Post #4000
time to read 2 min | 322 words

Dear ALT.NET Community,

You are likely familiar with that classic Warren Zevon song, Werewolves of London. I was reminded of this the last night being in London under a full moon and in the same hotel as one of the more famous Lycanthropic developers in the .NET community, Ayende Rahien, with whom you are also likely familiar as, well, you are reading his feed. Duh.

Shocked? Read on...

To call Ayende a werewolf is inacurate, of course. A lycanthrope, yes: Half-man, half-animal (i.e. manimal). But his primal half does not take the form of the lupine. Rather, Ayende is a were-Rhino. This should be obvious given the various logos and trade names he chooses. There you have it! His shape-shifting nature explains his Rhino fetish along with the genesis of the names of such projects RhinoMocks, RhinoCommons, Hibernating Rhinos, etc.

Yes we're all familiar with the conventional wisdom detailed in the classic essay of the same name by Fred Brooks, "No Silver Bullets." In this corner case of our industry there is a silver bullet, a couple (luckily, friends)!

There are a few things you can do to protect yourself from this marauding monster, Mr. Rahien. When in his manimilian state, if you ask him a question about NHibernate, you will stop the abomination in his tracks. If, being a proper member of the ALT.NET tribe, you cannot think of an NHibernate question (as you are undoubtedly an expert at this point) engage the brute in a discussion regarding the popular science fiction book series, "The Wheel of Time." That should do.

IMPORTANT: a curious, oft-overlooked but quite dangerous feature of the wererhino is that the beastly transformation can be triggered when the subject views a piece of code built on the Entity Framework. Be very, very careful when working with EF code around Ayende.

You have been warned.

Yours truly,

Dave Laribee

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