Dave's Blog

Sunday, October 27, 2002 12:37:23 AM 

A little "aha" floats by.  I must note it!  

Distractions and events sweep it away, and it is now an unconscious 
part of me, living inside where it is not obviously expressed to 
others, but expressed, nonetheless, subtly in assumptions they must 
deduce and will, but only if their "aha" matches mine and if they see 
it in the same context, a probable event, no doubt, by about one in 
6.02x10^23 or thereabouts, an event less likely than winning the 
California Lottery jackpot.  I count the pelicans flying together 
over the Bay a mile away, as a hummingbird slips by my balcony 
unnoticed.  How do we recognize each other? 

All thoughts are everywhere, all knowledge everywhere.  The past, 
present, and future, ageless in the 5th dimension, contain all the 
knowledge of the Universe.  The existence of the Universe embodies 
all knowledge of it, and there is nothing outside it by definition.  
The teacher teaches what she wants to learn, her students guiding her 
by their insight and by their questions.  Clarify for one, clarify 
for all!  

Electromagnetic energy, light, information.  All knowledge then bathes 
us, and we have Hertz and Einstein and Shannon telling us in chorus 
"yes," the knowledge is here!  Reach out and grab it!  Listen!  It 
tells you the truth daily, hourly, in every second, can you not hear 
it?  More dots come by, are they physical dots or bright spots in the 
electromagetic fabric of all existence?  Yes, they are.  

The Library of Alexandria is not dead.  Burned, sacked, but not gone.  
Rebuilt, but not empty.  Scrolls in the sand, in the caves, buried in 
somebody's back yard, in languages we do not understand.  A linguist, 
a historian, a traveller, a cryptologist, all come together and 
make the language breathe again.  Wheezing, dusty breaths, subject 
to misinterpretation, but breathing all the same, the language lives 
once more in all these collaborators, come together in the personality 
of one fortunate, living man.  And so hieroglyphs become an alphabet, 
linear B becomes a message, the ancient city of Troy rises from the 
tell.  

Opportunity knocks, knocks constantly, is knocking now.  Do you hear 
it?  All knowledge is yours, all knowledge is at your hand.  Not just 
what your parents told you, not just what the schools told you, not 
just what you found in the books.  All knowledge.  "Aha," we say to 
ourselves.  "Aha," we say to each other.  

"Aha," Thoth speaks again.  


Monday, October 14, 2002 3:43:57 PM 

Things have been a bit hectic lately.  The bank is 30 miles away.  I 
spend half my weekday devoted to the success of the bank.  I get up 
before dawn, which is not something I have been accustomed to the 
past several years, and get home after sunset.  Today was Columbus 
Day, a flag holiday.  I went to Stacey's and bought a book for my 
upcoming course at the SFSU Oakland Multimedia Center.  Rush, rush, 
rush, hurry, hurry, hurry.  I thought that after a decade of work 
there was supposed to be some slack.  What happened to the leisure 
society that was supposed to evolve from our technological revolution 
of the 1950s?  


Monday, October 07, 2002 9:55:58 PM 

This summer I had the pleasure of interviewing with several 
companies, and I discovered something very interesting.  The 
descriptions of the jobs and skill sets for which I was asked to 
interview didn't match the jobs and skill sets that needed to be 
filled!  

One agency asked me to interview for a dot-com division of a major 
retailer, whose position was supposed to be in Burlingame.  The 
description called for a mid-level system administrator.  That was 
close; it turned out the retailer was looking for someone who could 
install about sixty Sun web servers in two months, and who had 
configured a JumpStart install.  The job, by the way, turned out to be 
in Sunnyvale.  

One company advertised for a system administrator who could program 
in Perl and who understood the Solaris pkgadd system.  Of course, 
there's an Answerbook that tells you how packages work, and how to 
create one.  After five hours of interviewing -- a unilateral decision 
on their part -- it was clear to me that they were really looking for 
a Perl programmer who understood the Solaris pkgadd system.  
Inappropriate job search last summer, penny stock today.  

I have told recruiters for years that if I have to cross a bridge, the 
client is too far away.  One account manager called me a few months 
ago, and the first thing out of his mouth was "How would you like to 
ride BART to Concord?"  Well, riding the train put a different picture 
in my mind, and I decided to pursue the contract.  The job entailed 
system administration, planning, performance tuning, and analysis.  
The announcement listed all the technologies for the product, end to 
end.  It amounted to a dozen different disciplines.  You might as well 
have asked me to be a whole company myself, but I noticed the phrase 
"if you don't have these skills don't bother to apply" did not appear 
in the description.  So I gave it a shot.  I consciously remembered 
never to say "no" in the interview.  Every time we talked about a 
technology I would relate it to similar technologies with which I had 
direct experience.  I got the contract.  

I've been on the contract over a month, and I haven't seen about 
half of the technologies that were in the description.  One thing 
about a bureaucracy is that there are many people to handle the many 
details, and the project manager doesn't have to know everything.  
Did I say project manager?  To the company's credit, they refrained 
from selecting a title for the position.  They simply call me a 
"contractor."  That business of crossing the bridge?  I found riding 
BART to be too tiring, and now I drive across the bridge every day.  

The bottom line?  The advertisements are not describing what the 
companies are looking for.  Even if they are not patently ridiculous, 
they are usually out of date or inaccurate.  If I'm interested in a 
company and it looks like a halfway decent fit, I'll interview.  

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