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Future Blues

Take the skytrain 'cross this city,
Concrete high rise I feel no pity,
Jesus died and God's gone missing,
Take your skin off it might fit me now,
God is dead and you're so pretty baby ...

Kent, 'Just Like Money'

Had a short-term bout of the future blues lately, which was due partly to apprehensive feelings about the coming academic year and also to an incessant stream of articles in various sections of The Australian about the slump in the IT job market, which most of the pundits are currently predicting will be permanent. A sharp change from the magical fairyland of money and fast cars that was being sold to undergraduates five or so years ago. But definitely anticipated. Anyway, I'm over it, and I'm back to looking forward to a return to study, which I hope will be quite profitable this year.

Baffled from time to time by how much books, and specifically technical books, cost these days. $100 for a mass-produced technical manual of around 500 pages? Surely you jest.

Have nearly configured my 'puter, which is running installs of Windows 98 and Debian, to dialup to Tartarus. However, getting my software modem, which is undoubtedly a cheap piece of crap, to function properly is proving a bit difficult. It connects to Tartarus fine, but then seemingly loses track of the DNS, meaning that it can't find either the UWA proxy server or any remote sites for SSH. Stupid thing. I'll probably ask someone for help with it soon, but it'll be a little embarrassing when it's such an apparently simple issue. I just hope the answer isn't 'You're using what kind of modem? You idiot!' which would be typical of the kind of technical person who knows how to do everything one way, and one way only, and acts as if any other way is the domain of imbecility. Of course, when you're talking about winmodems, it probably is.

One of my biggest pet hates is the nauseous feeling of insignificance that you get when it appears that the person you're talking to thinks that you're a bit thick, or at least not on their mental level. This is completely hypocritical, because of all the people I know, I'm probably one of the most likely to induce this feeling in others, albeit without usually meaning to. Note: contrary to popular opinion, I don't actually think I'm smarter than most people. But having heard my voice on tape I know that most of the time I sound like a self-important prat wanker. I hate this some of the time. I do think I'm better than most people at some common mental tasks (like thinking up words to express an idea, or adding numbers), but in a lot of other areas (like logically organising one's movements to get things done efficiently) I feel very slow.

Now, I've met a few people who were demonstrably light years ahead of me in intelligence. Mathematics geniuses who had mastered areas of knowledge most people couldn't properly comprehend in a lifetime of study before they were twenty - those kinds of people. But I'd never want to be in a situation where when I was having a conversation with a person like that, they acted as if I just couldn't cut it in their league. It's just not how I was brought up. As far as I'm concerned, no one should walk into a conversation with me with the intent of patronising my intellect - and that applies to chit-chat on just about any topic. It's a characteristic of people with a deep specialised knowledge to act as if their interlocutors are morons when discussing their field. This is a faux pas in my opinion. A good example is the IT systems administrator who acts as if his users are idiots because they can't configure Outlook, even when those users are university academics, lawyers, doctors, whatever - people with proven high-level ability in their own fields (although IT guys with such overdeveloped self regard are not particularly, but only somewhat commonplace). It's a misplaced, parochial pride that really irks me.

To be honest, I don't think people act this way to me very often. But I start seething a bit when I detect overtones like that, and it's not long before (in my own paranoiac way) I'm projecting all kinds of disrespect onto every word that's said to me. I sometimes despise my psychology, and then I wish I could have a psychectomy (as it were), and have the unpleasant aspects of my personality removed and replaced with functional elements. That is all for now.