MemeMachineGo!

I’m a senior software engineer. Since the mid-‘90’s, my job has included interviewing people. The late ‘90’s were heady times in my field, especially in the Bay Area.

The joke was that you could get a job if you could spell HTML. It was pretty much true. You needed more than that for the positions I was interviewing candidates for, though. Some of the time the interviewees didn’t have it.

And some of those times, by the time we got back to the candidate to say we weren’t interested, he or she had already accepted an offer elsewhere for a godawful amount of money.

I mentioned previously that when my job before last went south, I took a long lunch and got a new one.

The story’s true as written, but there were two omissions, one of which makes it less dramatic, one of which makes it moreso.

1) I’d already been looking for another job, and had already scheduled the interview. 2) I quit before the interview. My PHB’s reaction was to ask what was the salary I’d accepted elsewhere. It was basically condescending, asking “OK, kid, so what do we have to beat to keep you?” as if he held all the cards, and I, none of them. When I told him I didn’t have another offer for him to beat, the conversation derailed — I’d deviated from his script.

Those were the boom times, and I could get away with that.

While I was at my last job, the boom turned bust.

Not long thereafter, I hired a kid fresh out of college. He proved to be a walking stereotype: the kid fresh out of college who thinks he knows everything. Worse, he had a sense of entitlement that matched his arrogance.

I just didn’t get that for a while, but when it clicked, it was blindingly obvious. For the whole of his college career, he had known nothing but the boom. He expected to graduate and instantly be on top of the world.

Poor bastard.

I fired his ass. I hope he’s gotten over himself in the meantime.

And then the bust got much more dire: it directly affected me. I was laid off.

I had more experience and skills than 4 years ago when I quit with no worries. But I was having a hard time even getting interviews. The seller’s market had turned buyer’s market in a big way. Companies were demanding years of experience in the exact systems they were using… and getting it. I had one interview that couldn’t have gone better, and then didn’t get the job because they found someone with experience in the exact ad serving software they used.

And Perl’s fallen out of favor for web development (to judge by Bay Area job listings.) Java and MSFT systems predominate, and most of what’s left is PHP.

So for 9 long months, I was unemployed. Not long ago, my unemployment ran out. With only Pocahontas’ salary, the mortgage would cut through our savings pretty quickly. We were trying to avoid talking about what to do about that.

I’d had an interview that had gone well, and then a second interview that had gone well, and a former co-worker not only worked at the place, but shared an office with one of my interviewers, and could recommend me. We felt optimistic.

And, happy ending, I got the job.

Now there’s something big I’ve still omitted.

I haven’t worked a 40-hour week since 1997.

After taking time off due to a crippling repetitive stress injury from insane overtime in insane start-ups, I sought jobs with less than full-time hours, but with full benefits.

And I got them.

Because it was the boom, and I could get away with that.

At DNAI, I worked 25 hours a week. At my last job, 30.

I can’t get away with it anymore.

Before I go on, let me make clear that I am very grateful to have found this position. I am well aware that my life is incredibly cushy, not just by the standard of humans in general, or even the standard of First World citizens, but by the standard of American professionals working full-time jobs.

I don’t have insane hours — it really is 40 (though it’s understood there’ll be overtime required at points.) My workplace is less than a mile and a half from home; I can bike it in ten minutes if I hurry. I don’t have to wear funny high-maintenance costumes that need dry-cleaning. I’m not on call nights and weekends.

But.

The difference between 40 hours and 30 hours is huge. Suddenly, it feels like I have to struggle for the time to do everything. Things that never required thought before — spending enough quality time with Pocahontas, with the kitties, getting enough quality time alone (I’m one of them there introverts) — now take effort. It feels like I only have about four elective hours a day, and I’m in trouble if I don’t spend a couple of them doing the infrastructure maintenance that lets me go back to work the next day.

You can see why my blogging frequency is off. I don’t have much time for web surfing.

I know there are people who have even more of their time spoken for. Commuting hours a day, working insane hours, raising kids.

Don’t know how they do it.

=v= If you're like me -- on the Internet for years, own a few websites, well-known in certain circles (never mind their diameters) and indexed a lot -- a vanity search is lots of fun. Do it on Google and you might even get some interesting ads served up. Apparently I can be purchased on eBay. Heck, just searching for one's unusual first name turns up some interesting stuff. (Give it a try, Zed).

A vanity search on Usenet is quite another matter. Usenet is a Dantean inferno, dominated by those who do the most flaming. When your name gets used, it's not necessarily a good thing.

For years, the top Google Groups search for my name turned up a ranting kook demanding that I denounce something called "Green Communism." Said kook used my name a lot, as if he (or I?) was Bob Dole. More recently, though, an unhinged loon seems to have misidentified me as an online alias, though offhand I can't tell whether I'm an alias for someone who actually exists. At any rate, the loon has a long list of accusations about my religion, crimes, sexual performance, diseases, drug use, and residence (New Jersey), and used my name 32 times.

Ironically, a Google Groups search would have shown that I've been at the same email address all millenium, and at a variant of it for the 1990s. Also, since I live in New York City I suppose I should raise the inevitable objection that I don't live in Jersey, but on the other hand I might just affect the requisite jaded nonreaction to it. You choose. Whatever. Do I look like I care?

Smokey the Bear’s Legacy on the West

No single human modification of the environment has had more pervasive and widespread negative consequences for the ecological integrity of North America than the suppression of fire. Fire suppression has destroyed the natural balance of the land more than overgrazing, logging, or the elimination of predators. One could easily build a case that an Environmental Impact Statement should be prepared prior to any fire suppression activities by government agencies since control of wildfires greatly alters the natural environment. Yet, most people are oblivious to the many long-term consequences of fire suppression policies.

[…] The western U.S. is sitting on a powderkeg. One of these summers the West will burn down. Fuel loading is so high, a fire-storm of incredible proportions will overwhelm our suppression capabilities. We also face greater possibilities of loss of human life and property as people continue to build houses in forested areas. This is analagous to building on the flood plain of a river. Sooner or later you pay the consequences. Communities have not recognized this problem and thus have not faced it with zoning restrictions.

(Via jdporter’s use.perl.org journal)

Slacktivist

October 13, 1992, was the day I gave up on mainstream journalism. It was the day I realized that such “journalism,” as it is now practiced, is surreal, irrelevant, unconcerned with facts or reality.

That was the day when I first recognized the appalling nonsense of “he said/she said” journalism. Others have described and lamented this phenomenon at great length, and with more clarity and insight than I can muster here. But since your first time is always special, let me tell you about my terrible epiphany of October 13, 1992.

I was watching the vice-presidential debate, which featured the incumbent, Dan Quayle, and the two challengers, Sen. Al Gore and retired Vice Admiral James Stockdale.

A key exchange in the debate involved Quayle’s misrepresentation of a passage from Gore’s book, Earth in the Balance. In the chapter in question, Gore argued for a new “Marshall Plan” to promote sustainable development in the Third World. Quayle offered a garbled interpretation of this idea and Gore corrected him.

The point here is that the debate got very specific — with Quayle citing a specific page number, page 304, of Gore’s book.

After the debate, I clicked between the networks and watched the talking heads discuss their feelings about which of the candidates was more “convincing” in this dispute. Nobody bothered to pick up a copy of the damned book, turn to page 304, and compare what the candidates said with the rather specific and easily checked facts of the matter.

The book was a best-seller. It shouldn’t have been hard to find a copy. Once Quayle cited a specific page number, I got up, walked across the living room, grabbed a copy of the book and looked up the passage. My apartment was apparently better equipped than the research departments of ABC, NBC and CBS news.

Yet none of the “journalists” apparently considered this their job. It did not even occur to them to look up the disputed passage.

Paul Krugman

Let’s face it: whatever happens in Thursday’s debate, cable news will proclaim President Bush the winner. This will reflect the political bias so evident during the party conventions. It will also reflect the undoubted fact that Mr. Bush does a pretty good Clint Eastwood imitation.

But what will the print media do? Let’s hope they don’t do what they did four years ago.

Interviews with focus groups just after the first 2000 debate showed Al Gore with a slight edge. Post-debate analysis should have widened that edge. After all, during the debate, Mr. Bush told one whopper after another - about his budget plans, about his prescription drug proposal and more. The fact-checking in the next day’s papers should have been devastating.

But as Adam Clymer pointed out yesterday on the Op-Ed page of The Times, front-page coverage of the 2000 debates emphasized not what the candidates said but their “body language.” After the debate, the lead stories said a lot about Mr. Gore’s sighs, but nothing about Mr. Bush’s lies. And even the fact-checking pieces “buried inside the newspaper” were, as Mr. Clymer delicately puts it, “constrained by an effort to balance one candidate’s big mistakes” - that is, Mr. Bush’s lies - “against the other’s minor errors.”

The result of this emphasis on the candidates’ acting skills rather than their substance was that after a few days, Mr. Bush’s defeat in the debate had been spun into a victory.

Adolf Hitler

All this was inspired by the principle - which is quite true in itself - that in the big lie there is always a certain force of credibility; because the broad masses of a nation are always more easily corrupted in the deeper strata of their emotional nature than consciously or voluntarily; and thus in the primitive simplicity of their minds they more readily fall victims to the big lie than the small lie, since they themselves often tell small lies in little matters but would be ashamed to resort to large-scale falsehoods. It would never come into their heads to fabricate colossal untruths, and they would not believe that others could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously. Even though the facts which prove this to be so may be brought clearly to their minds, they will still doubt and waver and will continue to think that there may be some other explanation. For the grossly impudent lie always leaves traces behind it, even after it has been nailed down, a fact which is known to all expert liars in this world and to all who conspire together in the art of lying. These people know only too well how to use falsehood for the basest purposes.

I watched the VP debate. It was ok, but remembering this, any outcome that didn’t involve Edwards rolling across the stage and plunging a stake through Cheney’s heart was gonna be a letdown.

So the town of Livermore, California hired an artist to make a mosaic mural featuring portraits and names of great figures in science, art and history. Unfortunately, $40,000 doesn’t buy you correct spelling these days. The mural celebrates Eistein, [Vincent] Van Gough, Michaelangelo, and [Paul] Guagan. and more. The town had voted to pay her another $6000 plus expenses to fly her back to fix it (state law prohibits modifying public art without the artist’s consent.) But now she’s coppin’ a ‘tude.

The artist who created the now-infamous Livermore library mosaic that contains 11 misspellings says she no longer wants to fix it because of the “nasty messages from people who don’t understand art.”

Because if you truly understood art, you’d just love to have your town library covered with misspellings.

Maria Alquilar, who complained that her name, too, was often misspelled

Ah, so there was a revenge motivation.

“My career in public art is over,” said the artist.

You got that right.

The artist said the names were spelled correctly on her sketches, but she got them wrong as she was doing the piece. She admits noticing “Einstein” was misspelled but choosing to go forward anyway. “I just wasn’t that concerned,” she said. “None of us are particularly good spellers anymore because of computers. When you are in a studio full of clay, you don’t give it much thought.

“I’m a militant apathetic — I don’t care, and neither should you.”

“When you look at Michelangelo’s David, do you point out that one (testicle) is lower than the other?”

“I cut all my life drawing classes in school.”

The city debated leaving the misspelled names and creating a game where visitors try to find them — an idea that angered Alquilar. “Can you imagine them suggesting that a work of art be used as a game?” she asked. “It is outrageous.”

Making the best of a bad situation with a potentially educational game: outrage. Pocketing $40,000 of taxpayer money for a project you couldn’t be arsed to get right: art!

I’ve got a house (and a mortgage.) I’ve got a wife. I’ve got homeowner’s insurance, life insurance, and a retirement plan. Today, I turned 37. And last Sunday, I bought a really big ladder, so I could clean my gutters. It’s now stored in my garage.

I’m reasonably certain I’m a grown-up now.

Mil Millington’s writing advice:

If the dizzy female protagonist finally realises that she’s been wasting her time on a succession of stupid, self-centred men, and that her sweet ‘friend’ David is the person she’s really loved all along, then I will hunt you down and spit in your ears. Relatedly, turning up at a fancy dress party, but - Ah-ha! - it’s not really fancy dress at all! You/she/he is the only one there in fancy dress, due to a misunderstanding/a lie told by the your/her/his evil rival: no. No, no, no. Seriously, just how many tiresome times do we see these clichés repeated? Writing them yet-a-bloody-gain will succeed in nothing but making me angry. And while you might get away with making other people angry, if you make me angry by sloshing out that lazy drivel I’ll break both of your legs, and then return every day for the next month to kick at your crutches.

This Neal Stephenson interview on Slashdot has a good essay on “commercial” vs. “literary” writers, and a lot more fun stuff.

A while back, I went to a writers’ conference. I was making chitchat with another writer, a critically acclaimed literary novelist who taught at a university. She had never heard of me. After we’d exchanged a bit of of small talk, she asked me “And where do you teach?” just as naturally as one Slashdotter would ask another “And which distro do you use?”

I was taken aback. “I don’t teach anywhere,” I said.

Her turn to be taken aback. “Then what do you do?”

“I’m…a writer,” I said. Which admittedly was a stupid thing to say, since she already knew that.

“Yes, but what do you do?”

I couldn’t think of how to answer the question—-I’d already answered it!

“You can’t make a living out of being a writer, so how do you make money?” she tried.

“From…being a writer,” I stammered.

I went to see Stephenson a few weeks ago when he was in town hawking The System of the World. It’s pretty obvious that he doesn’t really enjoy public speaking, but gamely accepts it as part of a job he loves. He didn’t read from the book, but answered questions from the audience.

The last question was: “In Snow Crash, you said the three things America did better than anyone are music, software, and pizza delivery. What would you change if you were giving that list today? Have we gotten any better?”¹

“Well, you can scratch software off the list,” he said. He paused to consider the matter. “I think I’d better just leave it at that.”

¹ Actually, Snow Crash says four things, those three plus movies. But that’s my recollection of how it was asked.

Sadly, this article probably isn’t going to sway any undecided voters. But for those who already know we’re in the shit, it’ll let you know just how deep it is.

In the summer of 2002, after I had written an article in Esquire that the White House didn’t like about Bush’s former communications director, Karen Hughes, I had a meeting with a senior adviser to Bush. He expressed the White House’s displeasure, and then he told me something that at the time I didn’t fully comprehend — but which I now believe gets to the very heart of the Bush presidency.

The aide said that guys like me were ”in what we call the reality-based community,” which he defined as people who ”believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.” I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. ”That’s not the way the world really works anymore,” he continued. ”We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality — judiciously, as you will — we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors … and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.”

Who besides guys like me are part of the reality-based community? Many of the other elected officials in Washington, it would seem. A group of Democratic and Republican members of Congress were called in to discuss Iraq sometime before the October 2002 vote authorizing Bush to move forward. A Republican senator recently told Time Magazine that the president walked in and said: ”Look, I want your vote. I’m not going to debate it with you.” When one of the senators began to ask a question, Bush snapped, ”Look, I’m not going to debate it with you.”

I’ve deliberately avoided posting about politics here, ‘cause, frankly, I was boring myself. But this is a must-read.

(Via just about everyone by now, but I saw it first at Amygdala)

Yet another good reason to give up driving: Microsoft wants your next car to run Windows.

Have more frightening words ever been spoken?

Hunter S. Thompson has made his endorsement, and he’s come out for… Nixon?

Nixon was a professional politician, and I despised everything he stood for — but if he were running for president this year against the evil Bush-Cheney gang, I would happily vote for him. You bet. Richard Nixon would be my Man. He was a crook and a creep and a gin-sot, but on some nights, when he would get hammered and wander around in the streets, he was fun to hang out with. He would wear a silk sweat suit and pull a stocking down over his face so nobody could recognize him. Then we would get in a cab and cruise down to the Watergate Hotel, just for laughs.

Life imitates Transmetropolitan and may God help us all.

Marvel’s got a line of motivational posters of the sort spoofed by despair.com. Captain America for Fortitude, the Hulk for Strength, Spider-Man for Character… not a bad idea — some geeks are managers, and vice versa.

And then I saw this one.

Magneto, a character who has repeatedly advocated and pursued literal genocide, standing for Possibilities.

I think the best I can hope for here is that whoever came up with these had never actually read the comics or seen the movies.

(Via Making Light)

Last week, at the Tuesday Berkeley Farmer’s Market, I did something dumb. I bought a pound of walnuts, and then laid it down on the bread vendor’s table while buying a vegan chocolate chip cookie. I realized hours later, when I wondered where my walnuts were, that this must have been what happened.

Yesterday, while buying a loaf of bread, I asked the guy: “Were you here last week?” He had been. “Did I leave a bag of walnuts here?”

Mind you, I was just looking to have my suspicion confirmed. Sort of like the W.C. Fields movie scene:

“May I ask you something? Was I in this establishment last night?” “Why, yes, sir, you were.”

“And did I spend the entirety of a twenty dollar bill?”

“Yes, sir, you did.”

“That comes as a great relief to me. I had feared that I had lost it.”

I figured the guy’d say something like “Yeah, thanks, dude! I made some kick-ass granola with them,” and that would have been fair enough.

But, no. Last week, he had returned the walnuts to their vendor and explained that someone had left them. And yesterday, he walked over to the vendor with me to vouch that it was me, and the vendor cheerfully gave me another bag.

And that’s how good Berkeley is.