Geek culture

My inside look at the world of Star Wars

Last week I held the original blaster that Harrison Ford - as Han Solo - used to shoot Greedo in Star Wars (Episode IV).

That’s what I consider the highlight to a vacation.

Thanks to some business contacts that a certain friend of mine has, I was fortunate enough to receive a tour of the center of George Lucas’s entertainment business empire in San Francisco, including LucasFilm’s headquarters at the Presidio in San Francisco and the fabled Skywalker Ranch north of the city. It is no easy feat to get a look inside the homes of LucasFilm and its various divisions, such as Skywalker Sound and Industrial Light & Magic. I once read that Ronald Reagen’s request for a tour of Skywalker Ranch while he was president was denied.
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NetApp takes viral YouTube marketing to another level.

The intersection between geek culture and hip hop has a long, vibrant history and has brought us many cherished pop culture moments.

Back in the 1984, there was Reveng of the Nerds. Who can forget the triumphant scene when the boys of Lambda Lambda Lambda clinched a victory at the Adams College homecoming carnival competition by wowing the crowd with a nerd rap with front man Lamar Latrell?

Then in 1999, we had Office Space. In a brilliant scene that seemed inspired by a John Singleton movie, Peter Gibbons and his co-conspirators gather in an open field with an HP Laserjet printer and let out all their TPS report fury, stomping, smashing and punching the printer into oblivion, all while the rap song “Still” by the Geto Boys eggs them on. Also we have the scene earlier in the film where Michael Bolton is stuck in traffic, singing along with another Geto Boys song.

Then two years ago we had Weird Al Yankovic’s masterful parody “White & Nerdy,” featuring a cameo from Donny Osmond.  The scene in the back alley where he buys a VHS bootleg of the Star Wars Holiday Special is priceless.

As much as I love Weird Al’s hip hop homage to geek culture, NetApp has taken things to a whole new level. I gotta give a hat tip to Beth Pariseau over at our sister blog Storage Soup for this one.  In this YouTube clip from NetApp that spoofs the climactic rap battle scene in the film 8 Mile with Eminem, two rappers, named for storage rivals NetApp and EMC, clash with each other for hip hop storage supremacy, tossing out classic lines like “It’s obvious you’ve got stage fright/Couldn’t save a text file with a gigabyte.” It’s not as funny as some classic moments from the past, but the quality of the rhyming and rapping deserves some special recognition.

Update: Amy Kucharik pointed out that any history of the intersection of geek culture and hip hop is incomplete without a reference to nerdcore hip hop master MC Frontalot. And I have to agree. Take a look at this video for “It is Pitch Black,” an excellent homage to Zork, the text-based role playing game from the eighties that I have cherished memories of playing on an Apple IIc.

Geek dating in the Windy City: Nerds of a Feather

If Sean Hannity can run a dating site just for his fans, surely there’s enough interest out there for a geek-friendly “Match.com.” (Please note, the only reason I would ever visit Hannidate would be to screen for people NOT to date. Fortunately the Hanni-pickings in Massachusetts are pretty slim).

Geek-friendly scifi blog io9.com has given some link love to a Chicago Sun-Times article about “Nerds at Heart,” a series of Windy City geek gatherings where men and women herd together and look for potential mates. io9 highlighted a couple choice paragraphs about these gatherings that I just have to include here.

The game of Risk may not sound romantic to everybody. “I was playing; he was knocking my cavalry over into the ocean,” remembers Flaherty. But it led to a first date at a book fair. And, eventually, love.

In April, their wedding-cake topper will depict them holding Wii controllers.

Now, I’m not aware of any geek dating websites out there, but surely there’s a market for one. I’d love to find a woman who appreciates my passion for the Star Wars universe and George RR Martin books… someone who would help me sell off some of my 6,000 comic books on Craigslist for some extra money.

‘Get with the Programmer’ contest seeks hottest tech guy

Are you the Romeo of routing? The Orlando Bloom of the OSI model? Here’s your chance to shine…

Just in time for Valentine’s Day, Daily Candy is running a contest to find the “hottest tech dude in all the land.” Since we’d like to see that award (justly) go to a networking pro, we couldn’t resist posting the link for you in the Network Hub. Theoretically, nominations are supposed to come from ladies who subscribe to Daily Candy’s newsletters (which promote shopping, dining and travel items of interest). But any toothsome techie worth his salt should be able to figure out a way around that.

In addition to bragging rights, both the winner and the person who nominates him will receive an HP Mini 1000 XP edition series netbook with an upgraded 60 GB hard drive.

The IT Guy: Geek courtship ritual

> Check out the classic xkcd referred to here, “Useless,” or the latest xkcd webcomic.

> View all our IT Guy cartoons on SearchNetworking.com.

The chronicles of an awful manager

A new blog popped up this month that any IT pro who has ever hated his manager can relate to. “Where is Bob? Tales of an absentee manager” appears to be a clever blend of fact and fiction. I guess it’s up to you to decide just how real it is. The blog is ostensibly written by “Anna Shore,” a Windows engineer with the Small IT Group (SITG) at at Big Private University (BPU) somewhere in New York City. Anna tells the tale of a small IT team that had gotten by without a manager for several months after its former competent leader moved on.

Then Bob arrives. Hired as the university’s new IT manager, Bob is a slovenly creep who says something inappropriate or offensive to just about everyone. Here is Anna’s first interaction with him:

“So, you are the girl at the office,” he uttered with a smirk. “We had a girl at the office at my last job. She made the best coffee! Better than Starbucks!”

“I am in charge of the Windows environment,” I replied, deciding to give him another chance. Sexual harassment could be charming, if done properly.

“I know a guy at Microsoft. VP,” he said definitively, and looked away. Our first conversation was over, and I immediately began to resent the fact that it wouldn’t be our last.

Beyond being a cretin, Bob also seems pretty clueless about technology. And not long after he takes over the department he begins playing hooky from work quite frequently, citing transparent excuses like car trouble and food poisoning. Anna’s descriptions of Bob’s incompetence and his absenteeism are deliciously well written.

Some of the details in this blog are too outrageous to be true, which leaves me thinking this is based pretty loosely on reality. Somewhere out there is a university IT department with a lousy manager. And whoever is writing this blog is definitely working there. Well, after writing that last sentence, I think there are probably scores of university IT departments with lousy managers . If I include corporate IT departments in that estimate, it probably ranges into the hundreds, maybe the thousands. Just read some of the comments readers have posted on the blog.

“Mike D.” wrote:

It makes me laugh…and, sadly, it makes me cry……I also have worked for a “Bob,” although not quite as bad as yours….thanks for sharing! Keep it up! Can’t wait to read more.

And “Bunny wrote:

Anna: I’m Bunny and I work at Huge Private University (HPU) and I’m an IT technician here. About four months ago, my uberboss hired Mike, the new manager. Your stories are disturbingly similar to what we have encountered here thus far … down to the sexual harassment and the technical as well as personal incompetence. And of course … the absence. At least, our Mike has the good graces to never give an excuse or even write us an email. We are thinking of starting out own blog about this … you have been a source of inspiration.

Today’s entry about Bob’s resentment of his predecessor (Jim), might be the best entry I’ve seen yet. It’s all about how Bob feels insecure about Jim’s legacy as a popular manager, so he makes a series of pathetic attempts to erase that legacy. All of them fail, including this particularly delicious one:

But that wasn’t enough, and Bob launched his foolish attack on our quips. The quips are a database of short quotes that Jim began to accumulate since the early days of SITG. Over time, each staff member made a lasting mark on the quips database. Our collection is eclectic, with selections from Mitch Hedberg, Rita Rudner, Jason the Intern, and many others. The quips are a happy addition to our day. They pop up on the pages of our ticket system, so whenever you start getting bummed out because your work queue is so very large, you can be cheered up with an amusing sentiment from Douglas Adams or Yakov Smirnoff.

And because about half of the quips were entered by Jim, Bob saw this as a direct threat, which had to be dealt with immediately. So one day, Bob stayed late, and manually (oh, yes indeed) deleted every single quip entered by Jim (about 1500 of them). This could’ve been done with one brief line of SQL, but Bob, of course didn’t know that. The following morning Dave noticed that the quips database had shrunk, and assumed that there was some sort of corruption or malfunction. So, he promptly restored the original database from the previous night’s backups. That night Bob stayed late again, clickety-clicking his way through 1500 records. This continued for a week - Bob’s futile deletes, Dave’s unassuming restores.

Recommendation: Rands in Repose

Last Friday, I held a conference call with a small group of network engineers to discuss some of their job challenges and interests. One topic that came up was the challenge of managing people in a technical job context. Someone recommended that we all check out a blog called Rands In Repose.

So today, I spent the better part of my afternoon reading some of the various essays on the blog, including The Nerd Handbook and a promo for his book, Managing Humans. I found out that I, along with many of my friends and co-workers, suffer from N.A.D.D.

It’s good stuff, and I’ll now share the recommendation with you as well. I just ask that you keep The Network Hub open in a separate browser tab; you’ll probably need to do that anyway if you have N.A.D.D. too.

The IT Guy: The binary tattoo

“Angelina looks cool, but a tattoo in binary would be so inefficient!”

> View all our IT Guy cartoons on SearchNetworking.com.

Geek Squad vs. Sex and the City

Sure, Carrie Bradshaw was mystified when her Mac died, but that’s no reason to hate on Sex and the City.

As much as pop culture may have you believe that the worlds of beauty and brains lie as far apart as Mars and Venus (Ashton Kutcher’s television “social experiment,” Beauty and the Geek, comes to mind), the truth is that the world is made up of plenty of geeky girls and eye-candy boys — and individuals who defy stereotypes and combine the best of both worlds. And one of the lessons from Sex and the City (if you can believe an HBO comedy would have a lesson) was that love can come in many unexpected packages, from Carrie’s Mr. Big to Charlotte’s true love — short, bald, sweaty and hairy-backed Harry Goldenblatt. Carrie even once dated a comic book guy… though he looked more like an indie rocker than Jeff Albertson.

Of course, that doesn’t mean that a few geeks won’t gag a little at the mention of tomorrow’s Sex and the City opening.

Nobody expects computer nerds to get giddy about satin pumps or the latest trends in foil highlighting. Leave the differential equations to the geeks and the eyebrow waxing to the so-called beauties, because if they try to swap, the results are not good — that’s the kind of thing that makes Beauty and the Geek entertaining. For that matter, I don’t even think the majority of men or many women care about that stuff.

But I do like to rail against the stereotype that women just can’t grasp technology (or that geeky people can’t also be pretty people, if they want to). So when I got an email from Ketchum PR this afternoon announcing an anti-Sex and the City promotion with Best Buy’s Geek Squad, I decided to have a little fun.

The email started off with a typical publicity shot of the four Sex and the City ladies with the caption, “IF THIS PHOTO UPSETS YOU, READ ON.” It followed by saying, “Sure Sex and the City will be adored by fanatic females that sip cosmos, adorn Manolos and look for their Mr. Big to get them out of credit card debt, but what about the unfortunate men that get dragged to this film?”

It went on to explain that Geek Squad agents will be handing out promotional packets at theaters in New York, Chicago and LA. The packets will contain four quarters and a list of excuses, so the geeks can run away to the safety of a video arcade. (Good luck finding that arcade, or an arcade game that runs for just four quarters!)

They also sent Geek Squad agents on the NYC “Sex and the City tour” to “become experts on the show.” The video is pretty amusing:

Here was my reply. I hope geek girls everywhere are vindicated.

Your email message was more offensive than the photo — what about men who *like* Sex and the City, or females who don’t like it, or the masses of well-rounded people who actually enjoy (gasp!) both their Manolos AND Mario Bros.? Can’t I have my cosmo and play arcade games? And, incidently, I’ll take Tony Stark to ease my debt over Mr. Big any day.

- Amy Kucharik, tongue firmly in cheek.

(In retrospect, I should have said that I’d rather be Tony Stark than have Mr. Big rescue me from debt.)

Is there a gap between those who are tech savvy and those who are not?

When I finished up my taxes online some months ago I laughed a little when I saw a button that said “If you do not have an email address, click here to get your tax receipt mailed to you.” I found it ironic because someone tech savvy enough to complete their taxes online would almost have to have something as basic as an email address.

I tried imagining the type of person who would have to click on that link. “Who in this day and age does not have an email address who uses the Internet?” I thought.

Although I’m embarrassed to admit, I couldn’t help but think of someone of an older generation. A thought persists that those who have not grown up around technology are somehow out of touch with the modern world. It seems everyone has a great aunt or uncle who refuses to go online, has been taken in by a phishing scam, or at least is still stuck using dial-up.

From my own experience I know plenty of recent retirees who have not only used computers during their careers but are more tech savvy than myself. So who would have to click on that link?

Not long after I asked this question did I receive a phone call from a long lost pal. We met up and reconnected, and despite the differences between gender, geography and race, the only time I felt disconnected from him was when he told me he could count on one hand how many times he had ever even been on the Internet.

Needless to say he did not have an email account. He was not over the age of retirement. He was not Amish. He had nothing against computers or technology. This person was 24. It blew my mind how someone my age had barely even surfed the Web, let alone been without an email address. Come to think of it, I think he was one of the last few in Generation Y who had a land line and no cell phone.

So I found examples of those close to me who had overthrown the statistics and stereotypes. When it came down to it age didn’t tie directly to one’s amount of tech-savviness or lack thereof, but I wondered whether being technological made someone more connected not just with society but with other people.