Got Geek?

In an old Tom Cruise movie, his incarcerated brother conveys with disparity how he misses the sky. The worst part of prison is not seeing the sky.

At the time this was a fairly meaningless sentiment to me. Prisons these days purportedly have varying degrees of yard time or work during which prisoners surely see the sky. Oh, and I’m not in prison!

Am I free though?

I look out the window today, and I see neighbours’ houses. Trees. Pavement. I ventured outside in search of vastness but was still imprisoned but a solid grey blanket. I scanned the horizon through a full 360° turn but the blanket was unrelenting.

Suddenly depressed by the realisation that I couldn’t gaze at the heavens, I searched my mind for the last time I’d truely experienced the sky.

All I find are shreds and glimpses. Some blue through this window. A cloud through that window. A thin beam of morning Sol between the curtains. Stars are a faded memory.

If you ask anyone “who are the biggest software giants in the world?” chances are their response will be:

In the evil corner: Microsoft; And in the good corner: Google.

As I am a big fan of playing devil’s advocate, my stance on the the accuracy of these reputations often varies depending on that with whom I’m discussing it. The dichotomy aside we can all agree these are metaphorical giants.

Google in particular has piqued my interested in the past few days in large part due to the failure of some Gmail accounts (mine among them). There are so frequently minor issues and outages related to Google that I find my programming ideals challenged.

In programming I am characteristically defined by my moralistic and idealistic upbringing, a good base education in software engineering, and frequent struggles with others’ esoteric programming methodologies. I thus strive to achieve solutions that are error free and that don’t cause disruption to the user.

This is not an easy road to take in modern programming environments. More often now we are reporting to a manager with knowledge limited to what he wants and when he wants, without any sense of the scope of the work he’s asking of you. It’s a constant battle for the time and resources to plan, to implement, and to test new features (hopefully in some variety of iterative process!)

Google, however, seem to have many minor issues with their software. Their flagship product – Google Web Search – fails an html validation with many more than a few errors. The translator fails in different areas. They have the Google Dance, coined to describe the phenomenon occurring due to the lack of synchronicity between their datacentres.

The issue that concerns me here is: nobody cares! There are murmurs and grumbles and gripes but for the most part people seem to accept it and move on with their lives. I was very inconvenienced by not having access to my work and personal email for a couple of days while Gmail refused me entry, and yet I’d still swear by it, and have no intention of discontinuing my use of the service.

Is it worth banging your head against your boss’ brick wall? Do you really need to tear your hair out on behalf of your less meticulous colleagues?

Perhaps, against everything your heart tells you, the answer is:

No.

Monday through Friday we rise with the sun and for a brief period divide our time equally between grooming, travel, and a daily attempt at caffine absorbtion.  Thus far a fairly typical beginning for much of the corporate population.

From there a full third of our day – half of the awake portion – is slightly deviated from the managerial or marketing type.  We spend a little more time at our desk and a little less at the water cooler.  When fielding an enquiry we are quick with the verbosity but lacking in circumlocution.  We’ve answered the question, but they still look at us quizzically! WTF?

It’s Friday.  Tradition says we are released of many of the bonds of  office protocol to join our peers in social splendour.  Do we accept?  We’ll come down soon, but we should really finish debugging this latest iteration and commit it to the repository…  19:00!?  Already?  Oh well, perhaps next week.

Until now we’re just regular every day corporate I.T. people.   But when Saturday night comes around and we’re staying in instead of heading to town; gaming instead of drinking; chatting instead of socialising…  have we gone too far?  Does this transcend conscientious career involvement?  Have we now become a shut in?  Have we got…

The Geek?

Welcome to the beginnings of my geek philosophising.