Yeah, I’m A Geek

K, I admit I am a Geek. It should come as no surprise. My family got our first computer when I was in the 7^th grade. It was a Commodore Vic 20. It hooked up to our TV – that was the monitor – and I had to actually program games into it before I could play them. We saved files to a tape recorder and it took forever to load them off of the cassettes. A few months later, we got a couple of games (Gorf and Pirates Cove) on cartridges that were the size of a paperback book. Now imagine blocky graphics on a low-resolution color tv and you have just pictured my first date with computer technology.

I remember learning how to program graphics and make my own programs. I spent hours creating games and images, launching rockets across the screen and scrolling text in a never ending loop. Wanting to show off my creations, I made up a birthday party invitation in the 8^th grade. It was made out of ASCII art and it had Gumby on the front made out of X’s and O’s. I used to have a copy of one. I wonder if I still have it? I think I saved it somewhere because my mom and I spent hours just trying to get the stupid things to print out with the green ribbon cartridge on our fancy dot matrix printer. I think we tried every dip switch combination possible until it printed correctly. Probably killed off a couple of trees in the process. Chalk it up to my obsession with all things Geeky.

Fast forward to last Thursday. I spent all day working on a new design for the shop. When the kids went out to swim, I took the laptop out with us. Yep, that was me out the deck – tanning and typing. At about 5:45pm, I got the itch to try to resolve the trackback options I have been dealing with on the site. I should probably mention here that I was expecting guests for dinner at 6pm. 15 minutes? Yeah, I’ve got time. They arrived, but I was still emailing another techie trying to resolve the issue. You might think this is rude – to be checking my email as my guests arrive -but I don’t feel so bad when my friend shows up and whips out her laptop on my kitchen table first thing and proudly shows me her latest video creation (which is awesome – do ya have a link to to it yet, Kel? Yes, she does.)

So Kel and I speak geek some more while the guys go grill the burgers. Meanwhile, I check my email again, make some corrections to the code and fire off another email to the techie to check my site again. The guys come in and roll their eyes
at finding their wives at the kitchen table with their laptops side by side. To add to this picture, I might mention here that we have the exact same model of laptop.

After one more sweep of email, I decide to put my baby into hibernation for the evening. Yeah, right. After dinner, while everyone headed out to swim, I stayed behind to “clean up” – also known as “check my email”. Another suggestion from
the techie has me changing file permissions and replying to his email before heading out to the pool.
Later, we all come inside and, well, since the computer was already on…I ducked into the office one last time. Darn it – the trackback still wasn’t executing properly. I flipped over to another window and checked the code again. Looks like the path is wrong. I change the path, resave and send one more email out the door.

Kel’s hubby, Joe, catches me on the computer and says “you are addicted”. Well, yeah, is that sobad? So Kel sees me and says “well if you have your laptop out, then I’m getting mine out.” So we proceed to sit on my couch and IM each other while our husbands played a few games of pool. The IM-ing turns into me showing Kel how to, um, do a little hacking (did
I type that out loud?). Shortly after that, the trackback issue got nailed once and for all.

And if that’s not enough, about 15 minutes after they leave, Kel and I were IM-ing again. This time from our own homes instead of on my couch.

So, to honor all the geeky chicks out there, I drew a little something…for lack of a more creative title, I call her “computer geek” and she’s now available in the Girls Can’t WHAT? Gift Shop. Yes, that’s a Girls Can’t WHAT? mug on the table and what is that on her screen? Oh – she’s surfing the girls can’t WHAT? site on her laptop. Let me know what ya think!

Girls Can’t WHAT? Computer Geek Gifts!

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