Three Things Scott Hanselman Learned Me

Tuesday, July 03, 2007 -

Dare wrote an interesting post on Three Things he learned in college, then Scott Hanselman wrote up Three things he didn't learn in college, and that's spun people off to writing what they've learned (and not learned) etc in college, and they told two friends, and so on, and so on...

It's all so terribly exciting and it's filled up my reader all of this excitement has. But I have a plan!

I'm going to toss a resonance grenade into the blogosphere, hopefully shattering all discussion of collegiate learnativity! I'll whack this whole Meme right back to the perpetrator himself (think Tron), and cause a feedback loop!

System.BlogException: Meme Stack Overflow!

Nah. I really like Scott and in all seriousness, I think I've learned more from him than most of the CS classes I've taken. I got to hang with Scott a bit at MIX and entered into his 2 minute sphere of influence. He's intense I must say, and he's also one of the nicest guys I've ever met. And I agree with George

"... about 10 seconds into the conversation it suddenly occurred to me that Scott Hanselman was timing me. It was like the second I walked up to him, he visually assessed me and gave me a set conversation time, say about 2 minutes and 27 seconds. He was keeping this internal timer running in his head and after the timer reached 0, he'd wrap things up and move on. It makes sense, he's a busy guy, got a lot of geek fame and if he's going to circulate or get anything done, seems like a practical thing to do. So as we're talking and I'm watching this timer that I'm imagining running just behind his left eye, I begin to wonder if there are "checkpoint" bonuses. Like maybe if I hit on an interesting conversation topic or say something in a clever way, will Scott increase my allotted conversation time? And then on the flip side, if I drone on or bore him, is he decreasing my allotted time and preparing to move on sooner?"

I managed to make him sit through dinner, but I think it's because I paid :). Actually, come to think of it, Jon and Phil Haack were there too, and about 5 others... he was there for about 20 minutes total... hey! That's 3 minutes apiece! Damn! I wonder who he gave the bonuses to...

So on to it - My Top 3 Scott Hanselman Things That He Learned Me
I read Scott's blog regularly (he's the coffee that regulates my fiber-rich developer lifestyle) and really dig how he's taken so much time to write up things that really matter.

1. Diabetes sucks, and there's hope. His efforts fighting diabetes are awesome, and his Twittering of his disease was really eye-opening. Take a second and donate  - it's worth every penny to give what you can.
   
2. Scott personally made a difference in my life with this post. I can't tell you how much I admire a guy who puts it out there. He made me think a lot about my relationship with my dad (which wasn't the best at the time) and it was perfect timing too. I was supposed to go to LA to visit my mom and some friends last summer, but decided to visit my dad instead since I hadn't seen him in a while. We had a great visit, and 4 months later he past away. Scott's post was really instrumental in this.
   
3. I think he might have saved my marriage with this post :). My experience mirrored his, but my AT&T store was out of iPhones. I was about to buy one online but read his post and thought "you know, there's some good sense there" and truth be known,

I was pretty dang bored (and still am). I like Rick's point of view regarding the iPhone hype:

"...would you go out of your way to sit in a line for hours or even overnight? What type of personality goes in for that? Last time I checked lines are BAD! I walk out of a grocery store if the line is longer than 3 people deep, but then I have a real aversion to crowds <s>. But if you're so fond of being outdoors and in line donate your net worth to your favorite charity and live it for real"

I'd never wait in line for a phone - but the sentiment is still the same. Find some purpose, visit a loved one, call a friend, go have a Mirror Pond. None of this stuff matters really, especially reading pointless posts like this one :).

Now get back to work!