8th Layer Archive

« artisticbluewolf.com | 8th Layer Archive | Purple Moon »

October 01, 2001

For the love of nerds

If you're a computer nerd (like me), and if you have a girlfriend (like me), chances are that regardless of her ability (or inability) to understand "computer stuff," it still flips her lid that you know so much about computers. Sometimes I look sideways at her and wonder if she's with me for the tech support...

When we first met (just over 3 years ago) we discussed her attraction to intelligent women. When she was dating men, she always went for men who were strong, but not too bright. Since becoming a lesbian, her tastes for partners tended toward smart women. She couldn't understand why her partner selection process changed just because the gender changed. It was obvious to me. She's an intelligent woman - college educated with some fancy initials (RN) after her name... She sees someone of the opposite sex as "different" - so therefore it's okay and natural for him to not be smart, but to be strong. When she sees someone of the same sex, she sees them as "just like her," and therefore would tend to be more interested in an intelligent woman. She swooned.

For me, I tend to go for women that are female. Oh..yeah, intelligent. I tend to be attracted to women that are intelligent, but in a way that's different from my areas of strength. I don't know if it's the yin-yang type of thing or if it's just a failsafe to keep us from stepping on each other's toes.

I'm the one that writes poetry (which Tracy loves) and she's the one that writes humor (which I love). She has recently written a novel - it turned out to be a humorous "slice-of-life" type of novel. I've started my own novel - and my genres tend to be sci-fi, suspense, and horror. She writes from the heart, just pouring out page after page, and then goes back to edit with her head (and creates the outline from the finished product). I start my writing from my head. I create the outline, create the themes, build all the structure - then I fill the spaces between with emotion.

She thinks it's awesome that I know all these techie things. And I think it's cute that she's happily unaware of all that goes into the things she enjoys. I tell her about servers, the boot process, doing a trace route and a ping. She blinks. She blinks again. "Oh, honey, it's great that all those serving dishes have boots to keep them warm." "Can you do that trace thingie to find out who the hell sent me this damn Spam?" (Yes, I've managed to get her to understand Spam at least...) "Is there a way for you to do that ping pong thing to find out why this damn thing won't work right?" Blink, blink. *bats eyelashes to get me to help her with some html code that "won't work right"*

And I think it's awesome that she's so creative. We'll be in a situation that (to me) seems like an impasse. With Scylla on the left and Charybdis on the right, I'm heaving a heavy sigh. At which point Tracy will dance a little jig, pat me on the back, and then tell me to hop onto the Unicorn with her - and we fly away in a direction that wasn't even on the map!

So now that she's got a techie girlfriend, she's a big shot with everyone. She gets tech support requests from her dad, her mom, her coworkers, her email lists and her blog/website visitors. Of course the easy stuff she does, but when she messes something up and can't find the missing > or understand the code, well...that's when I get the butterfly eyelashes pointed in my direction. This is in addition to the tech support I have to do for my own blogs and website, her blogs and website, and my family's website, email, etc...

Most of the time I don't mind her taking the credit for the things I help her with - I'm still hoping it will inspire an interest in learning more about html, etc. I'm very proud of what she's learned already - she's getting pretty good at tables ... even though she still asks at every sitting "is black all 0s or all Fs?" And hope springs eternal that someday she'll open the Paint Shop Pro book and finally learn how to create her own graphics.

So today ... while I'm trying to get my own new blogs set up ... she's busting my chops about not having written anything about her in my blogs yet. She didn't like my first one - Blue702 - because she's not a fan of the "woo woo" stuff (it makes the hair stand up on the back of her neck). I can understand that, so I created this blog. This is the third post... I'm still finding my voice...

In the midst of tweaking the look of my site, adding links, adding a reblogger and site meter, etc... Tracy bats her eyelashes at me like two silken butterflies and says, "can you help me with this?" Of course, it's for someone else (she's suuuuuuuuuch a Pisces) who flattered her into doing it. So I stop what I'm doing and get the usernames and passwords - logging into someone else's blog and site meter manager - and not only fix the original problem, but also put the settings on Central time for her because she's in Texas.

Okay...so I go back to the tweaking. Tracy (all her work now done) goes back to blogging. She puts a big plug in for me on her homepage ... since she's been blogging longer and gets about 100 hits a day - she wanted to drive some traffic to my new site. She meant well. But she was a little upset that my new blog wasn't all about her ... (hence this post all about her). So I read it and continue tweaking - while she pours over my homepage for the millionth time. Then she posts one of my poems on her blog. That was so sweet. (It was also so I would feel guilty enough to post about her.)

So I finish my immediate tasks and take a look at her blog again. The woman who I had just helped found it in her heart to make a comment about Tracy's blog entry that was plugging my site. Her comment about my site was all zzzzz's. Then she parodied my poem in her next comment.

The difference between genius and stupidity? Genius has its limits. And I have her passwords.

She's lucky I have morals.

Posted by BlueWolf on October 1, 2001 03:00 PM