I don't think that OSHA can help with this one

Not that I'm complaining, but the occupational hazards of programming computers for a living include things like:

• Extended (and stressful) hours racing against deadlines
• Folks assuming that just because you can write code, you can fix their printer
• An ever-widening Universe of things you don't know (but which can hurt you...or at least make you look like a complete dolt)
  

To me, it's all worth it, for any number of reasons--the shallowest of them all being that, when someone asks me what I do for a living, my trade at least retains it aura of above-average intelligence. (Even--surprisingly--in the wake of the dot-com bust.)

But today Dennis & I were chatting with one of the guys @ Wisconsin Building Supply, he gave us the URL for a window company's website, assuring us that the info. would be there. Dennis quipped something like, "Oh, yes--you can find everything on the internet." Our host didn't seem too thrilled with that notion: Ohhhh noooo, not at allllll... Mercifully, he wasn't interested in chatting about jobs, so there was no need to, ahem, "burden" him with the knowledge of how we both make our living.

Now, much of my work life revolves around making organizations--one in particular--somewhat more transparent to those inside them. In doing so, I reduce a lot of the friction caused by the normal churn of people. Churn itself is expensive, and friction much more so. But it wasn't until then that I realized that Spokeo, Google Street View, ZabaSearch, TweetStalk, and the like may be getting Big Brother cooties on me in a way that spam, viruses and black-hat hacking hasn't.