[PLUG-TALK] Shooting in Portland

Keith Lofstrom keithl at kl-ic.com
Mon Jan 26 20:40:39 UTC 2009


24yo Erik Salvador Alaya, the young man who allegedly killed two
people and wounded seven in downtown Portland Saturday night,
could have easily been one of us.  He is a computer and game
geek, who has been underemployed for a while.  I'm sure violent
computer games (and computers) will be trotted out to "explain"
his alleged rampage.  And given people's tendency to single out
differences, much of the "computer" blame will hop and skip
lightly over familiar Windows and stick to Linux.  Heck, the guy
may even have an Ubuntu Live CD somewhere, and Tuxracer may be
the game that media pundits will decide drove him over the edge.

Well, fellow computer nerds, be ready for a little marginalization,
until the news moves on ("Adams accepts new post as Governor of
Illinois!  News at 11!").  That is just the way people are.

And if any of you react to such marginalization with thoughts
of revenge against the Cool Kids, please take a deep breath, and 
find some distraction along a different path than violent video
games.  I suggest tearing stuff apart at Free Geek, or killing
bugs in open source code.  Not that violent games aren't fun,
but hacking code looks better on a resume. 

Show up for meetings, and blow off some steam (rather than
bullets) at afters.  I'm a nerd too, not a wise psychological
counselor, so I probably can't do much to resolve your inner
conflicts,  but at least we can trade snarky jokes about the
cool but clueless.

BTW, Alaya's roommate was Mike Delisle, a name that sounds
familiar.  If anybody is friends with that guy, invite him to
the meetings - I imagine he needs to talk to somebody besides
cops and reporters right now.

Keith

-- 
Keith Lofstrom          keithl at keithl.com         Voice (503)-520-1993
KLIC --- Keith Lofstrom Integrated Circuits --- "Your Ideas in Silicon"
Design Contracting in Bipolar and CMOS - Analog, Digital, and Scan ICs



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