The programmer’s wife
My wife is an optometrist. She knows as much as you’d expect an optometrist wife of a programmer to know, and then a fair bit more. She uses a mac. She can power cycle a router with the best of them. She recently got a printer working on an internet-less machine running windows 95. That’s not half bad.
Some choice quotes
On World of Warcraft: “This must be the worst game of all time. You spend twenty minutes dressing your wizard and then when you finally kill something you spend ten more minutes trying on all their clothes.”
On her favorite blog post of mine: “It’s the one about the jpeg and png. It has cartoons.”
On SQL queries: “Can you please explain to me the thing with the eskimo queers?”
Today at Best Buy
her: Hey, didn’t you say you wanted a KGB cable?
me: Uhmmm… kgb.. what could that possibly mean
her: So you can switch between…
me: Ohhh! A KVM switch. And yes, I did want one.
Ha! She remembered. Thank god one of us did.
One time we were out
One point not too long ago we were at a bar, and my wife was meeting some friend of one of her friends. This guy didn’t know who either of us was nor what we did. I wasn’t really part of the conversation but just overheard it, it was classic:
guy: Yea, I’m software engineer.
her: Oh, wow, I do all programming in linux
guy (really suspicious): Oh really? What languages do you use?
her: C++ and python, mostly.
guy (astonished): Wait.. are you serious? In Linux? Really?
her: Yea, it’s way faster. I can’t handle windows… too much mouse….
her: .. and also I love the penguin
His eyes were all lit up. She was basically bullshitting him. She’s done this more than once. She’s learned a ton about programming (without actually learning it) and picked up much of the lingo. When someone trips her up, she asks a bunch of questions so she doesn’t get fooled the next time. For whatever reason, they are always extremely skeptical until she hits them with the penguin line. That seems to seal the deal.
August 31st, 2009 at 10:45 am
huh huh
Very interesting post …
August 31st, 2009 at 12:59 pm
Great story about your wife BS’ing that guy
.
I’m also a software engineer, but we haven’t been married long enough for my wife to have picked up much. I think one of the things that makes us seem so good with technology is that we know how to troubleshoot. If my wife, for instance, can’t get the TV working with the cable, she will try the buttons on the TV, the remote, and then come to me for help. I’m down there about ten seconds, and of course the first thing I try is what she did, and when that doesn’t work I unplug and replug the TV. Works fine.
So often it really is a hardware problem!
September 1st, 2009 at 1:20 am
I wish my ex-wife could have pulled that kind of BS off, but whenever I tried to explain anything technical to her, her eyes would cross and the she’d get impatient, flustered, and frustrated. She had a tendency to switch between pride at my computer skills and jealousy when I spent to much time with it.
September 1st, 2009 at 2:26 am
My wife’s the same, she’ll say daft things regarding computers, but also pull of reams of BS (whilst I was doing my Phd she managed to have an intelligent conversation about eigenvectors).
My favourite daft statement was when we moved house she offered to delete all her old emails from the computer so that it weighed less!
September 1st, 2009 at 3:23 am
The screen on my Macbook Pro was trying to auto-adjust its brightness in a semi-dark room. Because as the screen darkened, the light sensors sensed darkness, it increased the screen brightness.. and so forth. So the screen was basically glowing bright and dark on an interval.
She asks, “Why is your computer breathing???”
Another classic:
Her: Honey, I can’t print anything.
Me: Did you install the printer?
Her: Does that mean I need to plug it in?
Me: Well.. if you’ve installed it, yes, it should be plugged in already.
If that wasn’t bad enough, later I realized that she didn’t even have the printer power cord plugged in. I was on the phone with her, obviously.
September 1st, 2009 at 4:28 am
ha ha very very interesting….
September 1st, 2009 at 8:19 am
that guy must have committed a suicide
BTW your captcha is like filling in an entire blog post
September 1st, 2009 at 8:47 am
The question is your wife okay with your programming habit? Ive always had a problem with the ladies because I coded a bit too much…
September 1st, 2009 at 10:17 am
Would love to have seen more!
September 1st, 2009 at 10:26 am
She sounds like she’d make a good programmer, actually, given that she’s already got the pissing contest protocol down.
If you guys were in San Francisco I’d invite you to take one of the free Ruby workshops I’ve been doing.
September 1st, 2009 at 10:37 am
For the record, this shoe goes on both feet. You should see me around the optometrists. Here’s a pro-tip: if you hear the words ‘viral conjunctivitis’, that means eye herpes (note: that’s not entirely true).
@scott, yea, she’s fine with it
@sarah, that sounds like a really cool program.
September 1st, 2009 at 3:03 pm
love recaptcha
September 2nd, 2009 at 4:17 am
So I should be proud of my wife, She is a programmer too!
September 2nd, 2009 at 8:11 am
hilarious! Does your wife have any sisters?
September 2nd, 2009 at 10:59 am
This is awesome ..
September 3rd, 2009 at 12:43 pm
LOL, eskimo queers. I have kind of the same situation with my husband, who is a teacher and former chef. Very intelligent, but he listens to me vent about my day at work, and says he hears something like “blah blah blah Linux blah blah blah Database blah blah blah Network…” but he at least pretends to listen, and nods from time to time and says “uh-huh” just to show he is paying attention. They don’t have to understand everything, just listen to show they care.
@Sarah why must it always be a pissing contest?
September 3rd, 2009 at 4:23 pm
You are so lucky. Seriously, I envy you. I can barely get my fiancee to read my blog…
September 4th, 2009 at 5:56 pm
I am thoroughly convinced that some of you guys will be cozying up to keyboard a little more after reading these comments
September 20th, 2009 at 11:30 pm
I’m thinking about dating an optometrist. Did you have to compromise anything in the process of getting to know this person? What obstacles did you have to overcome or were you a match right off the bat?
June 27th, 2010 at 11:08 pm
LOL.
I want a woman like this.
Louis Brandy, you are very lucky with your wife.
Nice post,
Javier