A great, complex and deep stout with a hint of vanilla.

One such brew is Old Dominion’s Oak Barrel Stout. This one is one of my favorites because it is really top shelf as far as it’s depth, and also is widely available (at least near me) and fairly priced. Here is what the brewer has to say about this beer.

We use smoked and peated malts to create an intricate malt foundation. Our method of dry hopping with vanilla beans and oak chips pushes the depth of this stout’s flavor spectrum even further.

This small quote does not do this beer justice. Beer Advocate gives this one a 99 rating, which is world class, and users give it an 89, which is very good. Ratebeer gives it a 95, which is also very good. Of course these sites heavily favor dark beers because, let’s face it, light beer is basically dark beer with less taste.

Because of it’s complexity, many people who do not drink dark beers or stouts will probably prefer this beer with food, rather than alone. It has a nice bite when it first hits your mouth, but then you can taste a nice smoothness and hints of the vanilla. Serving it very cold will numb it’s bite a bit as well.

Your typical SharePoint error message. A tiny bit more helpful with the correlation Id.

In SharePoint 2010 Microsoft introduced a “Correlation Id” that was stamped on an SPRequest object (essentially). This means that for every SharePoint request, there was a unique Guid associated with it that was the correlated with log entries that were also marked with the Guid. This makes it easy to produce an error message in SharePoint, put the correlation Id on it, and then the administrator can quickly pinpoint what happened by searching the logs for the correlation Id instead of sifting through thousands of log entries for the users request.

The problem is that if I were creating a web part in SharePoint that did some work that was fairly long running or had the potential to take a while (for example a web service call to another server to get data), I would not want that to happen during the initial page load. I would rather that the initial page load very quickly, and then have the web part make the request that might take a while via Ajax. This gives the user a more responsive page. However, now we lose the nice correlation Id of the request. The user gets a correlation Id for the initial request of the page, but the subsequent Ajax requests to SharePoint hosted web services that do the long running work get different correlation Id’s even though they are related.

This is not a huge deal, and everything works fine, but for troubleshooting purposes we can do better.

I actually asked this question at a SharePoint Conference in 2011, and was told that it was certainly possible by setting a header, but unfortunately I didn’t have a complete answer as to what exactly that header was. By reflecting the SharePoint code we can get our answer.

This comes from the SPRequestUsageMonitoredScope class constructor that is called early in the SPRequest pipeline. The base class for this object is the SPMonitoredScope class, which defines an Id property as a Guid. This is what your Correlation Id comes from.

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string g;
if (httpRequest != null && (g = httpRequest.Headers.Get("SPResponseGuid")) != null)
{
    try
    {
        base.Id = new Guid(g);
        if (DeveloperDashboard.s_DisplayLevel != SPDeveloperDashboardLevel.Off)
        {
            ULS.TraceLevelOverrideStart(ULSTraceLevel.VerboseEx);
            ULS.SendTraceTag(1701589042u, ULSCat.msoulscat_ULS_Correlation, ULSTraceLevel.VerboseEx, "SPResponseGuid forced correlation switch: {0}", new object[]
            {
                base.Id
            });
        }
    }
    catch (FormatException)
    {
    }
    catch (OverflowException)
    {
    }
}
ULS.CorrelationStart(base.Id);

You can see that it is basically looking for a header with a key of “SPResponseGuid” and if that value is present, it simply takes it and overrides the correlation Id of that request (which is basically just the Id of this SPMonitoredScope derived object).

Now that we know the SharePoint code that can read this header, you just need to set the header when you make an Ajax request in Javascript. That is easy on an XMLHttpRequest object by using the “setRequestHeader” function. In other scenarios, in code, you could set the header in code as well. Anywhere that you are making a subsequent request to SharePoint that is related to the original request is a good place to use the same Correlation Id for troubleshooting purposes.

If you are using jQuery and .ajax, this is very easy.

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var previousRequestGuid = "previous" // some way to get the correlationId of the base page request
.ajax({
    type: "POST",
    url: "some web service",
    data: { name: "Something" },
    headers: { "SPResponseGuid", previousRequestGuid }
}).done(function(data) {
    // do something with what we get back
});

Of course you need some way to get the Correlation Id so it can be sent along to JavaScript so that the Ajax request can consume it. In order to do that I used the code from Wictor Wilén’s blog for getting the proper Correlation Id in code.

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[DllImport("advapi32.dll")]
private static extern uint EventActivityIdControl(uint controlCode, ref Guid activityId);
private const uint EVENT_ACTIVITY_CTRL_GET_ID = 1;
 
public static string CorrelationId
{
    get
    {
        Guid g = Guid.Empty;
        EventActivityIdControl(EVENT_ACTIVITY_CTRL_GET_ID, ref g);
        return g.ToString();
    }
}

I put this code in our static logger class so we could get at it. In the code for the page or web part, you would then basically read this correlation Id in code and then send it to the JavaScript layer when you render the page or web part, and then the JavaScript will use it to create the header.

It may not impact the typical end user, but your administrators and tech support (and yourself if you are stuck supporting what you are building) will thank you for making it just a bit easier to track related requests in the SharePoint log.

This dude surely knows how to party.

Kierkegaard has an interesting passage in “Concluding Unscientific Postscript” where he stumbles on a curious direction for his philosophy that I find immensely appealing.

I sat and smoked my cigar until I lapsed into thought … “You are going on,” I said to myself, “to become an old man, without being anything and without really undertaking to do anything. . . . [W]herever you look about you . . . you see the many benefactors of the age who know how to benefit mankind by making life easier and easier, some by railways, others by omnibuses and steamboats, others by the telegraph, others by easily apprehended compendiums and short recitals of everything worth knowing, and finally the true benefactors of the age who make spiritual existence in virtue of thought easier and easier, yet more and more significant. And what are you doing?” . . . [S]uddenly this thought flashed through my mind: “You must do something, but inasmuch as with your limited capacities it will be impossible to make anything easier than it has become, you must . . . undertake to make something harder.” This notion pleased me immensely. . . . I conceived it as my task to create difficulties everywhere.

This was true then, and as time marches on it only becomes more so. Think about all the effort you personally, and society as a whole, expends in trying to make their lives easier so that they can live easy. There is a huge amount of effort, but to what effect? Many times the technology allows us to experience a sort of increased acceleration towards certain aspects of our lives that can come easy and it becomes obsessive. This is why this passage is so great, because very rarely in life is the easy path, or the path that comes most natural to you, the most rewarding.

This is really the great tradition of philosophy, and one of the reasons why it is such a great discipline, to upend and destroy everyone’s “easy” reality. Really, isn’t that what Socrates was doing by questioning everything? If difficulty is measured in one’s frustration with a discussion, then I can tell you from experience that practicing the Socratic Method is one of the quickest ways to assure difficulty. Of course you can imagine a huge crowd of people, mulling about and living their lives as easy and without stress as possible, taking the path and routine most familiar to them, and the philosopher looking at all of them wanting to completely shake it all up and ruin their collective contentment.

Most people react with disgust when someone tries to wreck what contentment they have, when the boat is rocked by some external force. No one is immune from becoming complacent in their lives, to embrace the easy and sit idle, allowing time to march on, carrying them along for the ride. As I write this post, in fact, it is a continuing struggle for me personally (though there are bigger philosophical questions at the root of it for me, mainly escapism because of existentialist dread and the encroachment of nihilistic thought, more on that some other time).

If one were to imagine a single person doing what I just described, until all their time is used up and they are an old man/woman, then many would call that a “wasted” life. Sure, people assign all kinds of meaning to their lives to make it so their inner story is not one of “waste,” but that meaning can also be infected by the “easy” and then what you have left is even worse than a “wasted” life, you have a life where you lied to yourself and assigned meaning to a path that was way too easy.

Now this is not some kind of crazy “bucket list” pleading, where I tell you that you must “seize the day” and experience everything in life that you have ever wanted to before the end. Frankly that is garbage, similar to coming up with a new diet, gym schedule, and then trying to make yourself strictly follow this new life on January 1st every single year. That never works. Typically people require some kind of wall to be hit, and some kind of serious event to happen, before that kind of drastic change takes place (people collectively, i.e. government it becomes even worse, but that is a topic for another time).

What I am saying, and a somewhat practical approach to what Kierkegaard is saying, is to just always try and think about what you are doing and whether it comes easy to you. Challenge yourself by going down other paths every so often. If you shy away from a lot of social situations, force yourself to be in some every so often. If you always must have someone on the phone or near you, but are never alone, force yourself to be alone doing something that you like to do. If you find yourself always talking about shallow things with your friends, try introducing some deeper discussion. If you have the opposite problem, try and have some fun every so often. The more you exercise “the path least followed” muscle, the more rounded a person you become.

By doing these kinds of things it has an effect on all the people around you, and you do create “difficulties everywhere” because it is likely that the people around you are a lot like you. You end up strengthening the group this way, and imagine what it could do to society if we did try to make things more difficult everywhere?

Kierkegaard was right.

It is like “reading” a novel by watching a video of someone turning the pages, and it is utterly ridiculous.

The web is replete with these, all over the place. It has become a common way to present new “exciting” information about technical topics. It is also usually mind boggling and a major irritation because synthesizing information via video is so slow.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I understand that many people have different ways of learning. Some people are visual, some auditory and some learn by doing (touch). However, the information that you are trying to convey has to have some kind of importance in the presentation of said information.

If I were to create a tutorial on how to best cut an onion, then a video would certainly be the best option. If I were to create a tutorial on how to best create a web part in C#, then the best choice would be words and not video, with some graphics mixed in as well. I wouldn’t really want to read about cutting an onion (it would be very ambiguous likely), just like I wouldn’t want to watch a video of someone programming because it would be ambiguous and slow.

Many of them consist of many different steps, some of which either you already know and would like to skip, or the author pontificates (much like I am doing now) and you really want to skip whatever they are talking about. Typically some kind of table of contents and paragraph division allows us to do this easily with the written word, however most videos do not have this capability.

It is not that I can’t understand a video tutorial, seeing as though many times I am forced to watch them to see information on some new technology. It is that I would rather not spend upwards of 30-60 minutes watching a video containing information I could have digested in 10 minutes via reading. Consider that the average person can read at a rate of 250-300 words a minute, while that same person can only speak (with a reasonable level of comprehension) at 150 words per minute or so. If I can read twice as fast as someone can talk, while still comprehending what they are saying, then why on earth would I choose that to consume information that is just as easily consumed either way?

I swear, what really gets me, is that the written word is something that we learn early in school as being a major milestone in human evolution, yet it seems to be abandoned in all kinds of medium. Youtube videos, Facebook status updates, and Twitter tweets do not constitute written word, or adequate communication. The quick, visual and audio fix pervades society to where people scoff and actually have trouble reading large amounts of text.

This has an effect on society, if you think about it. Most people, whether they notice it or not, are actually constantly taking in information, synthesizing it, and acting on it by creating information that is likely used by someone else. The chain could end there, for example if a mechanic used information about how to fix your car, it would end with your car being fixed. Many times you may use information from others on some subject, add some additional information, and then disseminate it out to others who could also use that information. If information is disseminated in a manner which adds additional slowness or “drag,” then information is flowing inefficiently through the system. This likely causes a negative effect on the system when compared with faster information transfer.

This baby clearly knows more than you because it is using a faster method of learning.

If we had Matrix style transfer directly into our brains, that would represent the best .. but we until then I suggest people look at the content they are creating and start with the words, add pictures, and then add videos. This way you are presenting your content in all the best ways possible.

It may be more work for people that put together content, but in the end it will pay off because all of your “readers” (or more accurately consumers) are going to be able to consume your content in the most efficient and most comfortable way according to their own preferences.

Ingredients

• 1 Raw Banana
• 5 Frozen Strawberries
• 1 Scoop of Protein Powder
• .5 Cups of Quaker Oats
• 1.5 Cups of Skim Milk

I prefer to use raw banana as opposed to frozen because when I used frozen bananas the shake became very “icy” instead of liquid (which I prefer). If you prefer an icy kind of smoothy consistency, then using frozen banana may make more sense.

For strawberries, I typically buy the 6 pound bag of frozen strawberries in bulk from Costco if you are going to drink this thing every day. It really saves time and money (because you don’t have to keep going to the store to get smaller packages).

I get all my protein from Protein Factory and what I get is usually basically Whey. I get chocolate flavored with no artificial sweeteners (I do not use artificial sweeteners ever).

For the Oats, I also typically get the very large Old Fashioned Quaker Oats from Costco. It comes in a 10 pound container, so that you can feel like you are eating the quantity of Oats a horse would eat.

Instructions

1. Put the Quaker Oats (dry) into the blender and blend on the highest setting for around 10 seconds. This will get the oats to as close to a “flour” consistency as possible and give you a smoother shake.
2. Put all the rest of the ingredients in.
3. A quick tip for bananas. Always break the banana in your hands a number of times into pieces because you never know when the middle of the banana could be bad. I remember biting into a banana I bought at Walmart in College and the entire middle was black without the outside showing any signs.
4. Blend.
5. Enjoy.

I use a Breville BBL605XL Hemisphere Control Blender which I cannot say enough good things about. This blender is the best blender I have ever owned and well worth the money. It is very quiet compared to other blenders, does a great job, and is literally set it and forget it with the “smoothy” button which does everything for you.

Below are the nutrition facts for the shake.

The API of this web part is not particularly well documented and a lot of it has the ominous “for internal use only” stamped all over it, but since we really needed this functionality (we did the same thing with the Excel web part), it was necessary to give it a try.

I ran into a nasty weird bug (or design flaw) that I had to use the excellent ILSpy to get to the bottom of.

Very simply, all I wanted to do was link a KPI web part to a list dynamically through code. This should be as easy as saying

SPLimitedWebPartManager manager;
 
Microsoft.SharePoint.Portal.WebControls.KPIListWebPart myWebPartReference;
SPList myStatusListReference;
myWebPartReference.TitleURL = myStatusListReference.RootFolder.ServerRelativeUrl;
myWebPartReference.ListURL = myStatusListReference.RootFolder.ServerRelativeUrl;
 
// You will get a NullReferenceException here
manager.SaveChanges(myWebPartReference);

Doing this simple bit of code (some details left out obviously, so don’t copy and paste the above) will result in a NullReferenceException (Object reference is not set to an instance of an object).

The issue is actually in Microsoft’s code and it wasn’t until I ran ILSpy that I saw it. In the setter for ListURL, you can see what the problem is.

bool flag = string.IsNullOrEmpty(this.TitleUrl);
if (!flag && Uri.TryCreate(KPIHelper.GetAsAbsoluteUrl(this.TitleUrl), UriKind.Absolute, out uri) && Uri.TryCreate(KPIHelper.GetAsAbsoluteUrl(this.listUrl), UriKind.Absolute, out uri2))
{
// details omitted
}
if (flag)
{
this.TitleUrl = value;
}
 
this.listUrl = value

So it is basically checking to see if the TitleURL is set already, and if it is it will call this KPIHelper.GetAsAbsoluteUrl which demands an SPContext.Current reference. This does not exist during the provisioning and feature activation through creating a site collection through Central Administration, so was giving the null reference.

Very strange because if you do not set the TitleURL at all, then it will simply assume everything is fine and set the TitleURL to the same as the ListURL for you, which is the fix for this.

I guess I was being a bit too helpful and explicit and should of let SharePoint try to do it’s thing, though the problem is certainly not obvious.

When this happens AD FS 2.0 shows this in the GUI.

AD FS 2.0 Certificate Not Found – Set Service Communications Certificate fails through GUI as well.

In addition, you also get a nice error with an “Object not set to an instance of an object” when you click on “Set Service Communications Certificate” if you are following the instructions from the Technet Wiki or the Technet Article itself.

So how do we resolve this? Powershell to the rescue.

First, you can verify that this is your problem.

Load the Powershell addon for AD FS and then use the get-adfscertificate command.

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add-pssnapin microsoft.adfs.powershell
get-adfscertificate | ? { $_.CertificateType -eq "Service-Communications" }

Certificate     :
CertificateType : Service-Communications
IsPrimary       : True
StoreLocation   : LocalMachine
StoreName       : My

Notice that the “Certificate” is null. This is what is likely killing the AD FS 2.0 Management Console.

Now we just need to assign it a new certificate, in the same Powershell window. Note that you will need the certificate thumbprint of the certificate that you have already added to the computer personal store. This is typically the same certificate used to secure your IIS site. See the Technet documentation for those requirements.

Make sure that the user running your AD FS 2.0 Windows Service (ours was running as Network Service), has permissions to the private key of the certificate you are using. You can give read access through the certificates snap-in.

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set-adfscertificate -certificatetype "Service-Communications" -thumprint "Your Certificate Thumbprint"

Once this is done, you will need to bounce the AD FS 2.0 windows service on each server in the farm, and then you will see the proper certificate noted in the GUI after you refresh.

Now everything should work as expected.

INTJs apply (often ruthlessly) the criterion “Does it work?” to everything from their own research efforts to the prevailing social norms. This in turn produces an unusual independence of mind, freeing the INTJ from the constraints of authority, convention, or sentiment for its own sake … INTJs are known as the “Systems Builders” of the types, perhaps in part because they possess the unusual trait of combining imagination and reliability. Whatever system an INTJ happens to be working on is for them the equivalent of a moral cause; both perfectionism and disregard for authority come into play. Personal relationships, particularly romantic ones, can be the INTJ’s Achilles heel … This happens in part because many INTJs do not readily grasp the social rituals … Perhaps the most fundamental problem, however, is that INTJs really want people to make sense.

This is probably a good summary of my thinking, and I could not agree more. Most of you people make zero sense. You walk around riding highs and lows of your emotions, and discard logic or rationality out the window. While I cannot really comprehend where you are coming from, at least I am logical enough to understand that is what happening. Perhaps you can provide me with a guide on how to deal with you.

Here are some things to keep in mind if you have contact with me, in no particular order.

I will debate you on everything.

This is the most important point of this entire post. There is no subject that is sacred and free from the constant debate. In my mind, all ideas (mine and yours) are supposed to (hell, we have an obligation to) constantly test them and discard, modify, or keep them based on their merits. This makes me seem argumentative, and many times if engaging a debate with someone who has no interest in debating, makes me seem like I believe I am always right.

This is actually not completely true. I believe I am right until evidence is provided otherwise, of which I am perfectly willing to absorb and integrate into my own ideas.

This extends to the very metaphysical world, and a comprehensive philosophy that drives all life. If I find new information or a new idea that is better than an existing one, or makes more sense, I will gladly discard entire portions of my “life system” in favor of the new one.

This also makes me seem like I might have constantly shifting opinions. This is false. Rigidify to new ideas is the worst thing imaginable to an INTJ because new information and ideas are paramount to all other things, so my shifting opinions are just flexibility in an obviously changing world. This is a completely rational view of things.

I don’t necessarily believe what I am debating you on.

This is also an important one, and an extension of the previous one. I will engage in hours of debate with someone on a subject on which I believe the exact same position as them. Why would someone waste time like that you ask? Well, I am not exactly sure, but I find that this kind of debate usually leads to a more concise viewpoint and may even lead to more ideas down the same path.

This can also be incredibly infuriating when this tactic is revealed. I don’t know how many times the debate has reached it’s natural conclusion and I tell the other person that I really believed what they thought the entire time, and was just taking the opposing view to have a debate. Do not take offense or believe that I was deliberately wasting your time (what, you don’t like to debate?!?), I was merely making sure that the idea was tested appropriately.

Excuse my warped, blunt and sarcastic humor

This one is easy. I don’t understand your “human” emotions or your emotional needs. So let me apologize in advance for offending you with my humor. You can rest assured that I understand the significance, historical reference and all cultural ambiance related to the sarcastic warped comment I just made, so there is no reason to take offense.

I Don’t Understand your Emotions (or my own)

Do not get angry when I do not pick up on, understand, or provide any kind of emotional support. It is not that I do not care, the unfortunate truth is that I don’t even understand (or even want to understand) my own emotions, so how could I understand yours?

Do Your Research

The quickest way to create a situation where your feelings get hurt and the conversation (debate) gets quickly out of hand is to come to the table with an ill-thought out idea. If what you are saying does not make sense and you cannot back it up reasonably well, then I will have to mercilessly destroy your idea until there is nothing left.

I mean no offense during this process, as I am sure your idea sounded great to you, however it is necessary to keep the universe in order. Sorry.

I Expect You to be Like Me

This one probably confuses people the most. It usually plays out like this.

1. We have a rational debate.
2. You present your arguments.
3. I present my arguments.
4. Your arguments are weak.
5. My arguments are strong.
6. You should be convinced.
7. …
8. The universe is now in order.

Unfortunately, many people seem not comprehend step 6. If your arguments are not rational or do not make any sense and mine are rational, then you must yield. If you do not, then the world is not in order.

Don’t you people want the world to be in order?!?

It is very likely that you and I will not know each other very long if we cannot get past #6. This is not hubris, as if you were to give me an argument that made sense and I was convinced I was wrong, I would gladly yield and acknowledge that you were right.

The bottom line is that I expect people to act in sane, logical and rational ways. When they don’t, it makes the entire system of human interaction break down.

Irrationality Gets the Boot

As an extension to the above, if you behave in an irrational manner or present continual arguments that make no sense, be prepared to at best become a running joke and at worst get the boot from our lives completely.

Irrationality cannot be tolerated and must be aggressively destroyed at all times.

Being Critical is a Compliment

If I am being very critical of one of your ideas or thoughts, then you should feel encouraged. You see, your idea is getting the same treatment as every thought that passes through my head. It is evaluated, picked apart, weighed, disassembled, assembled, and either used or discarded. In the process you may find that your idea is completely changed, but it was changed into something better!

Do not be offended when your idea becomes barely recognizable in a flurry of my own. As I said, internally I am always destroying my own ideas, so why should yours be any different.

You should take offense (or probably more accurately see the point doing your research above) if I do not give your idea this treatment. It means that it is not even worth the time to deconstruct because it can be dismissed offhand.

I Don’t Care What You Think About Me

A life of debate has basically trained me to not care if you think I am an arrogant asshole. The fact of the matter is I brought forth my vision and exposed it for you to disassemble and refine and you failed (if you didn’t then we wouldn’t be examining why you think I am an arrogant asshole). You need to see the above points because you took offense when you shouldn’t have.

I Like Being Alone Sometimes

No offense, but being around people is exhausting. After a long day dealing with all you people, my life is drained out of me. I need to be alone with my thoughts, or looking up precious information, or working on some sort of quantitative analysis, or reading some deep philosophy, or some other internal pursuit.

It is nothing personal, and it doesn’t really mean anything about any personal relationships with the people that I ignore when alone. It just means that, generally, I find other people exhausting. It probably has to do with constantly having to shoot all of your ideas down.

Do Not Tell me What to Do

Oh wow. This is probably the worst. You see, each idea, order, or other thought must go through “the filter” and be judged as any other. You must understand that anything that tries to bypass this filter is immediately suspect, and pushing that fact will get you on my bad side very quickly.

The bottom line is that the process an INTJ takes to evaluate an idea is the only acceptable process. Telling an INTJ what to do essentially tells him or her that their process is invalid, and then telling someone to do is also not debatable.

It is very likely that I will simply ignore your order, or even better do the exact opposite, especially if your order doesn’t make sense anyway.

F.A.Q

Enjoy this F.A.Q. that I got from INTJ Central, as it more humorously teaches you about INTJs. All of these apply to me.

Q: Where can I find an INTJ?

A: We INTJs are über-introverts, so we prefer asynchronous and semi-anonymous forms of communication. We get most of our socialization through internet forums and Usenet newsgroups. Look for us there.

Q: Can I become an INTJ?

A: Unless you are born an INTJ, your only hope is to find a genie lamp while strolling on the beach, rub it, and make a wish. You can fake being one of us by burying yourself in a mound of books, nerding out on a favorite subject (like quantum mechanics, not needlepoint), wandering around by yourself, not giving a damn what others think of you, etc. If this sounds like too much work, just try doing a good robot impersonation.

Q: How can I break up with my INTJ?

A: Tell us the truth. We’ll reply, “Sure, why not?”, and go on with our lives.

Q: My INTJ is trying to take over the world. Should I be concerned?

A: Remember, he’s trying to take over the world for the betterment of everyone and everything. Just go ahead and let him. He’ll be happy and the world will be a more organized and efficient place.

Q: My INTJ just told me I’m retarded. Should I take offense?

A: You probably are retarded, by our standards. But don’t take offense. Our standards are so high that even we don’t meet them. We judge ourselves more harshly than we judge others.

Q: My INTJ isn’t sensitive to my feelings. Should I take offense?

A: We aren’t even sensitive to our own feelings. Why should we be expected to be sensitive to yours? We won’t even try to fake it. Insincerity is a pet peeve of ours, and anyway, it would ruin our reputation if we ever showed emotion.

Q: Why doesn’t my INTJ ever show emotions or feelings?

A: Because he doesn’t have any. Actually, that’s not strictly true; it’s just that we tend to get emotional about things you might not appreciate. INTJs have been known to cry during the liftoff scene in “Apollo 13″, for example, and there are also many touching moments in some of the Star Trek movies. An INTJ may also smile or laugh at random for no apparent reason; probably one of the voices in his head just made a good joke.

Q: My INTJ doesn’t care about me any more after he tried to explain his idea and I didn’t listen. What should I do?

A: Ideas are of prime importance to INTJs, and disregarding or not listening to our ideas is the highest form of insult. Although INTJs do not hold grudges, neither do we go out of our way to associate with people who don’t give serious consideration to our ideas. You’ll be in damage control mode for quite some time, fighting an uphill battle to get back into our good graces.

Q: My INTJ won’t talk to me. What should I do?

A: What subjects are you trying to talk about? Most INTJs hate gossip, and all of us hate talk of relationships. We also don’t do small talk. Try quantum physics, psychology, or some other deep (but non-touchy/feely) topic. If all else fails, try email instead.

Q: Why does my INTJ keep correcting my grammar?

A: Probably because you are being grammatically incorrect. The next time you tell your INTJ that you’re going to “try and [do something]”, prepare to get bitch-slapped. It’s “try to”, not “try and”. And there’s no such word as “irregardless”. Words have specific meanings, and language has specific rules; please abide by them. And don’t even get us started on your contextually ambiguous use of pronouns.

Q: I have this REALLY good idea… should I tell an INTJ?

A: Sleep on it… for a week or so. If it’s still so appealing, sleep on it for another week. Then maybe run it by one of us and we’ll pick it apart for you. Your idea is more likely to survive our scrutiny relatively unscathed if you have actual logical arguments and sound evidence with which to back it up.

Q: Is it dangerous to annoy an INTJ?

A: First we will ignore you, then we will launch a volley of extremely witty but esoteric insults that will probably go right over your head, and finally we will just engage the “nod-and-smile” autopilot and go back to ignoring you. Best to leave us alone at this point. If you push us too far we may blow up your head with our telekinetic abilities. So, yes, it can be dangerous to annoy an INTJ.

Q: What are the pet peeves of INTJs?

A: Thanks for asking. Our pet peeves are:

• We dislike surprises.
• We hate having decisions made for us. We’re INTJs; nobody is more qualified to make decisions than us.
• We dislike getting gifts, as it burdens us with the need to reciprocate.
• We hate small talk, gossip, and relationship/people talk. Really anything mundane is beneath us.
• We get particularly annoyed by attacks on our intelligence, competence, and integrity.
• We hate it when people try to manipulate us.
• Insincerity and lying.
• People interfering with our alone time.
• People who are chronically late.
• People who talk incessantly. We will just engage our “nod and smile” autopilot and mentally go somewhere else.
• People who are stupid, arrogant, opinionated, and/or closed minded.
• Crooked/badly placed pictures.
• Superficiality (body piercings, pimped out cars, brightly colored anything).
• Salespeople. INTJs are immune to emotional manipulation and have zero tolerance for lines of bullshit.
• Incorrect grammar and word usage.
• People who waste our time (see Salespeople, people interfering with our alone time, etc.).

Q: My INTJ keeps disappearing. Is this normal?

A: Yes. We need our “alone time” to recharge, more so than any of the other introverted MBTI types. Being around people for very long sucks the life force out of us, and we sneak off to be by ourselves whenever our “low battery” warning light starts to flash. (And in those cases where we can’t disappear physically, we will retreat into our minds.) Consequently we have great stealth capability; we can sit in a corner, observing while being unobserved, and we can escape, unnoticed, when we’re ready to move on.

Q: Why can’t my INTJ remember anything?

A: This is normal. Most of us INTJs are very forgetful. We have too much going on in our heads at any time to remember a lot of new stuff. Also, we zone out and go into autopilot mode quite frequently. We often won’t remember where we put our car keys because we weren’t “there” when we did it.

Q: My INTJ employee consistently strolls into work an hour late and leaves an hour late, every day. He/she seems to make their own hours, however the job gets done rather well. Should I feel disrespected?

A: Time is relative to the INTJ, and getting the job done right is paramount. We do not like wasting our time, so we will often adjust our schedules accordingly to miss AM and PM rush-hour traffic. The more traffic we miss, the more time we have for books, movies, video games, books, message boards, books, etc. You should feel disrespected, although it has nothing to do with them not honoring your work rules; it has to do with them not thinking you are particularly smart or competent. If you were smart/competent, you wouldn’t be going on about getting your wittle bitty feewings hurt by your disrespectful but high-performing INTJ employee.

Q: My INTJ is very pedantic.

A: Strictly speaking, that’s not a question.

Q: Dammit, see what I mean?

A: Yes, the irony was not lost on me as I typed the previous answer.

Q: And sarcastic as hell, too.

A: Sarcasm is a free public service we provide to those within earshot. No need to thank us. We also do irony, hyperbole, word-play and puns, one-liners, quick-witted observations and flippant remarks, and abstract and deep philosophical insights on nonsensical themes. Our sense of humor tends to be dry, warped, and morbid, and not everybody “gets” us.

Q: Why does my INTJ just “shut down” at the end of the day?

A: Our minds are always buzzing with plans and theories, and we cannot voluntarily get it to stop. But even an Indy 500 car will coast to a halt after it runs out of gas. When we are very tired our brains slow down, and we become normal or even a bit retarded. If we start asking you to repeat what you just told us but more slowly this time, and/or if we can no longer perform simple routine tasks like computing an orbital transfer burn or finding a memory leak in 10,000 lines of C++ code, you know it’s time for us to call it a day.

Q: Why is my INTJ so… well, so freakin’ WEIRD??!?

A: It’s probably just a side effect of the way our brains work. Many of us tend to be rather obsessive-compulsive, for instance ordering our cd’s, dvd’s, and books by genre then alphabetically (by title for dvd’s, by group then title for cd’s, and by author then title for books, except for series which must be kept in appropriate serial order). Most of us have other quirks as well, e.g., always eating M&M’s in a specific color order, naming our children in alphabetical order, etc. It’s a small price to pay for genius, really.

Q: Why does my INTJ just start nodding and smiling after we’ve been talking for a couple of minutes?

A:

Q: I said, WHY DOES MY INTJ START NODDING AND… Oh I get it, you’re being sarcastic again. Does it ever get old?

A: [ hey, more Wayne Newton anagrams… We Want On Yen, Ant On New Yew, Way None Went… ]

Q: Hello? Are you going to answer any more questions?

A: [ … “Hair Salon For Stray Nerd Nuns”, “Larry Moe and Curly’s On”, “Karaoke’s Not That Fun”, “Harry Potter’s Gay Stepson”, … ]

Q: Asshole. I’m outta here.

A: [ works every time ]