on an unrelated note
Good Saturday to you all. It has been a pretty good one here. We had our first decent snowfall of the year, so it looks beautiful outside. Of course, the snow will be replaced by dreary Illinois rain in a couple days, but I’ll take it while we’ve got it!
Tonight was the college Christmas dinner. It was a good time - Sarah, Curtis and I sat with a few people from my department. We hob nobbed with some of the other staff members and faculty, ate suped up cafeteria food, and sang Christmas carols. The highlight of the evening, though, was when a fellow employee’s wife came up to Sarah and I, tugged on my shirt a little, and said in a rather amused voice, “Oh, flannel!” Before you get me wrong, it was not a chopping-wood-out-behind-the-shed flannel, but a dressy flannel, if you can picture it. It was red and reeked of yuletide cheer. I must have looked “anti establishment something or another”. All in all, I got a kick out of that encounter. Sarah and I were laughing about it for the rest of the night.
So here is a bit of information that I would like to share about computer nerds. I hope I don’t get driven out of the ranks for revealing this, but I am willing to take the risk to provide some amusement for you, my occasional readers. One of the most satisfying things for a computer nerd to do is to become so proficient in using a program that people watching them use it will:
A. Have no idea what they are doing.
B. Have no idea how they are doing what they are doing.
C. Fall into an epileptic seizure from the speed of the changing onscreen elements.
One of the most sure fire ways to develop this proficiency is to learn the keyboard shortcuts for your program. While any mere neophyte can use a mouse, it takes a special amount of nerdiness to accomplish computational tasks using the keyboard alone. Not only does it take us back to the days when there was no stinking mouse (nerdy sentimentalism), but it also allows the skilled operator to accomplish tasks at a crazy speed.
Now, I have to admit that despite usually taking things slow to better explain them to people, I occasionaly like to lay down a combo of keyboard shortcuts, make a few windows fly up on the screen and say, “There, was that so hard?” Ok, so I’ve only done that whole Nick Burns routine on a few occasions, but when I have it has been fun. The truly great nerds are the ones who can baffle even other nerds with their keyboard proficiency. I work with a few guys who can pull that off, and let me tell you, it is something to see.
Until next time.
Ctrl+S, Alt+F4
cw