My Other Strategy at Work: Looking the Least Incompetent

Recent conversations:

• Coworker, on the technical staff: I heard that we get to take classes on campus for free. I was thinking of taking [freshman level computer science].


• Me (over email): [One of the users of the supercomputer] has a question about Hadoop.
  Coworker, on the technical staff (emails back): What's Hadoop?


• Me: How fast is the connection [from the supercomputer] to the Internet?
  Coworker, on the technical staff: It depends whether you're on the wired or the wireless network.


• Coworker (over email): [Really important thing that happened last year] is coming up soon, right?
  Me (over email): No one has said anything to me about it happening again this year.
  Coworker (over email): It says in the webpage archives that it's happening in March 2010. That should say March 2011, right?