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.

-----------

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.

-------------------

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.