Issues with my Bag

The past couple of weeks I've been suffering with sack-related discomfort.

I'm sure it happens to a lot of people and I'm trying to be brave about the whole thing. Stoic. A rock. My pain is my own and my silence is my refuge, so to speak.

But I've been trying to find a solution online, because the intarwebz is where solutions are produced, documented and pirated.

My bag is a large Targa affair at the moment, sized for a much larger laptop than I carry. Lately I've decided that perhaps it is a desktop bag more than a laptop bag, designed for moving whole workstations across country along with my lunch, MP3 player, portable hard drive, some CDs and sometimes a spare alarm clock. Really.

It is a giant, over the shoulder, padded rectangle. The times I've dropped it have never resulted in damage to electronic equipment, so there is no doubt that my bag is doing its job. However, it hangs over the sides of my personal area way too much. I bump stuff with my bag everywhere I go.

Last week I climbed into my car first thing in the morning and my bag bumped the steering wheel, honking the horn in a sealed garage and nearly killing my weakened pre-coffee self.

So I started looking for something a little more efficient. The messenger-style bags like the one I have are okay, but unless I lift the strap over my head and wear it across my chest my bag makes me walk funny -- like lopsided -- and I fear that wearing my bag across my chest makes me look like I think I'm on Animal Planet hunting some small furry creature to wrestle in place in front of a camera between ads for Jenny Craig and the Porsche Cayenne. I know I'm not that guy. And everyone within sight of me knows I'm not that guy. But I fear that they don't know that I know that I'm not that guy, so I'm sure you can understand my stress.

I began my bag research at Amazon.com, and found some very nice stuff there. The problem is the wild variation in the consumer reviews. While one bag is appreciated by certain users, others seem personally offended by the sight of the same bag. I haven't found a single bag with 100% favorable reviews. It would seem that a person's bag is almost too personal to openly discuss, though I've brought mine up on elevators lately quite a bit to find out what other people think.

There is nothing definitely wrong with my bag, but the consensus is that it is simply too large and bulky to be doing the job required of it. 

Google searches were all but useless here, as "bag" is apparently a fairly popular ad word and all the links are sponsored. Likewise crawling message boards for un-endorsed bag talk is not only unproductive but in some cases quite frightening.

Essentially, I need a new bag. Smaller than my current bag but still big enough to hold my laptop, power supply, a couple of bagels and . . . hang on . . . about 30 Diet Coke caps at any time. Extra pockets are bonus points, but I need a bag that hangs ergonomically and yet doesn't look like I'm dragging my bag into the woods to document nature or whatever.

I found one I like at REI, but I totally fear that it embodies all that is outdoorsy about bags and (while no doubt comfortable) I fear being mistaken for someone who would not physically lock up on the pavement when getting too far from a Starbucks like those shopping carts with the sensors when someone pushes them past the yellow line. 

This is one of those minor things regular people with normal thought processes talk about casually and then solve on a whim with a trip to any store. It also qualifies as one of those minor things which is gradually consuming more and more of my emotional well-being until eventually I will collapse into a useless puddle of panic, so I'd appreciate any suggestions you might have. Not about therapy, so much. More about my bag.

Lost Sleep Can Never Be Replaced

So we (except the freaks in Arizona) collectively lost an hour over the weekend.

I can do without an hour, no problem. A single hour is replaced during my half-asleep commute between home and work. But like everything else (Diet Coke, Star Wars action figures, old computer parts and cats for example) I've got issues stopping with one of anything.

I end up thinking "I feel fine" and "I'm not so old that missing a single stupid hour of sleep will make me feel like I've been dragged behind a horse" and "I see this as a personal challenge to my masculinity so I will do something extra stupid and man-like to compensate".

On Saturday night Gwynyth had a friend sleep over. And when I use the term "sleep over" I'm not referring to an activity either girl seems to have participated in. I stayed up with them longer than I'm normally awake, yet they lulled me into a false sense of security before getting up in the night to do whatever it is little girls do late at night in the near-absolute silence of a darkened house. I think it involved the Disney channel.

Both were miserable in the morning on Sunday and I mocked them for their poor choice as only a parent can mock.

"That was a pretty horrible decision and now you are tired and sad and I'm not as tired or as sad because I eventually went to sleep instead of staying up to watch That's So Raven. And eat your vegetables or you'll get rickets."

So Sunday night Gwynyth fell asleep pretty early, of course. She had staggered around for most of the day and I just felt bad for her.

I logged in to play World of Warcraft. Since I recently rejoined my old guild, it was nice to be invited along on a 10-person dungeon crawl. We had a great time dashing through the place. And dashing and dashing and dashing. While dashing. We'd kill stuff and laugh and die horribly and laugh harder.

And I looked over at the clock from time to time. That's why I find it odd that I eventually looked over and noticed with genuine surprise that it was about 2am on Monday morning.

Oh, dear.

So the alarm clock went off less than four hours later and I turned it off before the first early morning honking buzz noise was complete.

And then the backup cellphone alarm started playing Material Girl in the other room, ramping up the volume over time. It played the whole song this morning. 

I was not late for work, but I'm still trying to completely regain consciousness.

Staying up until 2:30am was a pretty poor decision on my part, but I at least plan to have some vegetables later to avoid the whole rickets thing.

Speaking of sad nutrition, I've entered over six thousand Diet Coke Reward points and I still have a substantial stockpile to input at the limit of ten codes per day.

I no longer remember what it feels like to not have to pee.

Mail

I've ignored the geek_AT_prettygeekything.com inbox for too long already, so I'm planning to spend a Friday post answering reader mail.

I get a ton of email at this address and it gets overwhelming. Just as with my work inbox, when the volume gets too high I just stop paying attention.

Since I can't answer all of them in a single post, I'll just pick a few at random:

Dear Geek,

Spring new collection available!
Exelent style to make your couple crazy

Swiss Models now!

Allie

Dear Allie,

What?

-G

 

Geek,

Most popular watches

Rolex Datejusts•Cartier•Hublot•Panerai•Rolex Sports Models•Chanel•Jacob & Co•Patek•Philippe•Alain Silberstein•Chopard•Jaeger•LeCoutrePorsche•Design

Mohamed

Dear Mohamed,

Thanks, but I have a watch. It has Boba Fett on it. I like it very much.

-G

 

Geek-

Click here to be enrolled in our online nursing degree!

Signed,

Online Nursing Degree

Dear Online Nursing Degree,

Hey! My Mom is a nurse! I'll bet she'd have loved to attend school online. I'm sending you her email address so you can talk school with someone like-minded.

-G

 

Geek,

Perfect solutions to have it hard as stone! Take a pack of four blue pills!

Max-Soft

Dear Max,

I liked The Matrix too, though I disagree with the recent online poll which declared it the Best Sci-fi Movie Ever. The sequels ruined it for me. Also, I can never remember which pill, red or blue, was the one Neo was supposed to take. This inability to keep pill colors straight would have killed me had I attended a State College.

Thanks,

-G

 

Geek,

Windows Vista Free Download For Geek! Click here!

Admin

Dear Admin,

I like bittorrent for my software download needs, but thank you for offering. Further, I think it only a matter of time before Microsoft is offering Vista as a free download anyway. If they don't alter the marketing to pretend it never happened.

-G

I'm starting to sense a pattern here, and it is a pattern I don't like at all.

 

Geek,

Give her some mind-blowing bedroom action!

Where the hell is my spam filter?

 

Geek,

Office 2007 Enterprise for $19!

Not worth it.

 

Geek,

Enjoy March with our meds . .

They can't all be like this.

 

Geek,

Cheap downloadable OEM software . .

As if.

 

Geek,

Unable to please your partner?

Holy crap! I've got 1200 messages about my junk! This can't be random. Who put me on a list? Shana?!?

 

Geek,

Your friends will be amazed at your thick and strong . .

No! Mental image! Stop it!

 

Geek,

Work from home and retire early . .

Argh!

 

Geek,

Upsize your man parts . .

/blogquit

 

Geek,

More power and super-size . .

/faceplantkeyboard

 

Forget it. I'm going to set up some more aggressive filters and try this again another time.

Announcement Time

I promised an announcement and I will deliver an announcement.

The announcement I intended was one about the opening of our new corporate East Coast headquarters, but it seems the expansion will be postponed for a little while at least.

It isn't like there isn't anything to announce, though. I have loads of announcements around here, and most of them fall more into the "interesting changes in the format of Pr3++yG33kyTh1ng" category than the often emphasized "drunken rant about the coming zombie invasion" one.

Sadly, those are our only two options.

For those of you who turn up here every so often expecting to see text to skim, there is another way to access the cheery and enthusiastic productivity tips which are produced here so elegantly with semi-daily regularity.  As a bonus, the new method is even less labor intensive than slogging through the text manually, risking eyestrain, carpal tunnel, some nasty trackball-based infection, and the chance that some of this text may trigger a workplace firewall alert followed by lengthy sensitivity training (No warranty by Pr3++yG33kyTh1ng is expressed or implied, your mileage may vary depending on road conditions, this geek is in no way a lawyer, use of the materials contained in this blog is defined as "As Is" and application of the ideas contained within may constitute violations of the laws of your community and certainly often do violate the laws which define human decency and allow us to function socially as a species.).

This spring, ladies and gentlemen, Pr3++yG33kyTh1ng is going on tour.

We've put a secret ballot box in the break room at Pr3++yG33kyTh1ng Worldwide Amalgamated Headquarters and have been letting the staff suggest tour titles. So far, the leader seems to be "Pr3++yG33kyTh1ng!" though I'm pretty sure when it comes to live shows an exclamation point at the end denotes that the performance is a Musical. Pam or Andrew should correct me if things have changed since I dropped out of the industry.

Anyway, once the title is selected I'll be cranking out t-shirts and bumper stickers and trying to find an older VW van from which to sell hemp bracelets in the parking lot since quality control dictates that these things be done according to process.

So far, our handlers have settled on one venue and date but I'm certain that they are working on others in an attempt to be inclusive.

Tickets are not available for pre-order at this time, but . . . and this is a secret (published on the interwebz and non-encrypted and therefore about a poor a secret as has ever been) . . . I know a guy who knows a guy at the door, so I could totally get you in probably. 

At 9am on April 12th I'll be speaking to select members of the class of 2010 at Lee College about life in Corporate America with a Presentation titled "Workplace Communication: Technology is a Tool So I Don't Have to Be".

Topics covered will include:

Email

Blogging

Instant Messenger and Text Communication

Web Conferencing

Live In-Person Meetings

And Passwords and Security Measures a non-I.T. professional employee can perform to make the real I.T. staff like them.

I'm getting the use of a projector and everything!

I'd expect a profanity-laced 90 minutes including Q&A and I've already noticed that one of the documents I'm sharing for example contains the word "Penis", though its inclusion was purely by random chance.

I'm taking this opportunity to speak to a group of people who will soon be joining me in this grand adventure in the workforce with absolute realism about the stuff which isn't allowed into textbooks. The publication of these processes and real-life examples would cripple the economy when an entire generation chose after graduation to sell novelty t-shirts on the beach somewhere instead of getting a "real job" and paying off their student loans, but I can take a chance on a select group of students.

Eventually (like when I figure out how to publish a Google Docs presentation through Blogger) I'll make the slides available here purely for giggles.

Hell, there is every chance that within minutes of the close of the presentation grainy cellphone video of the whole thing will turn up on YouTube with amusing editorial asides and captions like "I CAN HAS PRESENTASHUN" and "BITTER GEEK IS ALL OUT OF BITTER" and "GEEK MONSTER HAZ EATED UR SATURDAY - NOM NOM NOM".

At least it would if I were in charge.

My Polling Place!

Let me show you it!

Well, I could show you it. But taking photos in the polling place is strictly prohibited.

If I did show blatant disregard for the rules, the pictures from our trip to vote in the primaries might look something like this:

Republican side:

Democrat side:

Gwynyth asked why the lines were so long on the Democrat side. I explained that Republicans are efficient and able to process a vast number of voters in a fraction of the time. I'm not sure she believed it either, but in looking at both lines I suspect Tuesday began a lifetime of voting Republican for one little girl who loves her country very, very much.

This touching moment capped a day which was an emotional roller coaster for me. Some events in a person's life just toss ice water onto his or her emotional crotch. The thing so chills a person that he knows nothing will ever be the same.

Tuesday, March 4th, Gary Gygax passed away.

The inventor of Dungeons and Dragons, old-school.

Before TSR screwed him over.

And then Wizards of the Coast absorbed them and crushed their souls.

And then Hasbro pwned them corporate-style and passed the assault onto the customers.

Gygax was a visionary. His need to add words and math to what was essentially playing with little army men on a table prompted a lot of people I know and respect to develop a love of reading, pass advanced math classes and not date until after college when the money started rolling in.

His game allowed us to shed our geeky shells and live in our imaginations, however briefly, as noble knights, bookish wizards and laconic woodsmen. And sometimes the art in the earlier publications had an elf nipple or two in it hidden among the kobolds and orcs.

We will miss you, Mr. Gygax.

I poured forty ounces of funny-shaped dice on the sidewalk Tuesday evening, like the ancient vikings once did for their own dead. Or something.

 

There is a big-time major announcement on the future of Pr3++yG33kyTh1ng Publications tomorrow, so please feel free to come back and hit the refresh button again and again until the big reveal.

It should be loads of fun for everyone either way.

Visitors

This week my company is hosting representatives from one of our clients. This client is an oil company based in China.

We (the geeks) have been instructed to avoid all contact with these people. Since that lines up with my personal policy of avoiding contact with all people as much as possible, I'm happy to comply with company policy in this case.

I can hear them talking in the conference room where they are entrenched every time I go for coffee, but I have no idea what they are saying.

I hadn't actually seen them until yesterday afternoon when we crossed paths in the men's room.

I still had no idea what they were saying, but I was amused to notice that it seemed they had all gotten off the plane and run directly to The Gap and Banana Republic to buy everything this season had to offer.

As I pondered their immediate yet temporary Americanization, the truth dawned on me.

They did not rush to the Galleria as soon as the plane landed.

More likely, they bought the clothes in China where a lot of it is produced and it probably costs a hell of a lot less.

So who is the fashion copy cat, now?

All this time I've been dressed in traditional modern Chinese clothing and I never once considered my own cultural awareness and fashion globalization.

Of course, I've always been a fan of the Chinese culture. Communists are nothing if not efficient. I read The Good Earth and learned a lot about opium and humoring the elderly from what can be described as the best "feel-good ending" churned out in the 1930s. Jackie Chan does his own stunts. It is a matter of simple rank to judge the qualifications of General Tso's Chicken compared with that of our own "Colonel".

Yet I was still overtaken with a feeling of unity when I came to realize that in spite of our language gap, we are united in a bigger "The" Gap. We all put on our flat-front weekend relaxed fit khakis one leg at a time.

They simply pay less for theirs. Renminbi, "The People's Currency", talks.

When I'm in the men's room I just wish I knew if it were talking about me. 

Vacation Day

Hey! Look!

If you fly from Houston, Texas to Charlotte, North Carolina, this is the plane they put you on.

Well, maybe not that exact plane. There may be older ones in service too.

Anyway, that is the adventure I started on Friday morning.

After a couple of hours in the Charlotte, North Carolina airport (which is lovely, by the way) I started the second leg of my trip.

Orbitz decided that "Washington DC" can be defined as "Baltimore, Maryland" sometimes. This is fair, I suppose, except that that definition stuck a $100 cab ride between me and my destination. My destination was about 20 minutes from Ronald Reagan National Airport, and that airport is where Orbitz decided I should return from.

The whole thing was very confusing, so I printed out a basic map of Washington DC before leaving the house.

Here is the map I chose:

Feel free to use it for your next trip to our nation's capitol. I was especially interested in the dots marked "other".

I had a chance to do a very small amount of sight-seeing, too. I saw the top half of the Washington Monument. It made me giggle a little bit.

I also got the see the train!

This is the train the Senators ride to work every day, I would assume.

The inside smells a lot like urine.

So, my Friday started with a 6:15am check-in at the Houston Airport and ended at 12:15am Saturday when I got back to my car before an hour long drive home from that same airport.

It was possibly the best day off ever.

This morning on my way in to work I went through the drive-through at Starbucks. The lady who took my order was not at the window when I pulled up, and I was relieved as she had been so peppy it was disturbing. My only fear is that my rejection of her blueberry muffin suggestion has resulted in her demise in some way.

More importantly, as I went to pay I unfolded my wallet (nothing goes in my back pocket anymore, ever, and that saved me from what would undoubtedly be debilitating pain following those plane rides) and exposed my World of Warcraft Visa in its home across from my debit card.

The guy who processed the purchase and handed me my coffee noticed and said,"World of Warcraft! Do you play?"

"Yes I do," I answered.

"What server? I ask everyone that."

"I am on Duskwood," I replied,"More importantly, Horde or Alliance?"

"I'm Horde," he answered.

"Me too."

We bumped fists ceremonially through the open windows.

He handed me my coffee with a cheerful, "Way to roll, sir."

Normally, being called "sir" makes me cringe a little, but in this case it did not.

I have over 10,000 Honorable Kills.    

Therefore, I'm due not only a "sir" but technically a salute.

 

Edit: I just found this. Please click through and know that it is true.