Gray Soft / Conferences / I Got Booed at the LSRC!

8

SEP
2007

I Got Booed at the LSRC!

At the Lone Star Rubyconf, only a single speech coaxed a "Boo!" out crowd. Of course, it was mine.

On a slide where I was trying to counter the expert warnings against using glue code features in Ruby, I told people not to lose a lot of sleep about external dependencies. When I added the comment, "That's your SysAdmin problem anyway," one audience member growled a complaint.

The complainer later apologized to me for the outburst, but his point was valid that I didn't say what I intended to say.

What I was trying to get across is that any external dependency I add to an application is going to become a line item in my SysAdmin's build script. After that, neither of us will lose any more sleep over it. He does his job so well that it makes mine easy. So, what came off as an insult, was intended as a compliment. I apologize.

To rebalance the global karma pool, do me a favor and hug your SysAdmin today.

In: Conferences | Tags: System Administration | 4 Comments

Comments (4)

Mando Escamilla September 10th, 2007 Reply Link

Don't forget all the laughs you got for that line as well. You made an old SysAdmin chortle (and remember why he moved into programming) :).
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evan September 10th, 2007 Reply Link

good-natured self-deprecating humor aside, the boo was clearly a testament to how engaged the audience felt.

and dont forget all of the laughs you got throughout the rest of the talk (including then, as Mando pointed out). not to mention all of the good points.

thanks for a great talk
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seebq September 10th, 2007 Reply Link

I'm still waiting for my hug… ;-)
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2. James Edward Gray II September 10th, 2007 Reply Link
  
  You know I love you Charles. Come here big guy…
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