Never ask a geek a question that you really don't want answered....

For those readers who may be geeks, you've probably either seen this before, or actually done it yourself. For those of you who are not geeks, this may apply to your particular realm of expertise as well, and you may find yourself nodding in agreement. For those who are the posers of the questions, you have our collective pity, because geeks are hard-wired this way. Well, some of us are, anyway.

Jennifer was checking her Twitter feed the other day and saw something unfamiliar, so she asked me about it. What is PHP? I replied that it was a programming language; a better answer might have been "it's a scripting language," but that would have been more appropriate for Mr. T rather than my wife. I also told her that there was a book about it in the bookshelf next to the dining room table and gave her the approximate title. Then, just to make sure I had given her the correct information, I found the link on Amazon and sent it to her. I waited patiently- it had to be at least two minutes, and then I texted her, "What, no PHP love?"

Predictably, I did not receive a response.

A long time ago, I had a boss who once said of me, "I once had another employee just like you: when I asked him what time it was, he told me how to make a wrist watch."

My particular genus of geek doesn't get a lot of love when it comes to things which we are able to expound upon. However, I am not unique in my immediate family in this regard. Most all of us will regale the unsuspecting poser of an innocent question with facts, details and minutiae on our particular areas of expertise or interest at the drop of a hat. Jennifer, for example, knows a lot about a lot of things. With her geology background, she'll be more than happy to explain why (as I understand it, anyways) there's no such thing as sand. Nope- just sand-sized particles... and don't even get her started on "jungle." Daniel can wax long and eloquently on cinema, manga, and console video games, as well as Eighties and Nineties pop culture. Mr. T keeps abreast of the business side of gaming companies, and can hold his own in a video game discussion with Daniel. He's also involved with computer graphics cards and game graphics.

Me? Trivia in general- military and music in particular (anything before the 90's- you know, the good stuff), as well as all sorts of PC and software related stuff.

You've been warned.

As always, I am hochspeyer, blogging data analysis and management so you don't have to.

*And in my spare time, this weekend I'm web host shopping.

Why, 2K!

Well, it's been ten days since my last post... which, in the blogosphere, is the half life of an eternity, I think! Today's title is in commemoration (actually anticipation) of 2,000 views of this blog!

This makes me happy.

In addition to looking for a job, building Forty-Two, working nights, blogging, HTML5 and working on the Lego spreadsheet, I've also been doing some stuff on Twitter ( @CJoelHarrison ), and am looking at PHP, MySQL and Apache. I'm not sure as yet where the last three will fit into the general scheme of things, but I'm thinking that adding these last three to my software skills can only be good.

As far as blog data goes, I'm still amazed at some of the locations of my readers. When I first started out, I had a goal of at least one reader per continent by the end of 2013. As a writer, I'm not sure how much control I have over who reads, but I've tried to make it as interesting and universally appealing (within the constraints of being semi-technical at times) as possible. So, with five months nearly gone in 2013, I'm happy to say the last frontiers for readers are South America and Antarctica. Shameless plug: if anyone knows folks in either of these places, I'd appreciate a recommendation! 

Finally, the database has grown by .5% since I last took a look at the numbers earlier in the month, and the Lego spreadsheet has not been touched. Most of the database growth has occurred in one table- Songs. As I'm getting deeper into this project, I'm finding that it is quicker and easier to take a single book or piece of music and extract all of the data, rather than working in the main table and going back and forth opening, saving and closing multiple tables many times over the course of an evening's work. That's the theory for today, at least.

As always, I am hochspeyer, blogging data analysis and management so you don't have to.