Ich, bin, ein, Nerd!

But first, let us establish the exact extent of the Nerdity:

I was thinking about starting a series of posts on programming an evolution simulator, about how I am going to go about it this time (I’ve started a couple of times but some of the details eluded me in the past). But then my ThinkGeek order arrived and now I can’t concentrate properly on what I wanted to write about before, my mind clouded with the geekly awesome currently in the air.

So, I’m going to show off the Nerd!(tm) gear that arrived today instead.

The shirts I got for myself (ok, I may have gone a bit overboard, but that is entirely besides the point):

Go away or I will replace you a small shell script

http://www.thinkgeek.com/tshirts-apparel/unisex/frustrations/374d/

Do or Do Not

http://www.thinkgeek.com/tshirts-apparel/unisex/itdepartment/9e4a/

user error

http://www.thinkgeek.com/tshirts-apparel/unisex/frustrations/59fe/

Killer Coding Ninja Monkeys

http://www.thinkgeek.com/tshirts-apparel/unisex/itdepartment/5e89/

Arrgh

http://www.thinkgeek.com/tshirts-apparel/unisex/generic/7666/

You are dumb v2.0

http://www.thinkgeek.com/tshirts-apparel/unisex/generic/38db/

And for my wife:

GeeKISSexy Babydoll Tee

http://www.thinkgeek.com/tshirts-apparel/womens/5c8f/

Geek Love Poem Babydoll

http://www.thinkgeek.com/tshirts-apparel/womens/724f/

Pixel Angel

http://www.thinkgeek.com/tshirts-apparel/womens/ccb7/

Can you feel the awesome? Can you? No doubt that you can.

Many sheep and goat producers indicate a special bond quickly develops between lambs and their guard llama and that the llama is particularly protective of the lambs. Guard Llamas. Cool.

ThinkGeek is made of win but South African Customs are a bunch of thieving bastards

So I bought a bunch of T-Shirts from ThinkGeek, smothered in awesome goodness. They weren’t cheap but it didn’t break the bank either. A T-Shirt is a T-Shirt (unless you’re one of those Ed Hardy wearing people, not awesome). After you add delivery to the order, them shirts start getting expensive but, you think to yourself, it’s ok, what’s a couple extra bucks for the geekly goodness? Right? Right.

Then, DHL phone you.

Did you know, for example, that one has to pay 45% import duty on a shirt. I, shit, you, not. I’m furious. Those filthy, back stabbing, thieving, cold hearted, communist bastards at customs are charging me 45% import duty on my order. To put it into perspective, including shipping, my total order for 7 T-Shirts came to R1505. I now need to cough up an EXTRA R827 for import duties and VAT because it’s a bunch of T-Shirts. For clothing, apparently, the government gang rapes one to, well, I’m not sure why. Possibly because they feel one needs to be gang raped as part of being a South African citizen to properly appreciate why one should buy local goods.

For the perspective part: I bought a Kindle and including shipping, VAT and estimated import duties, it came to R2700. Amazon then refunded me R500 from that which means the Kindle ended up costing only R2200 which is cheaper than the T-Shirts.

What kind of fuckery is this?

The gestation period of a llama is 11 1/2 months (350 days).

ThinkGeek is made of win

I love shopping at ThinkGeek and I’ve shopped there many times before. My wife literally has to hold me back from bankrupting us on that site, such is the level of my geek.

Some of the stuff I have had those guys send me include (but are not limited to):

• Das Keyboard (the best keyboard I have ever owned): http://www.thinkgeek.com/computing/keyboards-mice/8396/
• Levitron (the most entertaining toy I’ve ever owned): http://www.thinkgeek.com/geektoys/cubegoodies/5bb6/
• T-Shirts (many, many bucket loads of T-Shirts): http://www.thinkgeek.com/tshirts-apparel/

When I started this post I had no intention of saying anything other than ThinkGeek is made of win but I realise now that it sounds more like an advert than a blog post.

Well, it’s meant to be an advert, in so far as that I personally think ThinkGeek is great and that everybody should buy from them. I did. Today. A whole *bunch* of T-Shirts, much to the dismay of my wife, who is now much poorer in cash but much richer in geek awesomeness (yes, I bought her some also).

ThinkGeek does not (yet) sell any llama apparel.