A friend gave this to me. It’s written by a girl somewhere, and is available online at http://www.stwing.upenn.edu/~jenf/writing/rant04.html. I like it. It’s well-written and very on point. As a “nice guy,” or Intellectual Whore, as some have called it, I identified very well with the topic. May my vindication come quickly.

Ode to the Nice Guys

This rant was written for the Wharton Undergraduate Journal

This is a tribute to the nice guys. The nice guys that finish last, that never become more than friends, that endure hours of whining and bitching about what assholes guys are, while disproving the very point. This is dedicated to those guys who always provide a shoulder to lean on but restrain themselves to tentative hugs, those guys who hold open doors and give reassuring pats on the back and sit patiently outside the changing room at department stores. This is in honor of the guys that obligingly reiterate how cute/beautiful/smart/funny/sexy their female friends are at the appropriate moment, because they know most girls need that litany of support. This is in honor of the guys with open minds, with laid-back attitudes, with honest concern. This is in honor of the guys who respect a girl’s every facet, from her privacy to her theology to her clothing style.

This is for the guys who escort their drunk, bewildered female friends back from parties and never take advantage once they’re at her door, for the guys who accompany girls to bars as buffers against the rest of the creepy male population, for the guys who know a girl is fishing for compliments but give them out anyway, for the guys who always play by the rules in a game where the rules favor cheaters, for the guys who are accredited as boyfriend material but somehow don’t end up being boyfriends, for all the nice guys who are overlooked, underestimated, and unappreciated, for all the nice guys who are manipulated, misled, and unjustly abandoned, this is for you.

This is for that time she left 40 urgent messages on your cell phone, and when you called her back, she spent three hours painstakingly dissecting two sentences her boyfriend said to her over dinner. And even though you thought her boyfriend was a chump and a jerk, you assured her that it was all ok and she shouldn’t worry about it. This is for that time she interrupted the best killing spree you’d ever orchestrated in GTA3 to rant about a rumor that romantically linked her and the guy she thinks is the most repulsive person in the world. And even though you thought it was immature and you had nothing against the guy, you paused the game for two hours and helped her concoct a counter-rumor to spread around the floor. This is also for that time she didn’t have a date, so after numerous vows that there was nothing “serious” between the two of you, she dragged you to a party where you knew nobody, the beer was awful, and she flirted shamelessly with you, justifying each fit of reckless teasing by announcing to everyone: “oh, but we’re just friends!” And even though you were invited purely as a symbolic warm body for her ego, you went anyways. Because you’re nice like that.

The nice guys don’t often get credit where credit is due. And perhaps more disturbing, the nice guys don’t seem to get laid as often as they should. And I wish I could logically explain this trend, but I can’t. From what I have observed on campus and what I have learned from talking to friends at other schools and in the workplace, the only conclusion I can form is that many girls are just illogical, manipulative bitches. Many of them claim they just want to date a nice guy, but when presented with such a specimen, they say irrational, confusing things such as “oh, he’s too nice to date” or “he would be a good boyfriend but he’s not for me” or “he already puts up with so much from me, I couldn’t possibly ask him out!” or the most frustrating of all: “no, it would ruin our friendship.” Yet, they continue to lament the lack of datable men in the world, and they expect their too-nice-to-date male friends to sympathize and apologize for the men that are jerks. Sorry, guys, girls like that are beyond my ability to fathom. I can’t figure out why the connection breaks down between what they say (I want a nice guy!) and what they do (I’m going to sleep with this complete ass now!). But one thing I can do, is say that the nice-guy-finishes-last phenomenon doesn’t last forever. There are definitely many girls who grow out of that train of thought and realize they should be dating the nice guys, not taking them for granted. The tricky part is finding those girls, and even trickier, finding the ones that are single.

So, until those girls are found, I propose a toast to all the nice guys. You know who you are, and I know you’re sick of hearing yourself described as ubiquitously nice. But the truth of the matter is, the world needs your patience in the department store, your holding open of doors, your party escorting services, your propensity to be a sucker for a pretty smile. For all the crazy, inane, absurd things you tolerate, for all the situations where you are the faceless, nameless hero, my accolades, my acknowledgement, and my gratitude go out to you. You do have credibility in this society, and your well deserved vindication is coming.

Fu-zu Jen, SEAS/WH, 2003

At work, we have a mindless task that has to be done manually every hour. Basically, we have to log into this website and click around a bit to make sure that the site is still up and running. It’s pretty ridiculous, I know, but it has to be done nonetheless. No one in the office ever remembers to do it, so I decided it might be nice to have an alarm of sorts. So I remembered some of my old Micrososft Agent tinkering back in High School, and looked around for some examples of using the Windows speech API in C#. It didn’t take me long to figure it out, and the code for my simple text-to-speech program is deceptively simple. Instead of providing the code as a download, I’m just posting it here since it is so short.

using System;
using SpeechLib;
using System.Threading;

namespace Speak
{
    class Speak
    {
        ///
        /// The main entry point for the application.
        ///  [STAThread]
        static void Main(string[] args)
        {
            SpeechVoiceSpeakFlags flags = SpeechVoiceSpeakFlags.SVSFlagsAsync;
            SpVoice v = new SpVoice();
            if( args.Length > 0 )
            {
                v.Speak(args[0], flags);
            }
            else
            {
                v.Speak("Please specify what you would like me to say.", flags );
            }
            v.WaitUntilDone(Timeout.Infinite);
        }
    }
}

Basically all you need is the code above and the Interop.SpeechLib.dll file, which provides access to the speech utilities. For completeness (and since I had some trouble finding the DLL), I put a copy of the file up on here. This program basically just echoes back whatever string you pass in at the command line, so to get the scheduling working, I just used Windows Task Scheduler. I scheduled a task to run every hour ever day between 8am and 10pm (check the advanced settings of the Task Scheduler), then pointed the task to the compiled program, passing it the string I want it to say as the argument. Simple. And it works. I still smile every time one of the office computers says, “It is time to check Blackboard.”

I came across a link to this story on Slashdot. I always enjoy reading Paul Graham, because he writes quite simply, but obviously has the technical knowledge and experience to write on the topics he does. This particular article was a brief analysis of trends in the market during the DotCom Bubble and talks a little bit about the future based on some of the market trends and techniques from that time period. A good read, and it gives me hope that maybe I can still get rich. After all:

I have no illusions about why nerd culture is becoming more accepted. It’s not because people are realizing that substance is more important than marketing. It’s because the nerds are getting rich. But that is not going to change.

Now, I don’t think I’m overly hung-up on “getting rich,” but it sure would be nice not to have to worry about how much I’m paying for food and whether or not I can afford rent this month. Opposed to that, rich sounds pretty nice. If not rich, at least “comfortable.” I also liked the quote about dressing informally:

Dressing up is not so much bad in itself. The problem is the receptor it binds to: dressing up is inevitably a substitute for good ideas. It is no coincidence that technically inept business types are known as “suits.” Nerds don’t just happen to dress informally. They do it too consistently. Consciously or not, they dress informally as a prophylactic measure against stupidity.

So true, so true! While I fully understand the importance of appearance, people seem to miss the seemingly obvious fact that even underdressed people can be very talented and have good ideas. I have found in my IPRO that while people need direction and leadership, they also need freedom and informality. That way they can get their work done on their own terms. Frankly, as a leader, it shouldn’t matter how the work gets done (within reason, of course), as long as it gets done. Obviously there are limits to this (for example, I require that students follow a standard comment format when writing their code), but the idea is that most smart people work better when they can work on their own terms. I have had managers argue with me about this, and I have decided that dumb people exist, and that if you require someone else to tell you how to get your work done, you must also be dumb. It is against my policy to work with dumb people. FInally, I really like what Graham says about young people:

A 26 year old may not be very good at managing people or dealing with the SEC. Those require experience. But those are also commodities, which can be handed off to some lieutenant. The most important quality in a CEO is his vision for the company’s future. What will they build next? And in that department, there are 26 year olds who can compete with anyone.

You better believe it. While I do my best to defer to my elders, I don’t think the fact that they are 20 years older than I is a default reason for them to make better decisions than I do. And frankly, I do know a lot more about some topics than they do. Consustently, however, I get little or no respect from people just because I am young. On the other hand, I am lucky in that I have several older people who I deeply respect that also seem to respect me and my abilities (Dr. Sun, my friend Patrick). For the rest of you who think I’m too young to be any good at anything, how about reading a little bit of the Bible:

Don’t let anyone look down on you because you are young, but set an example for the believers in speech, in life, in love, in faith and in purity.

1 Timothy 4:12

Take that!

I have quite a few Firefox extensions that I find extremely useful, so I thought I’d share them.

• Firesomething: http://www.cosmicat.com/extensions
• Adblock: http://adblock.mozdev.org/
• Tabbrowser: http://white.sakura.ne.jp/~piro/xul/_tabextensions.html.en
• GMail Notifier: http://www.nexgenmedia.net/extensions/
• Allow Right-Click: http://extensions.roachfiend.com/index.php
• User Agent Switcher: http://www.chrispederick.com/work/firefox/useragentswitcher/
• WeatherFox: http://weatherfox.mozdev.org/
• Dictionary Search: http://dictionarysearch.mozdev.org/
• Target Alert: http://www.bolinfest.com/targetalert/
• Mozilla Calendar: http://www.mozilla.org/projects/calendar/
• Foxy Tunes: http://www.iosart.com/foxytunes/firefox/
• Cute Menus: http://cute.mozdev.org/
• Disable Targets for Downloads: http://www.cusser.net/
• Download Manager Tweak: http://dmextension.mozdev.org/

Update 09/22/2004

OK, so the new version of Firefox (1.0PR) just isn’t cooperating with TabBrowser Extensions and pop-ups. I want my pop-ups to appear in new tabs, but I don’t want all of them blocked - especially in GMail. Despite adding the GMail domain to the Exceptions list in the Firefox pop-up blocker, things still won’t work. I think the problem is with TabBrowser Extensions, since disabling it made everything work again. Anyway, in the meantime, I have tried to find a few other smaller extensions that will emulate the TabBrowser Extensions functionality to get around this. Here’s what I’m using right now.

• Tabbrowser Preferences: http://www.pryan.org/mozilla/site/TheOneKEA/tabprefs/
• TabX: http://extensionroom.mozdev.org/more-info/tabx
• Tab Duplicator: http://www.twannos-extensions.tk/

One minor aesthetic problem is with TabX. It just puts simple X’s for close buttons, unlike the nice looking red buttons that TBE puts there. Oh well, beggars can’t be choosers, right? I just hope that TBE doesn’t cause these problems when a new version is released.

Lots to talk about in this rant. I first heard of the Illinois Governor’s plan to increase tolls in Illinois one day when I was driving to work. And this isn’t a small increase, either – the tolls are doubling! Unless you get an IPASS, of course. The solution, obviously, is to get an IPASS. Unfortunately, that in and of itself presents a bit of a problem. You see, IPASS tracks you. That’s my biggest beef with it. I understand the argument that it “makes things faster” and reduces congestion, but it also records where I go. Check the FAQ at their website. One part reads:

I-PASS users can log onto www.getipass.com or link to the online maintenance function through the general Illinois Tollway Web site at www.illinoistollway.com to update credit card information, add a new vehicle to the account, or even check on recent I-PASS transactions.

This bugs me. I have no intention of ever getting arrested or anything, but if for some reason I was, I’m fairly certain my IPASS records could be pulled and used against me. This makes me angry. And despite the fact that the Tollway Authority says they don’t track users speeds to issue tickets, I don’t trust them. Didn’t RealNetworks claim their player wasn’t spyware at one point? Anyway, you won’t see me buying an IPASS.

The day after I learned about this I decided to finally go and get my Chicago Card, which can be used as a fare card on CTA busses and trains. Since I’m a part-time student now, I don’t get a U-PASS, and I ride the train enough to warrant getting one. But that made me realize the similarities between the Toll situation and the Chicago Card. You no longer get a 10% bonus in funds when you add 10 or more dollars to your regular CTA fare card – you only get the bonus when you have a Chicago Card. But the Chicago Card is tied to your name, so tracking is possible. With the regular fare card, they can track the use of the card, but they can’t tie it to any one person. That’s the way I like it. I submitted a question to the CTA people asking about the privacy and information collection policies of the Chicago Card, and here’s the response I got:

Dear Mr. Butler:

Thank you for your inquiry. The CTA does not track the use of these cards by any individual unless requested by that individual. The Chicago Card Plus does provide its users with an online record of their usage, but each customer has a password of his or her own selection to access the information. The regular Chicago Card does not offer this online service.

If a law enforcement agency wishes to review our records, it can do so with the official, lawful use of a warrant, court order, etc.

Thank you for your interest.

Sincerely,

Terry Levin
CTA Customer Service

Unfortunately, this doesn’t really answer my question. So no tracking is done “unless requested?” But what if law enforcement has a warrant to pull their records? Is Mr. Levin saying the information doesn’t exist (i.e. users aren’t tracked), or that it exists and isn’t used for any other purpose other than for posterity’s sake? I don’t know. But it looks like no Chicago Card, Plus or not, for me.

Finally, I came across this story on Slashdot. Apparently the city is considering rolling out a whole bunch of cameras in the city and tying them into the 911 call center. All good, in theory, right? It’ll help deter crime, right? I don’t think so. Why not just put up more street lights? A bright light is the biggest deterrant to random crime. But that would be too simple, I guess. And lights can’t track you.

Do I sound paranoid? I am. I don’t trust the government. They’ve given me no reason to. And government is universally corrupt, be it a national government, a local government, or even a school administration. So it looks like I’ll be paying a lot more than the rest of you for the same services. Yes, it’s my choice, but the government shouldn’t be allowed to charge me for my freedom.

For what it’s worth.