5 people left at the table. The opponents, from my left going around: A super tight player, the chip leader (about 1/2 the table's chips), someone who was so drunk that they were refused alcohol, and my arch nemesis; someone who I've gotten into trouble with in past games since they're next to impossible to push around with bluffs.
Super tight player is dealing. Blinds are 300-600, I have about 4000 in chips which is only slightly more than the tight player and my nemesis. Nemesis calls, I raise to 1200, blinds fold, nemesis calls. Flop comes... Ace - Ace - Ace. Check, check. 9 of clubs, putting a flush draw in play. Bet 600, call. River is 4 of diamonds. Nemesis bets 1500, I go all in; Call. Nemesis shows JJ, I show AJ. I do a little dance.
I do like such little bits of recreation. They do though unfortunately make me feel a little uncomfortable. I'm not sure if it's Minnesota or the relative age of my coworkers, but even the computer programmers around here are 'normal' socially well adjusted folks. They call each other nerds and actually mean it as a grave insult... Though they're still big gamers and read penny arcade and do the technophile bits of things around the house, they're not geeks. Sure, there's still your occasional bearded unix guru, or prius driving, sandal wearing, coffee injecting politico geek but by and large they're Ambercrombie and Fitch wearing ex-athletes who just happen to work with computers for a living (and have traditionally geek hobbies such as computer gaming or anime foraging when not socializing or playing sports).
I've read an article or two (after LotR came out) about how many geeky folks were actually having psych problems because their geeky sanctuaries were being invaded by non-geeky folks. It is perhaps silly to aim for the cliquishness that geeks generally revile in the popular folks, though such logic does not prevent the sadness and general feeling of seclusion it brings.
Oh, not too much mind you. I've dealt with far more determined assaults upon my psyche than not having a small pack of geeks to hang out with. Give me a woman, a home, freedom from financial worry and a high speed internet connection and I'd be content for all my days. I am merely curious as to what changed to cause the stereotype to fail. It might be that Minnesota didn't have enough geeks to hit critical mass for their own group, so they had to make do in others. More though I'm beginning to think that they are just normal people; young enough that Nintendo was prevalent and went into CS because of the tech Boom. Before then you often had to be the sort holed away with a computer somewhere to choose such things as a career.
In other news, I am a little skeptical in offering advice for the C# workshop. I'm someone who's really skeptical by nature, so I look at my entire lack of professional experience( <1yr ) and lack of any C# code anyone else has ever seen (nothing, nadda beyond random forum snippets) and out goes any confidence I used to have working with it as my primary hobby language for 2 years. Still, there looks to be a whole ton of students and not many tutors, so I'll try to help. That and I do love teaching people.
