Tiffany

[ljplicease]

Tiffany: you did it again
Tiffany: you pre-empted me
Gr8ham: i'm just creepy that way :)
Tiffany: I had noticed
Gr8ham: although only faux creepy.
Gr8ham: what's up?

Highlight of the day was definitely when Tiffany called. Somehow our conversations always end up sounding like the minutes of a mutual admiration society. She started out by saying, "you seem to be the most approachable over there [in EDA] or maybe it's just that you have the right level for sarcasm" and proceeded to ask me a few technical questions that I was happy to answer.

Tiffany is a patent lawyer, and we crossed paths last year when I was assigned to help make unencumbered one of our software tools, which had at one point been jointly developed with a competitor (an episode that has left most developers in EDA distrustful of management). Some of the people in EDA that I worked with on the project were very disparaging of lawyers, and the sort of work that they had to do to keep the layers happy, but for me the whole thing was a wonderful experience. I actually like working on different things from time to time and the opportunity to interact with professionals of another vocation is a great way to expand one's horizons.

I think lawyers have a bad rap, and I think it comes from the unproductive and not terribly uncommon tendency to shoot the messenger. Sure there are bad lawyers, but there are also good lawyers, and there are also bad programmers and bad doctors and sometimes even bad politicians. Working with Tiffany was a real pleasure, and I have to say that my experience with lawyers has been overwhelmingly positive. I told her all of this on the phone.

I also thanked her for talking to Sherry before she went off to law school. From what I gather, they really hit it off, and I think it helped Sherry decide that she really did want to go study patent law.