Hoist that Petard! or I am Wile E Coyote

So, no sooner had the pixels cooled on my last post--The one where I beat up Victoria Foyt for writing something easily construed as racist--that a friend reported something about something I'd said. And moments later I was hoist on my own petard!

One of the corollaries to Murphy's Law is that if you ever write something bad about someone else, you'll misspell a word. Or in some other way get a cosmic payback. Here's how Murphy got me.

Every August one of my favorite activities is BarCampGR. It's an un-conference where a bunch of like minded geekishly-inclined people get together. The program is simple. Every attender is a presenter. You just have to think about something others may find interesting, and give a half-hour talk on that topic. Just sign up for a time slot and an room.

Two years ago, a friend, Matt Heusser and I gave a team-talk on the topic of Technical Debt.

This year, I gave a talk on "How to Publish an E-Book." Matt was in attendance and took notes. He then reported on my talk here. Now, keep in mind that I spent less than an hour preparing for the talk and I just made a simple text-file check-list. My notes were written in a fast-and-loose fashion off the cuff intended to entertain more than seriously inform.

I wrote this in my notes: Create a snazzy cover with a pretty girl.

When I got to this point in my talk, I took pains to emphasize that a handsome guy would work very well, too. (Not for me, because I like girls more than I like guys.)

Sex sells and sexy guys are appealing to more book buyers than sexy girls, because more book buyers are girls than guys.

However, my friend Matt omitted the handsome guy remarks from his report. So, this morning I catch flack from some guy on Twitter for being sexist.

There's a lesson in this. Life isn't fair and sometimes you'll catch flack despite the best of intentions.

Am I a sexist? I say I'm not, but you might find evidence to the contrary in that book with the pretty girl on the cover. You should buy it and find out for yourself.