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Real-Life Dialogue (EDT Edition)
[The scene: a suburban home situated somewhere in the (US) Eastern time zone. It is a mild, sunny Sunday afternoon in mid-March, and He and She are seated at their respective computers on opposite sides of a low wall, enjoying the sunshine when they remember to look out a window.] She: [From her side of [...]
Things Programmers Think (and Sometimes Say)
In my day job, I have a couple of stock responses to questions from clients or just to my (and their) experiences with computers. One of these stock responses is something which clients almost never like to hear, because it translates, roughly, to This may sound like a “yes,” but if you believe that you’re [...]
Smashing Your Thumb with Your Trusty Hammer
[Technology alert: If you're not into PC tech, especially wonky stuff about operating systems and such, you might want to give this post a pass.] As some of you may know, I almost never use Microsoft Windows anymore — at least, when at home. (At work, there’s no other option.) Until a couple days ago, [...]
Forward Bravely, into the Past!
This March — the 12th, and isn’t it interesting I remember the exact date? — marks my 30th year as a computer guy. When I started out at AT&T, my job title was Member of Programming Staff (with a digression into Managerhood); at my present job, I’ve been a Distributed Systems Specialist, a Business Systems [...]
Smile After Smile
They say old habits die hard, and I guess it’s true. But traditions are a sort of shared old habit, and traditions don’t die hard at all — although they don’t flat-out die, either. Traditions evolve. People come and go. What’s possible replaces what you could never do, and what you used to do all [...]
More Bibliophiliac Detritus
In a post a few days ago, I talked about BookRabbit.com — a (fairly new) site which lets readers share the titles of books they own, in hopes of discovering other books they might be interested in. The clever mechanism which BookRabbit have come up with for communicating this information is bookshelf photographs: take a [...]