forthwritten has associated the following concepts with me: The poodle Open source Support Food Geek humour
The poodle
My aunt has a standard poodle (blue or silver, depending on who you're asking: a charcoal grey that turns white at the tips) named Dazzle. He was formerly named Parnelli, in his days as a guide dog candidate. Sadly, he was a medical washout, as he has something funky going on with his chest area, a weakness of the windpipe or something of the like. A poodle that has a non-zero chance of dropping dead if handled wrong about the chest (in a way that wouldn't affect other poodles) is not a good guide dog candidate.
The poodle is coming up on his 4th birthday. He is still very young and full of energy, but has settled down some. He and Deacon (the 10-year-old Black Lab) have different thresholds of excitability on different things. The poodle is sometimes more sensitive about stuff going on outside, and, when very excited, has a piercing high-pitched yap ("the sissy bark"). He generally gets sent outside for that. He also humps Deacon when he is all stirred up (when there is noise outside and Deacon starts barking, or when arriving at a location and parking there). Occasionally Deacon tries to hump him; more often, Deacon will lick the poodle's dick. (I dunno, man, I dunno.)
The poodle is picky about his food, and is not highly treat-motivated (unless it's a really good treat). Kibble does not excite him. He will sniff at his dish and look up as if to ask what this swill is, before eating daintily. Sometimes he will wander away from it before deciding that yes, he might be hungry after all. If that's all there is.
He is not overly styled. He is close-clipped almost all over, except for a pom-pom on the end of his tail, ear flaps, and the top of his head. He wears a leopard-print collar (loose because of the chest issues). This means he can slip it if he's leashed. Thus, when he's being walked with a leash, he has a harness. When he comes home from the groomer's, he frantically rubs himself on the dog bed to get the shampoo scent off of him. He will also do this when coming home from a walk. I dunno, man.
He's a good dog, I suppose. I'm not terribly much of a dog person, but he's nice enough.
Open source
Like many geeks of my age, I approve of open source software. It's a personal choice for any developer, of course, but I approve. I'm not really a developer myself (I have a little bit of schooling in programming, but not enough experience to be useful) but I enjoy the company of developers. I volunteer for an open-source project: LiveJournal is open source, and I do stuff in Support and
suggestions. Most recently, I have taken to hanging out with the developers and associated other volunteers for Dreamwidth.org, a code fork of LiveJournal. This makes me immensely excited. I have watched LJ's volunteer code patches from the sidelines with interest. As LJ moved away from being managed by geeks, this process became somewhat less effective. Since Dreamwidth is just starting up, pretty much everyone is trying to pitch in. Dreamwidth developers are maintaining a cordial relationship with LiveJournal developers, and, in the true spirit of open source, are sharing back and forth relevant information.
I really have a hard time expressing how very transformed with glee that this makes me. There are these two sites that might, in a closed-source environment, become rivals. However, neither of them would exist if they weren't open source. Brad wouldn't have had all that help. Mark and Denise wouldn't have been able to take the starter code to fork off their site from. Sites like InsaneJournal and Inksome would not exist. It thrills me so much to see LJ devs happily accepting patches from people working on DW code, and it thrills me to see DW coders taking on things that LJ has been wanting for years. It thrills me to watch LJ build things that LJ devs probably know DW devs are wanting, and seeing that they're being shared open source. I giggle and clap my hands and do a little shimmy in my chair.
Support
Speaking of volunteering for an open-source project, I do stuff in LiveJournal Support and
suggestions. I poked at the Support board starting in I believe 2002. Later, I came into the Support IRC channel (and was immediately claimed as a clone by bekijane) during one of the Great Power Outage Downtimes. I like knowing what is going on with LiveJournal. I like being able to let people know what is going on and how to do stuff. Thus, I do Support. The perks, like support points, the Support community, the vgifts, the occasional paid time, and the general hilarity associated with the community, all take second place to knowing what's going on. Sometimes volunteers hear stuff that's going on before the rest of the userbase; sometimes we find out with everybody else. We can usually get a straight story fast. Around the time of the layoffs, Support was huddled up together in IRC comforting each other.
The main thing I do in volunteering is head the
suggestions team. (I do look to have it built into a robust team rather than just having most of it in my head.) boredinsomniac is my very capable co-maintainer and backup. Basically people make suggestions and we screen them before they show up in the community, then moderate comments in the community and help out with the discussion. It is loads of fun, and there are often really interesting discussions. It comes with its share of frustrations, but what doesn't? I love the community so much. Food
Since coming to stay with my aunt, I have been posting about food a lot more. I'm not technically what you'd call a foodie, but some aspects of food-geekery do intrigue me. I post the odd recipe every now and then, and post pictures of stuff like the Bacon Explosion. I am known for my LJ Fudge, and have been known to do things with crockpots.
Geek humour
I love geek culture. I love being a geek. I love cracking geeky jokes. I really like entertaining the people around me, and when the people around me are geeks, this means geek humor. I love puns. I love the kind of puns that mean you have to be somewhat conversant in the programming language of choice to get it, or become conversant pretty fast in it. I like bizarre injokes, and I like the fact that for once, I am part of the 'in' crowd, or at least some of the 'in' crowds that count. I even like the fact that sometimes in order to make the non-geeks get geek humor, I have to increase their geek score a little. I don't mind explaining jokes when they take specialized technical knowledge to get, because one of the best ways to acquire specialized technical knowledge is by having it tied into something funny.
