Allison's World of Geekery

Originally posted by gabrielleabelle at Mississippi Personhood Amendment

There are a zillion and one major and minor life updates that I should probably put up here when I get the chance, most notably a promotion at work. But tonight, I just want to say thank God for the Sheboygan police department.

As I was leaving work tonight, my low fuel light came on. Knowing that I was unlikely to remember to go get gas tomorrow until about the time I was five minutes late leaving for work, I figured I'd swing by the gas station on my way home. Somehow, I managed to lock my keys in the car while I was pumping gas. I don't even know how I did it. I tossed the keys down on the driver's seat when I took them out of the ignition, same as I usually do; I guess I must have accidentally hit the lock button. I got lucky - about the time I was discovering that my hide-a-key had fallen off my exhaust pipe at some undetermined point in the past, I saw headlights coming up from behind me, and turned around to see that it was a police car. Turns out someone had driven off from this convenience store without paying for their gas. REAL stupid thing to do; in the state of Wisconsin, you can lose your lisence for that. Anyway, said officer saw me, and asked what was wrong; I told her. She opened her trunk to find that someone had removed her slim jim. So she went inside the convenience store to get the information about the drive-off from the clerks, and see if anyone inside had a coat hanger. I followed, because I was flippin' cold. Below forty tonight. Someone had a coat hanger, but wouldn't you know it, my car is too recent a model for that to work. So, aforementioned officer lets me sit in the front seat of her car while we wait for another officer who has a slim jim. And what should have been a 10 minute stop for gas became a 45 minute endeavor. But thank goodness for the Sheboygan PD, who were kind enough torescue me from my own stupidity, and not even tell me how stupid I'd been in the process. Thanks, guys, wherever you are tonight. And, um, thanks to the guy who drove off from the pump, I guess, for causing these officers to be out my way. But, dude - that was really stupid. Just so you know - those convenience store clerks got your lisence plate...

You scored as Enterprise D (Star Trek), You have high ideals and know in your heart that humanity will continue to evolve in a better people. No matter what may happen, you have faith in human beings. A rare quality. Now if only the Borg would quit assimilating people. </td> Enterprise D (Star Trek) 100% Babylon 5 (Babylon 5) 94% Heart of Gold (Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy) 81% SG-1 (Stargate) 75% Moya (Farscape) 75% Deep Space Nine (Star Trek) 69% Millennium Falcon (Star Wars) 63% Galactica (Battlestar: Galactica) 63% Andromeda Ascendant (Andromeda) 56% Bebop (Cowboy Bebop) 56% Serenity (Firefly) 50% Nebuchadnezzar (The Matrix) 50% FBI's X-Files Division (The X-Files) 44% Which sci-fi crew would you best fit in with? (pics) created with QuizFarm.com

--Go to Google.com
--Click on Maps.
--Click on "get Directions".
--From New York
--To Oslo

--And read line # 23.

If you laugh, repost this.

Christ the Lord is risen today! Aleleuia!

It seems I always get Geordi:-)

Your results:
You are Qui-Gon Jinn

Qui-Gon Jinn 80% Chewbacca 77% Obi-Wan Kenobi 76% R2-D2 73% Yoda 66% Luke Skywalker 65% Lando Calrissian 65% Han Solo 62% Princess Leia 58% Padme 58%

Overall, you're a pretty well balanced person. But maybe you focus a little too much on the here and now. Think about the future before its too late.

(This list displays the top 10 results out of a possible 21 characters)


Click here to take the "Which Star Wars character are you?" quiz...


So, I seem to have gotten spring fever. Bad. It started innocently enough, with a quick trip to Wal-Mart. After remembering the toilet paper, I realized I had forgotten the cat litter. Forgetting the cat litter was not an option, I REALLY needed cat litter. So I trecked back across the massive store. And, in the process, wandered past the cosmetics aisle. I am not normally found in the cosmetics aisle, as I don't wear make-up. The last time I wore make-up (not counting that one time I dressed up as a whore for class) was my high school graduation. But, something caught my eye, and the result is that I have now painted my nails. Just my toenails; I'm a nailbiter, and I work with acetone all the time, so there's no point in painting my fingernails. But my toenails are now alternating lime green and metallic ocean blue. A little messy, as the last time I painted my nails was when I was about twelve. Holy cow, that was over a decade ago. But painted nonetheless. I honestly don't know why I did this. No one but me's ever gonna see it - the apartment pool hasn't been filled yet, and between my bad knees and my job, I don't ever wear sandals. And the apartment is the only place I ever go barefoot. But maybe this will motivate me to finally get some Tevas, I'm hoping those will be easier for me to wear than other sandals. Much as I love my running shoes, I'm getting a little tired of living in them. But yay. Technicolor toes!

EDIT: I can now show off to my little heart's content, as I have a pair of Tevas. I originally went to the shoe place down by Target, but they didn't have much my size (I have big feet), and they only had generic brands - I have to have Tevas, because they have an adjustable heel strap, without which I get bisters and sore knees. So then I tried Rogan's, which carries damn near everything, as that's where I got sent to get steel toes for work. Iliked the blue ones, but they didn't have any big enough, so I now have a rockin' pair of brown and green ones. Yay! They feel a little funny, probably because I'm used to the mega arch support from my prescription orthotics, but they don't hurt, even in the middle of a joint flare-up! Yay shoes!

So, life progresses. It is a BEAUTIFUL 45 degree day today, so I finally pulled the bike out of seasonal retirement. I didn't go far, just around the apartment complex, but man, I needed that. My tires (and my jeans and sneakers) are now wet with melting snow, and my airways are a little pissy with me, but I don't care. It felt good just to be outside, especially without the big heavy parka. I just had a fleece vest under my windbreaker, and I was fine. And it was sunny and breezy, just beautiful. I've been feeling restless the last couple of weeks. I've been cooped up all winter, especially when it actually got down to 25 below. 45 is tropical, as far as I'm concerned. And it was good to be outside for a while. The snow is melting, though the drifts will probably be here for a while, and it'll probably be another month or two before they open the complex pool back up, but for now, I'm happy with the bike.

And, just because I can, a meme, swiped from the lovely peace_weasel:

YOU'RE ON MY FRIENDS LIST, I WANNA KNOW YOU... I want to know 34 things about you. I don't care if we never talk, never liked each other, or if we already know everything about each other. Short and sweet is fine... I just wanna know you better! Thanks! =)

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So the radio is always on in the labs. I hate the one station that comes in in Devo (The Buzz), so I usually keep CDs in there. I don't mind the station that's usually on in Micro (The Point) so much. Sure, I hate Nickelback's Rockstar but the other songs are mostly okay. But I was running some titrations in there the other day, and someone had it set to some rap station known as KISS. I hate rap. With a passion. But there was this one song that seriously had me going WTF? And unfortunately, it's been stuck in my head the last two days. The chorus consisted essentially of "This is why I'm hot. This is why I'm hot. I'm hot b'cause I'm fly, you ain't 'cause you not. This is why, this is why, this is why I'm hot." Aside from the rather obvious fact that the singer doesn't know me and has no way of knowing whether I may or may not be hot...dude why are people paying this nutcase to tell them about how he's hot and they, essentially, suck. I don't care if the song's theoretially addressing someone else, it's still in the second person. And dude...if you have to tell the general public, using logical fallacies, why you're hot...you ain't, 'cause you not.

Work, being work, continues a pace. I think I must be getting a cold, I've been hypersensitive to noise the last couple of days, even taking into account the fact that I have a limited noise tolerance anyway. Yesterday, between the hissing nitrogen taps and a coworker blasting heavy metal, I was about ready to kill something. I settled for a pair of earplugs, but all they really did was make it hard to hear anyone who was talking to me. I was contemplating whether there was a way to wear two pairs at once, but I concluded that the answer was no. I really do need to talk to Harry about the music. Aside from the fact that I just plain don't care for heavy metal (neither does anyone else in that lab), it's distracting, and it sets off the Sensory Integration Disorder something awful. I'd been hoping the problem would resolve itself, since last staff meeting, the bosses declared that all music must be not only at reasonable volumes, but also work-appropriate, and The Buzz, the station Harry likes, definitely does not meet those criteria. Name me one occupation where Californication is work-appropriate. "Prostitute" and "porn star" don't count. Nickelback's Rockstar is bad too. And their humor talk shows aren't funny, they're just offensive. Thing is, Harry's a really nice guy who's practically never too busy to show me something when stuff comes up that I don't know how to do, so I don't want to hurt his feelings.

Learned how to use a glove bag today, which was kinda cool. Solvent-land has been uber-slow lately, so I've been taking some of the other trackers that don't have weird stuff on them to help alleviate the backlog, which is how I came to be handling an air-sensitive solid. Air-sensitive liquids, you just use a nitrogen-flushed syringe, but air sensitive solids need a full nitrogen atmosphere, which requires a glove bag. They seriously need to make those in female sizes, the gloves on that thing were like twice the size of my hands at least. It was the bench-top equivalent of a spacewalk trying to handle tiny meltpoint tubes in those things. Luckily this wasn't a spontaneously-combusts-in-air sample, this one just has a tendency to absorb CO2, which can make the IR go screwy, and occasionally the GC as well. Looking at my IR spectrum, I may have picked up a little CO2, but not much, so that's good.