N.A.D.D.

So recently I’ve been trying to scour the internet for useful, fun, interesting articles and information. Today I found an article that describes me pretty well. On the Rands in Repose site I found an article he wrote in 2003. This describes the behavior of those with Nerd Attention Deficit Disorder. I thought it was funny, and possibly accurate, enough that I should post it here. While this hold no technical and, to the best of my knowledge, no scientific merit, it surely seems to help describe some of my behavior.

I don’t know why but I tend to have a number of these kinds of windows open. Ever since I started using and abusing the emacs client i fell in love with the ability to hack on a number of different files from the same window without having the issues of cascading the windows and so forth. One of my co-workers often refers to my editing experience as a “work of modern art”. I also tend to have 2 browsers open, one holds our bug reporting system open along with outside searches and browsing, while the other tends to be for the current task at hand. Either for searching on the ‘thing’ i’m developing, or for testing that which I’m developing. I then tend to have a few log files open to report messaging in the code I’m developing, along with IM, email, and the works of communication tools open.

While I think that most of it goes unused while I am working on the current focus, I tend to feel it important to keep as much of that information open and available at all times because at some point during the day I will probably return to that source of information and continue reading or developing from where I left off.

This also manifests itself in my everyday life and interactions with people. I need fast information or I begin to lose interest. I usually find myself drifting in thought if a conversation doesn’t change it’s flow very quickly. Also, if I’m not contributing to the conversation, then I’ve pretty much lost all interest in that conversation. I don’t know why that is the case, but now I have something to associate with it.

In short. I think I have N.A.D.D. Is this good or bad? Who knows, everyone has something these days…