The deal I made with myself when I left the office Tueday evening was to either fix my computer or write a blog post. Welcome to the lesser of two evils.
I built the computer a few years ago with my bare hands (literally smelt the metal on my cook top...) and it has mostly served me well. Only now it emits this odd buzzing noise which, despite five months of stern looks in the general direction of the half open tower and a bit of prodding at the fans, refuses to abate. I even went so far as to obtain a second tower full of replacement computer parts (though not enough to constitute a whole new computer soldier) and set it next to Tower #1 to represent the threat of war. "Do not mess with me! I can pull your innards out and go all Frankenstein on your ass!" I leered, "Don't think I won't... right after this episode of Best Week Ever is over and I finish shredding 2 months worth of junk mail." But still the buzzing persists (right beneath the satisfying growl of the shredder).
People will claim that I am annoyingly tolerant of any high pitched noises in my living room (Dirty.). My television has a whine that a few times and hour crosses the line between "audible only to dogs" and "dear god why is blood pooling on my shoulder?" Since replacing or, even less surmountable, fixing the TV seems shockingly painful I mostly just dab a Kleenex at the problem and focus on tuning out high frequencies. I excel at avoiding problems that can't be fixed without me committing suicide via sighing in agony so often that I fail to breath.
The computer buzzing highlights three of my most painful personality flaws: I am lazy and shallow with a side order of miserly.
I see my homebuilt computer as the castle where my geek cred lives. I may not program any longer and I may find first person shooters painfully boring and I may roll my eyes at the mere thought of the SCA but dammit I BUILT MY OWN COMPUTER. Give me my geek pin! I would take a moment here to address the irony of putting so much effort into being the antithisis of cool but I think the world (or at least the world of blog readers) has long since accepted that the geeks have inherited the earth. Hail Cthulhu (See? A Cthulhu joke! GEEK!)
In addition to possibly being the last proof I have of my geek nature Tower #1 is the cheapest means to a computer end. I built it (bare hands! gloveless!) in 2002 after a particularly painful experience at a computer parts store where, unsurprisingly, the staff had never actually talked to a girl before. I originally had installed on it a dual boot to Windows or Linux -- this was done entirely in service of geek cred as I used the Linux OS only when some thing broke badly in Windows that I was (shockingly) too lazy too fix right away. The computer occasionally chokes -- the video card has been replaced twice, I stuck in a new hard drive a few years back and upgraded the motherboard in 2005 -- but replacing a broken part is infinity cheaper than buying a new computer (which seems to be what Dell and IBM and Apple expect virtually everyone to do once every 3 years or so).
So Why not fix it? Lazy, remember? Fixing the computer requires knowing what's wrong with the computer and as far as I can tell there is no clear source for the buzz. It's not the fan. It also seems like it's probably not the processor fan -- though it might be... but replacing the processor is a huge pain and... maybe I should just buy a new computer. Later. After I take off my old nail polish and look up recipes for tatsoi and find the album art for every song I have in itunes. And, of course, right after I finish this blog post.
Showing posts with label technology. Show all posts
Showing posts with label technology. Show all posts
Wednesday, September 24, 2008
Monday, August 25, 2008
Let Me Hear Your Body Talk (Mine Says "Ow")
First the bad news: Once again Nintendo has failed to reliably stock its products in an amount even vaguely on par with demand. Now the good: This time I didn't have to personally commit to sleeping on the sidewalk or breaking and entering since I can just mooch off of my boyfriend's Wii Fit. I love relationships!
I was originally a little apprehensive about using the Fit primarily because I feared that the device would announce my weight each time I stepped on it (likely in a mocking tone while someone makes pig snort noises and/or moos in the background) and my weight is something I am only prepared to acknowledge once a week on Friday morning after a night of no liquids and a morning of peeing as much as I can. This is how I avoid going crazy over the theoretically insignificant fluctuations of a pound or two which might otherwise cause me to curl up into a little ball to watch an infinite loop of my imagined future 300lb self creating shock waves as she wobbles down the sidewalk. Luckily, the system allows you to easily skip the little step where you get weighed and have to spend years in therapy. Hallelujah.
Early on in the Wii Fit registration process (after cringing at your BMI but before you shed even one measly calorie) the game lets you pick a trainer. Your only choices are "girl trainer" or "boy trainer" which I thought would be highly disappointing -- how could the designers at Nintendo hope to create the dream trainer look for ever girl in the world with just one avatar? By making that avatar look exactly like my Olympics boyfriend Ryan Lochte, that's how! There is evidence that Ryan may be a bit of a douche (what is it with these swimmer dudes?) but as a trainer he's perfect. He constantly tells me how great my balance is, looks smoking hot (you know, for a digital representation of a hot dude) and encourages me by lying about how impressively strong my abs are. Still, a nice expansion to the standard Wii Ft might be a program that ups the trainer encouragement so that I can hear Ryan tell me over and over again how skinny and irresistible I am (a SUPER nice expansion might be him telling me exactly what he'd like to do with my well toned body...).
Though I'm sure I usually seem like a polite demure young thing I play video games the way my dad watches baseball. I jump off of the couch. I scream. I curse at the screen. Someday I will have kids who find Mommy a little scary when the console is on just as years ago Lil' Brianna felt like Daddy was replaced with an angry beast every time the Dodgers took the field. Save the joy of ogling Ryan it is fair to say that my first date with Wii Fit was a little rocky. It is possible that there was even more yelling than usual. The words "stupid fucking machine" may have been bandied about. My boyfriend, G, may have used the term hissy fit. I am, however, proud to say that I did not cry (G is likely proud to say that he did not laugh out loud at all of my pouting and thus avoided a fat lip/bloody nose/detachable penis). While I was able to stop the machine from announcing my weight to the entire room I could not stop it from picking up on how much I hate being bad at things. And lord was I bad at hitting soccer balls with my head, and running in place, and hula hooping. Especially hula hooping which I failed at despite wearing the national uniform of girls hula hooping on Wii Fit: panties and a tank top. I can only hope G has the self restraint to resist making me one more of the
legions of girls swinging their scantily clad hips on youtube.
The Fit is a surprisingly good work out. At first most of the exercises (save the wailing and complaining) seemed unnaturally obsessed with my center of balance. Scoring for yoga, strength training and balance activities were calculated based on my ability to distribute my weight in a way that keeps a red dot in the correct area. The only sport that I can fairly claim even intermediate knowledge of is yoga and I was shocked to find that this method forced me to do the poses more accurately than I would have in a class or if I were to ever get off my lazy ass and do yoga on my own at home.
Due to the possibility that I might throw the wiimote at my boyfriend's head I eventually had to quit my workout in favor of brunch and dress shopping. An afternoon of stress-free bliss far away from obsessing over my center of gravity and Ryan tsk-tsking my uncontrolled attempts at slalom skiing was just what I needed to chill the fuck out and accept that Wii fit is only a game and no matter how often Ryan frowns at my pathetic attempts at athleticism I will not suddenly balloon to a size where TLC will make an hour long documentary about me trying to get out of bed in route to gobble down a 5lb bag of M&Ms (mmmm chocolate-y!). I rushed home to a gin and tonic and the most time devoted to hula hooping outside of 1958. I woke up early the next morning jonesing for some more hula action even though my lats were killing me(look at that! I just used a sporty sounding shortened name for a muscle group! I blame the Fit for that! Soon I'll be flexing in the mirror, willingly eating "goo" and telling everyone about how much I can bench).
Let's momentarily pretend that this real review of the game and not just me pontificating on my nerdy reaction to physical activity so that I might make some suggestions about how Wii Fit could be improved (you know, in addition to the brilliant Trainer Compliment Mode that I recommend above). Firstly, I know this has been mentioned all over the internet but I would really like it if the software included some sort of training routine. Moving from one exercise to another requires a lot of back and forth with the wiimote and the software which unnecessarily interrupts your workout. The need for a mode that walks you through a good 30mins of continuous exercise seems so obvious that I'm shocked that the smart folks down at Nintendo HQ failed to include this in the first release. Barring an update that allows me to work out without the wiimote ever present in my right hand I could use some sort of wiimote holster, in addition to freeing up my hands for balancing, grasping and wiping my brow this would also make a smashing addition to my panties and tank top work out look. A holster always adds that certain spark to an outfit -- I'm shocked we don't see more of them on the red carpet.
I was originally a little apprehensive about using the Fit primarily because I feared that the device would announce my weight each time I stepped on it (likely in a mocking tone while someone makes pig snort noises and/or moos in the background) and my weight is something I am only prepared to acknowledge once a week on Friday morning after a night of no liquids and a morning of peeing as much as I can. This is how I avoid going crazy over the theoretically insignificant fluctuations of a pound or two which might otherwise cause me to curl up into a little ball to watch an infinite loop of my imagined future 300lb self creating shock waves as she wobbles down the sidewalk. Luckily, the system allows you to easily skip the little step where you get weighed and have to spend years in therapy. Hallelujah.
Early on in the Wii Fit registration process (after cringing at your BMI but before you shed even one measly calorie) the game lets you pick a trainer. Your only choices are "girl trainer" or "boy trainer" which I thought would be highly disappointing -- how could the designers at Nintendo hope to create the dream trainer look for ever girl in the world with just one avatar? By making that avatar look exactly like my Olympics boyfriend Ryan Lochte, that's how! There is evidence that Ryan may be a bit of a douche (what is it with these swimmer dudes?) but as a trainer he's perfect. He constantly tells me how great my balance is, looks smoking hot (you know, for a digital representation of a hot dude) and encourages me by lying about how impressively strong my abs are. Still, a nice expansion to the standard Wii Ft might be a program that ups the trainer encouragement so that I can hear Ryan tell me over and over again how skinny and irresistible I am (a SUPER nice expansion might be him telling me exactly what he'd like to do with my well toned body...).
Though I'm sure I usually seem like a polite demure young thing I play video games the way my dad watches baseball. I jump off of the couch. I scream. I curse at the screen. Someday I will have kids who find Mommy a little scary when the console is on just as years ago Lil' Brianna felt like Daddy was replaced with an angry beast every time the Dodgers took the field. Save the joy of ogling Ryan it is fair to say that my first date with Wii Fit was a little rocky. It is possible that there was even more yelling than usual. The words "stupid fucking machine" may have been bandied about. My boyfriend, G, may have used the term hissy fit. I am, however, proud to say that I did not cry (G is likely proud to say that he did not laugh out loud at all of my pouting and thus avoided a fat lip/bloody nose/detachable penis). While I was able to stop the machine from announcing my weight to the entire room I could not stop it from picking up on how much I hate being bad at things. And lord was I bad at hitting soccer balls with my head, and running in place, and hula hooping. Especially hula hooping which I failed at despite wearing the national uniform of girls hula hooping on Wii Fit: panties and a tank top. I can only hope G has the self restraint to resist making me one more of the
legions of girls swinging their scantily clad hips on youtube.The Fit is a surprisingly good work out. At first most of the exercises (save the wailing and complaining) seemed unnaturally obsessed with my center of balance. Scoring for yoga, strength training and balance activities were calculated based on my ability to distribute my weight in a way that keeps a red dot in the correct area. The only sport that I can fairly claim even intermediate knowledge of is yoga and I was shocked to find that this method forced me to do the poses more accurately than I would have in a class or if I were to ever get off my lazy ass and do yoga on my own at home.
Due to the possibility that I might throw the wiimote at my boyfriend's head I eventually had to quit my workout in favor of brunch and dress shopping. An afternoon of stress-free bliss far away from obsessing over my center of gravity and Ryan tsk-tsking my uncontrolled attempts at slalom skiing was just what I needed to chill the fuck out and accept that Wii fit is only a game and no matter how often Ryan frowns at my pathetic attempts at athleticism I will not suddenly balloon to a size where TLC will make an hour long documentary about me trying to get out of bed in route to gobble down a 5lb bag of M&Ms (mmmm chocolate-y!). I rushed home to a gin and tonic and the most time devoted to hula hooping outside of 1958. I woke up early the next morning jonesing for some more hula action even though my lats were killing me(look at that! I just used a sporty sounding shortened name for a muscle group! I blame the Fit for that! Soon I'll be flexing in the mirror, willingly eating "goo" and telling everyone about how much I can bench).
Let's momentarily pretend that this real review of the game and not just me pontificating on my nerdy reaction to physical activity so that I might make some suggestions about how Wii Fit could be improved (you know, in addition to the brilliant Trainer Compliment Mode that I recommend above). Firstly, I know this has been mentioned all over the internet but I would really like it if the software included some sort of training routine. Moving from one exercise to another requires a lot of back and forth with the wiimote and the software which unnecessarily interrupts your workout. The need for a mode that walks you through a good 30mins of continuous exercise seems so obvious that I'm shocked that the smart folks down at Nintendo HQ failed to include this in the first release. Barring an update that allows me to work out without the wiimote ever present in my right hand I could use some sort of wiimote holster, in addition to freeing up my hands for balancing, grasping and wiping my brow this would also make a smashing addition to my panties and tank top work out look. A holster always adds that certain spark to an outfit -- I'm shocked we don't see more of them on the red carpet.
Thursday, December 20, 2007
On Being a Girl in the Big Bad World of Software Part 2
To graduate from most
I was the only girl enrolled in this class (shocker, I know). In fact I was apparently the only girl to have EVER enrolled in this class. At the time I thought this might have made me a feminist badass but it soon became clear that it only made me an idiot. Surprisingly the class was not made up of all nerds (if only…) but had a heavy representation of senior football players looking to shore up an easy ROP credit before graduation. The teacher was a guy my mom had known during her “I live at the Yosemite rock climbing camp with my hippy boyfriend” days (which took place right before the “I live at a cross country ski lodge with my hippy boyfriend/soon to be husband/father of my children” days) and it turns out he’s a little bit famous. A few years earlier he had suffered a fall while climbing that resulted in him loosing a lot of his hearing – specifically he was unable to hear high frequencies at all. This wasn’t really a problem…until a girl decided to take his class. The first test was an oral exam. This consisted of him asking me a question and me trying to answer it over and over in an increasingly louder (and, ironically, higher pitched…) voice until I started crying. Eventually he gave up and handed me an A-. Luckily the rest of the class was taught by a series of programs that the teacher wrote so that he could spend the class period at his desk reading and pretending that his hearing was so bad that he didn’t even notice that class time was primarily focused on tormenting me.
Everyday I came into the classroom to find my monitor, mouse and keyboard unplugged, this meant I had to crawl under the desk and blindly paw at the back of the machine while simultaneously using my free hand to hold down the back of my skirt so as not to expose my panties to the classroom full of giggling boys. Some jokes are apparently funny over and over again for 4 whole months. This kind of tomfoolery haunted my semester until the boys decided to up their game from mischievous to skeevy. One spring day I came into class and football player #1 says to me, “Hey, Brianna, if we gave you $250 would you take your shirt off? Cause we took a collection.” It is at this moment that I make one of the worst mistakes in my young life – rather than flash some boobage, pocket the cash and donate 25% to NOW (and 75% to the cute skirt fund) I decided to care about “principles” (and not even the right principles! Everyone knows Capitalism>Feminism). So my boobs remained a mystery and my pockets remained empty and the teasing continued through June and women were finally allowed to wear pants and own property and men started birthing babies and getting excited about cute shoes. Please write your thanks you notes on Georgia O’Keefe stationary (and I wouldn’t turn my nose up at pair of sensible shoes).Publish Post
How, after this intro experience to the awesome world of technology, I ended up actually majoring in Computer Science in college I cannot explain but after a few years of hanging out with the boys I’ve mellowed and come to love being the only girl in the room. Sadly no one has ever again offered me money for a boobie show now that I’d be happy to take it (off). Life is unfair.
For reference here’s Part 1.
Wednesday, November 22, 2006
On Being a Girl in the Big Bad World of Software
A few years ago when I was still living in San Francisco and still billing myself as a programmer I went on the best interview ever. I have chosen not to name the company in this post because I love nerds and have no desire to embarrass them on this very popular blog but I am not so nice as to refuse to identify them verbally – so if you really care, ask me.
I was only at the interview for 10 minutes before it became clear that the decision to interview me went something like this:
Dork #1 (making announcement over office intercom): Dudes! CODE PINK!!! I just got a resume for that open programmer position and I think it might be from a girl!
(Dorks 2-6 rush to the desk of Dork #1)
Dork #1 (pointing to computer screen): See? “Brianna” that ends in an “A” and in our culture ending a name in an “A” almost always indicates that the person totally will have boobs someday OR might already have boobs right this very moment!
Dork #4 (in a badly affected English accent): By George I think he’s right!
Dork #5 (in an electronic voice): female programmer… does not compute.
Dork #1: Dudes. I don’t want to get over excited here but…. she might have other friends who are also girls.
Dork #2: CALL HER!
I do not recall noticing heavy breath during my brief phone screen for this job so I commend the boys for learning how to mute their phones.
Dressing for programmer interviews on the west coast as a girl is a challenge – if you’re a boy you can wear khakis and a dress shirt but there is really no flattering equivalent for females. You cannot wear a suit because the people who interview you will be wearing flip flops and that kind of huge disparity between the dress level of interviewer and interviewee can only lead to bad things. For this interview I choose to wear a burgundy tank dress with a white button down underneath (yeah, it probably is as bad as it sounds). I arrived at the interview site and was greeted by five very eager young men. I was not asked any programming questions. I was instead engaged in the following conversations:
Conversation 1
Dork #6 (arriving late to meeting wearing jeans with a 6inch rip at the left knee, a black thermal shirt and (I am not kidding) a bike chain with a clothes pin attached to it as a necklace): Hey, I’m [Dork #6]
Female Dork (aka me): Hi, it’s nice to meet you
Dork #6: Is this how you’d typically dress for work?
Bri: Well you seem to have a rather casual atmosphere so probably not.
Dork #6: Like that would you normally wear?
Bri: ummm jeans? And a shirt…
Conversation 2
Dork #1: Do you drink?
Bri: ummm occasionally
Dork #1: Ok, let me be more specific – If we were making margaritas in the office would you have one?
Bri: Yeah
Dork #2: Let’s say that we were going out to a bar after work – would you come with us?
Bri: Sure
Dork #3: Do you like E?
Bri: ummmm…. I don’t really do any drugs so….
Dorks 1,2,3,5,6: hahahahahaha
Dork #3: [Dork #4] likes going to raves, he was hoping you’d go with him sometime.
Shockingly I did not get this job – I do not know if I should blame my conservative dress (Thanks Laura Ashley!) or my lack of experience with recreational drugs. Perhaps upper management stepped in and rejected me in an effort to avoid the sexual harassment lawsuit that was sure to result from letting a girl into the shire.
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