Still White and Nerdy

Sometimes I worry that, by maintaining celebrity-gossip websites, I’ve lost all the geek cred I had when I wrote instruction manuals for Linux software. But recently I’ve had a couple reminders that I’m still an irredeemable nerd.

This weekend I was annoyed by 93.7 Mike FM’s assertion that they are “random radio.” They play a wide variety of songs, but it’s far from being mathematically random– it’s carefully selected to appeal to a specific demographic. I know, I know, it’s a figure of speech. Still, it sometimes annoys me that “random” is used to mean “unexpected” or “improbable.”

Second, I got life and disability insurance through work today and the paperwork referred to AD&D. I immediately thought “what does Advanced Dungeons and Dragons have to do with this?” I actually had to ask: it stands for accidental death and dismemberment.