Unique Human Experiences

I think one skill that has aided me as a troubleshooter and a programmer is my ability to scavenge.  I refer a lot to web searches/knowledgebases and I incorporate the discoveries and “best practices” shared by others into my solution.  It still happens every now and then, but it is pretty rare that I come across a behavior or issue that no one else has posted about.  Even if everyone is complaining and no one has a solution to the issue at hand, at least I have the comfort of knowing I’m not alone.  Someone else is sharing my frustrations.

Well, thanks to the newsgroups and the ever-growing popularity of blogs, I don’t think that phenomen is limited to Microsoft mishaps, Oracle occurences and ASP.NET anomalies.  A few years ago, I ingested 32 ounces of Fierce Grape Gatorade.  The next day, I noticed a peculiar coloration in my poo.  It was very appropriate for St. Patrick’s Day and hard to miss– quite bright.  I mentioned it to my husband (yup, that’s the kind of things we discuss) and he happened to have noted the same distinct color in his droppings.  The dye in the gatorade was the culpit. 

Out of curiousity, I did a quick newsgroup search.  Back then, I found one lone guy out there talking about “fierce grape turds“.  Today if you do a search, you see dozens of mentions in various blogs and websites citing the same experience.  For example, “Gatorade Fierce Grape is key to seeing a mighty green poo.”

My keen sighting of the Dr. Grip in the movie, “Breach” is no longer a unique one.  It’s now mentioned in the IMDB forums and on at least one additional web site. 

This has me wondering.  Are unique experiences becoming an endangered species?  It seems a lot of what we encounter, be it a database crashing or having green poo, there is someone out there experiencing the same thing and rest assure, they are talking about it on the Internet! 

I’m not sure if this is an entirely good thing.  Sure, in this day in age, where neighbors are not necessarily neighborly and most people do not experience the community a religion could provide, running across others like yourself could be your community.  It could indeed make you feel like you are not alone in this world and I guess, at times, provide hope.  Apparently some folks found relief in reading about Fierce Grape Gatorade on UtterlyBoring.com:

“My green poo came freom Grape Gatorade Fierce. I purchased an 8-pack of 20 FL.OZ. bottles and downed them all in 5 days. I was freaked out too. This site saved me a Co-Pay at the doctor’s office.” – GatorPoop

“This is a huge relief. I’ve been suffering from shocking green turds on and off for a few months now. I was worried that I might die… ” – Dizzee Rascal

But at the same time, isn’t it a bit of a bummer?  That a lot of your encounters with products, your opinions, your trials and even some of your random thoughts are not just your own?  Instead, the same thing is stored in the minds of numerous individuals across this great planet.  We’re part of a geo-redundancy scheme.

Well, since I profit both professionally and personally from web searches, I have a vested interest in our global knowledgebase expanding.  I guess if I ever do get to feeling a little indistinct, I can always console myself by thinking there is no one out there who is going to have all the exact same thoughts! 

Perhaps I can manage to sustain a monopoly on the ex-vomit-fearing; hiking; geocaching; rollerblading; beagle-bashing;  Project-Runway-watching; Malcolm-X-admiring; Discover-magazine-reading; female-web-applications-programmer perspective afterall.  🙂