Geek cognition

Back when Old Roommate and I attended the same university (where we met!), we had a mutual friend named Marcus Dodralius who was a Comp. Sci. major.

One day M. Dodralius was telling me about some guy. ''I don't remember his first name,'' said Dodralius, ''But it's five characters long.''

''Whaaat?'' I asked him? He didn't understand what I was reacting to. ''You said 'five characters','' I said. ''Most people would've said 'five letters'.'' He agreed that this was very ''Comp. Sci. major'' of him.

And now, some eighteen years, a score of databases, and a few hundred manipulations of string variables later, I find myself talking exactly the same way to The Lady. And neither of us thinking anything of it.


Slow contagion.


--GG