Two Slashes

Alright, so this should at least partially explain my late posting last night.  Yes, I concede defeat, but it only means you’re getting two posts today.  And perhaps a slice of cake.  I hear people like cake.

It’s a funny thing.  Last night, I found myself up until all hours of the night, alternating between working on (an admittedly lame) project for one of my computer science classes (a simple shell, in case you were wondering) and helping a few of my friends set up everything they needed for a conference they were having over this weekend.  An iPhone software developer’s conference, to be exact, complete with introductory labs and plenty of student-provided help on hand.

And now, day one into the conference, and I’ve already found myself walking around wearing an Apple beanie and a lime green shirt with a huge silhouette of an iPhone screen-printed across the front (a shirt reserved for conference staff).  It’s the opposite of what one would expect given my previous rant about iPhones back when they were first announced.

Yes, the same person who was elected chair of the local student Linux Users Group is now running around answering random questions of MacBook-toting attendees.  While carrying around a Treo Pro (which runs Windows Mobile – is that double blasphemy?).  And a Dell laptop.  (If that’s not a sign of me at least being aware of and open to what’s around, I don’t know what is.)  At least most of the people I came in contact with didn’t notice (or at least, they didn’t show any signs of it).

Admittedly, the questions I’ve been answering aren’t so much related to Objective-C and a device with more influence on culture than as they are locating the bathroom or finding out what time a talk starts and ends, and there’s been plenty of me sitting and babysitting overflow rooms full of people (due to the unexpectedly high demand for attendance in combination with being assigned smaller rooms for presentation), interspersed with babysitting a lobby full of hungry people and carrying the remains of the feeding hour for those hungry people out to a dumpster.  I’ve been taking any spare time between (or even during) these events writing posts and working on my shell more.

What I’ve caught of the talks has been fairly informative, though useless to me as someone not all that interested (at the moment, at least) in the iPhone platform, and it isn’t quite enough to make me “eat more fruit.”  That isn’t to say they weren’t well-presented; it seems as though the guy who’s been doing most of the talking has seen this YouTube video about proper PowerPoint etiquette.  (And before you ask…yes, he was using Keynote, so it might not be all him.)

Oh, and while bugs in software are fun, bugs that laugh at you are even more fun.  (Yes, that’s a bug in my code.)

And yes, the cake is a lie.  Or maybe not…

I came across a discussion on 20SB today regarding Michael Phelps and his little ‘drug incident’, the latest controversy to hit the media…right before whatever major controversy came right before it .  (I forget, as that’s what people tend to do.  They forget the previous misdeed as soon as something more recent gets brought to the forefront of their attention, even though the misdeed in question will still have lasting consequences.)

To be honest, I’ve always wondered why people take a particular interest in the private dealings performed by the rest of the world.  With any media format you care to name, chances are it’s been used to delve into the personal lives of countless famed actors and sports figures.  Blogs, television shows…essentially, you name it, it’s been used to tap into things that have no reason to be public.

People wonder why their friends tend to be photophobic and don’t want their pictures posted everywhere.  When you have incidents like this, it’s not a stretch to wonder why.  It can make or break relationships, turn relationships one way or the other, or, in some cases, completely screw up the rest of your life.  It all depends on who finds your dirty laundry and how evil they are with it, with a direct correlation to the amount of fame you’ve garnered throughout your life.  And it’s all stuff that people wouldn’t find out about otherwise, too.

In our quest for information and with the growth of media, we’ve evolved from caring about relevant and timely information to as much trivial tripe as we can stuff into our primitive brains, personal business being just one of the many categories people file away on a daily basis, with the only benefit being the increased average skill at pop culture games like Trivial Pursuit.  And whether that can even be classified as a skill is a debatable topic at best.

I find it rather pathetic that we’ve changed how we define our lives from what we do to what we do without getting caught, too.  Alas, that is a rant for another time.

I never thought I would be adding a marijuana tag, despite the fact that I’m not a druggie.  Go figure.

And yes, this post was almost two hours late, and it’s shorter than normal.  I have a legitimate excuse, though.