I think that Stephenson does a really good job of connecting the personalities of Randy and Lawrence. The first thing I noticed was that they are both described as having trouble remembering names. I recently noticed a paragraph on page 488 about Lawrence, that reminded me of Randy's idea of License-Plate-making. "The rest might seem like glorious conquest to people like the General, but to Turing, and now to Waterhouse, it just looks like tedious mopping-up. It is exciting to discover electrons and figure out the equations that govern their movement; it is boring to use those principles to design electric can openers.