It’s Friday, August 23, but this probably won’t get posted until Monday. I’m in the second day of .NET developer training, bored as hell, disconnected from the Internet, and totally unable to blog, so I’ll write this now and post it later.

I’m working on an art project where I’m separating a Mucha piece into layers and then I’m going to print it on transparency to give it dimension. I’ve been working on it for around three months now, and I’ve finally finished cleaning up the scanned image and separating it into layers. Now I just have to print it out and figure out how to frame it. I think the hard part is done. (I finished that while sitting here in training. Took about 10 hours, for a total of around 100 hours of working on this thing. Not easy, but it looks really good now.)

I’m noticing there are several classes of people in this training. I’m not sure which class I fit in, but let’s see if you know what I’m talking about:

• The Managers: The Managers don’t know how to code and they’ll probably never actually do anything in the development environment. They’ll watch, ask stupid questions, and “assess,” but for all intents and purposes, they shouldn’t be here. Most likely, they’re just here to see if the developers that work under them are lying when they say something is technologically impossible.
• The Over-Participants: An Over-Participant wants so badly to be the teacher’s pet that they’ll ask questions that were just answered or just simply restate what was just said by prepending it with “So, let me get this straight…” For example, the teacher will say, “If you add two and two, you get four.” The Over-Participant will then raise his/her hand and, when called on, say, “So, let me get this straight - if you add two and two, you get four.”
• The Talkers: Talkers don’t care if you’re trying to listen. They don’t care how loud they are, and they sure as hell don’t realize their voices are very nasal and carry throughout the room. All they care about is the fact that they have something to say during the lecture. The Talkers always sit right behind me. I’m not sure why. Usually the Talkers are talking to the Over-Participants.
• The Dirty Programmers: I’m talking actually, physically dirty. These are the people who program so much that they forget about hygiene. Greasy hair, strong body odor, and clothing requiring a good laundering are all required. I think my favorite example of this from the training is this guy, probably 5’ 10”, 300 pounds, who never combed his hair and wore oil-stained “Big Dog” t-shirts and faded cargo pants both days. Yow. Usually poor social skills accompany the Dirty Programmer.
• The Non-Technical Programmers: These are the people who are hired to program commercial products but can’t figure out how to change their own screen resolution in Windows. You usually see the Non-Technical Programmer listening intently to the lecturer and nodding at intervals to indicate their apparent understanding of the concept being discussed.
• The Too-Technical Programmers: These people already know all about what’s being lectured on. They’re bored, but they do want to learn, so they ask questions that go way beyond the scope of the lecture, stuff the lecturer would have no way of knowing or even finding out.

I think I probably fit in the “Too-Technical Programmer” category, if anywhere, but who knows? I’d like to think I don’t fit anywhere, but there’s probably another category… The Attention-Deficit Attendee: This person can’t pay attention to the lecture regardless of what they do because there’s not enough going on. Rather than pay attention, they find anything else to do (like write posts for their blog) and listen through their periphery.

I am the Attention-Deficit Attendee.

I’ve played more Solitaire, Freecell, and Minesweeper than I care to think about. I’ve done all I can on my art project. I’ve even come up with a logo for a company event we’re having soon. Bored, bored, bored.