Men's Room

The Dreaded Men's Room Debacle

It was the urinal that tipped me off. We don't have any of those suckers on our side of the wall. To my relief, said urinal was not in use. No exposed objects anywhere in sight. I did an about-face, high-stepped it back to the door, and peered out, hoping nobody was around.

A lady with toddler eyed me disapprovingly from the doorway of the room I had intended to enter. "Oops," I grinned at her. "I've had bad dreams about this." She was not amused.

I do know where the Borders Books ladies' room is. I've spent a million lunch hours in that store. It's just that if I get to thinking too hard about programming, or writing, or the relative merits of self-clumping kitty litter, I forget where I'm going.

I had been looking through ASP books, trying to decide which one to buy and, as is often the case, the Dummies book won hands down. I hate that. As a true nerd, I learned early on that I wasn't going to get through life on my looks. So go ahead and make fun of my freckled container. Ogle my festive plumpness. Make "short people" jokes. But whatever you do, don't call me dumb!

IDG has pulled off quite a feat with this series. They've got books for dummies of all persuasions. Over in Love and Relationships (which is right next to Self-help and just below Addictions) you can even find Dating for Dummies and Sex for Dummies (not that I was actually looking, mind you, I just happened to notice.)

Active Server Pages for Dummies, by Bill Hatfield, is an excellent first book for ASP coders, especially those who don't know all the current jargon. Computer people are almost as good with jargon as TV evangelists. Brother Falwell may have been washed in the blood of the lamb, by gosh, but we've been downsized by the hammer of corporate America, and we have to make up new jargon for self-defense.

Next time your company downsizes, just look your boss in the eye and say, "Of course John from Accounting can't take over my job. He's not a Knowledge Engineer. Every time he mines, he brings back dirty data, and he doesn't even have keys to the data warehouse!" Your boss will have no idea what you do, but he'll be convinced it's important.

Just make sure he doesn't read any Dummies books. In Active Server Pages for Dummies, Hatfield cuts through the latest ASP jargon and explains everything in English while keeping the book detailed enough to be worth your investment. There are many other good books out there (See the ActiveServerPages book reviews), but for beginners, this is the best.

Runner up awards go to Teach Yourself Active Server Pages in 14 Days, a Sams.net book that has decent jargon translations but lacks depth. It's also lacking in the database department and, at times, confusing. For instance, on page 151 it says, "To access a database, you must create a DSN." Then five pages later there's an example of a DSNless connections. This got on my nerves; maybe it won't bother you.

I left the ladies' room and picked up a copy of Hatfield's book. By then I was immune to the embarrassment. Buying a Dummies book is nothing compared to going into the wrong bathroom. Guess I could have bypassed the embarrassment completely and ordered it from Amazon. They don't have any bathrooms, which might not be all bad.