Geek Habitat

I don’t have words for the still-unfolding catastrophe that is the Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunamis of December 26, 2004. It’s all a little mind-numbing — the sheer size of the geographic area affected, the scope of the devastation, and the growing numbers of lives lost or missing.

CNN photo gallery (Devastating photos; viewer discretion advised.)

How We Can Help — compiled by Google
NOTE: The list isn’t conclusive. It’s missing Doctors Without Borders (Médecins Sans Frontières), for example.

It’s my 31st birthday today! (Thank you, Noah!)

People who share my birthday:

• Thomas Woodrow Wilson, 28th president of the United States (1856)
• Earl “Fatha” Hines, father of modern jazz piano (1905)
• Stan Lee, artist and writer — creator of Marvel Comics (1922)
• Denzel Washington, Academy Award-winning actor (1954)
• Elizabeth Jordan Carr, first “test tube baby” born in the U.S. (1981)

Significant events in history on this day:

• John C. Calhoun became the first U.S. vice president to resign from office, citing differences with President Andrew Jackson (1832)

As many Amazon.com shoppers know, this holiday season something went terribly wrong in Bezosland. On several occasions, Amazon.com seemed to be posessed by gremlins — people couldn’t login to their accounts, view or modify wishlists, or even perform searches on the website.

Now those of us who do 99% of our shopping online, much of it on Amazon.com, are getting Amazoned. The symptoms of getting Amazoned are painful and easy to spot:

• Did you receive more than one copy of an item you placed on your Amazon.com wishlist?
• Did you give a “duplicate” copy of an item to someone because you purchased it off their Amazon.com wishlist?

QUESTION: What is the #1 cause for a geek to feel old?

ANSWER: Realizing your eldest website turns TEN years old in the coming year!

… I guess even websites have to grow up sometime.

It’s 1 AM on Christmas Day, and we’re getting up at 7 AM… Ack! It was worth it spending time with the kids and immediate family on Justin’s side and then heading home to open our gifts to each other. (Realizing, yet again, that Justin spent way too much on me. I mean, W-A-Y too much!) And topping off the evening watching the Evanescence video Justin got for me and realizing we’re both in love with her voice and, well, her. If you’re gonna be a goth chick, please follow Amy Lee’s example, kids! {grin}

Overheard around the Christmas tree of a web developer and web designer (c’est moi) who’s married to a usability specialist (Justin) in a Fortune 500 company: