Sandy

Last Saturday I attended an artist display at a gallery where a friend of mine was showing her work. This is Silicon Valley so the kind of people who congregate at any place tend to be fairly mixed so even at an art event to have plenty of technical geeky folks attending. One of men I talked to espoused some pretty obscure, yet ambitious plan. He was or at least that he claimed, working on a project that will redefine the Internet and its paradigm. It sounds quite strange, but I gave him the benefit of the doubt.

In any case, his name was Sandy. After he left, my friend and couple of other people were talking about him. My friend say, "Sandy, isn't that like a female's name?". I replied, "Yeah, but perhaps it's short for Sandford or SanDisk". There were silence and puzzled looks. To my surprise, no one there got the joke including another friend who works in computer field. I know, I know, the joke is pretty geeky, but hey, this is Silicon Valley.

Today, I went to lunch with several co-workers. I relay the same "Sandy" story and the reaction was vastly different. Everyone laughed whole-heartedly. They got it.

I guess I'm more of a geekette than I thought.

Specialization

For more than a month now, a building with a large lot in my neighborhood has been under fairly intensed constructions. I passed by it everyday on my way to work. There were men working busily blocking the road, redirecting traffic, digging etc.... So out of curiosity, one day I stopped the car, rolled down the window and asked one of them, "Hi, what are you building here?" He replied, "I don't know. We're only responsible for the digging"

Talk about specialization!