freebies

John goes to a lot of conventions. I swear at any given time, somewhere in the world, there is a computer convention going on. 

Last week, John went to a "Geek Day" convention in Washington DC, which was actually sponsored by his company.  Of course, I don't know why they call it "Geek Day" when it lasts the better part of a week.

Anyway, John tends to come home with a bunch of crap they were handing out for free.  Sometimes it's free stuff given away by the convention hosts (t-shirts), other times it's stuff given out at various booths.  Most of it being crappy toys I let the kids play with until they break it or forget about it, then it mysteriously disappears into the trash.  (the kids won't let me throw out the biker jacket wearing rubber duckies with the HP logo on their bellies)

And every once in awhile John will win a drawing for something exceptionally cool, like the time he won the Bose alarm clock.  That was super awesome back then (14 years ago) because I am fairly certain the retail cost of that thing was more than John made in a week.

Anyway, this week John brought home something that I was a little surprised I hadn't seen lining the candy shelves at check-outs across America.

Basically pixie sticks for big kids and grown-ups.  Tubes of caffeine laced artificially colored and flavored sugar.  With this society's obsession for caffeine and sugar you'd think it would be a no brainer.  I am sure they were a hit with many of the convention goers. Probably a nice change from all the redbulls the computer geek population supposedly consumes.

Personally, I find them a little intriguing.  Not sure I will be sucking one down any time soon, or spiking my orange juice with one, but I don't want to throw them away either.

Zach asked for one.  The answer was a resounding "NO".  When Nick found out they had caffeine in them he demanded I throw them out.  My response was "And what exactly is one of your favorite sodas?" (Mountain Dew)

To which he responded with. "I see your point.  Well then don't eat them all at once, okay?"  I thought that was a fairly reasonable request.

It's funny cause it's true

They passed out these t-shirts at one of John's computer geek conferences awhile ago for the guys to take home to their wives. 

For those not in the know, the "V" stands Virtual.

Party like it's 1989

That was the theme of this year's Cisco Live! Customer Appreciation Event. I thought it was pretty cool.

I got to go as "a guest" which in geek world means I'm not cool.

So, I figured being one of 2 people out of 10,000 who put any effort into 80's-ifying their appearance couldn't make me less of a dork. And let's face it, I'm guessing not many of these guys won any popularity contests back in 1989.

So how awesome is my "I'm the geek's girlfriend" t-shirt? Pretty nifty, eh? I've been waiting for two years to wear it since I bought it back when John first passed his CCIE and I threw him a party. Also my hair is crimped. Even though it's hard to tell in the picture. I had to borrrow the crimper from a friend (and hi, Tricia- I'm not sure when you'll be getting it back -I am having way too much fun with it)

Right when we walked in, they gave us "Devo Hats" or "Energy Domes" if you're a real fan. (I had to Google it) Which was like, pretty awesome, except believe it or not I actually spent quite a bit of time on my hair, and was a little disappointed to cover it up. (my lack of skill with hair requires an incredible amount of time for mediocrity)

The Devo Hats kept our heads warm. The party was out on an island in the middle of the bay, and it was freakin' cold and windy. Holy Cow.
The food was so-so. The soda selection stunk (Tab or Shasta) but as usual, there was more than enough beer to go around. There were also carnival games and rides. Oh, and it was all free.

But I wasn't there for any of that stuff- I was there for the concert- Devo (of course- why else would we be wearing these silly hats?),

B-52's, the Bangles, Howard Jones, the guy from Tears for Fears, Tone Loc, Sugarhill Gang, and a guy from Flock of Seagulls (we were late- we missed him. Apparently he just played the one song "And I ran, I ran so far away" and then got up and walked off).

We had fun. The music was pretty good, given that most of these artists were well past their prime. And my shirt got a few laughs.

My geek

After all these years, this still makes me laugh. There's my husband working on two laptops at the same time, and he needs an extra keyboard and mouse. The real story is that he is testing the one on the left to see if it is salvageable (the keyboard and mouse are faulty at best, hence the third keyboard), and the one on the right is his main one. It's taken me several years to finally (but not fully) be able to understand his need or desire for multiple computers. At one point several years ago, we were looking at houses with basements, and while I was envisioning game rooms, and movie theaters, and craft rooms, he was fantasizing about a server room. (yeah raise your hand if that was on your wish list when shopping for houses- anybody? anybody? Bueller? I thought so.-oh and PS we don't have a basement, so no server room here)

He's working off of the end table next to his desk because his desk is full of junk. He's in the middle of a really big purge/organizational effort, and I hope to do a before and after posting on that sometime soon.

He thinks I am just making fun of him, which I kinda am, but in a non-judgmental, "I think all this geeky-ness is somewhat cute and endearing" kind of way. Truth is, I'm proud of him, he's a smart guy and good at what he does, and if a server room makes him happy, I'd never begrudge him that. Oh, I'd make fun of it, lots and lots, but I'd never begrudge him that.

Power Geek

I wish I would have taken a picture of this, but I was kindof afraid the guards would get cranky about it, they were pretty serious, but it was totally humorous to me. At the train station in London to catch the train through the chunnel to Paris, they had all the security you would expect at a major station. Not quite airport security standards, we got to keep our shoes on, but close. Anyhow the guy running the x-ray machine decided that there was too much stuff in John's laptop backpack, so they had to go through it by hand with John standing there helping. I had to stand back, so I leaned up against a column and laughed. At first I was just watching in amazement at the amount of stuff they were pulling out of John’s bag, for starters there was his cell phone, GPS, laptop, extralife battery for the laptop, cords and cables, power conversion box, power strip, power cords and chargers for said stuff, extra hard drives, it seriously went on and on. Like 15 minutes, we barely made it to the train. I didn’t start laughing until he dumped out half a dozen thumb drives, and then I totally lost it when he pulled out a Powerbar. The guy actually started freaking out! “Your bag doesn’t have enough power?!? You need a Powerbar as well?!?” He even pulled a couple people over to see all his junk. (By this point they were laughing as well) After they scanned all his junk for explosives he told him that they hadn’t seen so much stuff of that nature come out of one bag in months. (This was THE major train station in London) he wanted to know what John did for a living. Even though I’m married to the guy, mostly I just block all that out. I really don’t want or need to know what he packs around with him, all I know is that is the heaviest stinkin' bag. I gave him a hard time about it on the train, and he said the sad part is is that he uses all that stuff on a regular basis. “You were gonna need ALL that on this trip? For ONE class?” “Um, maybe not one of the cables, but the rest, yeah.”