Understanding Nerds

I ran into a really great blog the other day: Rands In Repose.  He's got a great couple of articles (written a few months ago) about nerds.  Specifically The Nerd Handbook and N.A.D.D..

We'll start with The Nerd Handbook.  Written as a nerd-oriented "Men are From Mars, Women are From Venus," this post is actually quite accurate in describing my relationship with the world.  (Note to Suzanne: read the part about Your nerd has built an annoyingly efficient relevancy engine in his head, it might explain some of my apparent forgetfulness... my relevancy engine just needs some tweaking)

N.A.D.D. is all about the ADD-esque disorder that most nerds are afflicted with.  I don't think my case is quite as advance as Rands describes (I only have seven open windows on my two monitors) but the underpinnings are definitely there.

If you can bear/ignore some gratuitous language, Rands has quite a few good articles about management, work relationships (the professional kind, not the personal kind), the work environment (or cave), and so forth.

Why Windows 7 Will Win (and lose)

I thought this was an interesting post at thebetaguy.com.  To quote the interesting stuff:

"...Windows 7 will be a from-the-ground-up packaging of the Windows codebase; partially source, but not binary compatible with previous versions of Windows. Making the break from backwards compatibility is a dangerous proposal but a dream for software developers. Performance of native applications can be increased, distribution sizes can be cut down, functionality can be added without the worry of breaking old applications, and the overall end-user experience can be significantly improved.

However, Windows' lure has always been that applications from older versions of Windows are almost guaranteed to work post-upgrade..."

This is exactly what Microsoft needs to do, from a technical standpoint.  From a financial/business standpoint, it may not work out so well.  In the long run, however, continuing down the backwards-compatibility path will only further harm their performance in future versions.

Sometimes the medicine hurts worse than the sickness.  On the other hand, Apple did it right back in 2000, so why not?

Don't Make Me Stop This Fish Tank!

I like fish.  My parents had a large aquarium as I was growing up and I always enjoyed watching the fish.  As I remember, we had a few neon tetra's, some tiger barbs, an angelfish or two, and a kuhli loach.  There was a brief (and disastrous) flirtation with a small brood of fiddler crabs, but they always ended up getting out.  We found one in the toilet once.  It was amazing that it made it that far!

But I digress....

I have a betta that I have had for a little over 18 months.  A couple of months ago I decided it would be good to bring him to work and make a "proper home" for him: I bought a real aquarium.  It isn't anything fancy, just a five-gallon hexagonal aquarium with a small filter and a cover with a light.  I'm sure to Sammy (the fish) it seems like moving up from a shack to the penthouse suite.  He is definitely a lot more active than he ever was in his cold little fishbowl.

-Sammy in his natural environment (sorry for the reflections)

Problem: the tank grows algae and the rocks are dirty with uneaten food.

Solution: Get a snail (for the algae) and a frog (for the uneaten food).  Problem solved!

So a funny thing happened today in the tank.  The snail (as yet unnamed) has been quite listless since I got him a couple of days ago.  I was beginning to wonder if Frogger (the frog, duh) had killed him, as he likes to poke at him whenever he comes out of his shell.  So the snail was kind of half hanging out of his shell and Frogger decided to come over and poke his head in between the snail and his shell.

Big mistake.

The snail is still very much alive and decided it did not appreciate the intrusion.  He sucked down back inside his shell in a very fast manner.

Problem: Frogger's head was still inside the shell!

So now the frog is thrashing around like mad trying to get this shell and snail off his head.  He thrashed all around the tank and finally succeeded in detaching the unwanted snail appendage from his snout.  I thought he might be dead after all that.

Rest assured he is not, he still swims around like normal, but he has good reason to be afraid of the snail now.  I need to think of a tough name for the snail, he's shown himself to be no pansy!

Good Picture

Here's a good picture.

I enjoy having my own space.  This is the entrance to my cube at Cypress.  The silver nameplate is the standard nameplate for the Boise office, but I maintained possession of my nameplate when I left Micron, so that's the blue one.  (I don't think they have to worry about any other Cameron Stewart's coming to work for them anytime soon).

The CASS on my nameplate is/are my "Cypress Initials" or TLA (Three Letter Acronym).  Mine is actually a "FLA" because they started to run out of TLA's to hand out (They could have just given me "CAM").  FLA's are becoming more common here.  My TLA is my email address (TLA@cypress_dot_com).