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.
I think the biggest error is the insinuation that all nerds are computer nerds. While it fits me just fine, I know plenty of nerds of other varieties.
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.
This idealizes some not-very-nerdy habits. Yes, sometimes nerds are messy - my desk is just messy. The package of gum on my desk doesn't mean I have an efficient system, it means I made room for my laptop.
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.
Oh, absolutely. I do the whole "pause and do something else" thing too, which the OP calls Nerd ADD [1]. Netflix + tabbed browsing is especially conducive to it. My point is that flipping through channels every 5 seconds makes us sound like nerd robots from the future, which I at least am not.
On re-reading, this article comes off as more measured and less apologist, but the "nerd robot from the future" aspect still comes through.
I think this is more like a superset of features which describe many different types of nerd; some nerds implement all features, some only satisfy a subset of these interfaces. Each one is different depending on the level of nerd, and the activity the nerd centralizes their life on.
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[ 4.5 ms ] story [ 29.2 ms ] threadNothing 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.