I met many, many fascinating and wonderful people at SXSW this year, and I had a chance to be reunited with a lot of people that I had met before. I will post about that later on though. This post instead will focus on what is one of my more embarrassing moments, ever. Before I begin, I should state that I don’t get embarrassed very often at all. But this was one of those rare times…
Monday night, late in the evening, we all headed over to the Omni Hotel. The bar was already closed, but it is a nice quiet place to just hang out so it worked. I walked in and spotted Matt sitting on a couch next to Tantek, who I had not met yet. Seems I should have maybe done some research before our encounter:
Matt: Christine, have you met Tantek?
{Handshaking, “nice to meet you” and so forth}
Me: No, I sat down to talk to you guys at El Sol y La Luna on Saturday night, but you guys were talking about geek stuff that was going to make my head explode. C++, code, CSS and all that. CSS makes my eyes bleed.
Matt: (Cracking up and turning red.)
Tantek: What did you say?
Me: CSS makes my eyes bleed.
Tantek: (Laughing so hard he leaned over and put his face on the couch to stifle the laughter.)
Hmmm… it seems that Tantek had this incredibly huge role in getting CSS to where it is today and if I had attended the CSS panel earlier in the conference I might have known that. No, instead I just admitted to him that it makes my eyes bleed. Whoops.
It was truly a priceless moment. Maybe one that only the geekiest among us can appreciate. Thankfully, he then asked my why I felt that way – I explained that I can grasp the basics but anything beyond that has given me migraines in the past – and then I went on to point out that Kristine has rescued me several times when I have had CSS needs. We visited her site. All was good. The laughter continued as Jessica and I watched the rocking kittens.
On Tuesday night at the party at Bruce Sterling’s house, Nikolai offered to create a CSS version of my default design so I could study it. Tantek offered a suggestion of the book I should read so that I can overcome my fear of CSS. And the rest of us just laughed about the fact that I actually said, “CSS makes my eyes bleed.” Because what’s the point of being embarrassed if you can’t laugh about it?
True happiness consists not in the multitude of friends, but in the worth and choice. – Ben Johnson