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Done yesterday (20110605 Fr)
2011-06-04 11:47 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mdlbear0605 Fr
* up 6:35; W=199.4; drugs, nose, teeth, hair, laundry, dishes, coffee
* PAY BILLS. SW card a day late, but that's ok because last month's payment
was late too, so counted as this month's.
% I woke up absolutely convinced that today was the 5th, due to a deadline
in a particularly vivid dream. Since my house payment is automatically
transferred on the 4th, this led to a major overestimate of how much
headroom my account had. Not so good. Caught it before I did any
permanent damage, but still...
@ Life as a Healthcare CIO: Cool Technology of the Week (eWriter)
@ Life as a Healthcare CIO: Choosing a Great Single Malt
: Why is it so hard to explain to a geek that one doesn't want to talk about
geekery, even after mentioning a technological problem?
-> I wonder whether this is because geeks have been conditioned to
recognize the mention of a problem as a, possibly covert, request for
assistance. We do the same thing; when we mention something in
conversation, it's almost always because we're hoping the other person
will want to talk about it. It's hard to remember that this isn't
normal for some people, because it's normal for us.
% quite a lot of pain on the right side of my neck.
@ SDForum - Home via (coworker) Tarun --
they used to/may still have music at their annual conference.
@ Wonderful World of Linux 3.0 - Changes Between Linux 2.6 and Linux 3.0
@ Armed and Dangerous ยป The Smartphone Wars: No bump, no glory
@ UN: Disconnecting File-Sharers Breaches Human Rights via osewalrus
@ LinuxLibertine.org | Public domain Fonts: Biolinum and Libertine (LWN)
@ Color Trends + Palettes :: COLOURlovers No licensing info, alas.
Pretty, though.
& brought home a tablet, but left the pen at work. Never provisioned
it, either; something wonky there, probably version skew.
* splat around 10:30.
Not the greatest day, but on the whole not all that bad. I woke up absolutely convinced that it was June 5th and that I had some bills that were overdue. There was a dream involving a deadline, and submitting forms from a hotel room. I was nearly right about the second of those, so I set about making payments. Not allowing for the automatic mortgage payment on the 4th, because of course I thought it was the 5th.
Luckily, I managed to catch the error in time to fix it.
Meanwhile, I had quite a lot of pain, this time mostly on the right side of my neck (opposite the shoulder that I injured on Monday), and got a few things done at work but mostly design rather than tangible code. Monday, hopefully. The drop deadline is Thursday afternoon.
Someone recently asked me why geeks seem to be totally unable to learn not to launch into a discussion of geekery around non-geeks. Lawyers and midwives, to give two examples, don't seem to have this problem. It was an interesting question.
I think there are two parts to the answer. First, we geeks have learned that when most people mention a geekish problem around us, it's usually an implicit plea for advice or help. And all you have to do is... Many of us are proud of our ability to explain the problem and guide a non-technical person through the fix. And we're the same way; if I mention a medical complaint around a friend who's a doctor, it's usually because I'm hoping for some advice, not a few sympathetic words and a quick change of subject. But asking by implication is a good way to allow for that possibility if they don't want to talk shop in a social environment.
The second part is that, unlike lawyers and midwives, geeks don't usually have a clear separation between our work and our hobbies. We all come home, sit down at our computers, and read our LJ friends list. When a midwife does that, it's clearly different from delivering babies. When I do it, on the other hand... Especially since I use the same text editor for code, web pages, and LJ posts.
Anyway, I went splat early; I think I mentioned that pain is exhausting.
I brought home a couple of eQuill tablets to show off at the party, and cleverly left the pens at the office. Silly bear. I'm going back to fetch them in a couple of minutes, and pick up the ice on the way home.
Meanwhile, here's GeekDoctor on the Cool Technology of the Week. His previous post (see notes) was about choosing a good single-malt. Enjoy!
no subject
Date: 2011-06-04 07:03 pm (UTC)Lawyers and midwives both need reasonably good people skills. This may contribute to the ability of these groups to back off gracefully when other people's eyes start glazing over.
no subject
Date: 2011-06-04 08:20 pm (UTC)"When people's eyes start glazing over" is yet another; this conversation happened on IM, where bandwidth is low and feedback is negligible.
no subject
Date: 2011-06-04 08:51 pm (UTC)Lawyers have to take debating and speaking classes, in which they must carry arguments and ideas of topics about which they may know very little, but must still be interesting. I think this, along with people skills, hones their ability to be able to engage in small talk easily.
I find that geeks with geeks converse quite easily with one another in a convention format. It can be difficult to realize one is leaving the non-geeky behind in a conversation when one is used to being the "slow" one in a group of geeks!
no subject
Date: 2011-06-04 11:27 pm (UTC)eQuill Pens
Date: 2011-06-04 10:33 pm (UTC)Do the pens contain any actual electronics, or do they just work by pressure or capacitance or some such? In other words, would something like a knitting needle or a fingernail trimmed to a point work as a substitute?
Re: eQuill Pens
Date: 2011-06-04 11:10 pm (UTC)Re: eQuill Pens
Date: 2011-06-05 03:38 am (UTC)Re: eQuill Pens
Date: 2011-06-05 04:12 am (UTC)