verbs and icons and my dad

My mind seems to be wired in terms of verbs: the roles things play, versus an essentialist notion of "what they are". This is a powerful way of thinking about the things, but it can have some odd side effects. For instance, I am surprisingly slow at recognizing certain icons and associating them with the software functions they go with. 

To the right is my OSX Dock at work. Most of the images are relatively associate with their function: Sourcetree looks like a file tree, Stickies looks like post-its, Terminal looks like a terminal window. A few others, like Chrome and and Vidyo (the isomorphic cube) make up for the lack of use-association with great big hunks of color. (Finder I remember because it's always at the top of the list - that's the same kind of positional memory I rely on in iOS. Again, it's not that I can't hunt and find icons, I just don't want to have to for the icons I use the most.) 

This little guy has always proven problematic:
It's for the (very good, and free) "Komodo" Editor, and I guess it supposed to be a dragon or lizard head. I don't use it as much as I used to, though. 

But lately, my recognition nemesis is this guy:
That's for IntelliJ by JetBrains (hence the J?) the editor I spend most of my coding time in these days. But that icon... though the other day (and I'm chagrined at how long it took me) I realized I could use another hook. Those are the initials of my dad, Jim. 

Obviously, there's no particularly strong natural association between my deceased father and a code editor, but in this case the other connections I have are stepping in and making me think of James Israel when I sense myself hunting for the right icon... I actually enjoy the little tribute of it, as weird and idiosyncratic as the connection is.