This is a text message conversation I had with the AlphaForager. Keep in mind, the AlphaForager is a straight buddy of mine from work, so this whole conversation started out odd…

AlphaForager: I need your help with something that a man of your particular taste could help with.
Me: Umm….
AlphaForager: I need a picture or pictures of a guy that potentially looks like what I would if I lost weight and got ripped. If that makes sense?
Me: Clothed?
AlphaForager: both? I can throw some shorts on naked ones. I need motivation material to eat right and work out. Visualize what you want to be kind thing.
Me: Ah… Gothca. Lemme dig through my collection. I would think the guy from “the shield” is close?
AlphaForager: I think I would be a little bigger but you know the male b ody more than I.
Me: LOL… One would think. I’ll see what I can dig up…
AlphaForager: Just email me whatever you find.
Me: Will do!

Now I have to sit down and start perusing the porn for a reason!

This might be close?

[Edit: The AlphaForager was knew this would be posted.]

For those of you who didn’t know, the sales for the top level domain opened for “.me”. If you don’t know what a TLD is:

A top-level domain (TLD), sometimes referred to as a top-level domain name (TLDN), is the last part of an Internet domain name; that is, the letters which follow the final dot of any domain name. For example, in the domain name www.example.com, the top-level domain is com (or COM, as domain names are not case-sensitive).

Taken from Wikipedia.

Anyway, sales of the names went on sale today at 10 AM CST. The AlphaForager from the Great Retail Empire and I were waiting for the gates to open. We’re nerds like that. Apparently we’re not the only ones. The registrar sites were as hammered as I was from the previous night of drinking.

I wanted ink.me and tattoo.me for the tattoo shop. Sadly, someone beat me to them. So I settled for ink4.me instead. Great advertising and ease of referral potential… at least in my mind. The “4″ can be made to look like a tattoo machine even. (Thanks to the AlphaForager for that idea!)

As with all dorks, we started entering names we thought would be funny .me names, such as bite.me, blow.me, fuck.me, suck.me. You get the idea. How could anyone resist? Great fun! To have probably one of the best Internet addresses of the next decade! Most of those were already sold—no doubt to some porn site owners.

Being the funny man I am, I entered bear4.me. Lo and behold, it was available. So I HAD to have it. Maybe I’ll start another bear social network site. Not. Better still—maybe one of the existing ones would like to buy it from me!

Then the AlphaForager—being his funny, straight self—said I should see if cock4.me was available. Guess what. It was! Being the big ol’ geeky ‘mo that I am, I got it too.

I think I’ll put that one on a shirt and wear it.

(I’ll be pointing those address to my own websites tomorrow when I can add the nameserver entries.)

From the “AlphaForager” (a co-hort at the Great Retail Empire):

All I hear is the pitter patter of finger tips gingerly dancing across keys.
Every character typed with delirium or deliberation?
Word by word and line by line the great retail giant we strive to please.
Are we the slaves to or saviors of this IT nation?

He’s got mad poetry skillz.

Oh, and he LOVED my answers to all the questions you readers have posted. I think he’s been warped just that much more.

From an email sent by a co-worker to my team at work:

If you are ever looking at Erik’s phone and he says “be careful where you go”. Put the phone down, and step away. DO NOT click on the pictures icon. That is all.

There’s a funny story that resulted in that email being sent. I couldn’t figure out why my Smartphone wouldn’t send MMS messages, so a co-worker wanted to look at it. He hit the “Pictures” icon on the phone, and it went right to the last place it had been—porn! It wasn’t anything bad, but more than his mind was prepared for at that moment. Yet another way to torment my friends!