Tonight is one of those nights where I am at home, alone, with very little to do. It has been years since I was interested in “partying” or even social drinking. My girlfriend, on the other hand, has taken a few less trips around the sun, and is still very much into getting her social fix on weekends. Generally, she does not “pull all nighters” like tonight, but seeing as how it is a friends birthday, it is at least, a justifiable excuse. It has the added bonus of her being far from driving a car while just a few too many over what I personally call safe. So what the hell, I get bored, and she gets to let off a little steam, all in the name of safety… w00t!

She is pretty good about it, I get routine calls throughout the night to let me know she has not fallen victim of a smooth talking bar predator, and it was one of these calls that got me thinking. I just got one of these new fangled Apple Cinema Displays, the 23″ model. I have had two others, the ones in the plastic case, it was just time for a upgrade, I know the value of my old model is getting less and less, so it just makes sense to get into a new model. The IRS thanks me for these things anyway.

What I am having a hard time with, is I did a significant amount of updates all at once, and I am just not sure where to point the finger in proving what ails me. For a few months now, I have been getting headaches after working on the computer, my eyes just feel like they need a cold damp rub every now and then, sore. It could just be that I have hit the age where my eyes are going to start crapping out on me, or it could be related to some of my resent hardware and software upgrades. I know for sure they are not getting any better, and the local eye exam proves this, in that I am due for a minor correction.

Two things have changed, first, the display, and second, the operating system. There is also a second aspect of the display that could be wigging my eyes out. Last weekend, I updated to Mac OS X Tiger. There are some new settings in the appearance control panel that effect how font smoothing is rendered. I am not 100% sure, but there very well could be a minor change in how my fonts are being smoothed that is just not kosher to my eyes. Ideally, Apple would give me a slider that allows me to change the font smoothing by any increment, for now, I set it to the default, which is just a hair too much for my tastes. The lesser setting is just not enough, so a compromise is what I am living with.

The display is new, and it very well could have a wholly different internal color temperature that I am just not used to. Something in the back of my head is telling me this is worse than it ever was, at least, it sure feels that way. It could also be very coincidental, searching forums and such show no reports of others being bothered by this, so I am assuming it is a “me” issue, most Apple folks are pretty vocal about even the smallest little issues. There is also some pretty strange reflection business that goes on with my home lighting and the aluminum bezel on the display, this could very well be playing a role in some of my problems also.

I don’t really know what it is, as usual, the background leading up to the reason I am posting this has turned into a major distraction away from the point I was trying to make, which just so happens to be about my personality. So, back to the phone calls from my significant other. She updated me on what the haps was and I filled her in on how my eyes were buggin’ me. And here is the thing, she genuinely sympathized with me, granted, she was a little thrown off by my use of the words “color temperature”, but that is to be expected. Ever try explaining verbally what color temperature is? The bottom line is, the sympathy was nice, I can say, oddly enough, I felt a bit better about the whole situation. Yeah, I tend to obsess over the small things, and am known to let the small things be stumbling blocks from ever enjoying the larger things, but her attitude made me feel a little more at ease about it all.

And thats the general case all the time, she tends to be able to listen and get into what it is that I am expressing, and in a way that genuinely makes me walk away feeling better. Christ, I have bitched about how Entourage has this really lame bug in it and can not show 9 point Monaco in a monospaced fashion. I know pretty well, she has no idea why I use 9 point Monaco, let alone what anti-aliasing is, yet she genuinely does try to understand. What’s even more great about it, is she does not even bother to offer up suggestions on how to fix any of this. I have a feeling she has learned I investigate and test every angle, there really is not much she is going to add to my problem that I have not already covered. And for good reason, as this would more than likely just annoy me anyway.

What it boils down to is that tonight, I realized just a little bit how cool she really is, and how well it works with my personality. Sure, she has her problems as well, and I hope I have become in tune with her enough to help her through those problems in as effective a way as she does mine. Somehow, I get the feeling I could due to improve. I am just so damn analytical in my thoughts, I don’t see how it can do anyone any good. Well, at least, not on a social level, sure, I am many a software developers best beta tester, you won’t see “it crashed” coming in from me, but you will get a detailed report of the steps to reproduce the problem and track it down. While this may be a great way to approach technology, it leads a bit to be desired when applied to a social environment.

If she has a bad day at work, assuming I am not too burnt from staring at 9 point Monaco all day, I do listen, it’s what I do with that information that I am starting to think falls short. A bad day at work is usually going to be met with one of two responses. Either it is too petty to even bother talking about, or I will rattle off a 10 step plan for combating the issue on a grand scale. I would find the source of the problem, work to find the solution, and propose several ways to address the problem. So yeah, I treat it like a software bug, locate, reproduce, analyze, patch.

The big point I am missing, is almost always, it is not even a severe enough issue to warrant so much consideration. All she really wants is a shoulder to vent on. Sure, she gets to vent, but then I toss in a whole set of steps, which to her has to be nothing more than compounding the issue with complicated thoughts. All she really wanted was to be set at ease about it all and not think about it anymore, instead, I fuck it all up and do the opposite, forcing her to dig into the issue and put even more thought into it.

It’s certainly a character defect in a social setting, and probably a character asset in other settings. The trick is to know how to break out of debug mode and toggle into real life mode. And here I am, pondering how simple it is to change the boolean value of my debugging functions in code, when it has no relation whatsoever on how to drop my head into consolation or commiserate mode. I know where the bug is, I should be able to apply an appropriate patch and have a new build here by the time she gets home, for certain by the time she reads this.