Google?

Some time ago I got an email from a recruiter at google asking me to send a resumé. That was rather flattering. I checked with some computer friends and found that some of them had also received this request — I guess the recruiter did a web search for likely people working on open source projects — or something.

Less flattering.

A couple of months later, after I’d mostly forgotten the original event, I got another email asking if I would set up a phone interview to apply for a job in internationalization.

I don’t know much about internationalization. Come to think of it, I’m not sure that any of my skills would be useful to google. I know nothing about searching, databases, etc. I know the HTT protocol and can frame a request, but doubtless google solved that problem years ago.

I tried to explain this to them, and that I didn’t really want to leave SB. Still it might prove interesting, I’ve made font-editors for 10 years now, perhaps it is time for a change. If a gift job drops in my lap I should at least look it in the mouth, so I gave them a time to call me.

I went through the phone interview. Rather liked the process. The guy interviewing me (an engineer, not a PR drone) asked good questions about what I’d done, and then posed a computer problem for me to solve that proved interesting. At the end he asked if I had any questions.

Well, yes, I had a couple. Most important: What, specifically, was the job? To my amazement, he could not tell me. To me this was an extremely important question. Why should I leave my current work, which I rather enjoy (even if it doesn’t pay) to go do something I don’t think I’m even qualified for? I wanted to say “Convince me that what you are offering me is interesting and worthwhile.” But he couldn’t.

Second question: The job was said to be located in either Zürich or Mountain View, Ca. I don’t speak German (and I gather zürichdeutsch is vastly different from the smattering of German I’ve picked up) any chance the job could be in Geneva (I do speak reasonable French)? The guy I was talking to didn’t seem to think so. Well could I telecommute from Santa Barbara? “Oh,” he said, “We have an office in Irvine, I’m sure you could work there instead.” That’s certainly consoling.

Two weeks later I had another phone interview. Similar procedure. Again the guy I spoke to couldn’t tell me what the job would entail. He told me what he was doing, which sounded quite dull, and said it might be something like that. Eventually he asked me what I would like to do.

This seemed to me the wrong question. I was already doing what I would like to do. I didn’t ask for a job at google, they contacted me. It’s up to them to come up with something interesting if they want to attract me.

Then I did get a call from a PR person who wanted to talk to me about “Google’s interview process.” I wasn’t in the least interested in the interview process. I was slightly annoyed with them too. There was a certain arrogance about them, as if they were doing me a favor in talking to me. Every email I got from them had the title “Google!”, with an exclamation point, as though it were the most amazing thing ever.

But they had said almost nothing which I found interesting. They had given me no reason to work for them.

None-the-less I phoned back. They had twigged to the fact that I wasn’t very interested. And I was told that I’d have to move to Mountain View if I wanted to work for them. I thought I’d made it clear from the start that I didn’t want to do that. I guess not.

The woman said she’d make my resumé inactive.

I keep coming back to the fact that they approached me, yet acted as though I were petitioning them. I can’t understand why they made no effort to convince me that working for them would be better than doing what I currently do. Actually, I find it rather insulting.

An acquaintance who works at google said “You must understand that yours was a special situation and you must make allowances.” Wrong. The “special situation” was caused by google, so they must make the allowances. And since several of my friends have been in the same “special situation”, I do wonder just how “special” it is?

Yoga

Today is the new moon.

The Ashtangis will not practice yoga today because the new moon pulls us downward.  On the other hand the full moon pulls us upward.

When my yoga teacher said this, I had to object. At nine in the morning (as it then was), the new moon was well above above the horizon, somewhere near the sun in fact. The new moon pulls us upward during the day time. The full moon, on the other hand is below the horizon during the day and pulls us down. Not only that but the new moon is right near the sun, so the pull of both combines, whereas when the full the moon and the sun pull in opposite directions. The upshot being that we get a stronger upward pull during the new moon than at any other time. Exactly the opposite of what she said.

My teacher tried to talk about tides and fluids, which is completely irrelevant to whether the moon is pulling up or not. Eventually she settled on prana. Which might mean breath, and might mean spirit (yes, I know that spirit used to have the same double meaning). Well, the air molecules in my breath are moving so fast from ambient  heat that the pull of the moon exherts such a slight force that it will not be observable. And anyway it will still be upward during the day at the new moon.

As for my spirit… Personally I’m feeling fairly up-beat. My injury is fading, it isn’t raining, I’m more cheerful than I’ve been in a month. The moon is totally invisible today, but then I don’t see the moon most days. Why is it’s invisibility supposed to affect me?

To me, it just sounds like a lie.

Yoga comes with this huge superstructure of completely made up concepts with, as far as I can tell, no reality outside the imaginations of yogis. What are the nadhis? Can you dissect a body and find a chakra? No.

The night before last a different yoga teacher informed us that our problems are rooted inside ourselves, and if we can transform ourselves we can solve our problems. I could not help wondering what self-transformation could solve global warming.

I love yoga poses. I love striving to find the perfect instantiation of each pose in each moment. I love moving. But I hate the philosophy that comes with it.

The twenty-ninth day

When I was in college the text book for my class on population dynamics began with the riddle:

A man has a lily pond in his garden which keeps getting more lily pads in it. Every day the number of pads doubles. The man knows from experience that in 30 days the pond will be full of pads, and he doesn’t like that so he trims it before it gets to that point, say when it gets about half full. So when will it be half full?

The answer, of course, is on the twenty-ninth day. In that last day the pond will increase by as much as it has increased in all days before that.

Our minds do not intuitively accept the dynamics of geometric growth. Somehow it seems reasonable that the pond should be half full on the fifteenth day. We intuitively feel that we will have plenty of time to deal with problems posed by population growth — because, well, we’ve been increasing our population for hundreds of thousands of years, surely we’ll have another hundred thousand or so before things get critical.

But that isn’t the way geometric increase works.

The sad thing about population crashes is that up to the last minute the culture appears to be flourishing. The population will be highest, and the ability to achieve results at its greatest right before the collapse. This is true for fruitflies in a glass bottle. It was true for humans on Easter Island.¹ It is almost certainly true for us now.

There are several ways a population can exceed the carrying capacity of an ecosystem. It can consume more resources than the ecosystem can supply, or it can produce more waste than the ecosystem can dispose of.

Around 1900 farmers were getting worried because the need for organic fertilizer was outstripping the supply. The invention of artificial fertilizer solved this problem — but the artificial fertilizers we make are based on non-renewable resources, and eventually we will run out. In a sense the global human population exceeded the earth’s carrying capacity about 100 years ago. We’ve been living on borrowed time since.

In 1858 the Great Stink almost closed Parlement, and forced London to stop dumping sewage into the Thames, and instead to pipe it into the estuary and the Atlantic Ocean. When our waste overcame the carrying capacity of the area, the solution was to dump it further afield.

As time progresses we find more resources that we absolutely need, and more wastes that we generate. As our population increases we touch more areas of the planet and there is no longer a safe place to dump our waste. Food remains a danger, especially as we now divert food production to biofuels. Energy has become a need, and the growing scarcity of oil is shown in the recent cost increases (and concomitant increases in the price of food as we try to grow more oil — to my mind a silly attempt that will do almost nothing for providing energy while destabilizing nations).

Our plastic throw-aways are destroying boobies on remote islands where man has barely set foot. Mercury is disrupting the ocean food chains. DDT has send many species to the brink of extinction. And we are slowly coming to see just how dangerous global warming will prove.

If there were only 1 billion of us, trying to live with technology of 1900 — and we didn’t increase that — we might survive. If there were only 50 million of us trying to drive modern cars we might survive.

But the horror of geometric increase is that it isn’t clear that there is a problem until it is far too late to do anything about it.

Then after the last day, when things really are unraveling, history suggests we will go to war over the last crumbs of resources, and by our own hands worsen the crisis we have imposed on ourselves.

We just are not willing, any of us, to reduce our consumption, nor to reduce our baby production, nor to commit suicide. Keeping the economy growing is the watchword of politics; even knowledge of contraception is considered immoral by far too many of us, and suicide is a sin.

We don’t know how quickly the damage we have done will destroy us. But there are so many ways we have damaged the world. And we aren’t addressing any of them effectively. Perhaps, as Kornell suggests, only Alaska will be habitable by 2100, or maybe 2050, or maybe 2150. Who knows when.

But soon.

And unavoidably something will collapse.

(I don’t see much point in voting tomorrow; I will, but nothing important can change)

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¹See Jared Diamond’s Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed

Injury

When I am injured and can neither run nor do yoga I tend to turn inward upon myself. I rarely go out, as riding my bike can hurt too; so I stay inside and think. And get lonely.

Now admittedly I seem to be recovering from this most recent injury and went to a yoga class yesterday and warmed up with Rusty’s group the day before. (Finally)

Still — when I got an e-mail from Google asking me to interview for a job, I was more interested than I might otherwise have been. I have no desire to live in Silicon Ditch, and I’m generally quite happy with my own project. But — perhaps it would do me good to interact more with people. So I actually followed up on it.

Hmm. The job is in Mtn. View and Zurich. Now living in Zurich might be kind of fun (though I’d rather live in the French speaking part of the country) but commuting across the Atlantic on a regular basis? That sounds miserable. To say nothing of the environmental damage it would do.

And the job itself? Internationalization/localization in some form. Humph. The little knowledge I have of internationalization/localization makes it seem very simple — too simple for them to want to hire me. Which makes me think I don’t have the faintest inkling of what they want, which means I’m not the person they should hire.

They went to some effort (I presume) to find me, I did not contact them, they e-mailed me. Why ask me to interview for a job when I’ll probably just show off my ignorance rather than be useful?

Nonetheless. I scheduled a phone interview with them. Perhaps I am qualified. Perhaps I can telecommute.

Perhaps I shouldn’t answer the phone next Tuesday

---

Well, I did.

It sounded as though they didn’t know what they wanted done either, they just wanted someone who could figure stuff out. Also when they said “Mtn. View and Zurich”, they meant “Mtn. View or Zurich” — so I wouldn’t have to fly across the Atlantic every week.

Amphoræ

The word Amphora is so obviously Greek, that I was surprised to find the plural is Amphoræ, which is obviously Latin. But the word entered English via Latin, and so we have the Latin plural. I checked with a Greek friend and the Greek words are Amphoreus for the singular and Amphoreis () for the plural.

I have spent the last two and a half years making 500+ bowls as part of a glaze demo. I was tired of bowls and wanted to do something different. So I decided to make amphorae instead.

Dianna’s 50th birthday arrived. Elaine suggested we give her things like a walker, or a pack of Depends ™ to remind her of her advanced age. I wanted to do something nicer, and an amphora seemed the obvious choice.

Since amphorae were originally jugs of wine, I thought I might throw in a loaf of bread (she already has a “thou”, who even sings). But my attempt to decorate with grape leaves was a total failure and I gave up on that idea.

In the original Greek Olympics, the winners were presented with amphorae, with designs indicative of the sport. No women ran in the original Olympics (though there were, I discovered, races for girls a few days later), and all the races seem to have been fairly short (about 200m-~4k). Still that seemed the way to go.

So I searched the internet for runners on amphorae, and found several images. The Greeks men ran naked, of course, so the designs needed to be modified a bit to be appropriate for Dianna.

I believe the Greeks constructed their amphorae by coiling long worms of clay into the correct shape, and then smoothing out the joins. They would then decorate with coloured slips (essentially mud), burnish the result and fire at terra-cota temperature.

I’m a wheel thrower working in groggy stoneware clay firing at a much higher temperature. Sadly I find I cannot burnish my pieces, the clay shrinks around the grog as it is fired and the wonderfully smooth burnished surface becomes all bumpy after firing.

At terra-cota temperatures red is an easy colour to develop in a kiln (rust is reddish). But at stoneware temperatures red is much more elusive. So I would be unable to match the colours.

I threw the body of the amphora in two pieces — the base, and the neck — and then pulled three handles (I generally make an extra, just in case something goes wrong.

I set these aside to dry overnight. They didn’t dry as much as I had expected, so I put them out in the sun the next day to speed up the process. Then I joined the top (which was thrown up-side-down) to the base with slip. And added the initial banding using a black slip.

Finally I attached the handles. I always have trouble with this part — my handles are not symmetric and one has a sharp bend. Oh well. Again I set the pot aside to dry.

I couldn’t leave well enough alone though. I decided I wanted to scratch “I run Marathons” in Greek onto the bottom. So I asked a couple of Greek friends to translate it. Then I decided, why stop at Greek? So I asked more friends, scattered across the world to translate “I run” into their respective languages:

English German Swedish Japanese Russian Sanskrit Greek

English Italian French Spanish Latin Hindi Greek

A few days later I was back at work. I scratched my various versions of “I run” onto the neck (in two groups, one in front, one in back), then traced the outline of my runner onto the body of the piece, and finally coloured in the runner with black slip. Then I carefully removed the amphora from its bat and took it out to the kiln to be bisque fired.

The traditional amphorae were not glazed, but were burnished. I decided to glaze the inside of the piece (stoneware does become vitrious, so it will hold water even if unglazed, but I feel happier knowing the glazes is there too), and leave the outside raw.

Family Places

Sunset in the valley

Georgia was supposed to be having a drought.

Stir-up Sunday

In the English (but not the Episcopalian) Church the collect for the sunday before Advent begins “Stir-up, we beseech thee, O Lord…” Traditionally this has been taken as a commandment to begin cooking, stirring, the Christmas Pudding.

The puddings need to be started early because they spend the next month being fed brandy — a little bit every day, until, when the day arrives, they can be flambéed.

Being an atheist, I have a somewhat more secular approach, and start my puddings when I choose, and for whatever feast I wish.

Today I stirred up 4 puddings, the first event being the end of pottery class, and the next being Thanksgiving.

As is my wont, I sat down with a dictionary one year. The word “plum” actually means “raisin” (which, of course, means “grape”), while the word “pudding” means “sausage” (As in blood pudding). So a plum pudding is a sausage made of grapes — a wine?

A pudding for the festival of sun-return

2lb dried fruit (figs, apricots, prunes, cherries, raisons, dates, etc — my favorite is a mixture of figs and tart dried cherries)
Chop the fruit into large chunks (not too small or the tastes all merge together)

½ lb butter (2 sticks) — a traditionalist would insist on suet. I often use half butter half oil.
1 cup brown sugar
cream together
3 egg yolks
1 cup buttermilk
4+∞Tblspns brandy (or rum)
zest of one orange
1 grated nutmeg
Add to butter/sugar and stir together
1 ½cups flour
Stir in
Stir in the fruit

3 egg whites
whip
fold into the butter/fruit mixture

Pour into a buttered sugared mould, cover with parchment and steam for 2 hours.

Feed it some brandy from time to time, and steam again before serving

How does one steam a pudding? I realize this is no longer common knowledge. I put my pudding mixture into a bowl, or a specially designed pudding crock (I sometimes make these) and cover it with a sheet of cooking parchment. My mother always used aluminum foil, but I found that if the foil touched the mixture it would eventually dissolve and that seemed bad. The mixture must be covered or condensed drops of water will fall into it and turn it to mush.

If you have a double boiler or vegetable steamer that will hold your pudding pot, great, use that. If not I find that taking a dutch oven or large covered saucepan, filling it with an inch or less of water, and then placing the pudding pot in the water will work almost as well. If you can build a structure that keeps the bottom of the pot from touching the bottom of the saucepan, so much the better.

Hard sauce

1 stick butter
¾ cup confectioner’s sugar
1 Tbls Honey
2 Tbls Rum
¼ Teaspn cinnamon
¼ Teaspn nutmeg
cream everything together

add a dollop to each serving of pudding

Quandry…

I had managed to convince myself that I should not try to run Cal. International, but that I should wait, recover, train and run in February. Then I ran a better workout than I expected today. ~18 miles of which about 8 were hard. I managed to average 6:51 on the hard part. Last week I had trouble running that pace for 3 miles (and slowed to 7:02 and then 7:10 after that).

So… If I do run Cal. International I might have a chance of breaking 3 hours. I’ll almost certainly get a PR. And then I’d be qualified for Boston, and could watch Melissa (and maybe Annie) run in the Olympic trials.

On the other hand, I was hoping for more than just a PR, more than just breaking 3 hours, and if I wait until I’m fully recovered I can do better. I had wanted to do the best I was capable of, perhaps to set my lifetime record (I’m only getting older, soon I’ll be as trained as my body will take and I’ll start getting slower).

Another downside is — how long will it take to recover? At 10 seconds a week, I might be running 6:35 pace again in two weeks. If all goes well. Which would mean starting marathon training in November and racing in Feb. If all doesn’t go well, who knows? But some of the Feb races are filling up. I should decide soon.

Maggie tells me I shouldn’t run unless I’m completely well. Jim tells me that I’ve spent so much time training I should just trust that it will all come together. I think the training I did was months ago now and is largely irrelevant. I think it likely that I will be recovered (but not as trained as I’d like) by Cal. International.

Or… I could just sign up for a race then, but retain the option of doing Cal International?

I think I’ll start a new hobby: Signing up for marathons and not running them. I realized the other day that I’ve already scratched three marathons I was signed up for (injured before the race). I’ve only run 3 total. If I scratch Cal. too, then I’ll have failed to run more than I’ve run.

Lady Bracknell:We have already missed five, if not six, trains. To miss any more would expose us to comment on the platform

To miss any more marathons would expose me to comment at the starting line?

I did not race a marathon today