scott wrote:

> Nobody is normal, if they are they are probably pretty boring and nobody 
> would be interested in them apart from equally normal and boring people :-)

Normal people have friends. I am seemingly incapable of achieving this 
basic human need. I fail at life.

> You don't mention the fact that you have 3 GCSEs and no A-levels on your 
> CV do you?

Yes. It's at the end of the CV if you look that far. Why?

> Because understandably most employers would just throw it in 
> the bin.

Oh. OK...

>> (Actually, in fairness, the full class was 80 people, and IIRC about 6 
>> of them were female. And 2 of them were my age. The other 4 were 
>> married with children.
> 
> Oh, on my course nearly everyone was my age, or maybe a year older if 
> they had done that "year in industry" thing before starting University.

Most of the people in my class were teenagers too. But a small minority 
were "mature students". As in, people old enough to be our parents. The 
majority of the females fitted into that category. (Although not all of 
them.)

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Nicolas Alvarez wrote:

> I was using the *wrong IC*! I was giving it power into an OUTPUT PIN!!
> 
> After that abuse, it still worked fine :)

What, you've never plugged an IC in backwards? :-P

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>> I have an electronics kit with TTL in it. (A 7400LS, no less.) All the 
>> diagrams drive the LEDs directly from it.
>>
> 
> That's TTL - it can source current, i.e. drive a LED
> CMOS usually cannot source as much current.

Well, since TTL is what I'm using, TTL is what I'll worry about.

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> Normal people have friends. I am seemingly incapable of achieving this 
> basic human need. I fail at life.

You seem to have posted several times on here and on your blog about how you 
went out with other people (to pubs, karting events, parties etc), I suspect 
that's more than a lot of people have done.  I know certainly I haven't been 
out with any friends for a long time.  Anyway, how many of those people you 
went out with would you consider "normal"? From some of the things you 
posted they seemed anything but normal to me ;-)

>> Because understandably most employers would just throw it in the bin.
>
> Oh. OK...

You seem to have just been unfortunate in what happened during your 
childhood. No employer is going to spend the effort to investigate your life 
story on the off-chance that you are very intelligent but just didn't get 
any A-levels (which you are), there aren't many people like you so it's not 
worth looking hard for them.  I don't think many people who have been 
working for more than a year or two put the details of their pre-university 
education on a CV, so it's totally fine to just skip that bit and I bet 
you'll see better responses.

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scott wrote:
>> Normal people have friends. I am seemingly incapable of achieving this 
>> basic human need. I fail at life.
> 
> You seem to have posted several times on here and on your blog about how 
> you went out with other people (to pubs, karting events, parties etc), I 
> suspect that's more than a lot of people have done.  I know certainly I 
> haven't been out with any friends for a long time.  Anyway, how many of 
> those people you went out with would you consider "normal"? From some of 
> the things you posted they seemed anything but normal to me ;-)

I don't know - going to parties and pubs sounds pretty typical to me. :-P

Unfortunately for me, these things happen, like, once every few months. 
The rest of my life I heardly *speak* to another living human being. 
(Posting stuff on the Internet isn't the same.)

>>> Because understandably most employers would just throw it in the bin.
>>
>> Oh. OK...
> 
> You seem to have just been unfortunate in what happened during your 
> childhood. No employer is going to spend the effort to investigate your 
> life story on the off-chance that you are very intelligent but just 
> didn't get any A-levels (which you are), there aren't many people like 
> you so it's not worth looking hard for them.  I don't think many people 
> who have been working for more than a year or two put the details of 
> their pre-university education on a CV, so it's totally fine to just 
> skip that bit and I bet you'll see better responses.

At the moment, just finding somebody to give my CV to is the problem.

Also, I really hate the way you apply to half a dozen people... and then 
never hear anything about it. It's like "gee, did I *really* apply to 
all these companies? Or did I just imagine it?" It's massively, 
massively demotivating. Why spend hours of your life doing something 
that produces no results of any kind?

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Mueen Nawaz wrote:

> 	Second, you've been doing research all these years. Being curious and
> learning stuff - especially technical stuff - is virtually research. All
> that's left is to do some new interesting stuff in it. And generally
> your adviser will guide you through that.

And most of the things I post here are of the form "who do I find out 
about X?"

> 	And when you've spent time working on something, then trust me, you'll
> probably have more difficulty trimming it down than trying to fill
> space. Just look at your own Haskell evangelism!

Yeah. Just look at my own Haskell writings. The short ones are OK. The 
longer ones tend to end up getting muddled, no matter how carefully I 
try to write them.

> 	Seriously. I think it's the best advice you've been given. You get paid
> to do all the fun geeky stuff your adviser wants you to do. And it's not
> that rare that you'll also want to do it too! You'll be around smart
> people (which *may* make you feel stupid for a while, but that'll go
> away). And not sure about the UK and Europe, but (many) campuses in the
> US have a good social environment. Lots of great speakers visit campus
> and give talks - spanning the whole spectrum from science to politics.

Sounds positively utopian.

You'll excuse me if I'm a little skeptical... I was promised that 
college would be like this, and it wasn't. I was promised that 
university would be like this, and it wasn't.

You'll recall that I currently earn very little money. Am I likely to 
end up earning even less doing a PhD?

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Darren New wrote:

> It's also an excellent way to meet (a) friends and (b) business 
> contacts. You'll be in a mile-square place with thousands of people your 
> own age, most pretty smart, most rather more tolerant of differences 
> than places with less explicit mixing of cultures going on, etc. You'll 
> also be around people whose job it is to travel around the world meeting 
> with and talking to people with interesting problems, and whose other 
> job it is to talk people into giving them money to solve interesting 
> problems they didn't know they had.
> 
> It's not about the computers. It's about the people.

People told me uni would be like this. It wasn't even remotely like 
this. :-(

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Bill Pragnell wrote:

> I'll add my voice to this and third it. I don't know if anyone has 
> already said this, but the UK *is* the same - most PhDs in the sciences 
> and engineering (including CS) are fully funded, and I highly recommend 
> following this path if you're interested.

I'm always interested in geeking out over obscure algorithms and such. 
But I rather doubt that's what a PhD is actually about. And you say you 
get paid, but how much? Not a lot, I'd expect. I'm always on very low 
money - that's why I'm trying to get hold of a job that pays real money.

> And despite what you say, you *can* write technical documents. You keep 
> posting them here, and they are well-written.

Well, at least somebody has something nice to say about me. :-}

> Style and structure is 
> something you pick up whilst reading around the subject, and most 
> institutions will offer formal training for students and staff.

My college and my uni *did* offer (indeed, require) formal training. I 
still suck at it!

> The holiday allowance isn't too shabby either ;-)

I'll bet... ;-)

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Invisible wrote:
>>> I have an electronics kit with TTL in it. (A 7400LS, no less.) All 
>>> the diagrams drive the LEDs directly from it.
>>>
>>
>> That's TTL - it can source current, i.e. drive a LED
>> CMOS usually cannot source as much current.
> 
> Well, since TTL is what I'm using, TTL is what I'll worry about.


In the logic sense, CMOS and TTL are basically the same.  They even have 
the same 7400 series part numbers that are pin-pin compatible - just 
take note that hooking CMOS chips to TTL chips can be a bit tricky.

Otherwise, the TTL Cookbook is the cheaper one ;-)



Tom

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Invisible wrote:
> Jim Henderson wrote:
> 
>> So, you want to keep up with the tech industry?
> 
> Not *especially*, but...
> 
>> Subscribe to a slashdot RSS feed.
> 
> Two questions:
> 
> 1. What's RSS?

... GIYF

> 2. What actually *is* Slashdot? I keep hearing about it, but I'm still 
> unclear on what it's supposed to "be".

That tears it! Your geek license is officially revoked. :P

It's a tech news site. The comments section is famous for "First Post" 
type posts and disguised links to disgusting pictures. You think 
rickrolling is bad? Try a goatse. It was born on slashdot.

Shame, shame. You don't know what slashdot is...
-- 
~Mike

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