So...there's this thing my head does when someone mentions something anywhere near my areas of expertise, where my head will immediately begin tracing out how it works - what it interacts with - what the base requirements are - possible attack vectors - mitigative strategies - unless I suppress this reflexive thought pattern by force.

Is there a term for this?

'cuz it's -really- annoying, especially when I'm tired and the suppression isn't working so well.

It's also part of why I don't sleep right :-/

@munin

I think it's an overstimulation of the pattern recognition areas of the brain relative to highly-reinforced neuronal connectivity networks that you have built-up over the years of doing what you do.

I suffer from it too.

I have no idea what it might be called other than "categorically specific hyper-awareness syndrome" or some such nonsense? 😕

@richarddlarson @munin (I have similar tendencies. No, no clue what its called or where to begin.)
@munin oh, i fall asleep thinking about things all the time. i came up with an idea for doing encryption on a service like this the other night.
@rabcyr It's figuring out how to get to the sleep part that's the challenge :-/
@munin I've found it to be ok from that point. I enjoy analyzing stuff, so the impact on sleep doesn't feel so bad. Then again in my case sleep is probably less impacted than with you.
What is harder for me is controlling the urge to share excitement over stuff like that. I fear I'm really annoying to people around me because of it. Some are very tolerant to it, but it still feels like having an impact on communication skills.