The Mandelbear's Musings

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!