So far, my alter ego “Robert Lee” has received direct solicitations for software developer jobs from five companies.
Me, none.
Robert is also continuing to get calls and emails from recruiters.
Evidently, I need to revise my premature conclusion about ageism and sexism in the technology workplace.
Cold
It caught up to us last night, with temperatures in the teens and in some spots, single digits. To be expected for mid-January and mercifully, it’s dry and not too windy.
One is grateful beyond measure to be protected from the cold and, if circumstances permit, to be spared a long commute requiring long walks, frigid train platforms and/or bus stops.
What Would You Do About Iraq?
It is an intractable mess, not only because of horrendous mistakes made by the Bush Administration, but because of regional loyalties and long-standing rivalries between the Sunnis and the Shia.
Following last November’s electoral repudiation of the Bush administration’s Iraq policies, King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, fearing the worst for his Sunni brothers in Iraq in the event of a US troop withdrawal, administered a very decisive, public swift kick to Dick Cheney’s money-lined patoot.
Saudi Arabia is the same country that supplied the majority of the 9/11 terrorists, and whose citizens continue to fund both the Sunni insurgents raising havoc in Iraq and the US’s worst enemy in the “war on terror”, al Qaeda.
Still, their leadership is catered to, and have been for years, by the US government.
Robert and Me
After a recent family gathering, my son reported that one of his wife’s big-mouthed relatives was bragging about how he was getting one to two phone calls _a day_ from companies begging him to go to work for them.
In the two to three weeks around the first of this year, it wasn’t unusual for software developers to get one or more calls a day from headhunters, this being an exceptionally good job market. I was surprised, though, to hear about such a volume of calls from direct companies, and decided to test this out.
Women and Other Women
The elephant in the room for Hillary Clinton’s Presidential campaign is the fact that women are harder on other women.
This goes deeper than lingering fears of another marital scandal during a Rodham Clinton Presidency. The media doesn’t ask, for example, whether America is ready for another Oval Office affair. Rather, it poses the question over and over again, “Is America ready for a _woman_ President?”
As far as I can tell, no one has come up with a good answer.
Does the Taliban Run Your Office?
I started thinking about this while reading “The Kite Runner” by Khaled Hosseini, a novel about a family in Afghanistan that spans the twenty or so year period from the mid 1970’s to the takeover by the Taliban:
Fact: the American starry-eyed worship of youth is not just a marketing device, but a dominant factor in molding the corporate culture of businesses and especially office environments.
Fact: the eager young MBA’s and especially the over-competitive, short on social skills tekkie types that populate American offices have a lot in common with the “average” al Qaeda terrorist, as profiled by terrorism expert Marc Sageman back in July 2004.
Extreme Absurdity
I’ve been watching a couple of series on the Discovery Channel, about people who voluntarily put themselves into extreme survival situations, like climbing Mt. Everest.
Everest is 29,035 feet high, poking its way into the jet stream at an altitude beyond which helicopters can fly.
Summitting Everest requires a 12 hour climb from the highest base camp; the last 300 feet alone take 1-2 hours. Having not slept for the 48 hours before beginning their ascent, climbers must reach the summit and then descend safely past the “Death Zone” in a continuous 17 or more hour non-stop trip.
Oxygen levels at the top of Everest are about 1/3 of amounts at sea level, leading to hypoxia and cerebral and pulmonary edema: if someone were dropped directly from sea level to the top of Everest, they would die in 3 minutes.
Wind speeds can exceed those produced by a category 5 hurricane like Katrina. In July, the warmest month, the average summit temperature is -19 degrees C.
Belief in a Just World
There are people out there – in fact, the great majority of Americans – so divorced from reality that they believe – no, they _have_ to believe – that the world is fair.
Recently, a group of Harvard and Stanford researchers led by graduate student Kristina R. Olson concluded in a study of American children that kids as young as five to seven believe that luck is not random, but explainable by “good things happening to good people”, and vice versa.
An Hour
Today, I got an extra hour. It wasn’t due to a time change, but an adjustment in schedule.
A whole hour, and I have no idea where it went.
Non-office time is like that. Before we know it, it’ll be Monday morning, and everyone will say, “Where did the weekend go?”
Happy Birthday, Peter
Today is Peter’s birthday. In about an hour, he’ll officially be 37.
I get to mention this because I’m The Mom. Moms are goofy about their kids’ birthdays, even when party favors and silly games have become a relic of long ago. It’s a victory over the forces of nature that we feel entitled to share.