What’s in a Name?

I’ve discovered a fool-proof way to get lots of people to say strange things to you. Step one: grow a rather significant beard. Step two: shave it.

Here’s a sample of the things people have been saying to me:

• Said my housemate John, “what’s this 15 year-old doing here?”
• According to Tinh, my officemate, I looked smarter with the beard.
• My neighbor, whom I have met at most once, yelled from his garage at me, “you look better without the beard!”
• Karen, my other officemate, called me “cute”, of all things. I think she’s biased, though, since I look like her dad.
• Dale, the department secretary, also a Minnesota native, told me I no longer looked like I’d been out hunting in the backwoods. I hope that doesn’t mean she’ll start pestering me for a picture again.

While I’m blogging about things that happened two or three weeks ago, I might as well fill in the gaps. During spring break, I caught a train to Los Angeles to meet Max and some of the other NationStates admins. I’ve been working on the site for about a year and a half now, so it seemed like a good idea to catch him while he’s within 10,000 miles of me. Max was very easy to talk to, which says a lot coming from somebody as untalkative as I am; but maybe that’s because he knows things about Linux and programming. No, it’s probably despite that.

I’ve also been interviewing for a job at Google. I don’t know if I’m particularly interested in the job, but I figure it’s worth trying. After all, it doesn’t seem likely that I’ll be doing much else for most of the next school year. That reminds me: I need to go work on my résumé.

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