Eight years ago I took a spring off from Reality. I was living in a school bus, working renaissance faires, and generally having a good time. But, living in a school bus isn’t all it is cracked out to be, and pretty soon I was jonesing for a more complicated life. My friend Robin, who was out in California, asked me if I wanted to help him on a contract gig doing programming for a huge website project. The gig was in a language called perl. Well, I could make in two hours on this project what I would make in an entire weeked working a renaissance faire; so of course I said Sure! I then promptly hit a book store and bought the first O’Reilly book I could find on the subject: Learning Perl by Randall Schwartz. Within hours I was writing perl scripts on a FreeBSD box I had cobbled together from spare parts. By the time I got to Berkeley I was able to carry myself off as if I’d been writing in perl for years. I spent the next few years making a more than decent living largely based upon my perl skills.
Snap to the recent past… Nancy, Mel and I go to DragonCon in Atlanta. Randall Schwartz is part of the (white hat) Hacker panel. I decide to pay a little tribute, and I buy him a bottle of Glenmorangie single malt scotch. I thought it was fitting, since my scotch habit was fed for years by way of my perl habit. I gave it to him at the panel, and he seemed to be pleased.
A couple of days ago I wrote him an email, to see if he enjoyed the scotch. He didn’t. Apparently someone walked off with the bottle.
Who the hell stole my tribute to a perl god?
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