Random Stew It seemed like a good idea at the time.

Segmentation Fault

Like a lot of people, I tend to partition my life into segments. There's the work segment, the personal family segment, the martial art segment, etc. Of course, a segment can be composed of subsegments; for instance, friends can be categorized as my wife's friends, my personal friends, or friends of both my wife and myself (usually other couples).

For the most part, the segments don't bleed into each other very much; in a sense, I lead multiple lives. My family and personal friends rarely cross into my professional life and my professional friendships rarely bleed over into my personal life. There are exceptions; my business partner is also a close personal friend of mine --but not of my wife. Not that my wife dislikes my partner; it's just that they rarely have cause to interact.

And, yes, I know there are those of you out there who are eager to demonstrate your wit over that last statement, but please, just save it.

If you think about it, it's amazing how strongly we compartmentalize our lives. We see the clerk at the convenience store almost every morning, but fail to recognize him when we meet him out of the context of the store. This situation can lead to some uncomfortable "Where do I know him from?" moments.  I'm especially prone to this predicament because not only do I compartmentalize my life, but I also have a strong memory for faces but not for names; I am forever recognizing faces but not able to associate a name or context.

For myself, I find the blurring of compartments somewhat disconcerting. I find there is something uncomfortable about mixing associates and friends from different contexts. For this reason, I rarely go out after work with business associates or even attend company parties. Even if I go to lunch regularly with a coworker, I rarely associate with them outside of business. By the same token, I rarely lunch with my wife even though she and I are often available to lunch together. The idea of hosting an event for business associates at my house horrifies me with its absolute wrongness.

In computer science, we have an event called a segmentation fault that occurs when a software program attempts to use memory it is not allowed to access. At the risk of oversimplification (or overexplanation), when a program runs, a chunk (compartment, if you will) of memory is assigned to the process by the operating system. If the program/process attempts to access memory outside of that assigned compartment -- such as memory belonging to another process -- the operating system detects the unauthorized access and generates a segmentation fault, thereby shutting down the offending process and protecting other running processes.

That's how I feel.