So, yeah, went to see Neal Stephenson read last night at U of W and it was pretty all right. The new book sounds good and the man himself was interesting (although pretty beat; he really looked like he could use a few days worth of sleep).

The good part, thought, was the nerd-watching to be done at the reading. Yeah, I know, I was there, Pal A was there, The Young was there, so aren't we nerds?

Well, there's nerds, and then there's nerds.

I think I was able to differentiate 'tween programmer nerds and engineer nerds: programmer nerds wear Dockers or jeans (I guess so long as they're Levi's, everything's cool), and might, maybe, have a phone worn obviously (usually in a courier bag, though). Engineer nerds wear shorts (usually Old Navy-style cargo shorts which, yes, I own a pair of) and have copious gear clipped to their belts. The king of last night had a phone, pager, mini-maglight, PDA and a set of keys on a retracting reel, all lined up on his left side in black nylon carrying pouches.

The common ground, however, is the hair. Jesus, God. Big 'ol to-the-ass ponytails left and right, with the level of seniority based, apparently, on length and volume. Which is to say that the guys with seriously long hair were shouting orders to the ones with just a little bit of shag going on. It seemed to work out pretty well inside the circle, but once real people got involved (me & Pal A & The Young, f'rinstance), the lack of social grace began to show. Pal A was blocked by a gaggle of giggling nerdettes for a good minute, as the term "Pardon me," doesn't translate to "Get yer ass outta my way" in nerd culture.

Ah, well.

Off to the store for brown sugar so Buttons can make cookies. MMMMMMMM cookies...