Ro Two Oh

"I've got the girl for you" Sean N announced as he burst in to my office last Monday morning. Monday mornings with Sean usually involve mom jokes and him farting in my office* so the possibility of female interaction for me was a welcomed change.

"Yeah?" I responded, pretending not to be half as interested as I was.
"That girl from Romania is cute."
"Yeah, I remember her from last time she was here. She was cute... in that Cold War kind of way, if you know what I mean."
"No, not that one. It's a new one. She's even cuter. She's Ro Two Oh(2.0)" he said, obviously pleased with himself for the joke.
"She seems friendly. I said hi to her and I think she smiled." he continued, now beaming as any nerd would after a cute girl had smiled at him.
"Well, I guess I'll have to check that out"

My interest was now piqued. Erik recently married a Brazilian girl, and Adam a German. Maybe I could make it a clean sweep? Maybe the nerd pot of gold lays outside of US borders?

Soon, like news of a blog contest for a free lunch, the word had spread and half of the office was going to try to "hook Jesse up"(Aside from Liang who was trying to hook Liang up despite the fact that Liang is married).

I decided to have a little fun with it and marched in to Jim's office. Jim was the Romanian's contact while they were here(There were 2 guys and the girl).

"Why you gotta block Jim? Why haven't you introduced me yet?"

Much to my dismay, Jim was in to the idea too and decided to help. By Thursday a plan was set up where some people from the office would take the Romanians out to Mill Ave. over the weekend. A trip to Mill on the weekend for me is generally about as uplifting as "Bring Your Parents to School Day" for Bruce Wayne, but I decided to tough it out.

Friday Sean came down with Bronchitis, and other people started bailing. I found out that two of the Romanians were going to Vegas for the weekend, but the one guy (Mihi) still wanted to go out. Then Jim told me that the girl (Andrea) had a boyfriend anyhow.

I ended up showing him downtown Tempe and it was a cool experience getting to hang out with a Romanian dude for the night, but it was still no Ro 2.0.

* It's not just Monday mornings, that's pretty much every day.

Nerd Games: The Free Lunch

Generally, sometime around the New Year, I take my coin jar and cash it's contents in for the much more convenient paper form. Three years ago I started offering a free lunch to the person who came closest to guessing the value of the coins in the jar. I would also place my guess.

Unfortunately(for everyone else) I've won three years in a row. This leads to me having a celebratory lunch by myself, which isn't as exciting as it could be. This year I've decided to extent the contest to.... well, anyone who wants to wager a guess. If you don't live in Phoenix and/or I don't know you, then we'd have to work something out, but we'll burn that bridge when we come to it.

The winner will be decided sometime next weekend, so feel free to comment a guess, email a guess, call, web cam, carrier pigeon, or however you choose to contact me.

Rules:
1. The location of the dinner must be mutually decided upon, and the value per meal not to exceed 25 dollars.
2. I reserve the right to kick anyone out of the competition for any reason.
3. Results may be modified to ensure the winner is a cute girl who is single and in to short nerds.

Edit: After two guesses now in the 20 dollar range I feel it's impotant to state that the jar is apparently larger than the photos give it credit for. Therefore I took 2 more pictures of it comparing it to a normal sized coke can. It still looks small for some reason though :/

Robo-babe of the day: Shirley Manson

For well over 10 years now I've had a slight crush on Shirley Manson. She's cute, slightly emo, red headed, and has a thick Scottish accent, what's not to love? She's also in one of my favorite bands(Garbage) with Butch Vig, one of the biggest producers of music in the 90's.

I didn't find out until recently that she was also a fan of mine. Exhibit A:

When was the last time your celeb crush wore a shirt declaring his/her love for you?

I actually met her once(sort of), and pulled my usual nerd/turtle move and didn't say anything, but this isn't about me, it's about her.

Christmas Traditions: New Undies

Much like a head cheerleader after prom, I'm about three weeks late here, but never fear. I'm getting back in to the swing of things. I had an interesting, albeit completely unblogable Christmas break, and therefore the blog gets another mediocre story where the leading lady is my mother, and not some cute girl that I've managed to embarrass myself with. (And much like that cheerleader, that last sentence had to wait a long time for a period.)

It all began with a novelty pair of boxers that had glow in the dark Christmas elves that I received as a present. Until that point in time I had worn strictly "tighty whities". It wasn't necessarily by choice, but as a young boy you kind of just wear whatever mom buys. The Christmas boxers were intended to be a joke, but one day either out of curiosity, or lack of clean briefs I tried them on.

To quote Garth Algar:

At first it's constrictive, but after a while it becomes a part of you.

By the end of the day, like Jessica Simpson presented with a horrible movie role, I was sold. The freedom, the excitement, the ability to live the way god had intended... I was a new manboy.

Apparently my mother also thought it was cool(Every other male in my household wore the TW's as well). Either as a means to encourage my new found undergarment love, or to drop a not so subtle hint to my dad and brother, she thought it wise to buy me boxers the following Christmas, and the Christmas after that, and so on and so forth.

Unfortunately for her, they never picked up on the hint.

A traditional x-mas outfit

It soon became my tradition on Christmas day to wear these boxers on the outside of my clothes for entirety of the day. Sometimes I'd receive more than one pair, and wear them all. They generally complimented my traditional Christmas hat well, and it was an absolutely silly thing to wear all day. (More on the x-mas hat soon.)

The goal is generally to hike them up as high as possible

Eventually my mom must have gotten bored because the undergarment choices for Christmas became more and more outrageous. On one fine Christmas day I found myself wearing a pair of boxers(over my clothes) that felt a bit... "stiff." Stacey, my girlfriend at the time, sat watching me for a while before commanding, "Come over here"

"There's something funny about these" she said as she grabbed the top of them and then gave a stern tug.

Much to my surprise, and that of my mother and surrounding family, the boxers ripped completely off. The "stiff"ness that I had felt was the Velcro pieces holding the break away boxers together.

"You bought him stripper underwear?" Miranda shouted.

We all had a good laugh at my mother, and while I haven't gotten any more "stripper" underwear, the tradition continues to this day.

This year's boxers... now with more class

Interesting note: While checking the Wayne's World quote for accuracy I stumbled upon a wikipedia page that claims that Wayne's World is the first known usage of the classic phrase, "That's what she said.

Now you know. And knowing is half the battle.

The Developer Trap

About two months ago there was a huge box sitting in one of the spare rooms at our office. I work for a large format printer company so there are always rolls of paper around, and therefore always large cardboard tubes around. Apparently John saw fit to put these two together, combined with an electrical cord, and make a trap.

After some time Sean came across the trap and added a sign, and a nearby empty flat panel monitor box to the trap as "bait".

I'm really not sure how I was not involved in the trap building process. I must have been hard at work that week, but that hardly seems possible. Eventually Sean decided he needed to take pictures of his creation, and wanted a "test dummy" to pose with it.

I'm sure Liang was first choice to trap in a box, but I'm equally sure that he was cranky and argued that he wouldn't do it, so Sean came to me. As is often the case, it didn't take much persuasion to get me to make an ass out of myself.

Sean had the photos for a while, today I finally decided to sit down and throw them together. I hope you enjoy "The Developer Trap", and apologize for the fact that it's mostly inside jokes and nerd humor.

The UFADAR swings both ways/Jesse gets a new building crush

I really wish I had the writing ability to do this story justice, but you'll have to take my word for it that the real version of this was far more amusing than what I've managed to detail here. That being said, sorry it took so long. For some reason I just couldn't finish it. Sorry for the length. Feel free to stop in the middle and make yourself a sandwich, or some homemade lunchables. If that doesn't work give me a call and I'll read it to you.

"Someone in the building was looking for help with their computer."
"Uhm... yeah..." I responded with a bit of hesitation.

It was Allen, former doorman and now resident of my building, on the other end of the phone. He's the all around good Samaritan kind of guy, so I didn't want to come right out and say it, but normally helping people with their computer ends up being a pain in my ass that I'd rather avoid.

"It's Agnes, do you know her?"
"Red hair? About 4 feet tall?" I asked, now somewhat guilty for being hesitant. "Feel free to give her my number."

I'd run in to Agnes a few times in the lobby over the past year. She was an older lady(I'd assumed in her 70's) who always had a smile and a "Hello" as she ran off to her job, volunteering at the hospital. She's the kind of lady that makes you feel like you should hug her goodbye and say thank you for the cookies when she leaves.

After a bit of phone tag we finally arranged a date and time for me to come down and assess the damage. From what I could gather she and her sister had bought condos next door to each other so that Agnes could take care of her. When her sister recently moved in to a retirement home, Agnes moved across the hall to live in the bigger unit.

"When I bought the computa, the... the Geek. You know the Geek from tha Best Buy? He set it up for me" she informed me with her New York type accent and a certain amount of innocence reserved only for children and the elderly when dealing with technology. "I asked the man from Qwest if I needed to call the Geek back, but they said they could do it. He moved the computa for me. And... and now the thing doesn't work!" Her voice perked up at every use of the word "Geek".

Some quick investigation revealed that qwest had really done a number on her computer. I'll save the nerdtastic explanations for offline discussions if anyone is interested, but about an hour later I had most everything fixed except for her email.

"Okay, you need your name and password to sign in here" I told her as I attempted to fix the email issue and moved aside to give her access to the keyboard.

"Oh, it's agnesbridget and the password is..." she revealed what most people consider "private" without hesitation.

"You really shouldn't tell anyone y..." I began to protest, but gave up at the futility of it.

The login didn't work, and after a half hour conversation with qwest we found that they had disabled the account and it couldn't be recovered. I had some choice words for them over their treatment of a customer, but eventually I gave up and decided to sign her up for a free account at yahoo.

I began to fill out the registration information when I got in the kind of situation that I always seem to screw up despite my best intentions.

"Uhm... it uh... wants your birthday" I asked hesitantly. Was it rude to ask? Should I have just put in a fake date? Would that have been more rude?

"Oh. April 11, 1917" she said with a big smile. "I'm an old bag"

I was soon done with the necessary changes. The printer was working again so she could write her niece. "She never writes back anyhow. I don't know why I botha".

The shortcut to her recipe site was placed on the desktop. "It's the only thing I use tha Intenet for."

Everything else that could possibly be distracting was placed away in a nice folder. "I don't have time for all that nonsense"

She offered to pay me for my time, but I was more than happy to do it, and didn't feel right taking money from a 90 year old woman, especially one who's more proficient with the computer than half the people I know.

---

About a week later Liang was supposed to come over to watch the Sun's game. I had hung up the phone with him less than 5 minutes before when I heard a knock at my door. I thought maybe he had tricked me and called from the lobby so I threw the door open and jumped outside only to find Agnes standing there, now somewhat startled.

"Oh... uh hi" I stammered as she simultaneously announced, "Ya... Ya got no room unda ya door!"

I looked at her somewhat puzzled until she pulled a card out. "I tried to shove this under it, but it doesn't fit. Ya got no room unda ya door" she repeated.

"I wanted to say thank you for helping me out the other day. I was at the Biltmore. That Apple store. I don't know what they do there. My son... he... he's got one of those... what do you call em? A tripod. He loves the thing."

"Oh, an iPod?" I asked.

"Yeah, it plays tha music or whateva." she commented with a dismissive wave of her hand. "I got no use for all that. But he seems to love it." At this she handed me a card. After another thank you or two she left and I went back inside to open the card and find a 50 dollar Apple Store gift card.

Liang showed up minutes later and I related the whole story to him. My pure amusement at the whole ordeal was enough for him to start ribbing me about my 90 year old crush. The teasing continued until half time came and we decided to leave for dinner.

"Well, I always did want a short red headed girl." I relented as gathered our things to go. "And besides, a sweet, cute girl brought me a card. That's better than you've done in a while"

We were half way down the hall when the door to 11-N flew open and Agnes came bounding out with an energy normally reserved for those a tenth of her age. "Oh! I got distracted. I met this nice lady and decided ta chat for a while. I think I'm stuck on the 11th floor!"

We smiled, nodded and said our pleasantries as we made way to the elevator.

Once out of earshot Liang turned to me with a huge grin on his face and finally gave in, "All right. I see it"

Nerd Word(s): UFADAR

UFADAR(Universal Formula for Acceptable Dating Age Ranges)
- acronym

1. A formula for deciding whether a person is acceptable for dating based off of their age(Half your age plus seven)

- pronunciation
OOF DAR(Somehow the middle A became silent)

[ Acronym Origin: Me - this post, but credit goes to Geremy for taking it from a bad blog joke to a normal piece of the nerd lexicon through repeated use. ]

[ Formula Origin: First told to me by my friend James, and he's now an MD, so that basically makes it fact. ]

- usage
1. "Wow, that girl is cute"
"Woah, back up dude... way off the UFADAR"

2. "Is his new girlfriend UFADAR compliant? She seems a bit young"