Shopify, being startup made up mostly of younger people with a strong design bent, are a Mac-based shop. When you walk in the office, it’s Apple logos as far as the eye can see (I’m the lone holdout, with both a Mac and a Windows machine at my desk). Every culture lives in its own bubble, and Apple Hipster Culture is certainly no exception, so they can be forgiven for being unaware of goings-on in the Wild and Wooly Wintel World.
Somehow, one of our conversations took a turn from Harley poking loving fun at Edward’s new haircut (he kids because he cares) to me bringing up the legendary promo video for MSI’s X Series of really slim laptops showing a guy in a singlet catching them with his butt-cheeks. They refused to believe that such a thing existed, so I had to destroy their innocence forever with a quick jaunt down to YouTube:
I watched the horror in the young whippersnappers’ eyes as they watched.
Lightweights, I thought to myself. If you think that’s bad, you don’t even want to know what sort of kink the Arduino people are into.
“Truck Nutz” let you communicate to the world that you’re a bold and sassy guy in a way that words just can’t convey, but what if you don’t have a truck? For that Truck Nutz message without truck ownership, this iPhone case might fit the bill:
I think we’ve got an early contender for the title of “Weirdest Videogame of 2009”: Muscle March for the Nintendo Wii. As if the game weren’t weird enough, the trailer below ramps up the weirdness by presenting it in that oh-so-Japanese style with epilepsy-inducing jump-cuts and a hyper-enthusiastic Japanese TV announcer:
“Sorry to hear about the job,” he said. “Did you get my email offering to take you out for a beer sometime? I was wondering if it ended up in your spam folder.”
“Thanks, and yeah, I got your mail,” I replied. “Sorry for not getting back to you sooner. I’ve been busy with interviews, and I’ve accepted an offer. I’ll announce it on the blog on Friday.”
“Cool,” he said, and we both went back to work.
About ten minutes later, he IM’d me again.
“Holy crap. You’re not going to believe this. I just got laid off.”
“What?”
“I got called into ‘the meeting’, and they started talking about my severance.”
“Just after we were talking about me getting laid off?”
“Yeah. Weird, huh?”
“You know what? I will now buy you that beer.”
The timing of our conversation and his getting laid off were incredibly weird. It’s one of those things that makes you wonder if you’re not really alive, but just a character in a novel whose author has a mild sadistic streak.
In Fear and Loathing at RailsConf, Giles Bowkett examines what it means to “Keep RailsConf weird”. It’s worth a read, especially if you’re attending, planning or gate-crashing RubyFringe.
