Follow-Up

Shane is not a huge reader of blogs. At least mine. Which makes me feel better about stating 'facts' when I write. Typically if the main point of a text I send him is not in the first paragraph, he won't get to it. If I need five items from the grocery store, I need to communicate it in the first three words. In emails, he will often skim for the main points. So I usually distill as much as possible. I know he's busy doing whatever he does and I respect whatever that is.

So I was surprised the other night as we got into bed and he  looks at me and asks in amazement,

"You really don't know what I do?"

"Kind of. Maybe. I mean you've had lots of different roles. I wouldn't know how to explain it someone else. Can you tell me in one sentence I can remember?"

"Sure" he says.

"In words I can understand" I add.

"Oh. Hmmm. Lets see." He thinks a bit.


"Ok. This is really over simplified. You can just say I build systems that run Microsoft."

"Right now you could say I work on Cosmos."

Thrilled with the chance to show off that I have gleaned a tiny bit of knowledge over the years I look at him and say,

"But isn't that just a tool?" It seems to me all the languages, you know, like C# and SQL (pronounced sequel)  and methodologies like SAP and Hadoop- I might be totally off, but I do know Hadoop was named for a kids toy elephant. I can understand things like that.

So tool seemed like a safe bet. It worked.

"Yeah, you could say that. Do you know what it does?"

Oh shoot. Why does he always ask for verification. Now he'll find out that I am totally faking it, kind of. Can't I just intuitively know Cosmos isn't a product or project therefore it has to be a tool? Or it is one of those others but can still be classified as a tool. Why can't he just be impressed and we can go to sleep?

"Its a tool for organizing data" I state, feeling the odds are pretty good whatever it is or does could be described that way.

He seemed a little surprised.

"Yeah, actually." He admitted. It was dark but I'm pretty sure his face would have shown how impressed he was with my knowledge of geek speak. Or he was stifling his laughter at my poor attempts to converse knowledgeably on things I was clueless about and just pulling my leg. If so, please no one tell me. Ignorance is bliss and then I might feel tempted to ask him to really explain it to me.

But just to show off some other words, did you know that a yodabyte is bigger than a petabyte?  And if you do something to either of those you can turn them into yobabytes and pebabytes? I think one of those has wings or can't live within 500 yards of a school. I can't remember which.

Also to my credit, I know I couldn't be fooled like this:

 

 

I know you would need a much bigger box.