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Geek used to be an insulting adjective to use in describing someone. In high school, nerdy just wasn’t “cool”. With the internet now in it’s 2.0 stages and myself over a decade of being online, I proudly claim the term.Whether it’s my first love, writing, or  Photoshop, my beloved partner in graphical crime and chaos, or delighting in the “ooo’s and ahhh’s” of a new Wordpress or Joomla layout, I’ll forever be a geek at heart.

While I don’t consider myself a geeky goddess or absolute expert in all things techy, I’m fairly proud of the skills I’ve worked hard at learning over the years. There’s still a few mountains to climb and a few areas that need to be refined. The Photoshop pen tool hates me, and some elements of CSS simply despise me. In addition, I crave to be able to write my own PHP code but for now settle for being able to fairly confidentally edit and customize what already exists. I’d also love to someday learn Illustrator, as I drool over some of the beautiful vector art that’s out there.

Photo retouching is probably my deepest love. I started retouching in 2004, at the same time I finally gave in to my total phobia of Photoshop that sat dusty in my computer for a few years before I actually took 2 full weeks time and ate up every tutorial out there. I fell in LOVE with editing photos, be it restoring somebody’s family treasure, or glamourizing a model’s portfolio. I can easily get lost in the process of retouching, as if transfixed by the pixels themselves. It’s a form of therapy for me. Some people take in their favorite sitcom, some sit and eat ice cream when they’ve had a bad day, I retouch photos. Yes, I am a geek indeed.

I am the proud owner of my most adored domain/site … PhotoRetoucher.com
The portfolio is currently private but will be public soon. I obtained the name in January after following it many months just prior to it dropping. I used SnapNames to grab it and it worked like a dream.

Speaking of domains, as posted elsewhere on this site, I used to be a dot com freak. I would either come up with domains on my own (and am pretty damn good at it too), or grab just expired names. I’d then turn around and sell them for anywhere between $25 to $200 and that process saved my financial hyde more than once or twice. I now own in the vicinity of 125, with several still for sale. My highest sale was eVelvet.com for $1000, and Qoot.com for $650. Not exactly riches but also not at all bad when considering the cheap cost of registrations these days. Domains are like Lays for me, I can’t ever have just one so I had to go cold turkey and step away from GoDaddy anytime I get that “urge” haha.

I also have an unhealthy love for browsers. Like almost everyone else, I started out using Internet Explorer (on AOL I believe) but after reading how dangerous and insecure the browser was, I made the switch to Opera and was a fanatic for years. Sadly for my big O, I gave in a year ago and installed Firefox, much due to the constantly reading how I cannot “live” without the Web Developer Tool Bar. This ended up correct. I wouldn’t edit a single line of code without it. However, old habits die hard and to this day I have both browsers open and use them for different purposes. Opera is still the fastest browser on earth I believe (not counting Chrome, nice and clean but too few features and still in it’s infancy). For a brief month I used Flock, but because I’m not a huge social networking fiend, I settle for my pink themed Firefox and sleek beautiful Opera.

Speaking of Tweeting, I’ve recently finally caught the Twitter bug. It took a year to kick in but suddenly one day, I was fairly hooked. I get it now. I really do. I hope the Twitter trend sticks around for a while. It’s simplicity is pure genius, with a very real power in it’s purity. I use Tweetdeck for my regular tweeting and occasionally use Tweetvisor to make use of the threaded conversations when I go Twitter surfing.

So, that’s it. My geekiness in a nutshell. Or maybe I’m a wanna-be geek, as I hate Star Wars and don’t ever participate in gaming. One other thing I’m not is a “gadget” junkie. Maybe I would be but one has to afford most of those goodies and I prefer to spend my money on oh say things like the utilities and food, ha. I would love an iPhone one day, and to upgrade my digital camera. Just to prove my geekness, I get green with jealousy when I see somebody has tweeted from Tweetie on their iPhone! Speaking of Apple, one thing I’d love to have one day is a Mac. I’m currently on Vista, a 2 year old HP PC, flat wide screen, and all in all a good computer. But the designer and artist in me must simply one day have a Mac to create on!