Geek Role Models and
Heroes
Two things fired my original interests in
computers; the
Amiga 500 and Superman
III. A cool machine that gave a less than
knowledgeable hobbyist the ability to tinker around
and a movie where a knowledgeable hacker kicks
Superman's ass. Those were my computer geek
beginnings.
As a freshman and sophomore in college I was
enamored with hackers (or
crackers as some would prefer it) as they were
potrayed in the media. However after meeting a few
and hanging out more online I realized that most of
them were mere
script kiddies in real life. After a while,
after reading about how well Netscape engineers
were treated and enjoying their kickass browser
(this was in the Netscape Navigator 3 days) I began
to set my sights on being one day good enough to
work at Netscape. After a while I began to change
my mind not only because Netscape Navigator was
slowly being eclipsed by Internet Explorer but also
because many
described Netscape as a bunch of hackers patching
together whatever worked not as software
engineers designing and implementing a grand
architecture.
For a while I fixated on figures from academic
settings including teaching assistants, research
professors and programming context participants but
the closer I got to them or actually participated
(I was a TA, took part in a programming contest and
did research while in school which eventually got
published) the more I felt that these people
weren't really as cool as I thought. Partly a case
of the
grass is always greener on the other side of the
fence and part distaste at the politics of
academia.
In my junior year at college I began to take an
interest in distributed
computing and component technologies. I began
to look starry eyed at COM+/DCOM and CORBA
developers which eventually lead me to consider
working at Microsoft to be the coolest thing ever.
Interviewing for an internship that year and not
even making it to the second round interviews
simply made me even further convinced at the
technical expertise it would take to be a Microsoft
developer. In my senior year I began to take a
serious interest in systems programming and
eventually hacked on the Linux kernel which
eventually lead to my current reverence for kernel
hackers.
Besides the Linux kernel hackers, one other group
of people have wowed me with their technical
ability and the impact they've had on the world.
Happy 4th Birthday, Google.
Sorry for the introspective navel gazing. I
recently received an email from someone at Google
about job openings and it brought up a number of
memories which I needed to write down to clear my
thoughts.
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Speed
Stacks: The Sport For Fast Hands
This video
of Emily introduced me to the "sport" of speed
stacking. No doubt, she is really fast at what she
does but I really doubt this should be called a
sport.
Barber
Shop: A Movie Review
I saw
the Barbershop this week with the girlfriend
(Yes, we're back together for those keeping track)
and was surprised at how good the movie was. It was
funny, not preachy, not ghetto (or is that "urban")
and definitely worth buying on DVD whenever it is
released. I noticed that
Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton are up in arms
because the movie states opinions from black people
which run counter to their self serving and
racially seperatist agenda. I counted about four or
five such opinions on watching the movie- African Americans don't
want/need reparations. Black people have
affirmative action and
welfare
(something I can't remember) already which should
be good enough. Also pride shouldn't let black
people resort to taking the white man's handouts
like beggars.
- Rosa Parks was probably
just tired when she refused to stand up and
didn't really mean to make a stand on principle.
Also the only thing that seperated Rosa parks
from all the other black people who tried to sit
the front of buses and got smacked down or jailed
is that she had NAACP connections.
- Martin Luther King Jr.
day should be "Get Your Freak On" day because MLK
Jr. was a ho (i.e. sexually promiscous).
- Rodney King deserved an
ass whupping for driving drunk and resisting
arrest.
- OJ did it.
- Fuck Jesse
Jackson.
#Ricers
Unite
I came across
Beaterz, a ricer
bashing site via Slashdot yesterday. There are
truly some gems (i.e. tastelessly modified cars) on
this site. My favorites were
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