Thoughts between quizzes

I'm currently engaged in getting ready for my next week of business school. This quarter it requires doing a set of quizzes for MacroEconomics between sessions. After tanking the first two, I did ok on the third, and am now partaking of a mental sorbet of sorts, by sorting out a blog entry. As such, this may be a bit scattered again.

Now that a disclaimer has been disclaimed, away we go . . .

The job search continues, I am well aware of the doldrums that can hit one as the search stretches out. Still, it doesn't help and maintaining a positive frame of mind has always been Lola's job. Now that we're headed into holiday season, I expect everything to dry up for the rest of the year, which will give me more time to get my act together. Because, I think, the major hurdle in my search so far is (wait for it) - I don't really know what I want.

Which is probably why Joe Jackson's "You can't get what you want (till you know what you want)" has been on continuous play inside my head. Followed in my Sylvia Plath dance mix by "(I can't get no) Satisfaction". [And those of you who read the last blog post will have just heard the sound of the penny dropping.]

Of course my general ambiguity has not been helped by the fact that I haven't yet shown up to an interview with any clue as to what job the company had in mind when the called me. In the case of my interview with Google, it was almost comic in that each of the 500 people that interviewed me asked if I understood what the job was that I was there for.

"No, actually, they said I was coming in as a general fit."

"Oh. Umm, well, ok. Let's move on."

Lurvly. So, I finally pulled aside the HR lady and said, "Am I supposed to know what the job is?"

"No, we just want to see if you could fit somewhere."

"Oh. Umm, well, ok. Let's move on."

But they really were nice at Google. Really. Could be because there were no men. Honestly, I interviewed only with women.

Ok, so I'm kinda screwed.

But they were really nice.

In contrast to my other interviews (and, I suppose, my life), I only had one comment go slightly awry. The trick question came with the fifth person who said, "What's wrong with Google Checkout adoption rates?" So, I said, "PayPal." Where I was trying to be pithy, she thought I was being a smartass. Oh well.

They were nice though.

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Lola took the boys in for jabs last week. Interestingly, the eldest is thirty something percentile for height and weight. The younger is 75th percentile for weight and 83rd for height. No wonder people ask if they are twins.

More interestingly, the pediatrician had a theory for the sudden upswing in autism. Essentially, his theory was the quirky behaviour has become much acceptable in society and so quirky people are finding each other and breeding more, with each generation getting a little more quirky until it manifests as full-fledge autism.

In other words, the Internet bubble has not only created millionaires and heroes out of geeks, it's allowing them to get laid. This is causing problems for the general gene pool.

Now, some of that may not be completely off, but I might put it in slightly a different way. Much in the same way that Athanasius Kircher is said to have been the last man to know everything because the sum of human knowledge has become to great and we are all driven to specialisation, it could be that autism, in a sense, is a genetic version of this. It may be that we need to become so specialised in our thinking that the particular traits of autism are required to advance human knowledge to the next level

Still, I like the idea that geeks are getting laid now. Would've been better if that had been the case when I was in high school. But still, one has to pull for the square pegs.

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Ok. That's it for this edition. I must get to studying. I'm flying out on Thursday to London and I have much to do before then.

Apres le deluge

and by that, I mean, I haven't written in a while, so this will be a lot of randomness.

First, by proximity in time and degree of randomness, I think that my time in Europe has made me better with change. By "change" I mean coins. I mean, coins don't really mean anything here and so you wind up having a million of them. But as I found myself giving relatively exact change (20.26 for a 15.16 charge), I realised that I have a better respect for coins. Of course now I'm collecting a set of odd looks from merchants.

Second, just returned home yesterday from a week in DC. Lola and I finished sorting out the chaff from the wheat with regards to what we put into storage 6 years ago. We made a nice donation to the goodwill. And now the remainder is on a truck headed toward us.

At least I hope so. More on that story if it develops.

Four things from that trip:

1) We won't be travelling with the boys for a little while. Like a year. I walked most of the way to DC because the little guy insisted on roaming the aisles. We took Virgin America which was great, and the staff were great. Most of the fellow passengers were great as well. One guy who was a reject from Pimp My Ride tried to take a tone with me ("You better watch your kid man") so I kicked his ass to show the boys how to deal with that sort of nonsense.

All in all, the boys were great, but it's frankly exhausting to get them through security, on board, entertained and off the plane again.

2) Was odd to be back in DC. Good to see everyone, but odd being back.

3) The boys loved Holloween. The big guy ran up to everyone's door and got a good haul. Didn't really care about the candy. Just liked yelling "Trick or Treat!"

4) We all got a flu/cold thing somewhere along the way.

And because of the last, I'm gonna hit the sack rather than go into my discourses on America as an EU with a common infrastructure, the continued travails of the job hunt, Joe Jackson meets the the Rolling Stones, etc.

But a last observation: saw a guy with a Prius in the driveway using a leaf blower in front of his house.