When you go on these rants about your childhood... With some things I feel
sorry for you, with other things I feel like you're talking about my life
and not yours.

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Invisible wrote:
> Have you heard my voice? I certainly *sound* retarded! (I talk waaaaay 
> tooo sloooowllllyyyy...)

You're not retarded.  You just have all the common hallmarks of true 
geeks.  People will think you're retard, gay, weirdo, coward etc.  Face 
it:  if you want more of life than just a job, a marriage and a house, 
you're not part of them.

We sound awkward because our brains are typically multithreading through 
a range of intelectual subjects rather than just the weather, sports 
happenings, showbiz celebrities or someone else's life.

> Well anyway, the first school I went to was a rough school. Kids could 
> beat up other kids just for entertainment. Whoever the weakest kid was, 
> he or she got beat the most. Wanna guess who the weakest kid in my class 
> was?

Calvin and Moe.  Typical infant problem.  I used to bleed a lot, but was 
proud of myself of once handling two bullies at once.  :)  They were so 
astonished that left me alone for a while...

> I can vividly remember being chased across the playground screaming blue 
> murder begging for somebody to save me. But the staff just stood there 
> smoking, not really paying attention. Afterwards I asked one of them 
> "why didn't you save me?!" The disinterested individual casually 
> responded "uw, I thought they woz just playin widja". Yeah, thanks for 
> that.

Come on, now when you think of it don't you see the whole silliness of 
the scene?  They probably see that everyday.  It's not like some kids 
are truly massacring other kids, so it's really fun to watch. :P

It's a part of becoming apt for life, I guess.  Including all the 
traumas and neurosis.

> So then I got moved to this school for weird kids. And my god, were they 
> weird! Some of them couldn't even speak properly, or at all. Almost all 
> of them were very obviously strange.

Genius children?  Mutants?  Perhaps they just communicated by 
telepathy... ;)

> Originally I assumed that I went to this school because I couldn't read 
> or write. But now, looking back, it has gradually become clear to me 
> that *I* am not normal either. I do things that normal people don't do. 
> There clearly *is* something wrong with me. And I know it's incurable. I 
> find this extremely upsetting.

Unless you're talking superpowers, I feel very much alike, except I 
don't feel weird nor wrong, it's just me being me among many other 
pathetic life forms^^^ people. ;)

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>> Well, London isn't "remote", but no sane person would want to go there. 
> 
> ?

Heh. You'll get me into trouble. :-P

>> The people who aren't in London are in places like Southampton, York, 
>> etc.
>>
> 
> I happen to be in Amsterdam actually. Or don't I count as people? (or is 
> that '... do I not...')

I meant the other companies I researched. A lot of them were in London, 
and the rest were in far-flung parts of the UK.

Korg UK is in Milton Keynes. But there office is about 10 square feet, 
so I'm guessing it's just an admin office...

>> Um... the obvious problem here is that I'm obviously not intelligent 
>> enough to do a PhD. :-P
> 
> Intelligence is not a prerequisite for a PhD position. As long as you 
> have a MSc or equivalent you could be hired.

Well, I don't have an MSc. I only have a BSc.

(You know the random Asian guys asking me to fix their Java? *They* were 
the MSc students!)

> Please, leave the job of 
> finding reasons why you are not qualified to the selection committee. 
> BTW if it ever comes to this I will probably not take part is the job 
> interview. I might know too much about you to be objective.

Why would you want me anyway? Surely somebody who already lives in 
Amsterdam would be a more sensible choice? :-P

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>> MOST companies need salesmen. Not all of them, but most of them.
> 
> Every company needs at least one salesman. Sometimes that person is also 
> (say) the inventor, president, and CEO, tho. :-)

OK, I rephrase: Some companies need far fewer salesmen that others. It 
depends what they do.

>>> Most jobs requiring competence don't advertise. It's mostly 
>>> word-of-mouth.
>>
>> ....and since I don't know anybody, it's not going to be me.
> 
> That is definitely a stumbling block.  Another kind of thing you learn 
> at school...

The only thing *I* learned at _school_ is that people are terrifying 
things to be avoided at any cost.

Fortunately I have now unlearned that one. Unfortunately, I now have no 
starting point.

>> SOME people want somebody who can definitely do the job RIGHT NOW. 
> 
> Yes. And not infrequently, those are exactly the companies you don't 
> want to work for.

Yeah, I gathered. ;-)

>> (E.g., I suspect if you applied to work for Google,
> 
> Not if their interview process is anything to go on.

O RLY?

You know something about this then?

(All I know is that all the "interesting" companies like Google, NI, 
etc. seem to be in other countries. Not this one.)

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>> Yeah, it does - just not particularly often. ;-)
> 
> Tell that to all of those employees here or at RedHat who get paid.
> 
> But there is an added advantage to working on OSS projects - helps build 
> a resume and people can see your work.

I'm not disputing that getting paid for OSS is a good idea - I'm just 
saying it's highly nontrivial to achieve this.

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Nicolas Alvarez wrote:
> scott wrote:
>>> Well, I had a diagram for a circuit where you connect a lamp to the
>>> battery through a linear potentiometer. The brightness of the lamp
>>> varies roughly linearly. But the brightness of an LED... does not.
>> LED brightness is proportional to current not voltage!
> 
> Also, are *human eyes* linear? Would you notice when brightness is changing
> perfectly linearly? :)

Probably not. But when the light stays off, and then suddenly turns full 
on, with nothing in between, I'm fairly sure that's non-linear. ;-)

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"Invisible" <voi### [at] devnull> wrote in message 
news:491bf342$1@news.povray.org...
>>
>> Not if their interview process is anything to go on.
>
> O RLY?
>
> You know something about this then?

Google for google interviews. Quite a bit has been written about their 
interview process.

> (All I know is that all the "interesting" companies like Google, NI, etc. 
> seem to be in other countries. Not this one.)

Google's EU headquarters are in Ireland (though that is another country)

http://www.google.co.uk/intl/en/jobs/index.html
They seem to have a lot of openings. Won't suit you though, they're in that 
horrible, terrible place that no one want to go (London)

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Gail wrote:

> Google for google interviews. Quite a bit has been written about their 
> interview process.

...the irony...

> Google's EU headquarters are in Ireland (though that is another country)
> 
> http://www.google.co.uk/intl/en/jobs/index.html
> They seem to have a lot of openings. Won't suit you though, they're in 
> that horrible, terrible place that no one want to go (London)

Sadly it seems that 80% of all UK jobs are in London. Regardless of 
which industry.

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"Invisible" <voi### [at] devnull> wrote in message 
news:491bf7ae@news.povray.org...
> Gail wrote:
>>
>> http://www.google.co.uk/intl/en/jobs/index.html
>> They seem to have a lot of openings. Won't suit you though, they're in 
>> that horrible, terrible place that no one want to go (London)
>
> Sadly it seems that 80% of all UK jobs are in London. Regardless of which 
> industry.

Well, yes. It's the capital city and (iirc) the largest city in the UK. 
Hence most things will be there

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>> Sadly it seems that 80% of all UK jobs are in London. Regardless of 
>> which industry.
> 
> Well, yes. It's the capital city and (iirc) the largest city in the UK. 
> Hence most things will be there

This is not surprising.

What *is* surprising (to me at least) is that lots of things happen in 
cities near to MK, but very little happens in MK itself. I'm not sure 
why that would be...

(I'm thinking more of social events - I'm not really sure what the jobs 
markets are like.)

Also... the UK has plenty of other large cities besides London. Yet not 
many of these seem to have huge quantities of work available. I'm not 
really sure why.

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