Friction and Harmony

Well, Buck’s Science Fair experiment is done and presented. It’s unfortunate they don’t judge at his grade level – he has to wait another year. However, he did get top marks AND much interest in having the ‘coolest’ project in the class – even though our hypothesis wasn’t supported. We were testing the anti-microbial effects of colloidal silver – but our tests didn’t show any bacterial growth prevention, retardation, or elimination. We did some microscope observation of protozoa that clearly was affected by the addition of silver – within 15 to 20 minutes, our silver-treated sample was all but completely lifeless. However, that wasn’t part of our original project submission, AND we don’t have a microscope camera, so those results were irrelevant and not presentable.

He’s now officially been exposed to my love of micro-biology – and potentially some nasty stuff as well – nastier than I had thought! We also, therefore, used proper lab procedures, cleaning and sterilizing as we went along. As each of our cultures was completed, we not only doused them in denatured alcohol, we incinerated them as well!

One of the most startling revelations is the nastiness that is living on our money…

Above, Buck is culturing a sample from a moderately-used dollar bill…

And here’s what we grew. The samples are (clockwise from top left): dollar bill, computer mouse (kids PC – ACK!), X-Box controller and TV remote. Note that while the X-Box looks like it’s sporting the least growth – it’s the only one that’s hairy! (i.e., along with bacteria, we cultured fungus!) But THIS is what really scared me:

This nasty little spot hid a surprise that didn’t reveal itself readily under the microscope until I applied bacterial stains. Unfortunately, I can’t show you what I saw under the ‘scope (a CCD ‘scope camera is on my wish list), but what I discovered is that that large spot actually consisted of two species: one was a common coccal (in all likelihood, a fecal bacteria). But the other was nearly invisible until I applied an alcohol-based stain for an extended time. It looked faintly like strands of super-fine hair at lower magnifications, but under the oil-objective at 1600x magnification, it was clearly a mycobacterium – forming chains of rod-shaped bacilli, and because it did not take the water-based stains, it was also hydrophobic – meaning it has a waxy outer hull that repels water.

I’m not a professional, but I do know that generally, anything that forms chains is often pathogenic. Hydrophobic bacteria are also very bad news – they’re the nasties that are hard to kill, due to their tough, turtle-like, almost impenetrable outer shells. Add the two together, and odds are, you’re looking at something bad. Like, tuberculosis, leprosy and anthrax bad. Fortunately, (hopefully!) it is unlikely that we got anything so terribly nasty on the medium and under the conditions we used, but needless to say, this wasn’t one of the samples we continued to culture! Oh, and just to clarify, I didn’t let Buck directly handle any of the incubated cultures!

The moment I was done, I made a break for an improvised fire-pit in the woods with plenty of fuel in the form of alcohol and shredded paper:

I’ve never liked nor appreciated my debit card so much as I do now. Cash? No thanks, just credit it to my account!

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A quick recap of my first meeting with Fishhook, my ex-husband-in-law…

The now Mrs. Who and I began dating early in 1999. She and I had both been ‘re-single’ for several years, and we each had two children from our previous marriages.

Of course we both had our Ex-Files stories to tell… Naturally, we are perfect, but our exes are each a terrible waste of good oxygen. (Trust me, in our cases it’s true! – Well, maybe not the perfect part…)

Fishhook proved my early opinion of him in a hurry. I believe it was Spring Break for Ms. Who’s brood when he decided to exercise his visitation. Because they were both so very young at the time, unattended air-travel was out of the question, so joint-custodians typically drove, meeting half-way in Baton Rouge.

This time, however, it was different.

Fishhook was getting married, and he wanted his kids there to celebrate with him. No harm in that, right? Get them there beforehand, make them part of the ceremony, let them share in the ‘Big Day’…

Nope. Not his plan.

Fishhook, so named for his remarkable resemblance to a tiny, twisted, pri… um. You get the idea. Fishhook decided it would be best to have his children delivered to him because he wouldn’t have time to drive to Baton Rouge. In fact, the timing would have to be near-precise… She would have to time her eight-plus-hour drive perfectly, because he wanted Ms. Who to deliver them at a specific time and place…

His wedding reception.

He so wanted to show-off his new bride to Ms. Who – to punish her with the fact that he was ‘moving-on’… That he was ‘happy’… That he had found a woman several years younger than Ms. Who. He really wanted to rub her nose in his so-called ‘success’ without her. And he wanted all his family and friends to witness his triumph – her humiliation.

Now, that just pissed me off.

Prior to hearing this ‘plan’ for his visitation, I had only ever heard Ms. Who’s stories of Fishhook, but everything I did hear was scary. He was abusive. He was obsessively jealous. He had multiple affairs while they were married, even brazenly having admitted to some of them to ‘clear his conscience.’ On one occasion he attacked her, choked her and then threw her to the ground, knocking her unconscious when her head struck the floor.

In such situations where she had to go near him, her BIL, ‘Uncle Buck’ would often be her ‘bodyguard.’ This time, however, her bodyguard wasn’t available. She was worried about going alone, and though I had only been dating her a short time and it was against my better instincts to place myself in the center of a potentially violent domestic situation, I offered to go to Houston with her to deliver the children for his visitation. Besides, there wouldn’t likely be a scene with so many people gathered at a ‘family’ event… Heh.

Surprisingly, even though Ms. Who and I had been dating for a while, and despite the fact that he called his children regularly to talk to them, neither of the children ever once mentioned me to their father. Of course they often relayed what their father told them all about the wonderful women (note plural) that he was shopping to become their new mommy. In fact, they had told Ms. Who just a month or so before that Daddy was planning to marry yet someone else. I guess Leatherface (several years younger than my bride, but looks years older due to a complexion weathered by what I guesstimate to be years of exposure to tanning beds and brass-poles) was either blind or stupid enough to not be bothered by that fact…

We pulled-up to the reception center and ushered the kids inside. It was a typical scene of post-wedding celebration, with cake and decorations. The children went to their father, who was dressed in the obligatory rented polyester tux, and his face lit-up. Woot! They were here! This was HIS moment!! He moved closer to his bride (Really… wearing white?) and with a smug look on his face and his chest puffed-up, he glared a self-satisfied ‘eat-your-heart-out’ look at Ms. Who.

I had been hanging back, carrying the children’s bags. I didn’t know what I would be walking into, so I had been cautious, but believe me – that look he was giving her was enough. I dropped the bags and stepped forward, snugging right-up behind Mrs. Who, who is a whole head shorter than me, and rested a hand on her waist. I smiled my greeting at the happy couple.

All eyes in the room were suddenly on me. Where I had been almost invisible – everybody had been morbidly curious to watch poor Ms. Who’s reaction – nobody had expected the appearance of a new beau for Ms. Who on this day of all days! Even more curious for onlookers, too, was probably the fact that even though (unbeknownst to them) there’s just ten weeks between Ms. Who and I, I look ten years younger than my age… To everyone there, I’m sure it looked like Ms. Who had caught a ‘live one’ and was no doubt feeling her oats!

However, Ms. Who, always the perfect Southern Lady, just smiled and wished her children a good time and told them she’d see them again soon. She was the self-radiant model of genteel composure.

Fishhook, on the other hand, looked as if a giant needle had just been pricked into his side. He visibly deflated before our eyes. When his eyes met mine for that first time, there was a moment of confusion on his face – as if he had just been slapped hard by someone he never expected to assault him. That smug look – vanshed – was replaced by a pitifully dejected and hurt, downcast stare. As Ms. Who graciously greeted her former in-laws and friends, he refused to look even remotely in our direction. I shook the hands of a few morbidly-fascinated people who introduced themselves as he quickly ushered his new bride away, along with the children.

Mrs. Who has often thanked me for making that moment for her. “Even if we had never married, I’d owe you still for the look on Fishhook’s face at that one moment when he first saw you!”

Remembering vividly the look on his face, I tell her I was more than happy to oblige…

[Note: Names have been changed to protect or incriminate the innocent and accused, respectively.]

A few days ago, I was working at my PC when the phone rang. My mind was totally wrapped in a client’s routing problem that I was working on from remote, but the house was otherwise empty, so I picked-up.

“Put Beth on the phone.”

Uh-oh. It was Fishhook – my ex-husband-in-law (Mrs. Who’s ex), and from the tone of his voice, he’s obviously pissed about something. He’s normally not so very insistent when he talks to me, but he and I have History*, so our exchanges can occasionally be pretty adversarial. Evidently this was going to be one of those times. He was demanding to speak with his daughter, PrincessNO. Sometimes, the best way to diffuse him is to employ good ol’ Southern Charm and to keep your bearing. I tried. Really. I tried.

“I’m sorry, she’s in Pensacola for an audition with a friend.” My voice was almost mockingly even and lilting, like I was talking to a small child. Damn-it-all, I’m just not a diplomat…

“I don’t think so!” he responded, matching my patronizing lilt. Then he barked back, “I just got a call from home, and they said she needs to talk to me. Put her on the phone now!”

Oh shit! That explains the attitude. The situation just escalated by the addition of another player – his current wife, Leatherface. Her favorite hobbies are counting her husbands money and investigating Mrs. Who and me to see if she can make our lives miserable enough to win custody of the kids so she can keep more of her money he earns. Whenever Leatherface involves herself, Fishhook (who ironically warned me that Mrs. Who was so ‘dominating’ that I’d better either leave while I could or surely I’d become ‘pussywhipped’) regularly gets whipped into a frenzy. Every. damned. time. It really is a hoot to watch – all she has to do is ‘give him the look’ and he jumps. And there’s no question by his demeanor on the phone as to whether or not she’s nearby. He’s like two different nutters: chunky and creamy-whipped.

“I don’t know what to tell you – she left here nearly forty minutes ago with her friend. I can relay your message, though.”

“That’s impossible! They told me she just called five minutes ago and that she needed to talk to me NOW!”

His insistence is escalating rapidly – not uncommon for Fishhook – but I could tell whatever it was had him seriously pissed-off even before he called. I tried to assess my knowledge of what was happening with PrincessNO… Nothing with her directly, but there is litigation pending – a nuisance case if ever there was one – and odds are, he’s likely not about to be happy with the outcome. My heart started to beat a little more rapidly, but I tried my hardest to keep my cool.

“No, five minutes ago is impossible. She should be arriving at the auditorium within a few minutes – it’s at least a 45 minute drive according to you, and she doesn’t have a cell-phone with her.” Uh-oh, how did I let that slip? Fishhook can go from zero to ape-shit in under six seconds – and baiting him only makes it worse, especially when you trap him with his own twisted logic. The last time we faced him in court, he made a big (non-) issue of the time it took to drive to neighboring Pensacola, where much of our lives is involved. Rubbing that in his face was sheer reflex for me. At once, I knew this shit was going to come sideways…

He began to yell into the phone, “WHAT ARE YOU TRYING TO PULL HERE?! SHE. JUST. CALLED. ME!! THEY SAID SHE NEEDED TO TALK TO ME NOW!”

Gritting my teeth, I tried to replace the pin I had just pulled, “I’m really sorry, but I have no clue how she could have called you – unless she called from her friend’s mother’s cell phone – but I just can’t see her doing that.” Now I was beginning to worry myself. Had she been in an accident and for some reason called her father instead of Mrs. Who or home? Why would she do that? We’re so much closer than…

“What do you mean, ‘her friend’s mother’s cell phone?” Some of the steam had left him, but something wasn’t right – an obvious confusion had replaced some of his anger. The voice on the other end of the phone did sound just like Fishhook, but the conversation just wasn’t adding-up. Then he demanded, “Who the hell is this?”

“Bitterroot. You said you were calling for Beth?”

“NO! I said I want to talk to Steph!! Is this the Whoville Wal-Mart?”

“Uh… No.” Well, that explains it – although we’ve never, ever had a wrong number for Wallyworld before. Must be a back-line he’s trying to reach…

Then I heard an apoplectic “Shit!” *click*

I hung-up the receiver only to have the phone ring again almost before I had let go. My heart was still racing – remnants of  adrenaline still coursing through my veins – and though I understood that it was a wrong number, the near-traumatic impact of Confrontational-Confusion™ hadn’t yet had time to dissipate.

I yanked the receiver back off the hook and barked, “HELLO!!”

It was Mrs. Who – my abrupt greeting startled her.

After a moment’s pause, I started to laugh, “you won’t even believe the wrong-number I just had…”

…To the growing problem of terrorism.

I was shuffling throught the dustbunnies in the nether-directories of my hard drive and came across this pic that I had saved some time ago. I thought glowing pigs would be a spectacular idea, not only for research, but for more practical uses as well.

For instance…

Pigs are alleged to be very smart – perhaps smarter than most canine breeds. I say we train a bunch of these little green piggies to run circuits on cue. Like, say… through Club Gitmo at around 2:30 in the morning. Maybe even teach them to sniff-out and retrieve copies of the Koran to trade for truffle-rewards.

Hmmm…

Can you just imagine a roomful of Durka-Durka terrorist detainees being awakened unexpectedly by a small herd of stampeding glow-in-the-dark Koran-hungry swine? Maybe breed a little wild-boar aggression and physical characteristics in ‘em too… Round-out the night-terror apocalyptic experience with a little tusk-gouging and territorial charging. For added fun, sprinkle a little estrus-urine in the laundry the day before.

And finally, as an added touch befitting the Holocaust denying crowd, they can be trained like police dogs to respond only to commands in German.

Can you tell I’ve been reading CAIR propaganda tonight?

I spent several hours on a post that was very personal, meaningful, and emotional. It was something that someone inspired and that I needed to share. Part of it included text copied and pasted from a Word document. I thought I had cleaned it up, straightened it out. I edited, re-wrote whole sections, proofread….

It was ready.

I hit the Zoundry ‘publish’ button. Spell-check caught a couple of typos, but nothing stupid. Selected my categories, “Bitterroot Diaries” and “Heavy Shit” – then set to ping to update Blogrolling… Okay. *click*

I watched as the progress bar marched across the screen… done. The screen re-drew, and it was… wrong.

I quickly checked my blog on-line. My first introductory paragraph was there under the title. Another paragraph out of the middle of the Word-copied text was there, but the rest was just. blank. space.

Panicked, I went back to Zoundry to recover my post. It was hopeless. The same non-existent text phenomenon was all that filled the ‘undo’ buffer.

Gone.

Fuck.

Fortunately, my computer wasn’t subjected to the same maltreatment, and is alive and well. I *will* be writing that post again… Eventually. I don’t know whether to blame Zoundry or Word – or both. Needless to say, I won’t make THAT mistake again!

…and you’ll sizzle like the bacon you ate for not fasting on Ash Wednesday!

I met MamaBear for 7:00am Mass on Ash Wednesday, along with my aunt and the whole church lady bunch. Standing outside the church after Mass, I was invited to tag-along with them afterward.

So where do all the church ladies and their husbands go at 7:50am on Ash Wednesday, the first day ofLent?

Why, Cracker Barrel, of course – for BREAKFAST!

As we approached the entrance, MamaBear commented that we should have no problem getting a table, since there were only a handful of cars in the lot. I quipped, “you know WHY the parking lot is empty? Because all the GOOD Catholics are FASTING today!”

MamaBear started to laugh, and said “look behind you.” There were two couples, also with black smudges on their foreheads, standing in line to get a table. Go figure.

Once we all had arrived and were seated, everyone at the table counted their excuses for not fasting or abstaining from meat – except me, of course. At 41, I was the baby of the bunch, which meant that since most of them were ‘seniors’ – they were more or less exempt from the fast. I contemplated settling for coffee and toast, but then I realized that I had missed Mardi Gras entirely. And since I’m a procrastinator anyway… Mama’s Peach Pancake Breakfast with eggs it was, – with bacon and all the trimmin’s, including whipped cream.

I view it as taking ‘self-mortification’ just a little more literally – since it’s going straight to my arteries anyway!

This came to me via email. I couldn’t resist sharing it as a prelude to my own story:

Little Mary Margaret was not the best student in Catholic School. Usually she slept through the class.

One day her teacher, a Nun, called on her while she was sleeping.

“Tell me Mary Margaret, who created the universe?”

When Mary Margaret didn’t stir, little Johnny who was her friend sitting behind her, took his pencil and jabbed her in the rear.

“God Almighty!” shouted Mary Margaret. The Nun said, “Very good” and continued teaching her class.

A little later the Nun asked Mary Margaret, “Who is our Lord and Savior?” But Mary didn’t stir from her slumber.

Once again, Johnny came to her rescue and stuck Mary Margaret in the butt. “Jesus Christ!!!” shouted Mary Margaret and the Nun once again said, “Very good,” and Mary Margaret fell back asleep.

The Nun asked her a third question…”What did Eve say to Adam after she had her twenty-third child?”

Again, Johnny came to the rescue.

This time Mary Margaret jumped up and shouted, “If you stick that damn thing in me one more time, I’ll break it in half!”

The nun fainted…

Nuns can be so much fun.

I attended parochial school from Kindergarten through the end of high school, so I know nun-jokes! Some of ‘em are even true.

Last week, a quasi-religious discussion erupted over at Harvey’s place about the media’s inevitable gravitation to the sensational in addressing ‘radical atheism.’ That got me to thinking about the time where I was accused – by a sweet little nun – of being an atheist:

Sister Doloretta was my religion teacher that quarter in my Sophomore year of high school. She was also our class counselor. I had been doing poorly in her class, “Social Justice,” because it amounted to little more than a game of ‘Sister Says’. The course dealt with current societal issues, and grades were given on a purely subjective basis; if you agreed with Sister and regurgitated her opinions, you sailed through the course. If you thought otherwise, or for that matter, actually thought… it was academic doom.

For instance, at that particular time, there was a controversial issue which led to the call for a boycott of a company that was “killing people.” The company had been producing a ‘high-protein nutritional supplement’ that was causing people to die from renal failure because instead of being distributed as intended – as a supplement to a diet lacking in protein (i.e., rice and dirt) – it was being consumed by the people as a staple. Said people – whom were already in various stages of malnourishment up to the literal brink of death by starvation – were horking-down gobs of almost pure-protein, and subsequently, as their bodies were unaccustomed and unprepared to process it – it became toxic and caused their deaths.

I argued that the company was acting in good faith by doing what it could do to provide a solution – that it was contributing something that, if used under the right circumstances and administered properly as the supplement it was intended to be, would in all likelihood be helping people to thrive where they otherwise could not. Further, I contended that the improper distribution and use was not the company’s fault, since they had little control over its specifically-prescribed use once the product had left their warehouses. And as such, I felt the boycott was not only unwarranted, but perhaps even immoral itself, since it was a call to punish a company for trying to do something good.

I was given an “F” and called to her office.

We argued back and forth the issues that had been presented in her class. The “F” really pissed me off, and I was indignant. I was making my case – I had been doing my homework, participating in class, but since I didn’t agree with what were purely subjective questions on her test, I failed. I don’t remember exactly how we got to the point, but eventually Sister asked me out of the blue, “Bitterroot, why don’t you believe in God?”

*Blink*

I thought to myself, ‘where the hell did THAT come from?’ Never once did I deny believing in God, nor say or do anything that I thought would indicate such a thing. I was speechless.

“Bitterroot, I want you to imagine this. See that typewriter on my desk?” She pointed to a Volkswagen-sized, blue IBM Selectric ball-element typewriter.

“Uh-hunh.”

“Bitterroot, imagine if you spread a blanket out on the ground, and then took that typewriter apart. Imagine that you placed every last tiny screw and gizmo on that blanket, and then imagine if you threw those parts up into the air repeatedly, catching them all on the blanket again. Imagine that you did this for all eternity. Bitterroot, how many times in the rest of all eternity do you think that typewriter would come-together in one working piece again?” Already, I was thinking, ‘that’s a whole lot of imagining… and eternity just about describes this meeting!’

“Uh… None?” I could see where this was going, but I didn’t yet have a retort until she opened the door wide for me…

“THAT’S RIGHT! None! So you see, Bitterroot, there has to be a supreme and loving God to have allowed that typewriter to even have been created in the first place!” She pointed a little, bony finger triumphantly into the air.

I looked at the typewriter. I looked at Sister. I looked again at the typewriter, and at the little one-inch-square plate on the center-face with just three letters on it. I looked back at sister.

“IBM?” I said, with the mocking, know-it-all, smart-ass tone that every fifteen-year-old knows so well how to wield. I was pretty pleased with my answer – I sat back with a smug little smart-ass smirk on my face. I was mentally high-fiving myself…

Sister gritted her teeth and started to turn red, then crimson, then almost purple. She was shaking. My self-satisfaction turned to an almost genuine concern for a few nanoseconds when I realized she might be suffering an apoplexy. I began to lean toward her when suddenly, this always soft-spoken, saccharine-sweet, tiny woman erupted…

“OUT!” she shrieked. “GET OUT!! GET OUT OF MY OFFICE NOW!!“

I almost fell over myself as I tumbled out of the chair, snatching my book bag from the floor in the very nick of time… I was tilted forward, and my effort to get my feet under me to right myself rocketed me out of the counseling office door. Heads popped out of doorways as I crashed into the lockers on the hallway opposite the door from which I had just launched. I looked back to see if a little possessed nun was giving chase, but caught just a glimpse of her bony little hand as she slammed her office door shut. Mrs. Gunn, our school secretary, just looked at me and said matter-of-factly from her office behind the glass window adjacent to the counseling offices, “I’ll let Dean Karr know to be expecting you when he gets back in. Go to class for now – but be listening for the page.”

Fortunately, nothing came of the incident. Dean Karr laughed – but made me promise not to tell anyone that he found her to be almost as annoying as the students did. She once had filled his office with angry parents when she drilled students on a laundry-list of sexually-related mortal sins – and then called to conference the parents of any student who refused to answer, or who answered with anything that she found less-than-satisfactory. One girl I knew from my homeroom reportedly responded to the question, ‘are you still a virgin?’ with her own question, “why, Sister, are you jealous?” I understand she got the same apoplectic launch from the counseling office door… Which would of course explain Mrs. Gunn’s steadfast reaction. I’m surprised they didn’t pad those locker doors.

Of course I did finally find myself in trouble as a result of that conversation – but it wasn’t until near the end of my senior year when I foolishly thought everyone had forgotten the incident in Sister Doloretta’s office. The school had a chapel where Mass was offered daily in the early mornings. So late one afternoon, I crept into the chapel and replaced one of the statues with…

A Volkswagen-sized, blue IBM Selectric ball-element typewriter.

I do hope that when I leave this world I find St. Joseph has a sense of humor.

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Of all my responsibilities, I hate Help Desk / Desktop Support the most. People really CAN be this frustratingly dense. This is foreign / subtitled, but so relevant to *any* technology I’ve had to introduce, from MS-DOS to Windows 3.1, to Windows 95/98/ME/NT/2000/XP and now Vista…

Watch for the inevitable user panic attack as the HDR is about to step out of the room. I laughed. It really is so typical.

With everybody jumping to join the idiocy as Windows Vista is released, I’m just going to have to start clubbing stoopid people to save time…

My apologies – I’m too busy for any kind of “real post” – so here’s something to look at.

From the Geek Files:

Considering my last post, the title is just a little disconcerting. However, it has little to do with my sexual preference and a whole lot to do with my technical and sci-fi/fantasy trivial prowess and my subsequently impaired social life…

Tango just tagged me with a “non-meme.” It’s the Geek Test, and so far she and everyone else on her site has reported scores ranging from a 5.7% “Poser” (actually, declared as ‘Geekish Tendencies’ by the test) to one at just less than 25%, escaping the “Total Geek” label by mere fractions of a point.

*winks @ FarmWifeTwo*

Here’s the Geek-ness scores breakdown so far:

5.7 — Cmdr. Bliss – A Command Central (Note the truncated digits to the right of the decimal – definitely a non-geek!)
11.63708 — DTF – Carpe Ductem
12.03156 — R&R – Ranger’s Report
12.03156 — Lemon Stand The Lemon Stand
13.60947 — V-Medic – Have Black Bag Will Travel
24.65483 — FarmWifeTwo – A Day in the Life

That gives us a median score 12.03156% with an arithmetic mean of 13.27742% for the ladies. (Correct me if I’m wrong, but I seem to be the only male on the tag-list, which may account for… well, you’ll see.) Thanks to FarmWifeTwo for doing her part to raise the curve for the rest of the lot!

So what was my score? How does Bitterroot rank on the Geek-o-Meter?

Well, first let me offer a quick ‘snapshot’ image: Just before I read Tango’s ‘tag’ comment, I had been working on crafting a home-brewed ‘incubator‘ for Buck’s science fair project. I had been mulling where would be the best place in the house to grow bacterial cultures in a warm, dark, temperature-controlled environment, so I built a box to sit atop the ‘blowhole’ radiator on my water-cooled PC. Satisfied with my work, I took a long drink of iced Coke from the Bomex lab beaker that happens to be my favorite drinking glass as I settled-in to do some blog-reading. An episode from Star Trek Voyager, Season 2 DVD is playing on the television behind me, and Mrs. Who (my lovely on-line bride) is surfing away on her own networked computer just a few feet to my left, learning how to access the new SAN that I installed in our master bedroom closet at around 2:30am this morning.

So, based on that one moment in my life, how do you think I scored?!

“46.35108% – Super Geek”

Honestly, I don’t know whether to feel proud or ashamed.

So despite my proclaimed reluctance to tag people with memes, this time I can’t help it. It’s time for some testosterone-influence (and not the kind I was assaulted with when I first opened Tango’s and V-Medic’s blogs!!). I’m curious to see what some of the other guys score. Everyone knows that guys outrank women on the geek scale – according to Innergeek – by a ratio of about 10:1. So here it is… I’m hereby tagging the following:

Harvey – Bad Example
Graumagus – Frizzen Sparks
T1G – Drunken Wisdom
Contagion – Miasmatic Review
Deathknyte – Bad Catholicism

and hopefully…

Ken S of It Comes in Pints?

You can post your results here in the comments or at home on your own blog, but please let me know when you’ve made your ‘donation.’

Specimen cups and magazines are just inside the room, first door on the right…