The logical mind never takes a vacation.
I was standing in a hotel shower in Chicago, staring at the three little bottles lined up on the ledge. Body wash, conditioner, shampoo. In that order. This is not a one-time thing. Every hotel I have stayed in around the world arranges them this way. From left to right: Body wash, conditioner, shampoo. Think about that for a second. Who on earth uses conditioner before shampoo?
I suspect they intend for you to wash your hair first, condition, then body last.
My wife Terri says I overthink everything. She is probably right. But this is what happens when you're an engineer. You cannot turn it off. You notice the inefficiency in how grocery store aisles are laid out, with the milk at the back forcing you to walk past every impulse purchase in the building. You wonder why light switches in most American homes flip up for on when the rest of the world does it the other way. You mentally redesign the traffic flow of every parking garage you enter because clearly nobody with an engineering degree was consulted.
For us nerds, thinking differently is not a personality quirk. It is the whole point. When Chris Brunhaver examines a speaker crossover, he challenges assumptions the industry accepted decades ago. Our PMG Signature preamplifier exists because we looked at the standard approach to preamp design and asked, why are we still using electrolytic capacitors in the power supply when film caps sound so much better?
The beautiful thing about all of us thinking differently is that this diversity pushes everything forward. The musician hears something the engineer misses. The listener catches a problem the designer glossed over.
So the next time you are in a hotel and you reach for that conditioner bottle sitting smugly in second position where the shampoo should be, think of me. I am probably three time zones away having the same silent argument with the same illogical arrangement. And then I am going back to the listening room to obsess over something that actually matters.
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