Scott Hanselman

Why do I code?  Because I can't cook, or change my own oil, or mow lawns.  Because I lettered in drama in High School but I never got discovered walking an L.A. mall.  Because I never made any money doing standup.  Because, God help me, if I wasn't coding the only think I'd be good at would be selling cars.  (I'm REALLY good at selling cars.  Seriously.)

For real, I code because I like solving problems that are decidedly solvable.  I mean, I hear the problem, I think for a moment, I figure it's "possible" and then I try to figure how to solve it in a way that feels good.  Because I dig physics.  Because the end of the Carl Sagan's "Contact" was UNSPEAKABLY cool.  I code because of that feeling I've gotten 5 or 6 times when I just NAILED a problem and (while alone) raised my arms high in victory the same way that rapid sports fans do.  Except I look at them with a worried disdain when they do it, but secretly I wish I felt like that more often.

I code because coding, at its best, is art and literature and math and physics all at the same time.

About Scott

Scott Hanselman is a former professor, former Chief Architect in finance, now speaker, consultant, father, diabetic, and Microsoft employee. He is a failed stand-up comic, a cornrower, and a book author.

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I'm sitting on a plane from St. Louis to Orlando on the way to VSLive/ASPLive.  I was thinking about who I'm going to see at the conference.  I figure that my buddy Chris Kinsman will be there and possibly acquaintances of mine such as Keith Pleas.  Why just acquaintance?  I've had the pleasure to email Keith four or five times and I've met him four or five times, but when I see him I still lead with, "Keith! Scott Hanselman, how are you doing?" just in case Keith doesn't remember me, and this way he doesn't have to waste CPU cycles looking my face up.  I do the same thing with other acquaintances and "colleagues" like Chris Sells and Don Box and [Insert name here], et. al..  They are colleagues as I see them a few (sometimes several times) a year on campus or at conferences.  I say hi, but don't expect them to know my wife's name, since when you're holding all the WS-*.* specs in your head, sometimes you can't remember lots of trivial social details. 

So I got to thinking about the difference between "friend" and "colleague/acquaintance."  I have some remote friends, Patrick Hynds for example, who I chat with a few times a week and who could TOTALLY crash at our place on a moments notice.  We've shared (soft) drinks many times and have stories going back years.   But, I've only seen Patrick at conferences and on campus also.  Hell, I started to realize that I see Don Box more than I see my uncles (I see them on the 4th of July and at Christmas) and Don remembers my name better than my cousins! 

Therefore, I conclude that either:

A. I'm not nearly close enough to my family and need to spend more time with them instead of at conferences

or

2. Patrick, Keith, Don, Clemens, Chris, Chris, Sam and MANY others that I see several times a year are my REAL family and will not be surprised when I show up on their door wondering if I can sleep on their couch.

 Anyone else have this problem, or just me?

About Scott

Scott Hanselman is a former professor, former Chief Architect in finance, now speaker, consultant, father, diabetic, and Microsoft employee. He is a failed stand-up comic, a cornrower, and a book author.

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It came in the mail today, and it's about time.  What's next?

About Scott

Scott Hanselman is a former professor, former Chief Architect in finance, now speaker, consultant, father, diabetic, and Microsoft employee. He is a failed stand-up comic, a cornrower, and a book author.

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So, two people commented (one email, one blog comment) with some confusion over the 11/9.  Here's the explanation:

It was an internationalization joke (and a good one I thought) When we say 9/11 (formatted mmddyy) most people in the STATES assume we mean September 11.  In the last two years the word 'nineeleven' means more than just a date.  But it's use and newly attached deep meaning underscores how alone we are as a nation (not just politically) in things like date formatting and the measuring systems.   The rest of the planet uses ddmmyy, so they would say "11/9". 

The joke is, when we say "oh, ya, 9/11 was a horrible day," a non-american might say, "November 9th? What happened?"  Of course, nothing happened on 11/9, we just assume that 9/11 or 4/3 or 8/12 means the same thing to us as it does to them...

P.S. There was a local news report a while back that the local news had pulled off the AP NewsWire.  Some fellow came in on a Tourist Visa and transferred to a Student Visa.  At some point, he was arrested for some thing or the other and the local news lady, thinking this fellow had gotten away with some clever chicanery commented slyly that his identity was called into question when the news station "discovered" that his drivers license said he was born on 4/3 but his birth certificate listed his DOB as 3/4.  Oh, those wacky terrorists trying to pull one over on us.  If I had a nickel for every time an international friend reversed a date on a form...

About Scott

Scott Hanselman is a former professor, former Chief Architect in finance, now speaker, consultant, father, diabetic, and Microsoft employee. He is a failed stand-up comic, a cornrower, and a book author.

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Tomorrow, I'm leaving for Orlando to speak at ASPLive on Internationalization.  I'll be flying exactly two years (to the minute) from September 11.  Needless to say, the wife's justifiably not happy about it and I have mixed feelings. 

My boss says that even flying on September 11th is safer than driving any day.  I'm not sure about that, but I'll definitely be expecting some extra security.  It's always a challenge to get my Insulin Pump through.

If you're in Orlando at VSLive, please do stop by my Friday afternoon session called "It's the WORLDWIDE Web."  I'll be showing some cool stuff in ASP.NET like a banking site in English, Chinese, Malay, Spanish and Arabic.  We'll talk all about System.Globalization and dig into the issues around Dates, Currency, Culture and Right to Left languages.  It's a very interesting topic.  I may try to greet the crowd in at least 10 languages. :)

Remember, when we talk about what happened on 9/11, most people in the world wonder what happened on November 9th...

About Scott

Scott Hanselman is a former professor, former Chief Architect in finance, now speaker, consultant, father, diabetic, and Microsoft employee. He is a failed stand-up comic, a cornrower, and a book author.

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