Re: Tired of being called a geek?

Brad,

PMFJI, but :

• I'd rather stay a geek than move up into management - too many arseholes hang out there.
• If ATC was able to control the planes from the ground, then the hi-jackers would have taken over ATC rather than the planes - same effect in the end, if not worse - more planes could be controlled.

>> It is only mildly embarrassing that we need to go to Japanese car
>> dealerships if we want to buy a hybrid car.
In the UK and much of the rest of the so-called civilised world, we actually care about the environment. In the USA, Gerge W Bush has made it quite clear that he doesn't. Don't get me wrong, I'm sure many Americans do care, but when the boss says jump, you jump ! For this reason, we have hybrid cars, electric cars (the electric Lotus Elise outperforms the petrol one - oops !) and LPG powered cars. I suspect in America, the car manufacturers don't want to sell you one of these or a hybrid, so you can't get one. Me, I drive a Honda.

• forget the media, it tells you either (a) what you want to hear - otherwise why would you buy the newspaper, watch that particular channel etc (b) what the government wants you to see/hear/know - and not always the full story. And the media is controlled by your government as ours is. If they want to shut it down, they will. It happens more in dictatorships etc, but it can and does happen in our 'civilised' part of the world. 'Nice' stories never make the news, only disasters, war, corrupt politicians (are there any other types ?) etc.

>> I agree with you that those that control the media have very little
>> understanding or appreciation for what we do. But, whose fault is
that? It's
>> our fault. We haven't told them.
They don't want to know, they don't care and they never will.

>> If a journalist got two or three negative letters
>> every time he referred to us in derogatory terms, he would soon stop.
This implies that journalists know how to think - they onlythink in terms of selling papers/stories. If these are accurate or truthful then that is a bonus - my family have been on the receiving end of some absolute sh*te in the newspapers written by a journalist who was not even in the same part of the country as we were, and he even quoted people who he had never interviewed. Luckily, the story was about my brother at the 1996 Commonwaelth games and wasn't important, but what if he had been accused of child-molesting or rape for example?

Life is full of enough crap to worry about the media calling us geeks/nerds/etc. Bill Gates has to be the ultimate nerd/geek and he has more money than most media moguls put together. What does that say ? (Apart from Microsoft use their monopoly position to their best advantage and to crush anything remotely similar, but that subject has been done a few times !)

Stay sane and stay lucky, you have enough to worry about in life without having to worry about non-essential things. (Unless you like stress ?)

Regards,
Norman.

Norman Dunbar			EMail:	Norman.Dunbar_at_LFS.co.uk
Database/Unix administrator	Phone:	0113 289 6265
				Fax:	0113 289 3146
Lynx Financial Systems Ltd.	URL:	http://www.Lynx-FS.com
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