Diosa is Hot for Geeks

I am a web programmer. Don't get all nervous and let your eyes gloss over yet. I'm not going to bore you with too many details. I have one of those jobs people don't like to hear much about.

It's fine. I'm over it. 

Last Friday, I spent at the RIA (Rich Internet Applications) Conference in Boston. It's the first time I've been to a professional conference like that in my career. Honestly, it took me long enough. I've been so busy just trying to balance my day-to-day job and raising my kids, not to mention having a husband who's self employed and works all day and sometimes all night, professional development has kind of gone out the window. And the time and money I've had to spend on my career, I spent taking classes.

I may have been a bit misguided there. I'm starting to think professional certifications and conferences are where it's at.

A programming conference may not sound all that enticing to you,  but I had an absolute blast. First, I met two of my ColdFusion programming icons. Whenever I research how to accomplish something in CF online,  these are the two guys that come up. They have been my mentors for years. And I finally got to meet them.

In person.

It must be a bit weird having some woman come up to you and introduce herself, telling you what a fan she is of your blog. It was a bit weird for me, anyway. It's like I'm a groupie or something. I've never been the groupie type before. Leave it to me to become a groupie of the ColdFusion Jedi and Obsessively Thorough Web Application Development.

The latter used to be called Kinky Solutions, but Ben has gotten a little more mature and professional over the years. And he's totally cute. He lives in NY (Bookgirl, maybe you should look him up. He's single as far as I know. I really should have asked when I met him, but I was slightly awe struck). The Jedi told me his degree is actually in English too. I can't tell you how thrilling that is for me. Perhaps I will one day find the force within me too.

One can hope.

One of the coolest things about programmers is their terrific sense of humor. These are some quick and dirty replications of some of the more entertaining ways of making a point.

To let your audience know how you really feel about your programming language of choice:

 

To exemplify how you're not that impressed by all the trendy web services in the websphere:

 

To reiterate how you put this presentation together in your baby's delivery room this week:

 

And a lesson on string concatenation wouldn't be complete without a quote by George Bush.

"There's an old saying in Tennessee -- I know it's in Texas, probably in Tennessee -- that says, fool me once, shame on --shame on you. Fool me -- you can't get fooled again."

I also had a great conversation about jQuery with a couple of guys that do web development for one of the colleges at Harvard. There are few things in life that impress me - not your money, not your BMW, but Harvard, as long as your not some conceited a*hole, that's impressive. And if you're a really cool guy covered in tattoos, even better. Of course the guy not covered in tattoos was cool, too.

But you get my point.

And it never hurts being in a room where the ratio of men to women is about 4 to 1. I may be married and loyal and all that, but the attention is still nice. Because I've never had anyone ask me if they could follow me on Twitter before. That would entail me actually signing on to Twitter, though, not just having that account I opened two or three years ago.

The Jedi was the one who used the photo of Paris. He confessed that he follows her on Twitter. Not because he's really a fan, but because she's exactly what you would expect. Not everything works that way in programming or in life, so getting exactly what you expect, well, that's often the best possible outcome.

In programming it's the only acceptable outcome, and you can spend days getting there. 

In life, it can be nice to get more than you expected.

As for me, I suppose I'd be thrilled winning the lottery, finding out my portfolio was worth more than I thought, realizing my phone can do cool tricks I didn't even know about.

But honestly, most of the time, I'm quite content just getting exactly what I expect.

Comments

[Alice]

I'm not even going to pretend I know what programming is, even after reading that. We are lucky I know how to navigate the internets enough to get here, actually.
But I will say happy birthday and sorry I'm going to miss path's with you while in your neighborhood tomorrow.

[Polly Poppins]

I'm with you, Diosa. I'm hot for geeks and I like to get what I expect. I mean if I had to choose between no surprises ever and surprises of the usual variety, containing both good and bad things, I would not hesitate. Surprises are overrated.

And having had the good fortune to have shared a portion of the car ride home with you--on the phone, that is--I have to say, conferences seem to agree with you. You sounded almost giddy. And you're never giddy.

[Pandora]

I am fascinated by people like you who know the ins and outs of cyberspace. I'm with Alice on this: I have enough knowledge to click on the internet and download files.

I also can't resist the geek factor, but I hate expecting and expecting what to get. All that expecting makes me anxious because sometimes I expect too much. I rather things just happen spontaneously. Like last night: Skipper texted me asking if I could drive him back home because he had a bit too much of the demon alcohol. I was at his work 5 minutes later. I couldn't leave my cousin on the streets of Oceanside. Plus, I couldn't resist the offer of free gas and getting to see the Skipper attempt Soulja Boy in my passenger seat. Then again, I guess that's what expect of Skipper.

PS: Happy Birthday! I have a theory: some of the coolest people I have met are born in November. This theory hasn't yet failed me.

[The Dol]

Diosa, I love learning inside terminology for different groups. Like the rest of the group, I have no clue what you do, other than it involves computers and... language, maybe? Like coding, or whatever? Anyhow, you are very cool and mysterious that way.

Pandora, I'm sure you meant to qualify that P.S. to say that "while most of the coolest people I have met are born in November, the coolest person I've ever known was born in January." Just checking.

(And thanks for getting The Skipmeister home safely. I'm sure Health and Safety would approve.)

[Diosa]

Alice, Sorry I won't have time to catch you. My boss's last day was last Friday. The other woman in IT may be out, so I can't just take it off seeing I'm trying to get promoted. Too bad you're not staying long enough to party it up with us tonight.

Polly, Conferences do make me a bit giddy. Especially on top of the 9-10 hour days I'd been putting in at work for the two days before that.

Pandora, working in cyberspace is a great deal of fun. I often feel that I can't keep up with how quickly everything changes. Mostly, it requires a love of learning. I haven't met Skipper, but I bet his Soulja routine was hilarious.

Dol, I do love being cool and mysterious. I can't lie.

[Bookgirl]

Di, you do you, kid. While I'm incapable of getting a handle on exactly what it is you do, I love that you love it. You get such a charge out of being the computer goddess, just like I do out of being the bookgirl. And isn't that the sure sign that you're in the right field?

I do love a good conference, too, as long as it'd well run. I pretty much have to snort coffe grounds to get through it, since I'm not a sit still and listen to people talk kind of girl. But there are few things I enjoy as a bunch of smart people, united by a common love, setting out to make a difference. Which also explains why I love being part of this blog so much...

[The Model]

Geeks are the best. I may not know much more about computers and teh internetz than the rest of our fair panel here, but that's because I've never needed to. Both of my brothers are programmers (one for an email marketing firm and the other for the illustrious Blizzard game company, which is what I like to brag about whenever there are WoW nerds around), not to mention that my dearest Rex does some programming himself.

I'm also a fan of the November-born. Spawn numero dos and one of my aforementioned brothers are both among you.