Some Things

Or, A list of things because apparently lists help to overcome blogging inertia (especially on Mondays, but this happens to be a Tuesday)

1. I have to come up with a third fake company name. Hasturcom is my current employer; LENG Engineering is my previous employer. Now that I'm being seriously considered for a position with yet a third employer, I need to come up with a third name.

2. "LENG" is short for "LENG ENGineering". It's recursive!

3. My company names are based on the works of H. P. Lovecraft. So I dunno... "NyarlathoTech", maybe?

4. I prefer to put punctuation outside of quotation marks, unless they're part of the quote. Since I've left the school environment, I figured it didn't matter too much, and formed a pretty strong habit of this. Then I re-entered the school environment. Turns out the rules of punctuation haven't changed while I was gone. Now, for the first time in ten years, it matters. Argh.

5. I still owe you all a definition of "Gibson". To me, a Gibson is a sign that the future is upon us. The rapidly-approaching widespread use of cell phones to do banking is a Gibson (or will be, when it hits). The advent of steam-powered ironclads with guns mounted in turrets was a Gibson from a previous period of history. The quintessential Gibson is the H3: a smaller version of the Hummer that appeared in William Gibson's novel Pattern Recognition a year before Hummer unveiled the real thing.

6. Driving through the Cental Valley this weekend, I saw an old small-town water tower adorned with cellular network antennas. That's another kind of "Gibson": the future stuck onto the past.

7. Information Promiscuity: Mrs. C. posts our weekend vacation schedule and itinerary on Facebook. Me? I say no to Facebook apps that request access to my profile.

8. I plan to post my thoughts on the battle of Gettysburg, Real Soon Now.

9. Movies I plan to put in my Netflix queue, that have "9" in the title: 9 and District 9.

Living In The Past

With Apologies to Jethro Tull

Really, 2009?

Really?

So I'm running this report. Apparently I applied for a job as a Systems Administrator, and they gave me a job as an Administrative Assistant. But that's not the point.

The point is, this report will only run straight into a browser, as HTML. There are no other options to save it in any other format. In 2009.

I'm pretty sure this is the future--many Gibsons into the future, at least. And I'm pretty sure that the modern robots of today are perfectly capable of generating files in multiple formats.

Today I am very disappointed in the architects of tomorrow.

There But For The Grace Of God...

Or, Other People's Misfortune I Didn't Wish For

One of my co-workers is engaged in a major verbal brawl right now, on the phone, in his office. Even with the door closed I can hear everything he's saying. He is very very angry right now. I'm not sure what about, though. At first I thought he was mad at the payroll department about his latest paycheck. But as the level of discourse got more angry and intense, and the language got more and more... expressive... I've come to the conclusion that he's probably arguing with his ex-wife. Probably about alimony payments.

I know, I know. It's bad to eavesdrop. A classy Edwardian gentleman (fig. 1) would no doubt pretend to have heard nothing at all. But this is the Future! Privacy is obsolete! Blogging is a Gibson! The Internet means your business on other people's computers! Besides, a classy Edwardian gentleman would probably know how to smack people with his cane (fig. 2). I don't even own a cane...

...

Hrm.

Actually, I do own a cane. Maybe I should consider becoming a classy Edwardian gentleman, instead of an inconsiderate and narcissistic postmodern blogger.

But that's not the point.

The point is, I can only imagine the kind of hell this guy must be going through. Sitting in the ER yesterday, I theorized to Mrs. Container that my chest pain was Time-Traveling Heartbreak. You know how it is. At some point in the future, your True Love runs off with a murder of crows, and it breaks your heart, which then travels back in time, so you feel the pain in the past. Not the kind of thing that shows up on X-rays or blood tests. But it does show up in ER waiting rooms when you're really really bored and none of your symptoms match anything Mrs. Container can find by searching the Internet from her cell phone (it's the Future, I tell you! Gibsons!).

But hilarious as such a diagnosis is, the reality is far from it. I'm just really really glad that my True Love is the way she is, and is such a good teammate. I'm glad I can look forward to a future free of the kinds of conversations--the kinds of horrible, awful, no good very bad feelings--my co-worker is having right now.

Hrm.

I wonder what a classy Edwardian gentleman would have for lunch...

(Figures omitted on account of my Google-fu is weak. Weak! Instead, I offer Amazon's search results for "the modern gentleman".)