For the last few week’s I’ve been addressing excerpts of an email from “Bill.” I’m not done with it, but the next few will take more time to adequately address than I have time for right now. So in the meantime, from Dr. JWooch, MD* via Facebook:
every time i read your blog i think it’s a combination of xmonad and dwm
If I was doing a Linux blog, then perhaps it would be combination of those, except for that pesky “n” in dwnomad. For those who are unaware xmonad is a tiling X11 window manager (X11 being the graphics server for Linux, BSD, and several other open source operating system families) and dwm stands for dynamic window manager, specifically when referring to one used for X11.
I’ll be honest, I had to Google both of those. I currently use KWin for my DWM, not xmonad, and I’ve generally just seen window managers referred to was WMs. John, I knew you were a geek, but I think you just out geeked me. Well done.
As my blog is not primarily about open source software in general and this is the first mention of window managers, it’s not dwmonad, it’s dwnomad. But why the hell did I go with that?
I have limited creative abilities. Sure, I’m imaginative and on occasion I can pull off some kickass satire, but I’m horrible at naming things. (tl;dr? You’re done.) So what’s the origin of this blog’s name?
In the summer of 2007 I spent the better part of four months living out of a suitcase as I traveled around Jordan, Israel, and Mexico then couch hopped around the Northwest looking for a job. For four months I was truly a nomad.
When I got a job and found a place to live, I knew that I could be in Tacoma for as little as six months before my company would relocate. I wasn’t surprised when at about the six month mark I was itching to return to a more nomadic life. I was able to do some travel for work and that helped ease the restlessness.
I wasn’t just a nomad in terms of my lifestyle, but I was still in a very fluid time of rethinking my morals, values, and beliefs. I was an intellectual nomad trying to figure out who I was, not the person I had spent so long trying to be, but the real me.
In the end I spent less than a year and a half in Tacoma, then a year and half in Everett, and I’ve now been in Boise for a year. I’ve moved around a bit. For the last five years I have not lived in one place for more than a year and half. So yeah, I’m a bit of a nomad.
At some point when I was in Tacoma I decided I needed an anonymous online pseudonym, so I combined my initials, DW, with nomad. Thus dwnomad was born. When I started this blog as I was preparing for this most recent move, I wanted to keep it at least anonymous enough that Googling my name wouldn’t pull up my blog** and I initially didn’t have a planned focus for the blog. It was supposed to be pretty random.
Within the first month or so, I settled into a comfortable niche and on my first interview with Chariots of Iron I was identified as Dustin Williams. The cat was out of the bag, but I still try to make it so that it’s not too obvious where I work.
In a way I regret*** the name. As I’ve transitioned through my mid 20s and into my late 20s the nomadic life has lost its appeal. It makes friendships and romantic relationships very difficult. I would also likely have a much larger reader base if I had chosen a more descriptive name for the blog due to more people finding the blog through web and blog searches.
*John didn’t want an elaborate introduction, but I like the cred that comes from having documented proof that a medical doctor is reading my dribble.
**As it stands it’s the fourth or fifth search result on Google for “Dustin Williams.” To try to beat Google’s personalization of search results I checked it in Chromium (the primary browser on my desktop), Konqueror (rarely used), Firefox on a Virtual Machine running Windows XP, and Firefox on my phone to get it completely off my network and browsing history. Everything coming from my home network had it as the fourth result and on my phone it was the fifth.
***I don’t really regret the name of dwnomad, I just couldn’t think of a better word to use. I still kind of like it and it has historical meaning to me. Besides, I live my life with no regrets.