Hmm...

I wonder whether this explains a few things...

I'm just visiting this planet

The cover article in April 2nd's Computerworld was titled Asperger's and IT: Dark secret or open secret? OK, if you have to ask you haven't been paying attention. It does raise the very legitimate question of "If Aspies are everywhere among us, why isn't the IT industry doing more to support them or even to simply acknowledge their existence?"

High-tech companies, after all, have been at the forefront of supporting workers with nearly every type of social, ethnic, physical or developmental identification. Microsoft, to take just one example, sponsors at least 20 affinity groups -- for African Americans, dads, deaf and hard of hearing, visually impaired, Singaporeans, single parents, and gay/lesbian/bisexual and transgendered employees, to name a few. Just nothing for autistics.

But this isn't a song about Alice Microsoft, or even about IT.

I've noticed that I tend to approach people and relationships almost exactly the same way I approach any other technical problem, for example an unfamiliar piece of software. I don't have the automatic understanding of other people that ordinary humans seem to have: I have to treat each problem analytically.

And, of course, since another symptom of Asperger's is an ability to concentrate on one problem, and a corresponding inability to multitask, this can come across either as a possibly-disturbing intensity of focus, or an annoying inability to drop a subject. Sorry about that; I'm working on it. As a technical problem, of course.

My son-in-law is job hunting

Resume: Sean Stirling. I'm guessing that something in Western Canada or the US Pacific Northwest would be preferable.

From this post by chaoswolf.

I'm wondering...

...what effect andropause might have on Asperger syndrome. I couldn't find any obvious references on Google; anybody know of one? It seems relevant to me these days.

What is friendship?

One of these days there's going to be a Defining My Terms post on friendship. This isn't it -- right now I'm still in the early phases of gathering data.

But here is A Thought On The Nature Of Friendship by theferret just to get that data-gathering process out in the open. Note that I don't really agree with it. He says, "I think that, by and large, there are two types of close friends: Those who are committed to being a net bonus in your life, and those who want you to be where they're comfortable."

That's his definition of "close friendship". Or two. I've seen others recently, even more widely separated, ranging between "someone I can tell anything to" to "someone who calls me up every day to see if they can help". In my mind, the term covers such a broad range that it seems to be as much a barrier as a bridge to understanding. Like limits, it's probably something you have to negotiate up front once a relationship gets to a certain point. I've seen all sorts of havoc caused by people working from different definitions of "friendship" and "closeness". Caused some of it, too.

Something I haven't seen in anyone else's definition so far, but that's definitely part of mine and Colleen's, is the sense that the friendship itself is important to both parties. That it's something worth almost any amount of struggle, and compromise if necessary, to preserve. Worth fighting for. We work out our problems and our differences, sometimes too loudly and sometimes too long, because we're friends -- perhaps by totally different definitions -- and intend to stay that way.

Steampunk in the NY Times

Steampunk Moves Between Two Worlds - New York Times

It is also the vision of steampunk, a subculture that is the aesthetic expression of a time-traveling fantasy world, one that embraces music, film, design and now fashion, all inspired by the extravagantly inventive age of dirigibles and steam locomotives, brass diving bells and jar-shaped protosubmarines. First appearing in the late 1980s and early ’90s, steampunk has picked up momentum in recent months, making a transition from what used to be mainly a literary taste to a Web-propagated way of life.