boring? why will i put down a book to pick up my phone to look at inane stuff that, ultimately, i don’t really care about?

image by Audrey Westcott - http://www.studlife.com/author/audreywestcott/ — image by Audrey Westcott – http://www.studlife.com/author/audreywestcott/

way back in the year 2000, the american psychological association was already studying the effects of internet addiction. this was back when modems, chat rooms, and waiting until after you got home from work to check your personal emails were still a thing. if they were studying it THEN, when every person didn’t have a personal internet machine in his or her pocket, i can only image the effects now.
looking at some more recent coverage, there are some places that actually have internet withdrawal programs.

Bradford Regional Medical Center, has become the first in the U.S. to treat severe Internet addiction through a 10-day inpatient program. Patients admitted to the voluntary behavorial health treatment center must first undergo a “digital detox” that prohibits Internet use for at least 72 hours, followed by therapy sessions and educational seminars to “help them get their Internet compulsion under control.”
“Like any other addiction, we look at whether it has jeopardized their career, whether they lie about their usage, or whether it inteferes with relationships,” Young explained.
Internet Addiction Disorder (IAD) was first coined as a joke by Dr. Ivan Goldberg in 1995.

well har har, dr. ivan. who’s laughing now? not me, that’s for sure. the internet hasn’t jeopardized my career (quite the opposite!), i don’t lie about my usage, and the only relationship MY usage has interfered with is my self relationship (nate’s usage is another story 😉 ).
like all addictive substances, go through withdrawal and then stay away from it. willpower! willpower! but how on earth does a person stay away from the internet this day in age, especially when my job relies on it? it certainly doesn’t help that i’ve probably got a brain that tends toward addiction.
until that day comes, i’ll use that useless, addiction-crazy willpower of mine and attempt to corral my personal usage – attempt being the keyword. i’m not giving up the internet, but i can try to put it in its place. i win, internet. i win.

Getting past the block

October 6, 2013 kate Comments 0 Comment

When I sit down to write, fingers to keyboard, ready to fill the white void, I often have a moment’s hesitation. There is something daunting about that blank space that gives me a pause, and I have a short burst of writer’s block. What if I can’t fill the space? What if my brain doesn’t want to spit out the words? What if the fact that I haven’t written anything substantial in three months finally catches up to me? What if it’s gone? What if…what if…what if…?
Then the words flow from brain to fingers, and the white void becomes something substantial – something real.
When I was invited to post to Medium, I was so excited. But I had no idea what to write – of course now that I had an opportunity to reach more people on a large platform, I felt like my brain was out of good ideas. My first (and only, save this one) post was something I had written in 2007.
I used to write all the time. In gradeschool I was the huge nerd who wrote short stories and read them aloud during Reading class in school. I started a full-length novel my first year in college, an angsty fantasy romance where the heroine dies in the end. I took many classes where writing was the focal point, finishing with a minor in creative writing. I enjoyed writing research papers (yes, you read that right). A couple years after college, I started my blog as an outlet for my words, and nine-and-a-half years later, here we are. My lifetime readers have seen the early entries, posts pulling from the past with memories swelling at the seams; they have also seen recent contributions, where the majority of my posts are daily comings and goings and full of pictures.
What do you do when the well feels like it’s drying up? I started writing a book on my journey to eliminate corn syrup from my diet back in May…I haven’t written a word in three months. Instead of pushing through and putting words to paper (so to speak), I have been pushing it aside. I used to be able to write for hours and hours, but I feel it’s such a chore lately.
Part of this I blame on a self-diagnosis of social ADD. I spend so much time checking my online presence – my work is social media, so I get to work and login to Facebook and Twitter, then go home and login to Facebook and Twitter. I have been known, on more than one occasion, to check my Facebook WHILE ON FACEBOOK. Back in the old days of 2003, I would go to work with no internet access, then come home and check my email and messageboards. Now my technological life is in my pocket at all times. I need an intervention, but when my work revolves around that from which I need to abstain, it gets a little hairy.
Another part of this is that I’m just lazy. I need to get a schedule to write and stick to it. That’s why I like NANOWRIMO so much – it’s only a competition with myself, and only myself loses if I don’t finish. Out of the three years I attempted NANO, I beat myself two years – 2007 and 2011 (RIP 2010). It’s such a rush to have this national gathering of writers pledging to write 50,000 words in a month. And when you plug in your finished product at the end of November to find your word-count is awesome? It’s such a rush.
My sister Jane and I recently went to a convention where we encountered an unexpected guest – an hour Q&A with a writer at a horror convention (nerdism runs in the family). He was speaking specifically to horror and thriller writing, but his advice can be applied to all types of writing. Words are words, after all, scary or not.
I asked how he got past writer’s block (without actually mentioning writer’s block). He said one of his books took 15 years to write – it just had to gestate that long. Ultimately, though, you just have to write and push through the block, just like with anything that’s in the way. That’s what I have to do, that’s what you have to do, that’s what anyone has to do.
November’s fast approaching. NANOWRIMO might be the final push I need to get myself back into the writing groove. It really isn’t NANO that does it though – it’s a personal choice that has to come from a person’s own ambition; whether you win or lose in the end is really up to you. Get those fingers in shape – time to push past the block.

gutter

June 16, 2013 kate Comments 0 Comment

every time i watch a star trek movie that features spock’s mother, i keep trying to think of her name (amanda grayson) and all i can think of is the gray part, and so i think of sasha grey, who is a porn star! so when i do a web search for sasha grey, i get a bunch of porn! ack!
#nerdworldproblems