Dongle Emotions

After letting my bedroom / office get out of hand, I took some time today to clean up and get organized. I wrapped and grouped up my wires and even opened up some of the new USB3/Thunderbolt3 dongles I had ordered to go along with my new MacBook Pro order.

Now I don’t want to get into the current dongle drama surrounding the new MacBook Pro — but I do have a funny story.

A few years ago I worked as a self-employed contractor doing iOS work. I was at a meeting with a new prospective client. Overall the meeting went well and it looked like we’d be working together. At the end I was packing up all my gear and there was an accusation that I had taken their projector dongle. I was fairly certain I was in the right and this was a dongle from my laptop bag but did I really want to risk this multi-month contract for a $30 dongle? It was something out of a Seinfeld episode. Suffice to say, I left the dongle with the client that day to ease tensions.

Don’t mess with another man’s dongle.

These days I mark all my dongles (and I need a ton of them as a traveling instructor not knowing what a room will have) with “ZORN” to alleviate confusion.