The Nerd Handbook
randsinrepose.com
randsinrepose.com
Nothing bothers me more than small talk. “I have no system for understanding this messy person in front of me”. Hilarious. That pretty much nails my thought process when I meet someone new.
Regarding small talk, I don't think it's a lack of a system of understanding so much as a side effect of the relevancy filter. All that stuff people are saying to me? It frequently sounds like "Nice weather outside blah blah blah blah." Small talk about something I find interesting is another matter entirely.
And who watches 3 TV shows at one time? Serious question - if a lot of HN does stuff like this, that's a fairly fascinating discovery for me.
I do. I'll start one, and than pause it to go do something else (write code, grab a snack, etc) and come back and start watching a different show. Eventually, I'll get distracted and pause the show I'm watching and talk on IRC or read Twitter for a bit, at which point I'll read about another show that I've been meaning to watch. So, I'll start watching it. Only to remember the first show that I started two hours ago and never finished. Its worse when I catch a reference to another show that I'm watching but can't quite remember what its referencing or its baseball season and I have a Mets game to watch..
This works really well with Quicktime, where it opens a new window for every video file I tell it to play. Not so much with VLC or Movist (mplayer UI) on OS X, that use a single window for all videos.
On re-reading, this article comes off as more measured and less apologist, but the "nerd robot from the future" aspect still comes through.
[1] http://www.randsinrepose.com/archives/2003/07/10/nadd.html
Definitely passing this along to my partner.