Hijack alert, I'm making this about geeks. Feel free to ignore.
I did one of these, I think, for Roger Faulkner, Mr /proc (not the linux one, the original one).
Some back story, I needed to learn something from Roger, I was working in building 5 at Sun with the rest of the Sun kernel people, I was upstairs, Roger was downstairs, whatever. So I was pretty junior and I walked into Roger's office and he ignored me. I was sitting on his desk next to his monitor, he was looking at the monitor and typing away. I waited.
He eventually said something like "what the fuck do you want?"
And I said "I want to know about <something I've long since forgotten>"
And he said "why should I teach you about that?"
And I said "because I'm going to sit here and belch and fart until you do"
He laughed and we became friends.
We were both nerds with very few friends but when we connected over technology, that's a bond. It's a bond that is hard to put into words and have people understand, but we bonded (you guys should get the nerd bond. I hope). It turned into a thanksgiving at my flat in San Francisco many years ago (I have a vague feeling that Theo might have been there but I dunno). In some ways it was a sad nerd fest, in other ways it was so cool. I wouldn't trade that for anything, yeah it was nerdy, and yeah it was some dudes hanging out without any girls that we so wanted, but we had fun, it was a good time.
I'm all for thanksgiving being a place where you can hang out with your friends. Lots of people are away from their families, so go gather in the nerds, whatever, gather in the people that you care about. Who you gather is up to you but I'd vote for gathering in the people who are mostly ignored. Lots of them have lots to offer.
I did one of these, I think, for Roger Faulkner, Mr /proc (not the linux one, the original one).
Some back story, I needed to learn something from Roger, I was working in building 5 at Sun with the rest of the Sun kernel people, I was upstairs, Roger was downstairs, whatever. So I was pretty junior and I walked into Roger's office and he ignored me. I was sitting on his desk next to his monitor, he was looking at the monitor and typing away. I waited.
He eventually said something like "what the fuck do you want?"
And I said "I want to know about <something I've long since forgotten>"
And he said "why should I teach you about that?"
And I said "because I'm going to sit here and belch and fart until you do"
He laughed and we became friends.
We were both nerds with very few friends but when we connected over technology, that's a bond. It's a bond that is hard to put into words and have people understand, but we bonded (you guys should get the nerd bond. I hope). It turned into a thanksgiving at my flat in San Francisco many years ago (I have a vague feeling that Theo might have been there but I dunno). In some ways it was a sad nerd fest, in other ways it was so cool. I wouldn't trade that for anything, yeah it was nerdy, and yeah it was some dudes hanging out without any girls that we so wanted, but we had fun, it was a good time.
I'm all for thanksgiving being a place where you can hang out with your friends. Lots of people are away from their families, so go gather in the nerds, whatever, gather in the people that you care about. Who you gather is up to you but I'd vote for gathering in the people who are mostly ignored. Lots of them have lots to offer.