Errata for "The Nudist on the Late Shift"

For the record: I am not the nudist. I didn't get to see the article before it went to print. I am not complaining about anything, just clarifying. Po's book does an excellent job of capturing the flavor of what went on.

It's very weird to read about oneself if you're not accustomed to it. It's also interesting to get a bunch of additional facets of a story after having had basically only one perspective.

As for the chapter entitled "The Programmers":

• I already apologized to Arie. Profusely. We get along fine now.
• It's "SugarloaF" mountain, not "SugarloadD", and it's the San Carlos airport, not the San Mateo airport. (Yes, these are nits.)
• I realize that John and Steve couldn't rely on this fact, but I have enough integrity that I never would have considered doing an end-around and going straight to Snap.
• I really didn't have much to do with Freezing Man, though I did assist a little bit (truck-painting, etc.) -- it was mainly the work of Mike Wertheim and his circle, including my brother Rus, and Mike's fiancee (now wife) Karin.
• My cousin Bill is the owner of the huntin' grounds, not a friend of the owner.
• I think the notion of "egoless programming" is not so much defined as "deferring to the senior geek", it's deferring to the best way to do things. That may or may not involve doing everything the senior geek decrees. I am senior to Jason, but if he figures out a better solution, I'll never assert, "Well, we're still doing to do it my way anyway."
• "shoot" my mouth off, not "shout" my mouth off, which, boy, it sure reads like I pull that a lot. Truly, I don't consider myself an arrogant jerk; I wish I hadn't said a lot of those things, but when you're racing to meet some insane deadline, well, things can get a little tense.
• "Piece of cheese" is a Jasonism, picked up from a college buddy from some Eastern-European country. Jason tells the story that his friend was all worked up about his citizenship test, spent days prepping, immersing himself in Americana and the English language. When he came home from the test, grinning, Jason asked him how it went. "Piece of cheese," was the reply.
• This isn't book-errata but book-review-errata: a couple of reviews have made references to "nerds who cry over Babylon 5 episodes because the characters have deeper relationships than their jobs have allowed them to have." Uh, that would be in reference to me, I presume ... but if you read what Po wrote, I said that I was sad because this one episode, the finale, brought up feelings of loss. I've had a number of losses. All my grandparents, most of my great aunts and uncles, my godmother, friends and co-workers. And some painful break-ups. This doesn't have anything to do with my job. It doesn't have anything to do with whether I've had profound relationships. It was simply an evocotive episode of reasonably well-written TV that struck a chord and made me think.
• I hope TheGlobe.com guys don't freak after they read the chapter. :-) Last I heard they were pretty happy.