What does these two words mean? In our everyday life we ask someone a question and when they respond with an answer we reply back with a “Thank You”. It doesn’t even matter if you like the answer, the words “Thank you” come out automatically like you’re returning a tennis volley. In many circles its even considered rude to not say thank you.
What do we really mean when we say thank you? Are we telling the person “Hey, thanks for taking the effort to reply back with an answer” or is it because we feel we owe them something in return when they reply back? “He gave me an answer, now I have to say something… wait I know what to say! Thank you” Does anyone think when saying thank you or does it just come out of you automatically life a reflex action?
Recently I saw this movie “Three Idiots” and it raised an issue which I’ve been meaning to question for a really long time. In the movie (as in several points of my life) people have remarked “friends ko thank you nahi bolte” (you don’t need to say thank you to your friends)
My question is Why not?
Thank you is defined as a “conversational form of expressing gratitude”. Essentially it means that if you’re happy with the service rendered, you express your gratitude by using the words “Thank You”. It isn’t meant to be as a reply to an answer, or a way to finish of a conversation. It is a way to express your gratitude. So, when a friend helps me out (or vice-versa) why shouldn’t I express my gratitude? I’ll say thank you a million times if I’m happy. Its the human way of sharing an emotion — happiness. The thank you isn’t for you, its for me… I’ll give it whether you want it or not. I would also expect the same in return. If I help you out with something and you feel grateful, say thank you, otherwise it seems to me that you don’t care.
I think this term has been severely watered down to a point where its real meaning has been lost. Next time someone helps me out, I’ll say thank you even if its friend, a family member or a random stranger. You should do that too, and hopefully they will be happy that it comes from the heart.
A nerd needs a project because a nerd builds stuff. All the time. Those lulls in the conversation over dinner? That’s the nerd working on his project in his head. It’s unlikely that this project is a nerd’s day job because his opinion regarding his job is, “Been there, done that”.
If you see me daydreaming, that’s what I’m really doing. That’s also how I can spend hours at a bus/train station or airport without doing anything.
Understand your nerd’s relation to the computer. It’s clichéd, but a nerd is defined by his computer, and you need to understand why.
Your nerd has control issues. Your nerd lives in a monospaced typeface world. Whereas everyone else is traipsing around picking dazzling fonts to describe their world, your nerd has carefully selected a monospace typeface, which he avidly uses to manipulate the world deftly via a command line interface while the rest fumble around with a mouse.
These control issues mean your nerd is sensitive to drastic changes in his environment. Think travel. Think job changes. These types of system-redefining events force your nerd to recognize that the world is not always or entirely a knowable place, and until he reconstructs this illusion, he’s going to be frustrated and he’s going to act erratically. I develop an incredibly short fuse during system-redefining events and I’m much more likely to lose it over something trivial and stupid.
Change, eww.
Your nerd has built himself a cave. The Cave is designed to allow your nerd to do his favorite thing, which is working on the project. If you want to understand your nerd, stare long and hard at his Cave. How does he have it arranged? When does he tend to go there? How long does he stay?
Ah the area around my workstation, my mecca.
Your nerd loves toys and puzzles. The joy your nerd finds in his project is one of problem solving and discovery. As each part of the project is completed, your nerd receives an adrenaline rush that we’re going to call The High. Every profession has this — the moment when you’ve moved significantly closer to done. In many jobs, it’s easy to discern when progress is being made: “Look, now we have a door”. But in nerds’ bit-based work, progress is measured mentally and invisibly in code, algorithms, efficiency, and small mental victories that don’t exist in a world of atoms.
Gotta love finding out the rules, and then beating them, breaking bending them.
Nerds are fucking funny. Your nerd spent a lot of his younger life being an outcast because of his strange affinity with the computer. This created a basic bitterness in his psyche that is the foundation for his humor. Now, combine this basic distrust of everything with your nerd’s other natural talents and you’ll realize that he sees humor is another game.
Seen enough of Friends, House & Becker that my humor has heavy dozes of sarcasm.
Your nerd has an amazing appetite for information. Many years ago, I dubbed this behavior NADD, and you should read the article to learn more and to understand what mental muscles your nerd has developed.
How does a nerd watch TV? Probably one of two ways. First, there’s watching TV with you where the two of you sit and watch one show. Then there’s how he watches by himself when he watches three shows at once. It looks insane. You walk into the room and you’re watching your nerd jump between channels every five minutes.
I usually have TV running on in the background, several different active chat programs, people yelling for help while i work.
The skills to interact with other people are there. They just lack a well-defined system.
Anyone who’s ever spoken to me knows this to be true *sigh*
The Dubai Metro was officially opened at 09:09:09 on 9/9/9 by Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al Maktoum, the Ruler of Dubai. This time-lapse video shows the journey from Nakheel Harbor and Tower Station, to Rashidiya Station – currently the longest journey that can be taken on the Red line.
It seems so obvious: if you want to develop software that’s useful to people, you’ve got to talk with them. But too many developers take the anti-social approach and consider customer support to be beneath their status…If you really want to write useful software, stop spending all your time keeping up with technology. Don’t worry if your resume isn’t filled with the latest buzzwords. Instead, invest your time in talking with your customers. They don’t care what programming language you use – they only care whether your software meets their needs, and the best way to ensure that is by breaking out of your cone of silence and opening the lines of communication.
I’ve always believed that a software developer’s duty doesn’t end when his code is pushed live. Your software is never perfect and you will always have a user who finds problems with your UI, doesn’t know what this feature means or you’ve simply misunderstood the requirements.
Support for your software shouldn’t be like an add-on warranty you purchase at Best Buy. It should be given away because support is a feature of your product.
It still sucks how companies refuse to upgrade from IE6. The browser was release eight years ago. (Remember what you were doing eight years ago on the internet?)
Once someone breaks into their systems through IE6 they’ll learn a lesson. (hint hint)
I just had to share this one, it is quite beautiful:
And if I go,
while you’re still here…
Know that I live on,
vibrating to a different measure
–behind a thin veil you cannot see through.
You will not see me,
so you must have faith.
I wait for the time when we can soar together again,
–both aware of each other.
Until then, live your life to its fullest.
And when you need me,
Just whisper my name in your heart,
…I will be there.
“Menlo“, the monospaced font mentioned previously, is apparently used as the default coding font for Xcode 3.2 now. Apple even filed a couple of trademark registrations in US and EU for that name.
Apple is introducing a new Monospaced font as an alternative to Monaco. It’s called “Menlo” presumably derived from Menlo Park. It will be the default font for Terminal in Snow Leopard. Screenshots below:
I tried a simple search for “Federer” here are the differences. Google gave me the most relevant search results without having to click any extra links.
From Google the news sources I get are:
- Boston Herald
- The Sport Review
- Xinhua News Agency (Chinese News Agency which supplies info to various newspapers around the world)
- NBC Sports
Here’s Bing:
The default search didn’t give me any recent info/news so I had to click on “News” on the left hand side.
The top results it gave me were from:
- Chicago Sun Times - Asheville Citizen-Times (Where the hell is Asheville?)
- Augusta Chronicle
- Arizona Daily Star - Tehran Times (An Iranian News website?)
Seriously – these are the news sources I get first?
I like Bing, its much better live.com ever was but still needs to improve a lot. Federer just won the French Open and it was big news, so it should have displayed the information right on the frontpage of the search results. Even after drilling down to news I got some not so reputable links.
Nevertheless, my experiment to use Bing as my default search engine still continues. Make sure to check out the Search Engine Blind Test – which is a fun little experiment to play with the perception of search engines results.
A Chinese guy singing the song Tujh Mein Rab Dikhta Hai at some Chinese singing reality show. Frankly, it’s not too bad and he dances to it too! It made me laugh too
*sigh*
