Nerdiness and More Ghostiness

[captainsblog]

Gumby was back at the corner of Sheridan and Harlem at the height of morning rush hour yesterday. By the time I went by a second time (on my bike, this time riding to the office and back for the afternoon), he was nowhere to be seen. I suspect a cop gave him a talking-to about distracting traffic at a majorly deadly intersection.

Before coming home at lunchtime, I scored what it says on the tin of the icon- two tickets to Nerd Prom.  They've been doing annual TED Talks in Buffalo for a few years, but prior years' audiences were essentially audition-only, and I never made the cut. This time, they moved to a slightly larger venue and just put the ducats out for sale. I missed the first round of distribution but got word of more going on offer at 10 yesterday.... which I promptly forgot.  By the time I remembered, the ticket site was consistently saying Too Bad So Sad, but the event itself finally said that a browser refresh might help.

Which it did.  We can now check out the following on October 20th:

Jason Briner
Topic: Major Sea Level Rise in Near Future

William Capozzi
Topic: Visualizing/Revisiting Meaningful and Historic Places Using VR

Jim Cielencki
Topic: Discovering I knew nothing about  my city

Fotini Galanes
Topic: Beauty and Deformity

John H. Johnson, PhD & Mike Gluck
Topic: EVERYDATA: The Misinformation  Hidden in the Little Data You Consume Every Day

Dr. Mark Montgomery
Topic: Retention: The Powerful Hypothetical  Construct

Jamie O’Neil
Topic: Electroskip for Generative Movement

Jonathan Rajewski
Topic: How the Internet of Things is  Making My Job Easier

Allison Sagraves
Topic: Be a Citizen Data Scientist

Don't know any of them. Interested in many of them. Cmon- we're Buffalo; we're not getting Bill Gates or John Hodgman.  But I'll be nerdgasming all the same. And, just as with my abandoned effort to mock The Room, Babeville has a full bar.

----

The rest of yesterday was uneventful; I biked home after biking back to the office at lunchtime, and watched another Mr. Robot through my tablet while Eleanor was chanting.  We're now doing Stranger Things together:)  But by this morning, I was rendered virtually tech-less under this roof:  my main laptop was still at work, said tablet wouldn't power up, and my backup laptop, which died in the middle of Sunday's LJ posting (all of which, thankfully, saved to the server:), still wasn't showing any sign of life.  So I just left for work a few minutes early this morning in Ziggy; Eleanor had a doctor's appointment out of his driving range, so we switched cars for the day. 

The work morning was relatively busy, but I kept an appointment for a noon workout I'd made when it wasn't, and stopped at the Wegmans near the studio for some beverages, returning home to change back into work clothes. Somehow, my wallet got lost in the shuffle. I searched the car and house high and low, plus any number of other places it might've dropped, and when I returned to work I called the service desk to see if it had been turned in. 

It hadn't.

Oddly enough, panic did NOT set in.  I somehow knew it would be fine. So I finished my afternoon of work, changed out of work clothes to look higher and lower, waited for Eleanor to get home to put her on Wallet Alert, and then headed back to Wegmans for one last look around the register where I'd last used it (and also voted in our one-race primary).

Still nothing, yet still no panic. Partially, because by the time Eleanor got home, both my tablet and the backup laptop, as well as this one, were all up and running fine.

That's when I concluded that Betty was just messing with me.

I checked both active debit cards online and found no hackery.  Then I looked in one unusual place, and there the damn thing was.  So I'm fine for a full rich travel day tomorrow, a workout tomorrow night, and hopefully no more ghosts.

Comments

[bill_sheehan.livejournal.com]

I dream of the day when I don't have to carry my wallet. When my driving credentials are on my smartphone and every merchant accepts Apple Pay.

(and a Mr. Robot will hack me in no time flat.)