Tag Archives: Heroes

Profiles in Nerdery: Justin Hendrickson, drummer for Raspberry Caturday

• Astrological Sign: Virgo (please refrain from nerd/virgin jokes)
• Time at the Nerdery: Longer than Aesop and I haven’t even thrown up on the floor yet.
• Area of expertise: Internet.
• When people ask you what you do, how do you respond: Drummer for my Rock Band band, Rasberry Caturday. We have a gig every Friday at The Nerdery. Come check us out. (I program stuff too.)
• Favorite kinds of projects to work on: Anything that does not involve spelling Raspberry correctly.
• What one thing about The Nerdery surprises people the most when you tell them about it: That we actually get work done.
• Seven dream Jeopardy Categories: 1. Settlers of Catan; 2. Words Justin can’t spell; 3. Rock Band DLC recommendations (all answers take the form of “Who is Phil Collins”); 4. Laughable “Heroes” Plotlines; 5. Zend Framework; 6. Losing at Bug House; 7. There are only six categories per round in Jeopardy!*
• Favorite Fictional Nerd: I like my nerds non-fictional, thank you very much.
• According to the Wikipedia entry on Nerd, some nerds show a pronounced interest in subjects which others tend to find dull or complex and difficult to comprehend, or overly mature for their age, especially topics related to science, disambiguation, mathematics and technology. Do you know what disambiguation is: Hey, I edit Wikipedia.

*Editor’s note: In my defense, I ripped off the idea of the dream Jeopardy categories from Douglas Coupland’s 1995 novel Microserfs where the characters list their seven dream Jeopardy categories

Profiles in Nerdery: Brian Litzinger, artist turned programmer

• Astrological Sign: I honestly don’t know. Never really looked into it.
• Time at the Nerdery: Since September 2008.
• Area of expertise: Front end development mostly (HTML, CSS, JS), but I can knock around PHP pretty well, and recently did my first Rails project. I started off as a designer . . . who knew an Art degree would lead to programming?
• When people ask you what you do, how do you respond: I make websites. Any details further than that and people kind of nod their heads and pretend they know what I’m talking about, but the “I make websites” usually brings an “oh, cool” response.
• Favorite kinds of projects to work on: Ones that I can focus on for an extended period of time. I can juggle multiple projects, but its much more fun to have one or two projects that I can devote time to, but if they last for more than 2-3 months I start to burn out.
• What one thing about The Nerdery surprises people the most when you tell them about it: That I bring my dog to work. Also when I tell people it’s doubled in size in the last year.
• Seven dream Jeopardy Categories: 1) The IE 6 Box Model; 2) Name that CSS bug!; 3)Definition Lists or Unordered Lists; 4) IE 6 CSS hacks; 5) Bathroom tile removal tools; 6) Ways to annoy my wife; 7) World of Warcraft (pre marital bliss).
• Favorite Fictional Nerd: Hiro, from Heroes, but he lost his powers recently and kind of sucks at the moment. There was a foreshadowing scene in the first season where he was a ninja and didn’t talk like a nerd, so I’m eagerly awaiting the episode when he becomes a kick ass ninja, but I guess he wouldn’t be a nerd anymore.
• According to the Wikipedia entry on Nerd, some nerds show a pronounced interest in subjects which others tend to find dull or complex and difficult to comprehend, or overly mature for their age, especially topics related to science, disambiguation, mathematics and technology. Do you know what disambiguation is: That question is too long. Can I pass?