sparky thinks he's seen judy land. he's read the travel guides, he's communed with the locals, he has a good handle on it. but sparky, bless his commonsensical heart, has never actually been to judy land.

after working increasingly closely with judy for the past several months, i have visited judy land. by this i mean, judy's logic began to make sense to me - things that never happened did, email messages needed no tending, for they would read and sort themselves and boil themselves down to a list of action items which undergraduates (read: prole) would become instantaneously aware of and handle competently within 48 hours. even network services had no power to withstand the laws of judy land - ports were opened in the blink of an eye! every rule of dhcp bent to judy's will!

i will try and describe it for all of those who may never get the experience: imagine a sparkling pink cloud of optimism perched on top of your head, puffs of happy condensation clogging your eyes and ears, your voice refracting off of tiny shiny water droplets so that it always sounded musical, like a choir of angels speaking gospel. imagine that things going wrong was inconceivable, that projects could not be late or fail to fulfil their specifications and that you never, ever got lost. imagine planning to run off to japan for a year and leave a poorly organized gang of undergraduates (not including a programmer of any sort) to produce a working 3d model of every major canopy science research site in the world, never mind that none of them really know what canopy science is.

now you are in a place very close to judy land.

to get out, go talk to almost anyone else who's ever worked in any kind of high tech position. better yet, look through the help wanted ads, as this can usually be relied upon to provide a healthy dose of reality and cynicism.

only judy can withstand an extended stay in judy land. the environment is cold and inhospitable to all others. outsiders who stay too long tend to go crazy and decide they are competent to administrate nt servers and reprogram other people's palm devices. it's safer to smile, nod, pretend to take notes, and then run to a reliable translator of the native tongue of judy land, rather than try and make sense of this strange and fascinating world.