…and it’s a small world after all.
July 30th, 2008 by heathenxSo after work today I visited my local Wal-Mart for an eye exam. It was time for some new glasses and a pair of contacts. After arriving and filling out some paper work an older fella came out and introduced himself. Apparently this was my eye doctor. He wasn’t my regular eye doctor that I had come to know for the last three or four years. Apparently, he was on vacation so this fine gentlemen was filling in.
Immediately, I noticed that he had an OLPC (One Laptop Per Child) sitting in the examination room. I was interested in it because I had only ever seen them in pictures on the Internet. So I said, “Hey, an OLPC.” I think he was surprised that I even knew what they were. I asked him how he liked it and he filled me in on all the good and the bad and why he was using one.
Anyway, as the conversation continued, the new doctor asked me some personal questions regarding what I did for a living. I told him that I was a Design Engineer mainly and the IT administrator for a very small company. He asked if I ever did any programming in my line of work and I told him that I did but it was mostly just scripting since I wasn’t much of a “real” programmer. He found interest in that and asked what programming languages that I used. A little embarrassed about the first one I told him that I scripted in visual basic (VBS) and also used a little python (thanks to Mr. Richard Querin). I mentioned that python scripting is what I was really interested in learning more of because it seemed like the way of the future and allowed for me to use the code on Windows and Linux with very little changing. I also explained that I wrote bash scripts to automate some routines on my server as well.
Well, it turned out that this doctor is a software developer on the side who uses python for a majority of what he does. In addition, he uses Ubuntu wherever he can, especially at home. And the kicker is that he was well aware of many open source programs like Blender, Inkscape, and OpenOffice. If that wasn’t enough, I found out that his kids (who are probably around my age of 36, I’m guessing) are software developers too. They own a company in Ft. Wayne, Indiana, which is about an hour from me. His son is a big Blender user of all things.
We chatted for about 45 minutes about programming, Linux, software patents, open-source software, and education. Probably could have kept on talking but there were other patients that he had to attend to. He was very interested in the subject of teaching young children programming, namely python. This is why he had an OLPC. Apparently, him and his children were writing software for it. I thought that was absolutely brilliant.
So that’s my story. Here I am in Small Town, Indiana at my local Wal-Mart and I run into a person like this. He was very interesting to talk to and listen to. Yes indeed, it’s a small world after all. 
July 31st, 2008 at 9:05 am
Man. I’d flip if I met someone who even knew what Linux was, nevermind Inkscape, Blender or an OLPC. At least you’ll be surrounded with lots of like-minded people when you head over to Columbus.
But why did you have to ruin everything with a VisualBasic reference?
Did he give you the horn-rimmed rhinestone goggles you were after?
July 31st, 2008 at 10:13 am
Hey, I said I was embarrassed about the Visual Basic thing. 2 Hail Mary’s and 3 Our Father’s got me back on track.
Horn-rimmed rhinestone goggles? Absolutely not. I picked something far more practical and unflashy. I like to keep a low profile and don’t like to draw attention to myself.
August 2nd, 2008 at 7:59 pm
Wow. I live in small city in Poland.
Many people are aware of Linux, but find someone that use it as primary OS is alsmos impossible. Even more rare are programmers, especially young. In highschool they teach Pascal and some really simple algoritms. It is real miracle if somebody knows what Python or Ruby is.
I’m programmer (Ruby, Python and a bit of C/C++) and I never have met someone whit whom I can freely speek about geek stuff.
Sorry for my english.
August 5th, 2008 at 7:21 am
@Ivyl – I live in a small town in southern Ontario, Canada, and I can tell you that it feels like about 0.0001% of the population has even heard of Linux, nevermind using a primary/secondary OS.
And don’t apologize for your English. With his fat fingers and all his typing mistakes, your comment is more readable than most of the ones Heathenx posts.
August 5th, 2008 at 7:34 am
Haha! I’m hanging my head in shame because it’s the truth.
August 19th, 2008 at 5:07 pm
“”" it’s a small world after all.”"”
Greeting from France. I was searching for some screencasts to learn Inkscape and I’ve just landed on Paradise land
Thanks a lot for the quality and quantity of these screencasts, they are awesome! (I find you’re voice excellent too).
PS: I think Python is a great choice. What impress me the most is the community (lots of talented and creative folks) and not self centric (bindings or implementations for nearly everything).
francois