Six Months to Live

I recently completed a short stint as an IT Technical Recruiter—short, because I didn't make any placements, and particularly because the owner of the recruiting firm I associated myself with and I mutually agreed I wasn't a "good fit."

My most valuable take-away from this experience is the fact that, if you’re an IT pro who finds him-or-herself unemployed for any reason, after six months your career is simply no longer viable.

I've been out of an IT job for far longer than six months. I had no idea my professional life was over. When I learned that it was, I felt how I imagine a zombie must feel when he first notices his accustomed lifestyle evading him.

I have a major IT home project I’d like to finish before I die—as in real death—which involves making one large searchable database out of my two enormous and very distinct existing ones. Perhaps only so my descendents can reconstruct some of the essence of me after I’m gone. This project will ensure me a life in IT while my ruined career remains among the walking dead.

And ensures my digital existence when my real existence ceases to… exist.

Tick-Tock

I don’t appreciate digital clock faces because you have to read them. You can glance at a traditional face with two arms and know immediately it’s ten after two. Digital reads, 2:10—a minimum of two steps, one for the hour, one for the minutes. And with digital, you have to think how close your time is to the hour, or quarter-hour, or half-hour; and how far from noon (or midnight) you are, proportionally. One quick glance at a clock face with hands and you know it all. Digital, well, you have to think about it. Not for very long, hopefully, but it’s not a welcome effort.

Another benefit: With an analog clock face you get aesthetics. There are attractive digital displays out there, but so many more traditional clock faces are minor works of art—especially if you’re into classic utilitarianism.

A mechanical stopwatch is an even simpler pleasure. A glance at one hand and you know how much time has passed—as long as you’re under a minute. All right, I’ll grant that, in the case of a stopwatch, having a digital number blinking at you may be saving mental effort, because you want that single number, and as precisely as possible, usually.

But if a one-second margin for error is acceptable, and you really want to know roughly how close you were to some mark, say 30 seconds, or a minute, then once again the mechanical watch is more friendly to your task.

And, by the way, for any hand-held stopwatch, digital or analog, I feel a one-second margin for error is the best you can hope for. Our reaction time is human.

I'll leave for another day whether "human" is naturally more analog or digital, but I bet you can guess how I feel about that.

Blogging Hiatus

Please read today's post on my Meta blog, which explains my recent absence from these pages.

What Do You Know?

Once in a while I see technical position advertised with the expectation that the applicant can do their work completely from memory. I have a friend who can do this, and he has an amazing career.

Most of us rely on a variety of references to back us up. One of the first lessons I was ever taught ended with this advice: If you’re ever asked if you know something, say yes, take the assignment, and get a manual.

The knowledge most of us carry around with us falls somewhere between total recall and knowing where to go to get it.

I have a personal bias toward knowing where to go. My reasons are that I have too many technical interests to have it all memorized, and also that so much rote memorization tends to crowd out original thinking—including the latest-and-greatest technical information, which becomes out-of-date the moment you commit it to memory.

It does slow a person down, admittedly, if they have to look everything up. Success with technology involves knowing what to know, and where to go to find the rest.

3-Button Mouse, 3-Button Velcro

I lament the demise of the three-button mouse. What an intuitive interface! You would wiggle your three fingers in a balletic dance, and the need for a very large number of keystrokes was eliminated. Of course, you’d have to have a program which incorporated the elegance of the device, and there were few. So few that the 3-button mouse fell out of favor.

I lament the demise of the three-strap Velcro on tennis shoes. Never very popular, people just didn’t get it. That third strap provided much additional comfort. It also provided security. If one of a two-strap Velcro opens, you feel as if your shoe is about to fall off. If you lose one strap and two are still secure, you feel just fine.

The best doesn’t always prevail.

Belt Ring

I have a ring for my belts. It came with a hook, but the hook is superfluous. Better to hang the ring on a hook for quicker access. Grab the belt you want, open the ring, take the belt, close the ring, hang it back on its hook.

I’ve looked for this item for sale the internet, no luck finding one as sturdy with a hook as easily removed and discarded. Closest available I found is here.

Perhaps it’s just too perfect a solution to be popular.

My Favorite Algorithm

There are algorithms for everything.

My favorite represents a combination of numbers in a single number. The value of that number is determined as the sum of all 2 ** (N-1) for each N included in the set.

For example, the set containing 1, 7, and 11 is:

(2**0) + (2 ** 6) + (2 ** 10) = 1089
(1) + (64) + (1024) = 1089

This algorithm was particularly useful when computer space and processing time were at a premium. But even today, it’s cool to be able to “say” several specific things with a single number.

The way it works is that each combination will have its own unique number, no matter how many items are in the set, using powers of 2.

Best to limit the range of “N” so you can decode your result number expediently. The software I know that employed this algorithm used it for a range of 1 to 15.