Fixpert

This is embarrassing, but I’m kind of afraid of really big thunderstorms and tornados. This is a story about how Diggnation, one of my nerdiest of indulgences, got me through a scary storm last night.

First, some background: when I was a kid, lightening struck a tree just outside the window where I was sitting at my house, and in a giant explosion all of our electronics were fried. Some plugs got blown straight across the room, the VCR was shot, the phones were shot, I think the TV was toast too. You could see black burn lines up the interior walls of our house where the electrical lines were.

Later when we looked at our poor tree, we noticed a 4 inch strip of bark completely stripped away all the way from the very top to the very bottom of the tree where the lightening had hit it. I guess the lightening struck the rootball because the tree died and fell over a few months later (away from the house, phew!) in another bad storm, actually that was the morning of my sister’s college graduation. Anywhoo! It was a big honking tree, if there were two of me, we couldn’t reach our arms around it if we tried. Big old tree. So, imagine little mini-me sitting there at the ground level, about 15 feet away from where the lightening bolt hit the ground. That’s where I’m coming from, so don’t make fun of me!

Well last night, here in Richmond, Virginia, we got our first mega-storm of the warm season. I got off work, and was driving home with the intention of going for a run in my new neighborhood. Then I noticed the giant black death cloud headed my way. It was like the thing from the Never-ending Story — “The Nothing.” You feel me? Ok, so the Nothing was coming straight for me, with lightening bolts in the distance. I turned on the radio in time to hear “bleep-bleep-this is the emergency broadcasting system…bla bla 60mph winds…bla bla tornado warning…” My heart was racing a bit and I put the pedal to the metal. I rolled up at my house just in time, lightening was starting to hit and the rain just got started after I got in the door.

However, there’s another component to this story. I had just moved into this house the day before (Sunday), and it’s just me living in this house all alone. I live in the attic because the downstairs floors are getting refinished — OMG I just realized that’s so totally Never-ending Story too!! Ok, ok, so I of course unplug all of the electronics which means, unfortunately, I have no distraction or entertainment during the storm. I called Jim on the phone, who talked me through the beginning of the storm, but after we got off the phone, what was I to do?

It was still all rainy and stormy and scary. So, I popped open my laptop and thank goodness, there was Diggnation in all its low-res glory. I watched the Reno episode where Alex gets really drunk really early in the show (ala Jager shots). The timing was perfect because there were so many camera flashes going on throughout the episode, it blended with the lightening and I totally forgot there was a scary scary storm going on. Thanks guys!

That’s because it’s CSS Naked Day. I feel so…naked! So far the list of participants is at 545 people. That’s awesome! Everyone has turned off their styles and is baring nothing but pure xhtml markup for all the world to see. Hmm…methinks I need to change my markup to offer a skip to content link, or move things around so that my articles come before the sidebar.

Big ups to Dustin Diaz for putting this even together.

Eh? Eh? Can I get a witness? They just traded heads that’s all. For Sesame Street, Bert was the anal-retentive one, and the one with the oblong head. Ernie was the happy-go-lucky dude with the round noggin. Flip heads (oblong head = happy, and round head = anal) and you’ve got America’s hit sitcome from the eighties…Perfect Strangers.

People, this is the type of high-quality content that I provide for you day after day here at Fixpert.

With all the travelling I’ve been doing lately, I’ve had a lot of people ask me where I’m from or where I grew up. Sometimes this is a tough question to answer because I move around so much. That’s why I’m providing a list of everywhere I’ve ever lived throughout my life. Next time someone asks, they’ll have to visit Fixpert if they want an answer:

1. Born - Ft. Benning, Georgia
2. 0-2 yrs - Ft. Campbell, Kentucky
3. 2-3 yrs - Hiedelberg, Germany
4. 4-5 yrs - Osterholz Scharmbeck, Germany
5. 5-7 yrs - Ft. Meade, Maryland
6. 7-9 yrs - Westlake Village, California
7. 9-17 yrs - Williamsburg, Virginia
8. 17-21 yrs - Richmond, Virginia
9. 21-23 yrs - Charlottesville, Virginia
10. 23-24 yrs - Brooklyn, NY
11. 24-25 yrs - Richmond, Virginia
12. 25-27 yrs - Charlottesville, Virginia
13. 27 yrs - Richmond, Virginia
14. 28 yrs (present) - Los Angeles, California

You can see that Virginia makes up 18 of the last 19 years, so that seems like a good answer to give. Maybe soon I’ll provide a list of all the apartments I’ve ever lived in, it’s got to be at least 20 just in my adult life, seriously.

It’s been far too long since I decided I was going to write this post. If you’re looking for a quick, easy way to set up an online portfolio, I highly recommend CarbonMade. Creating a nice, clean portfolio has always been a bit of a chafe for me. This Winter I was interviewing for jobs. I put together a pretty lame quick-n-dirty “portfolio” — which was just a blog post on Fixpert with links to images. Lame.

Then I heard about CarbonMade. I signed up for a free account, and within 30 minutes I had a nice clean portfolio with a friendly url to boot: http://fixpert.carbonmade.com. What’s amazing is my response rate from prospective employers went through the roof after showing them my CarbonMade portfolio. I immediately got a handful of interviews and several job offers.

Another bonus is the guys at CarbonMade are super cool. I emailed them and it turns out they are cyclists too (and they ride fixies)!! Big thumb’s up from me, go check it out.