Alright, that's it. I'm sick of technology news.

I was getting my daily Salon fix this morning, when I scrolled down to the "Technology and Business" section - a link to which from Slashdot introduced me to Salon a year ago - and read the following headline:

Thank God for the Internet "Next" author Michael Lewis says the Net makes lawyers look foolish and Wall Street analysts irrelevant. And that's a good thing

And I snapped. I finally decided, you know what, I don't freaking care. Technology news is written both by and about one of two classes of people: those who know little about computers but like to pretend that they do, and those who know much about computers and think that this makes them some sort of superior being.

The former annoys me much, much less than the latter, perhaps because I have to deal with the latter much more frequently. I mean, for Chrissakes, there's a lot more to life than computers. Computer savvyness isn't the only form of intelligence, and many of these tech types are severely lacking in most other forms - social adeptness, cultural appreciation, spelling and grammar, etc.

And I get enough technology at work, anyway. It's not like I'm an investment banker or a politician - the kind of people who need to keep up with every little development in their field. I've never read any technology news that affects my current job (besides fluff pieces about "the future of AI" that contain the same unrealistic predictions year after year) nor my future job (with the exception of Jakob Nielsen's excellent AlertBox column). After working 8 hours a day with technology, the last thing I want is to read more about working with technology. I'd rather settle down and let technology entertain me. Or go for a walk.

I'm swearing off Slashdot. Whatever distraction it might afford me at work can't possibly be worth wading through outraged techno-libertarian rants towards "clueless" public authority figures ("I bet he doesn't even know how to recompile his Linux kernel! What qualifies him to be a Supreme Court justice?") and incomprehensible headlines like "Apache mod_ssl in NetBSD 2.9.47".

God, I'm angry. I can't stand this techno-snobbery any longer. I hope I cool down a little before classes start, or I'm gonna go nuts and start throttling some mouth-breathing geek in my Machine Learning class. I think I finally see where all those football players in high school were coming from.

On another note entirely - sometimes the only way to learn things about other people is by offending them. I realized last night that Jenn might actually be somewhat serious about her desire to be a wedding planner. And of course, I came about this realization in the worst way possible: by making fun of said desire.

I'd just figured all along that her interest in all things wedding-related was a simple passing fancy, like my brief love affair with computer game developer magazines a few years back. But last night she mentioned that she'd subscribed to a Jewish bride catalog, and when I started to poke fun, I got the distinct feeling that she was actually offended. The more I tried to backpedal by making light of the situation, the more offended she got.

And I ended up feeling like an unsupportive prick. It's just that she had always talked about the wedding planner thing so jokingly, it never occurred to me to take her seriously.

I've forgiven myself, though. I am a supportive boyfriend. I attend her readings and encourage her to write and get excited for her when her honors thesis proposal is accepted or she finds a cool grad school program. This thing sort of blindsided me, but having survived the impact, I can be supportive about this too.

As my roommate's subconscious would say: Like and learn, child. Like and learn.