Geek Fight!

I have just overheard one of the best geek conversation fights ever. The work environment here is very open. The cubicle walls are very short and don't absorb any sound so everyone can hear everything. The guy who sits on the other side of the wall from me is our IBM Consultant and is a total geek in every sense of the word. He is such a geek that he pushes the nerd line, if he wasn't an IBM guy I would put him into the nerd category. So everyone in the office sort of thinks this IBM guy is a god or something, so our senior developer, the one everyone used to think was god, had to challenge him to a geek fight.

Let me take a min to try and explain to anyone who hasn't experienced a geek fight in person or been involved in one. There are several issues at play during a geek fight, some are obvious and others are more hidden. The fight usually starts when one geek needs something from the other geek, a bit of info, some data, a report, it can be anything. The engaging geek will then try to give up as little info as possible about what he needs, this is how the geek probes the other geek to see how much he knows. This gives the opposing geek two options, 1. He can admit he needs more info and put himself at a disadvantage 2. He can go around the probe and ramble off other semi-related knowledge, thereby firing back his own probe. If the opposing geek goes with #2 the geek fight is on. If the opposing geek goes with #1 he will usually get a patronizing explanation and no geek fight will take place. After both geeks have launched their probes the fight starts. The object of the fight is to keep probing until you discover the weak spot of your opponents knowledge, then you lecture to them on this weak subject in such a way they really have no response. And thus you have proven your supreme geekness and mastery over the other geek.

It was a quiet morning so I was really able to hear the geek fight take place. I don't remember how it started exactly, I picked it up when they started talking about the speed of light. In order for any geek fight to be classified as an official geek fight there has to be nervous laughs thrown in at the ends of sentences. Here is an example, "well that would disprove Einstein theory....uh,uh,ha,ahaaa"

Now what makes this geek fight the best one I've ever heard is that neither one of the geeks knew what they were talking about, thus ending the geek fight in a stalemate and now the geeks are like best friends. They go to lunch and talk and hang out, I guess this is because they are equally stupid.

Here is some of the notes I took during the fight, as you can see from the quotes they contradict each other quite a bit.
IBM Geek: "Speed of light is the only constant"
Our Geek: "There is no proof that the speed of light is constant"
IBM Geek: "Einstein theory proves it"
Our Geek: "Well there have been new theories that disprove Einstein's theory"
Me in my mind: "How can a theory disprove a theory if it's just a theory?"
IBM Geek: "Well time is constant to the speed of light"
Our Geek: "Time is not constant because of the calendar and there is actually more time in a year than 365 days and they have to adjust it by one day every 1000 years"
IBM Geek: "Yeah, that is because of the math"
IBM Geek: "See math proves everything, and 365 is not divisible by 400 or 500"
I started to lose track of what they were saying because other people were talking but here is a few random phrases I heard and wrote down:
1. Volecular timestamp
2. Faster or slower than its relative speed --"That was from when they were talking about Einstein's theory of relativity, I think"
3. Atomic clock is wrong
4. Speed of light of an approaching object of intense mass
5. Gravitational force of a proton
6. Velocity of reference points.

The next time you hear a geek fight taking place, write it down. It makes for great entertainment later.

Tyse

Miss P

I am still trying to get a feel for everyone I work with. I have a few people figured out like Miss P, she is your typical middle aged lady who has worked here for 20 years and knows the legacy system better than anyone. I thought I would see if she had a sense of humor and could take a joke because she seemed non-technical. I sent her a very nice email asking her if she could show me how to send email when she gets a min. I then went into detail about how I have never sent email before and am a little confused. Well I really thought Miss P would of came by and made sure I wasn't joking around. This is the advantage of being the "new guy", nobody knows if you're being serious or not. So I sat with Miss P for 15 mins while she went over every detail with Outlook. Most of the conversation went like this:
"This is the send button...It sends the email" Me "I see"
"This is the forward button...It forwards the email to another user" Me "I see"
"This is the reply button...Click it if you want to reply to an email" Me "I see"
She was a very good teacher and I felt too bad to tell her I was just kidding. She then told me to send her some emails to practice. I guess I got in a little over my head.

Tyse

New Job!

I just started a new job on 1.3.06, everything is going great and I really like it here. I can tell this place is going to have a lot of quirks and funny people that are going to keep me entertained. For example, there are two people that I report to and am confused as to why I need two managers. So I asked, "who do I go to for which questions and why?" The response, "Think of it as a professional sports team, I am the general manager and your other boss is the coach" I'm still confused by this, is this the analogy he uses on everyone? Do I look like I've played on a professional sports team and he thought I could relate? This has to be one of the worst analogies I've heard. I really hope he comes up with a better way to explain it to me. I am starting to think he really doesn't know why there is two managers either.

I am also still considered "The new guy", I love that title, when people see me for the first time I get this exact response, "Oh, you must be the new guy, hi I'm 'whoever'" I am keeping track of introductions that go like this word for word, I am up to 6. The funny thing is the awkward silence after the introduction, in IT people are not good with small talk. The "new guy" thing is usually followed up with another stupid question, "So how do you like it so far?" Just once I would like to say some smart ass response like, "fine, until you came over" or "I hate it actually, I am thinking of quitting after lunch" or "The job is going ok, it's the people that suck" Well I better get back to reading my pile o` documents, people don't know what to do with "the new guy" so they just dump a bunch of documents on my desk and expect me to read them. I am putting a list of questions together from my reading to ask my boss, I am really going to need some help trying to decide if each question is a "general manager" question or one more fitting for the "coach".

Tyse