Bert blogt

arch, I don’t know…

I have one of those ‘I should quit school’ days.. And just today I saw a post on planet fedora from Mel Chua .
She is not alone one of the most awesome geek girls I know, but she also helped me out a couple of times already. (big thank you Mel!)

The title of her blogpost was ‘How to do stuff?‘. While I was reading the post I saw some very familiar things.. I C/P’ed some of her text (I hope she doesn’t mind):

In My Parents’ World – How to Do Stuff (answer: “Get A Job according to these Complex Procedures”)

1. Be interested in something
2. Study (very, very, very) hard
3. Get (very, very, very) good grades
4. Make a resume
5. Buy suit
6. Apply to jobs
7. Get introduced to recruiter
8. Get interviewed
9. Get hired
10. Do Stuff

Except that the “Do Stuff” might be… well, entry-level job, filing stuff, doing thankless gruntwork waiting ’till you could move up the ladder and really Do Stuff, you know…

In The FOSS World – How to Do Stuff (answer: “Do Stuff”)

1. Be interested in something
2. Do Stuff
3. get hired

As she is already working,she must be one of people that know what they are talking about. right? So I told her on IRC I was thinking about quiting school, and start searching a job in open source.. But then she said something interesting:

<biertie> but, I also want to thank you for your blog post :p
<mchua> ah, thanks!
<biertie> because I’m considering stopping school -_-
<MooDoo> biertie: why?
<biertie> because they don’t care about foss
<MooDoo> that’s not a reason to stop is it
<biertie> I wanted to help loupgaroublond out, and do a project for them
<biertie> and it’s not good enough, because I could learn something from it!
<biertie> #wtf
<MooDoo> ?
* mchua wrestled with similar things as an undergrad, would be happy to talk with you about this.
<mchua> biertie: if schools don’t care about foss, and everyone who cares about foss leaves school, who’s ever going to bring foss /into/ schools?
<biertie> so then I send a mail to them, about open source, and the about a changing world and blah blah
<biertie> and he thought I was rude then
<biertie> mchua: good point
<mchua> You may decide that you’ve got better things to spend your life on than fighting that fight for however many years you’ve got left, and that’s fine. It is a long and thankless one, but it does make a difference in the long term.
<mchua> biertie: Yeah, it’s a hard balance to strike, and it’s also hard to know how administrators and profs will respond sometimes.

So maybe I should stay at school, and try to fight the big forces in our school, so we can have lessons in a culture where they DO care about foss, and maybe even work with it!

Let me know what you think about it!

One of the Universal Truths that lie just beyond the fabric of modern society is the axiom that geeks, along with nerds and other peoples who overinvest in intelligence but boast underdeveloped social skills, make the best lovers. Once people realize this, the sexual revolution that will sweep through western culture will make the seventies look like the fifties, and I’m not talking about wider pants. The reasons why geeks are unparalleled as lovers are simple and many:

Geeks don’t sleep around. Geeks, through their higher IQ and therefore greater understanding of the tragedy of human condition, know that the dice only seem to have more sides on the other side of the table. Hence, they instinctively stay loyal to their lovers through thick and thin. Their social skills are also not well developed enough to support an affair, and frankly, geeks generally aren’t quite sure how they ended up with the lover they have attracted. When you date a geek, you know the geek will be yours until you are done.

Geeks are good at the things they try. When’s the last time you met a geek who didn’t have some secret skill just simmering below the surface of a simple-seeming life, honed in the wee hours of the night? It could be hacking, playing video games, or the ability to insert and remove those stupid computer power plug things from drives without cursing or breaking a finger. Let sex become their new favorite late-night hobby, and you know that a geek won’t quit until he or she has learned how to hack into your brainstem through specific genitalia interfacing in parallel with general dermal and oral bonding.

Geeks are not interested in status. Geeks became geeks because they chose to spend their time doing things that would not necessarily make them popular with everyone else in school, like sports and fashion. The ability to resist peer pressure is important to a geek. This means that a geek is more interested in their or your happiness than looking good to others, which will come in handy when either (a) you need attention, in any sort ranging from the nurturing to the lascivious, and also, because both of those things are not necessarily unorthagonal dimensions, any combination of the two, or (b) you need to be rescued because it is the climax of a teen 80’s movie. Or both.

Geeks haven’t formed bad habits. After years of serially dating lots of other women, many socially successful guys have become too confident to be intimate, think of women only for sex, and don’t have any intention of letting what in their minds is “just another girlfriend” enjoy the last spring roll. Let us not even pry into the diabolical, dark, twisted, and depraved mind of the girl who has serially dated many men. None of this is true of the geek, however. The lack of past romantic partners allows the geek to approach lovers with the zest of the neophyte. Geeks are not full of romantic confidence; however, once coaxed from their emotional holes like tame bunnies, they are eager to please and enjoy their newfound relationship.

Geeks can concentrate. Geeks can focus their energy on one task with the intensity of a hunting cheetah. Granted, the task they are focusing on may have more to do with hunting orcs with a +1 Sword of Piercing rather than hunting gazelles with claws, but the fact remains that a geek, once set upon a task and given Mountain Dew, becomes a tireless slave to their goal. Put a six-pack of Dew on the bedside table and a geek between the sheets, and you have found yourself one relentless lover. When’s the last time all night actually meant all night? When’s the last time you were with someone who, if they needed more of the night, knew how to get it?

Geeks have excellent finger dexterity. Geeks roll dice. Geeks play video games. Geeks flip pages in books. Geeks type a lot, and use characters like ~ and ^ and | that no one else has any use for. Geeks use calculators in postfix notation. As a result, a geek knows how to use his or her fingers to greatest possible effect. Whether you have a button that needs pushing or a joystick that needs joy, a geek is the person for the job.

Geeks have imagination. Once you have found your amazing lover, you wouldn’t want things to become boring. That is where geeks prove their real worth. Replayability is important to the value-conscious video-game playing geek, and this translates to relationships as well. Wouldn’t you want to date someone who has created a Quake 3 mod? Wouldn’t you want to date someone who has written steamy Everquest fan fiction involving elven incest? Wouldn’t you want to date someone who wished they were Morpheus rather than someone who wished they were Barry Bonds?

There are plenty of other reasons why geeks are the best lovers around, but don’t just take my word for it. Find the nearest sexy geek and coax that person into asking you out, even if you have to do so using instant messanger. Remember: the only non-sexy geek is a single geek.

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aaaaa, I”m a single geek
but you can still send your cv in
I got this via @miente