Liu Ningning’s real name actually isn’t Liu Ningning.
When I help him explain his real name it’s always some official position from some dynasty.
But Liu Ningning’s name on courier deliveries is “Liu Ningning”,
which has resulted in my own delivery name being “Liu Ningning’s deskmate”.
Liu Ningning and I were college roommates,
and later co-workers.
Because our company is full of mutual-flattery culture,
we basically address each other as either X-zong or X-shen or X-boss.
So later I started addressing Liu Ningning as Liu-zong (Boss Liu).
This forcibly twisted around years of college-era address.
Now when I say Liu-zong’s real name, it feels awkward.
Boss Liu’s real name isn’t Liu Ningning.
But he really likes the surname Liu,
so when he needs to enter test data,
it’s either “Honey-Voiced Waiter Liu Ningning”,
or “Liu Chun”.
Boss Liu cares a lot about privacy and security.
For a period, Boss Liu cancelled all the accounts he wasn’t using.
But some websites don’t provide cancellation (like Sina Weibo),
which really annoyed him.
Previously when I wrote articles on Zhihu I often mentioned Boss Liu’s real name,
and after his teammates discovered it, they teased Boss Liu about it,
so Boss Liu asked me to replace the real names in the articles with aliases.
Some I replaced with Liu Ningning,
some with Liu Chun,
some with ldsink.
Later Boss Liu stared at the five or six articles that came up in search and sighed:
“This many articles, it’s basically like a girlfriend…”
Boss Liu’s ID is ldsink.
GitHub/ldsink or ldsink.com are both Boss Liu.
Boss Liu says this name is an abbreviation of LinuxDeepin Sink,
and Deepin is a great Linux distribution,
Sink corresponds to his name.
Sure enough Boss Liu is a true Deepin lover.
Boss Liu basically only uses Deepin now.
(Except when playing dota2)
Programmers at my company are standard-issued Mac computers,
but only 8GB of default memory and the default iOS system is sometimes inconvenient.
Under Boss Liu’s suggestion and within budget,
I switched to a Hasee laptop + two 16G memory sticks.
He switched to a Dell laptop + two 8G memory sticks.
Later my Hasee was blue-screening every day.
Boss Liu chuckled: “I bet it’s the memory’s fault, why don’t we swap?”
After swapping, with the two 8G memory sticks, my Hasee indeed stopped blue-screening.
Boss Zhang, who watched the whole process, exclaimed:
“This is Boss Liu’s art of memory transfer!”
Boss Liu is an ACG otaku.
Although broadly you could introduce Boss Liu as an anime otaku,
I actually think he counts as ACG Otaku,
i.e. “an otaku deeply immersed in anime, manga, and games”.
Last year (‘17) Boss Liu started a “Sword Art Online: Ordinal Scale” movie-viewing campaign,
while also revealing his excitement as a member of the Matsuoka Yoshitsugu Marriage-Forcing Association.
During one period in college, his phone ringtone was Steins;Gate’s OP “Hacking to the Gate”,
and his text notification ringtone was Kana’s “tuturu~”.
So I’d always wait until class time, when he’d forgotten to turn on silent mode, to poke him with WeChat messages.
Boss Liu is a lolicon.
He probably really enjoys loli voices.
During a dorm-room late-night chat in college,
when discussing the topic of “what trait do you value most in girls”,
Boss Liu once mentioned voice as a very important trait:
“Pretty faces always age,
good personalities may change,
but a good voice is forever this beautiful~
Look at all those seiyuu, they’re monsters~”
Boss Liu was admitted to Jiao Da through OI exemption.
Boss Liu graduated from Yali High School.
I also studied at Changjun High School for a while.
Sometimes we’d talk about the carefree life after early college admission.
Boss Liu said back then they’d go to internet cafes as a group.
The jungler junglers, the mid-laner mid-lanes, having a great time.
Boss Liu plays Dota, his main is Furion (the Prophet).
After meeting roommates in college, the first thing was to share interests and hobbies.
Boss Liu, Yu Xiang, and I all played Dota.
Xiao Lai also got dragged in by us to play Dota for a while.
Boss Liu’s main is Furion.
His specialty technique is high-ground jungling,
then teleporting to mid to gank Shadow Fiend,
or going Aghs to electro Shadow Fiend,
or going for items first then silencing Shadow Fiend.
Back during 11 platform’s ranked games,
under our division of labor,
Boss Liu even started a chat-style approach:
high-ground jungling while
chatting about life with the enemy Shadow Fiend.
Boss Liu has quite a few close friends.
Back in college, you could form a 5-stack in minutes through Boss Liu.
(No guarantees on quality)
Once our dorm of three plus a friend of Boss Liu’s did a 4-stack.
After losing one game,
I sighed “Boss Liu, this friend of yours is a bit weak”,
then I looked at the scoreboard:
This player (Boss Liu’s friend) Storm Spirit hero rating: 1 point (normal scores are 1000~3000),
this match: -0 points.
Yu Xiang: -_-
Me: =_=
Boss Liu: +_+
Later we often dragged him along to stack,
and under the flag of “win one and then sleep” played all night.
Boss Liu is very willing to share his knowledge.
During college dorm late-night chats,
when the topic came up of “how to use contraception”,
because Yu Xiang and Xiao Lai both lacked the relevant safety knowledge,
Boss Liu enthusiastically explained “safe periods and contraceptive pills” to everyone.
Later we even opened a six-pack of Durex,
used two by filling them with water to play around,
and finally each of the four of us put one in our drawers.
Thinking about how the next day the cleaning lady would clear the trash
and see used Durex suddenly appear in a guys’ dorm…
We all laughed our heads off without conscience…
When clearing out drawers at graduation,
all four of us found years-expired Durex…
Boss Liu also has a salesman’s talent.
Now in the office, many teammates have Xiaomi phones,
use Xiaomi sockets,
take temperatures with iHealth thermometers,
all thanks to Boss Liu’s recommendations.
Boss Liu’s recommending technique is unusually slick:
Introduce the product: “This XX is worth buying, the features are XX, made by XX, solves the XX problem…”
Disparage competitors: “That XX is super expensive, doesn’t have XX feature, look at how badly XX uses it…”
Instant delivery: “I just bought this XX yesterday. You want it? If you want it I can give you this one…”
Settle payment: “Just scan my payment QR code. Look, Zaihui Cha Canteen, so convenient (smiles)…”
Boss Liu is a Taurus, and has a good sense of money.
Although Boss Liu probably doesn’t really believe in horoscopes.
Boss Liu started trading stocks in college.
When picking electives he even rallied Shui-ge to take “Investment Securities” together.
Boss Liu also has a deep understanding of credit cards,
last year he successfully dragged several friends into the “swipe to get Starbucks” loop.
Later when our company was working on payments,
everyone felt this feature should belong to Boss Liu.
Later the recurring “can vouchers stack” wok was also naturally taken on by Boss Liu.
Brother Jing only respects Boss Liu.
(Chinese teacher said you need side descriptions,
think about it, let’s use Brother Jing as the foil.)
Brother Jing is our company’s frontend boss,
not only responsible for writing some JS files (deadpan),
but also for setting up the entire frontend server architecture.
Since he’s a boss himself,
Brother Jing has always been very arrogant,
except when talking with Boss Liu.
Every time Brother Jing sneaks down the hallway,
then asks Boss Liu: “Boss, this little brother has a question, blabla…”
(Though every time on payment-related issues,
the two of them argue fiercely)
Boss Liu can’t tolerate outdated technology.
In the previous article “How We Upgraded to Python 3”,
it mentioned that Boss Liu acted as the driver of the whole Python 3 upgrade,
taking on the woks of dividing responsibility, taking blame, and other things no one wanted to do.
After discovering that Git Commits can be signed,
Boss Liu happily signed all his own Commits,
and looking at the green verified labels on GitHub/GitLab,
Boss Liu was very pleased.
Boss Liu is actually a very reserved person.
I think he probably likes the saying “The lofty tree in the forest, the wind shall break it; the heap rising above the bank, the current shall sweep it away; the man whose conduct surpasses others, the crowd shall criticize him.”
Although Boss Liu also really likes watching drama (gossiping),
he generally doesn’t directly express his views on things,
unless he can’t hold it in.
So sometimes to get Boss Liu to talk,
you can mischievously express controversial views,
like “I think kafka is a god-tier decoupling tool, can be used in any scenario”…
Boss Liu is also a lazy person.
For example, renting an apartment,
Boss Liu chose Ziroom because it’s simple and convenient.
For example, his toolbox,
Boss Liu turned all his frequently-done ops operations into scripts.
For example, answering questions,
if anyone has an operational question for Boss Liu,
his first instinct is to throw a document/script at them and let them run it themselves.
But in some matters Boss Liu is also very diligent.
His blog ldsink.com has maintained roughly a one-update-per-month rhythm since ‘14.
Boss Liu is very pale.
Literally.
Boss Liu was also chubby for a period.
Once when going to interview a candidate,
after several rounds, Boss Xie came out and laughingly told Boss Liu:
“The candidate just said: ‘That pale chubby interviewer from before was really impressive!’”
The heavily-stimulated Boss Liu spent the next two months eating only salads for dinner…
Boss Liu can’t help laughing when he wants to laugh.
A while ago Boss Liu picked up Onmyoji again,
then one evening at dinner,
I watched as he drew an SSR Higanbana.
Then Boss Liu had this complicated happy expression:
“Oh I’m so happy, oh I should keep it low-key,
oh I can’t flaunt the card in front of others,
oh but I really am so happy.”
This same expression also appeared when everyone was watching the Ziguang Court gutter oil incident…
Although Boss Liu and I work at the same company,
basically when we chat we don’t talk about work-related things.
Instead we chat about “when are we going to Jiao Da to get alumni cards”,
“how did you find your apartment when you moved”,
“the XX bank card has really great benefits, you should get one, if you don’t use it you can give it to me”,
“if you’re not playing your old account anymore, can I log in to grind soul daimyo”,
and other trivial things…
Probably it’s a kind of “I’ve got your back” peace of mind.
That’s my friend, Liu Ningning.