I’m being a complete goofball AND completely serious here: William Shatner’s website looks like a horrible, sad mess. A HOT HOT MESS.

And I can fix it for him!

So I’m launching a campaign to get William Shatner, the awesome Captain Kirk himself, to hire me as his new web designer.

Dear Captain Kirk, your website should be MADE OF AWESOME.

If you’re so inclined, you can click here for that tweet, and retweet it. That way maybe he’ll see it and decide that yes, he does – in fact – need a WEB DESIGNER.

WOW.

If you were here any of yesterday, I apologize. If you were here last night, I apologize.

It seems that my site’s previous MySQL database stopped talking to it (I don’t know if they had a fight or what, but somebody had an argument and somebody refused to speak to somebody else), so in the middle of yesterday morning, the whole thing stopped working.

ERROR ESTABLISHING DATABASE CONNECTION blah blah blah OMGCRAP.

Now, being an awesome webhost and all that, I immediately knew what to do. (Cue superhero music and my big red cape)

That sure as heck doesn’t mean it was what I wanted to do, or what I had planned for the afternoon. Grr.

The upshot is: my site now lives on a different server (which I had been meaning to do anyway but didn’t have time), with a different database to have future arguments with. I hope they are all happy. I also upgraded to the newest Thesis version, which frankly rocks, and I had also been meaning to do that anyway but didn’t have the time.

Which brings me to your inspirational caffeinated takeaway for today:

You know that thing you’ve been putting off? The one you know you need to do, should probably do, might even be time sensitive but not enough to put you in top-priority mode?

It’s going to come and BITE YOU IN THE ASS if you don’t just go ahead and do it. Trust me. It will rearrange your schedule all by itself if you don’t just get it done.

I hope you’re happy, I have to learn these things by the sweat of my teeth for you. Or something like that.

It’s been quite a while since I wrote any Geek Advice, but all that is about to change.

Right now, I am working on a short ebook (what are those called? Reports? Guides? Handy PDF thingies?) called Geek Advice: How to Transfer Your Precious Website to A New Webhost Without Losing Anything (Including Your Mind).

Before I’m done writing it, is there anything you, my awesome readers, owners of many precious websites, would dearly like to have explained? Don’t be afraid – ask the Geek! Leave me a comment about it – or email me, if you are embarrassed about your question, although really you shouldn’t be. After all, I geek so you don’t HAVE to.

I was actually going to publish a guide on ‘How To Love Your Geek’ before I published this one, but honestly – I have trouble knowing how to explain to people just exactly how to get to the very bottom of my geeky little heart. It requires far more research that I’ve given it so far, apparently.

However! I am gaining a large amount of experience loving a NON-geek. My fantastic fiance, Troy, is most definitely not a geek. He has a computer, but he actually SHUTS IT OFF when he’s not using it. That alone is enough to throw me for a complete loop. Heh.

Here are some of the things I’ve learned from loving a non-geek:

The Geek’s Guide to Loving Your Non-Geek

Forgive them for not being a geek.

They are not going to treat their computers, their mp3 players, or their pile of programming and HTML manuals like you would. Well, actually, they probably won’t even have a pile of programming and HTML manuals in their possession.  That’s your domain. (Ha! Haha! You probably have one of those too – or five or six.)

But that’s okay! Just because they aren’t a geek too doesn’t make them worth any less, or make them less interesting, or cause them to be less of a hottie. In fact, if you love them, chances are they’re just right for you.

Stop trying to make them into a geek.

Look, just because YOU want to go to Penguicon every year doesn’t mean that THEY want to go to Penguicon every year. They will go with you anyway, because they love you and you’re more important to them than all the geeky stuff you’re having nerd attacks over.

Your non-geek can enjoy geeky things in moderation, but if you overdo it, you’ll ruin it. Take them to con, buy them a shiny mp3 player, install Linux on a spare hard drive for them with a login name of ‘loverpants’ and a password of ‘iloveyou’. But don’t be upset if they don’t orgasm over it like you do.

Let them pick something to do (that’s NOT geeky).

I realize that all of us geeks have ridiculous ADD going on, and if it were up to us, life would be a nonstop barrage of software and code and RSS feeds and blogging and staying up late by the glowing light of our monitors. Also, we would forget to go outside, like, EVER. And we would start to smell funny, and eat all the Doritos in the house and then not go to the store and get more because we are ever so slightly antisocial.

Being non-geek for even part of a day is REALLY good for you! And an added perk is that the love of your life, your non-geek better half, will know just how much you love them for who THEY are, not for who you sometimes might like them to be. Different is good, variety is the spice of life, and so on. For the love of God, just go for a walk already!

Remember that one of the things they love about you is YOUR geekiness.

They’re perfectly fine with you having all the geeky cred. In fact, this is one of the most awesome things about being with a non-geek – no competition on geek-related matters! You are automatically the computer whiz, the software guru, and the deity of code. Enjoy this, and keep being the geek they fell in love with.

Just don’t forget to take a shower once in a while.

I have my prices up! OMG!!

I know, quit freaking out on me. Don’t worry, I still left part of it unfinished, just for you. I have my FAQ page and my Help page still to put up, but the important parts are there. Now I can bask in the glow of all the orders that will soon be pouring into my lap.

W00t!

Go ahead, check it out, and make your wish list! ;)

Yesterday, I moved myself further toward my goal of being a full-time Designer/Coder/Tech Support geek. Sure, I already do the design and coding – but I also love fiddling with computers. I’m not as good at the hardware configurating yet, but I can give your Windows machine a mighty nice tune-up.

I went up to visit my cousin Kim, because her dear hubby had FUBARed their brand-new computer because he was, in his words, “bored.”

Ha.

(Sidenote: She’s not my cousin by birth or family, but she was my cousin when I was married to my first husband; I like to tell people that when we divorced, I took her and now she’s MY cousin. Heehee.)

There’s a really good reason NOT to visit a p0rn site on your family computer, and that’s because for most people, they can’t tell the difference between a virus and a real piece of software. There were Trojans embedded into the registry so deep that they kept respawning when they were deleted.

And I FIXED IT. All they had to pay me was pizza while I was there (because it took me about ten hours to get it done), and gas money home. And coffee.

BitDefender, Spybot, and SpywareBlaster are my bestest friends. If I could, I would take them out for dinner. (And if you haven’t read my two-part series on protecting your computer like a geek, GO READ IT. And bookmark it. NOW! Part One, Part Two)