Deus Ex Kayceedee

It’s been a good week for me, relatively speaking anyway. Now don’t get me wrong, bills still suck and I’ve been exhausted all week, but I’ve had a number of great experiences that I plan to share with you. Followers of XKCD will nitpick me, and people who have no clue what it is will have a hint at how to learn and follow this glorious mindset.

The most exciting one comes first. In my eHarmony profile it says “I’m kind of looking for an XKCD girl,” which can be kind of vague, not to mention esoteric. That’s the beauty of it though. According to the way XKCD followers work, and indeed, as the rest of the techno-savvy world works, if you don’t know what XKCD is, you’re not an XKCD girl. The glory of this little diatribe is, Miss eHarmony Match did not know precisely what XKCD is or means. Does she give up and ask me about what the hell I was talking? No, no she did not. She googled it. She doesn’t even know that what she did there, perfectly qualifies her. I really hope I can win this time around. It’s been harrowing, and a hot nerdette is hard to come by.

Then there’s the second achievement this week. It can define the movement of the techno-savvy as well the self-motivated person who won’t let financial or technical restrictions stand in the way of what he wants. I was chatting with a friend who informed me several times during the chat of what she was doing at the time. These all involved different locations of a house or apartment. I was confused, and then she explained that she was on a wireless laptop. It made me jealous. I wanted to be able to type in bed, or look up recipes in my kitchen. I used to be a die-hard laptop user, but tides changed. I can’t remember why, but I’m positive it had something to do with gaming. My last laptop was purchased for me in 2000 as a reward for good academic performance. It was shuffled around family hands for a bit, and it was my college laptop from 2003 to its death in 2005 from unknown complications. It sat dead and awaiting parting in various boxes until a couple weeks ago, where I had this conversation with my friend. I wanted a laptop again. I disassembled the laptop in a last ditch effort, and located the problem, a destroyed power jack. Though a network of great friends, not only did it get repaired, but rebuilt and upgraded. I type tonight on a 9-year-old resurrected laptop. Total cost to me on this project? $0. That’s living the life in my book.

My cell phone also ceased to operate this week. I was cut off from my constant texts, emails, and my link to my electronic dharma. It really made me realize just how connected I felt to my small egocentric world and how lost I felt without my material trappings. My mother and I went to see how to get it working again, and found out that it would be an asinine amount of money to replace my phone (side note, everyone should check with their extended warranty or insurance provider on their cellular phone. I was apparently dropped the instant I got my last replacement.) We decided that was just wrong, and to search for parts online. We went and bought a cheap little Nokia to act as a “spare tire” that could be used by the family lines should anyone else’s phone break. I eventually learned that what kept me from fixing the phone myself was that I was simply doing my hard reset incorrectly, and I reset my phone. I did lose all my data though. Numerous text sessions from special people, phone numbers, recipe notes and addresses, all lost. The bittersweet lesson is that now though I have my window to my world repaired, I have lost my view. If you’re going to collect data, back it up, daily.

So, the week in summation. I like this girl a lot and I really hope she really reciprocates, because she’s my kind of people. I have built from ashes a new window to my electric nirvana. I have suffered information withdrawal, and I have learned the hard lesson that if you’re going to be the self-motivated information seeker with an unquenchable thirst for new technical, scientific and practical knowledge, do be certain to have multiple copies of it, aye? Live, learn, and love, ladies and gentleman!

-The0