This works because many perfumes/colognes use the secretions from a Civet cat's ass glands as a fragrance or stabilizer. Any many that don't, use a very similar synthetic compound.
It sounds like someone is working their way through their Science Fiction reading list: Calculating God by Robert J. Sawyer contains this event. Not a bad book. It got nominated for a Hugo.
Don't be arrogant; show some modesty or humility in regards to your skills no matter how 1337 they are. The other side of this is be open to new ideas, even from non-technical people.
Try to have some empathy for people, especially non-technical people you may have to work with. No matter what you know now, we all started out knowing the same thing: nothing. People will have a lot more respect for you if they know you are trying to engage with them on their level.
You could just get a ham receiver/scanner without a license. Set a 'listening station' up for yourself. I was down at a mall Radio Shack the other day and tucked in the back were a couple hand held ham/marine/aviation FM VHF 2m scanners. They were fairly cheap. This would give you some idea of what Hams do.
Though, I do believe it's legal to own a ham transmitter without a license, I think it's just illegal to transmit until your have a license.
"...but I'd rather go with 'classical' window managers, like Openbox/Gnome/KDE..."
Seriously? You think KDE and Gnome are 'classical' window managers? Neither of them is a window manager. They don't call themselves window managers. They might include a window manager, but that's not what they are. Classical window managers are things like TWM, FVWM, Window Maker, Fluxbox, Blackbox, Enlightenment, Afterstep.
Gumpy old Linux guy.
I've installed almost a dozen solar powered network backhaul repeater sites in Alaska for research projects. Since we go in by helicopter we have a limited time and weight available to us. So we use armored cat5 instead of pulling conduit. You can get outdoor cat5e and armored fiber from blackbox.
My grandfather worked as a launch operations engineer for an air force contractor in the 60s and 70s. They did have a "Pad Cat" living on the launch pad to control mice. He said it was the only effective thing. And yes, someone had the specific task of finding the cat and taking him into the bunk house when they cleared the pad for launches.
"If people are good only because they fear punishment, and hope for reward, then we are a sorry lot indeed." -- Albert Einstein