How Social Networking is Causing the Zombie Apcolypse

... or rather "How we are forgetting how to be human beings".

So the news is atwitter with how a couple of inappropriate jokes at a tech conference has lead to two firings among other nonsense. If you don't want to read it here's the breakdown:

1. 2 dudes are having fun at Pycon
2. 2 dudes forget that they aren't alone nor are they above reproach
3. 2 dudes make inappropriate jokes related to forking and dongles (that's what she said)
4. lady sitting in front of dudes get's offended
5. lady takes pic of inappropriate dudes and shares it to twitter
6. lady has a lot of twitter followers
7. 1 dude get's fired, lady receives death-threat and her company gets DDoS and also  she gets fired

So what's really going on here. This is a perfect example of how social media is crippling our communications skills and allowing us to forget that we are interpersonal beings. Take a look at your average social stream. What you see is a metric ton of complaints and threats and pointless drab that the sharers wouldn't ever share out loud with the people in the room with them. But thanks to the anonymity of the internet they've been empowered to speak up without saying anything or facing any consequences.

What's that got to do with this little blurb? The point I want to make is that social media has allowed this lady to forget that she's a human being. I have to wonder if it crossed her mind that she could actually turn around and 'talk' to these jerks? Let's face it, the guys should have been a little more aware of being in mixed company and kept the locker room talk where it belongs. 

The backlash over all of this isn't caused by some guy making a dirty joke, if that's the case I know a lot of people that couldn't keep their jobs and I number among them. The issue here is how somehow social media allows us as human beings to forget that there are consequences to everything we say, and empowers us to not even interact with each other in a civil manner.

Had Ms. Twitterholic taken the time to actually engage these guys in a conversation and express how their behavior was offensive then she would still have her job and a lot less headache than she's dealing with today.

So unplug, have a conversation, and for goodness sake remember that everything you say and do has consequences.

Les

Git stashing

Yesterday I had some changes that I was making in the mainline (call it master). I realized that I really wanted to check them into the branch for our Release Candidate rather than committing them to mainline and then cherry-picking the commit. So I found since I hadn't committed the changes I could simply execute:

: git stash

: git checkout release_candidate

: git stash apply 

The stash took my working directory back to the last commit but took all of my non-committed changes and put them in a safe place (the stash). The second command simple switched my working directory to the branch for the release candidate and then the stash apply command took the last stash and applied it to the working directory.

You can label stashes if you use them a lot in order to help keep them organized and you can even specify which stash you would want if it happens to be a previous stash.

until next time
Les

 

 

 

 

The world is full of jerks.

So the other day in Best Buy I'm waiting in line to pay for a gigabit ethernet switch because you know you can never have too many of those lying around. This guy in front of me is complaining into the air about the line and how they only ever have one cashier working at this place (they had 3) only he wasn't just complaining to himself he was talking on the phone with one of those little Bluetooth ear pieces.

My entire wait was listening to this guy ramble on for at least 3 different phone calls at the volume of "I-am-the-only-one-here-that-matters". Mostly I ignore him, although he had the lovely smell of cigarettes radiating from his person (seriously do people still smoke?).

Mostly I just ignore him and check out all the stuff along the line that the store would have me think I need last minute. It's possible that this guy just received this ear dongle for the holiday and doesn't yet realize how much of a douche it can make one appear to be upon use. Well that idea was short-lived as I followed him out of the store and see him get into his vehicle parked in a handicapped parking space. He was alone, he wasn't limping. he = douche.

I'm thankful for people who have respect for others.

until next time

Les