I am a fan of things. By that, I mean that while I do “like” some things, I also, always, have been that person who, when I really like something, I REALLY get in to it. I become obsessed with one thing after another, maybe it’s what happens when you cross an addictive personality with ADD? I am fairly monogamous in my addictions, though, I tend to only have one obsession at a given time.

Stargate is probably the longest-running fandom I can claim to belong to. I’m not head over heels obsessed, in fact, there is only one reason I’m up to date on Stargate Universe right now, and his initials are MS, but it’s definitely something I love. I listen to multiple Stargate podcasts, I’ve seen all there is to see, and keep up on the news and blogs. I’ve never been to a Stargate convention (as much as I would love to go, it’s one of those “if I won the lottery” things) and while I wouldn’t go chasing Michael Shanks across the country, I wouldn’t say no to seeing him at some convention if it was in SF. Which it never is, mind you.

That said, I’m still not a casual fan of anything. My favorite way to watch a tv show is start to finish, as in, watch the whole season start to finish. I will often not watch a show while it’s airing so I can do this. I get really into the show for about two weeks, crank through it, and then I’m done. For some reason, I find that much more satisfying than watching an episode a week for 20 weeks, although I definitely do feel a difference in the show’s pacing – in some cases, the storyline significantly changes in your mind if you go through a season too quickly. This also works well since I tend to prefer shows that are complex enough that it’s impossible to jump in midway through, I just wait for them to finish airing and then watch it all.

I will rewatch exceptional tv shows, listen to commentary, watch extra features, and read analysis online. If I really like a tv show, I want to learn as much as I can about it. I’m currently rewatching Babylon 5, and it amazes me how much more I notice about the show now that I know how it all ends. I’m even re-reading the episode guide as I rewatch the episode. Great shows do that…leave you amazed at the end about things they did in the first episode. They give you a reason to want to be a fan girl, to want to learn more, because there actually is more to learn! I definitely prefer shows and stories that are multi-threaded, that give you things to think about. Simple is boring.

I don’t think there’s anything negative about being a fangirl. It simply means I like complex things that require thought and invoke emotion. So what if I have a new obsession every week? It keeps life interesting, and I have a lot more fun being REALLY involved in things than minimally.

What about you? Do you keep all things at a distance? Or do you bury your head until you’re done?

I have always had a great sense of direction. I never knew how, or why I had it, but if you asked me at any given time where something was, I could point in the right direction. I wouldn’t necessarily know north or south or street names, just…”that way.” It’s definitely come in handy, every time I move, I need to learn streets and directions all over again, which means lots of getting lost trying to find my way around. I like going on instinct, it’s a great way to explore an area, and as long as I know “I need to be over there” I’ll end up at the right place.

That is, until I moved to San Francisco. I had a feeling this city was going to throw off my sense of direction, but I had assumed that was because of the hills. I was right about the sense of direction thing, but so wrong about the reason.

As it turns out, the hills don’t make a difference, the height of a street does not effect my perception of its length. What did screw me up, though, was my apartment building. My building sits in on the corner of the street. I enter my building on one street, and my window looks out onto another perpendicular street. However, when walking around that corner, I am able to cut it slightly by walking under the building, essentially walking catty corner instead of straight to the corner and turning 90 degrees. Doing this means that while walking from point A (under my window) to point B (entrance to my building) instead of only turning once in complete 90 degrees at the corner I turn twice, 45 degrees or so each. This is evidently a HUGE thing to my sense of direction.

When I first moved here, I was positive that the two streets surrounding my building were parallel to each other. Three turns must mean there’s another street, right? Just…the street is only 2 feet long and is actually a way to walk around the corner. I figured out my mistake quickly enough, but knowing and feeling are two different things.

This is where it gets interesting for me. I have lived here for over a year. Logically, I know the two streets I live on run perpendicular to each other, but it makes no difference. My mind – my “sense of direction” still insists that the streets run parallel. Even last night, someone asked me for directions, and I had a horrible time trying to point them in the right direction. I had to remember that “this street goes that way,” and even then confused myself but good.

Clearly, a “sense of direction” is related to feelings and perception more than logical thought, and changing the way your “gut” thinks is not simple. Logic does not enter into a gut reaction, and directional ability seems to be exactly the same. This is probably the first time that I remember trying to actively un-learn something because my perception is all screwy as a result, and it’s extremely hard.

What does it say about the human mind? How much of what we do is perception or gut-based, and how much is logical? My struggle with directions here in SF would suggest that I act a lot more from instinct than I do from logic, even if I don’t know that I’m doing it. I find that fascinating.

I haven’t found a second example where my gut thinks something that my head knows is wrong, but I’m absolutely keeping my eye out. I want to understand more about how this works, it’s a really neat mental, well, bug, that I want to fix.

Has this ever happened to you? Did you fix the bug?

I didn’t write this, but it’s too good not to share. Source unknown.

You didn’t get mad when the Supreme Court stopped a legal recount and appointed a President.

You didn’t get mad when Cheney allowed Energy company officials to dictate energy policy.

You didn’t get mad when a covert CIA operative got outed.

You didn’t get mad when the Patriot Act got passed.

You didn’t get mad when we illegally invaded a country that posed no threat to us.

You didn’t get mad when we spent over 600 billion(and counting) on said illegal war.

You didn’t get mad when over 10 billion dollars just disappeared in Iraq.

You didn’t get mad when you saw the Abu Grahib photos.

You didn’t get mad when you found out we were torturing people.

You didn’t get mad when the government was illegally wiretapping Americans.

You didn’t get mad when we didn’t catch Bin Laden.

You didn’t get mad when you saw the horrible conditions at Walter Reed.

You didn’t get mad when we let a major US city drown.

You didn’t get mad when the deficit hit the trillion dollar mark.

You finally got mad when… when… wait for it… when the government decided that people in America deserved the right to see a doctor if they are sick.

Illegal wars, lies, corruption, torture, stealing your tax dollars to make the rich richer, are all OK with you, but helping other Americans… well f*ck that. That about right?

The government did a really good thing this past weekend. It’s not perfect, but it’s a start. Here’s to being optimistic about the future!

We’ve lost a lot of celebrities in the recent weeks, and a death is like an emergency – you don’t really know how you’re going to react until it happens.

My reaction to two of the celebrities who died – Michael Jackson and Billy Mays – surprised me.

Billy Mays passed away right in the middle of the Michael fever (same with Farrah Faucett, who died the same day as Michael). I don’t think I realized what a connection I had in my head to him until he died. I read about Billy dying on Twitter, turned on the TV, and there he was selling Kaboom.

We all let Billy, more than anyone, into our houses every single day. It’s near impossible to watch anything without seeing him. I don’t watch commercials, I’ve never bought something from an ad on tv (I do own a snuggie, but I bought it at Walgreens), I DVR everything, either on the TiVo or the DirectTV thingy, and yet…I still know Billy Mays.

I’ve also been watching, and loving, Pitchmen, which anyone interested in consumer marketing really should watch. Invaluable stuff. People have heard me rant many times about “knowing your market” and not making a product for YOU, but for your users. Billy (and his partner on the show, Anthony Sullivan) knew better than anyone else I’ve ever seen how to make sure you were selling products to your market. It was really fascinating to me to see them turn down (what I thought were) really neat products because they weren’t appropriate for their market, and select really strange stuff, because their market would like it…even if they personally did not.

Billy came off as a really nice, sweet guy. A guy who you truly would trust to tell you “hey, buy this thing.” Who you want to sit down and have a beer with. And I discovered that I really expected to see him on tv every day, and that seeing him was somewhat comforting. Some psychologist could tell me what that means.

The idea that I won’t see him anymore, ever again, is unsettling. It’s not true, of course, they’re still running his commercials, and I understand a new season of Pitchmen has been ordered. But still. He’s gone, just like Michael Jackson, at 50.

Michael Jackson was the first VHS I ever saw (Thriller), and the first CD I ever bought (Dangerous). His music is associated with my life. I don’t know how to say it better than that. I hear his music, I remember the time in my life where it came out. It’s just always been there. And suddenly, it won’t be. I’m still a little stunned at that.

Two people who were always there suddenly are not. RIP Michael Jackson and Billy Mays, you both meant more to me than I ever knew.

A quick entry to say that yes, I know you’re getting an error when you leave a comment. The comment IS going through and will be posted, there’s just a problem with this theme returning you to the correct page after. So please, feel free to talk

I need to spend some time tinkering with the design of this blog and fix things up, please just bear with me in the process.

I’m finding all this stuff about Sandra Cantu’s killer very sad, of course, but I’m also really fascinated by the fact that this is a woman.

One of my favorite classes in college was Criminology, and like oh so many college courses, we had a large term paper to do as a final project. We had to present an original concept, with research to back it up. I wrote my paper on female serial killers, with a theory that the only reason the statistics were so low on women and murder was because people didn’t look for them.

Where did that come from? Well, statistics for female serial killers dropped dramatically in the late 70′s – right at the exact same time the FBI began heavy profiling. The generic serial killer profile is a white male, 30-50, middle class, etc. Nearly every investigation into a serial killer at the FBI begins with that standard profile. Meaning…they don’t look for women.

I don’t have the paper anymore, so unfortunately, I can’t give sources for any data. I used a lot of FBI/CIA documents (publicly available stuff, obviously), books on profiling, and lots of articles/interviews of serial killers.

My paper caused quite an outrage in my class (me? causing trouble? never!). My professor thought my theory was “plausible, but could never be proved,” but over half the class insisted it was impossible. They didn’t have data, there is none, but “women don’t do things like that.”

But of course they do. We have multiple instances in our history of women being just as nasty and evil as men, and yet, we expect women to be “better.” I keep hearing the quote “why would one woman kill another woman’s child.” People don’t say “why would one man kill another man’s child.” Women kill their own children, they murder, they’ve even raped before…raped both boys and girls. And because we all think the way we do, it genuinely HURTS to find out a woman did something like this.

I’m as guilty of it as anyone. Intellectually – I know full well that women can be as evil as men, obviously, I was pushing the theory over ten years ago. Emotionally – I was as horrified as everyone else to find out that Sandra Cantu’s killer, and possible rapist, was a woman. There is an expectation that women should be better, which makes absolutely no logical sense.

I still feel the same as I did back when I wrote the paper. Profiling is really great, and very helpful in solving criminal investigations, but it is dangerous when an entire segment of society is excluded for no good reason. I believe the statistics are flawed, and that there really is a correlation between the rise in white male serial killers and FBI profiliers looking for them.

To get back to Sandra Cantu (which is what inspired this blabbering), police stumbled into Melissa Huckaby as a suspect. They knew of her and had interviewed her; she told police that the suitcase Sandra Cantu was found in had been “stolen from her driveway.” But she did not become the focus of an investigation until she had done two more interviews with conflicting information (if I remember right, it was a CNN interview that was the nail in her coffin). I can’t believe that had a man said he owned the suitcase the girl was found in that he wouldn’t have been – at the very least – dragged down to police headquarters.

With all that said, kudos to the Tracy police for figuring this out. Women slip under the radar in things like this, and even though it took CNN to help “break” this for them, at least they were open minded enough to consider the possibility. Women are fully capable of evil things, and I’m sure I’m not the only one who’s going to be watching the criminologists and psychologists that are bound to start coming out to talk about this topic.

Why is it that while we push for gender equality everywhere, we still dodge the possibility that women could be just as evil as men? Equality is equality, after all. Women killing people on the front lines of a war? Absolutely! Women killing people…for no reason? Absolutely not. How on earth does that make sense, and why do I feel that way? I dislike logic that comes from emotion. I want facts, figures, proof. The data says we’re just as bad. But I simply can’t believe it.

Can you?

I often find myself twittering links that would otherwise have made it into a blog entry. So, here are some of those links, with a bit more annotation around them than the 140 character limit on Twitter. I want to try to do this every once in a while…some links are silly, some actual news.

A&E Releases iPhone app for checking Paranormal activity – Really funny, really neat. I can’t wait to see the boys on Supernatural holding up an iPhone instead of their funny EMF reader thingy.

RyanAir Calls Blogger Idiot – This is just awful. I fully believe companies absolutely have to respond to negative criticism publicly, but even if the person they’re talking about IS an idiot, you just don’t do that! Don’t insult your customers. Period.

Bank of Obama – This site lets you generate a “Stimulus Check” to send to your friends. You can send it via email, or you can pay a small fee to have it sent by paper mail. I sent all of you a check here. As a cute added benefit, you get a “thank you from obama” for doing your part to help bailout America. Glad I could help!!

F***MyLife – their tag line is “my life sucks but I dont give a fuck” It’s funny, or at least, I think so.

Secret Tweet – along the same lines as fmylife, except for twitter, and tends to be much more serious and sad. Anonymous tweets, with links attached so you can discuss, if you’re so inclined. Always an interesting service, but has taken on a whole new life now with the comments. Read the site, or follow ‘em on twitter.

Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow – Last but not least, from Stargate SG-1 writer Joseph Mallozzi’s blog, an episode outline for a story that will never air. It’s a time travel/alternate universe typey thing set during the 10th season. I looove the time travel/alternate universe stuff.

Enjoy the links!

Note – for those of you reading this through RSS, I recently switched my feedburner feed over to google. Please let me know if you see any wonkyness – all seems to be working ok, but I keep hearing stories of other folks having big problems.

Yes, this is another meme. I fully admit that I do not read blogs that are full of nothing but meme’s, so it is kind of pathetic for me to be doing these. They’re lazy ways to fill blogs with junk. That said, for some wacked out reason these things are making a comeback on Facebook, I was tagged over there, and I since I avoided meme’s like the plague before, ‘they’re new to me!’

Now, I don’t actually BLOG on Facebook – Facebook notes aren’t quite a blog to me – and have no intention to start now. Plus, I’ve written enough “real” stuff over here that I think I’m allowed a meme. Or two. Right?

Skip this post unless you’re interested….and I’m not sure many people would be. Once again, I’ll tag people on Facebook. If you want to see who I tag or whatever, just add me over there.

Okie, now for the meme. I have strange taste in music, including lots and lots of broadway, so this will be interesting. To me, at least.
The rules:
1. Put your iTunes/iPod/MP3 on shuffle.
2. For each question, press the next button to get your next answer.
3. You must write that song name down no matter how outrageous it sounds!
4. Tag 10 friends who might enjoy doing the game as well as the person you got the note from.
5. Add commentary

IF SOMEONE SAYS, “IS THIS OKAY” YOU SAY?
“Looking Down” – Audiovent

WHAT WOULD BEST DESCRIBE YOUR PERSONALITY?
“I’d Be Surprisingly Good For You” – Evita

WHAT DO YOU LIKE IN A GUY/GIRL?
“To Have and To Hold” – Depeche Mode
(I guess this one kind of makes sense? Ish?)

WHAT IS YOUR LIFE’S PURPOSE?
“Tether” – Indigo Girls

WHAT IS YOUR MOTTO?
“My Grown Up Christmas List” – Kelly Clarkson
(uhhhhh. Ok?)

WHAT DO YOUR FRIENDS THINK OF YOU?
“The Answer” – Bad Religion

WHAT DO YOU THINK ABOUT OFTEN?
“Take Me Away” – Avril Levigne
(hahahahaha)

WHAT DO YOU THINK OF YOUR BEST FRIEND?
“How Much Longer – Eve6

WHAT DO YOU THINK OF THE PERSON YOU LIKE?
“As Long As You Love Me” – Backstreet Boys
(ok, finally something kind of accurate. Kind of).

WHAT IS YOUR LIFE STORY?
“Could I Be You” – Matchbox 20

WHAT DO YOU WANT TO BE WHEN YOU GROW UP?
“Nobody’s Home” – Avril Lavigne

WHAT DO YOU THINK WHEN YOU SEE THE PERSON YOU LIKE?
“King of the Stereo” – Saliva

WHAT DO YOUR PARENTS THINK OF YOU?
“Contrary Mary” – Kix

WHAT WILL YOU DANCE TO AT YOUR WEDDING?
“Only the Young” – Journey

WHAT WILL THEY PLAY AT YOUR FUNERAL?
“The Rules” – Hoobastank

WHAT IS YOUR HOBBY/INTEREST?
“Symphony no. 35″ – Mozart

WHAT DO YOU THINK OF YOUR FRIENDS?
“Touch of my Hand” – Britney Spears
(Kinky!)

WHAT’S THE WORST THING THAT COULD HAPPEN?
“Perfect Stranger” – Erasure

HOW WILL YOU DIE?
“The Stone” – Ashes Divide

WHAT IS THE ONE THING YOU REGRET?
“I’ll Be There for You” – Bon Jovi

WHAT MAKES YOU LAUGH?
“Strange” Tori Amos

WHAT MAKES YOU CRY?
“Are You Happy Now?” – Michelle Branch

WILL YOU EVER GET MARRIED?
“Coming Home Now” – Boyzone

WHAT SCARES YOU THE MOST?
“Bones in the Sky” – Dan Fogelberg

DOES ANYONE LIKE YOU?
“I Remember You” – Skid Row
(kind of fits. I guess?)

IF YOU COULD GO BACK IN TIME, WHAT WOULD YOU CHANGE?
“How I Know You” – Aida
(Surprisingly accurate…if you know the musical and where the song fits in)

WHAT HURTS RIGHT NOW?
“Two Steps Back” Saliva

WHAT WILL YOU POST THIS AS?
“I Go To Rio” – Finale from Boy From Oz

Best subject line ever!! Why? Because the only thing you can possibly do when you hear this song is dance around. I wish anyone luck sitting still, really, it’s not possible. Da da da daaaa….

Gotta admit, this was kind of fun – I rarely put my ipod on shuffle, primarily because the soundtrack music does bleed in, and I hate listening to musicals out of sequence. I did hear some music I haven’t listened to in ages, though.

But now I’m off to listen to all of Aida. Because, ya know, that song got me started….

Woooeeee I’m tired. Being a blabbermouth is exhausting!!

This afternoon I attended two sessions, one on personal identity, and one I gave on “creating the right product for the right audience.”

The identity session was fascinating to me. We all walk a very fine line between revealing information about ourselves online, and keeping things private. It’s very hard to know where the line is on what should and should not be said, and the line is very different for everyone.

There’s no question that it’s changed for me. At one point in my life, I was completely honest about everything in my life online. I maintained my live journal, which was locked to friends-only, and oh my, the secrets about me that were in there. I was also Bobbi, of course….BamBam didn’t come along until later.

At some point along the way, I realized that “friends-only” really didn’t mean much. Not only could I easily make a mistake and leave something open to the world, but god forbid a friend decided to be mean or something, they could easily take screenshots or copy/paste.

The words “private” and “online” simply do not belong together. No matter how locked down you may think things are, there’s always a way for things to get out.

So, in my case, “StephanieBamBam” was created at AOL. My friend Susan nicknamed me “BamBam” for being a klutz, and it stuck. The name was unique enough (your nickname has to be unique!) that it worked well, and I kinda liked it. StephanieBamBam took over, and everything Bobbi that I could find was pulled offline. You won’t find archives of those live journal entries, they don’t exist in digital form anymore. I pretty much recreated my virtual identity, changing from a pseudoanonymous “bobbi,” to a slightly more personal name I was willing to associate with the real me. There are some pieces of Bobbi still lingering about in various places, but you’d need to dig a bit to find, and honestly…if you’re going to dig THAT much…have at it. I’m not embarassed by anything I’ve done.

Admittedly, I’m in a special position, where I work online in social media. The session discussed things like people who truly cannot reveal their identities online due to safety reasons – how do they even use social media? How do you get a domain without a credit card in your fake name, how do you attend conferences, etc.

My recommendation – for most people – is don’t put anything online you wouldn’t want associated with you everywhere. You can live under a nickname, but live in the assumption that your real name will ultimately be exposed. Employers, schools…the world has access to ANYTHING you do or say online. Be smart.

The other session this afternoon was mine, so of course I thought it was fabulous. We talked about how to create a product for your market – how to know who you’re making what for. Professionally, I’ve created products targeted at adults, teens, and developers. And believe me, something that works for one will probably not work for the other.

So how do you know what to do? Be a teenager! Be a developer! Be an adult. That’s oversimplifying, obviously, but I’ve seen every single high school musical, read Twilight, watch Hannah Montana, belong to MyYearbook…. etc. I’m often called a teenager, even. Which is fine. People have got to remember that they are not building a product for themselves. Just because “this makes sense to me” doesn’t mean it’ll make sense to someone without the CS degree. Make your product for your audience, market your product to the right audience, and if you have a good product, it’ll work out.

More from She’s Geeky tomorrow – I’m giving another panel in the afternoon “how to launch a product.”

I am finally settled in, and although I can’t claim I’m 100% unpacked, I am at least at the stage where my apartment LOOKS unpacked. That’s half the battle, right? I’m also hard at work on Operation Turtle, and absolutely dying to get something out so I can finally start talking about it.

It has been a fairly wacky couple of months, though, and I think it’s safe to say that I was an idiot for even thinking I could do NaNoBloMo. Moving, starting a new job, multiple holidays, and a blog entry a day? Hell no. Next year.

I gotta admit, I love San Francisco, it is the closest thing to a “real city” I’ve lived in since leaving NYC (Arlington, VA considers itself a city, but it’s not the same). I lived in Mountain View (South Bay) last time I was in Northern Cali, so this is my first San Francisco living experience. I live in SOMA (South of Market), and am fairly close to everything in SF. f I can’t walk there, I can easily take muni/bart. I can even walk to work, which I love. I think I got a little too accustomed to being a car slug in LA, I am much happier getting around on my own two feet. That said, it’s still great to have a car just in case I need it.

The cats are also settling in nicely here, even Mystic is coming out of her shell. She is still very skittish, and will hide from anyone other than me, but she’s getting better – she’ll stay in place if I walk near her, or stay on my lap if I cross/uncross my legs. My theory is that she was about as terrified in the move as she’ll ever get, and realized if she survived that, she could survive anything. Both cats spent a total of three days locked up in carriers, two days to move in/out, and one day when I drove from LA to SF. It’s progress!

Harry is still a little terror, not afraid of anything, but I’m discovering some ways to take advantage of that. For example, since he truly doesn’t care what happens to him, he was perfectly fine with me holding his paws still so my 10 month old niece could pull on his fur. I swear, he would run up to a wolf and snuggle it, he’s clueless.

I’m also in a building with dogs, and it is absolutely hysterical to see the cats reacting as a doggie walks by in the hallway. The dogs in the building don’t really bark, we just hear the jangling of their leashes, but it’s enough to send Mystic running into the other room, and get Harry all excited sniffing the door. I have wacky cats, but at least they do keep things interesting.

What else. Stargate Atlantis ended, bad horror movies make me laugh, I love my iPhone, Glade doesn’t smell particularly good, and there’s a guy who hangs around the office with a cat on his back.

And tonight, I have a date with Jack Bauer, throwing things (or a cat or two) at Tony when he dares to speak. I remember writing a blog entry out of joy when he was killed off the show. I still can’t believe he’s back…

I’m all moved in to a place I really like, 24 is back, and turtles are fun. What more could a girl want!