Awake, it seems.

Well, due to circumstances beyond my control, I didn't get to go for a walk or do anything outside yesterday. Grumph.

I did end up going to bed around 9:00 pm, and fell asleep by 10:00 pm. So far, that's according to plan. What WASN'T according to plan was waking up at 2:30 am and being completely unable to fall asleep again. I've been lying in bed, tossing and turning, since then. Nothing has helped. I tried some herbal sleeping pills, and a few hours later (on taxlady's suggestion) I tried Cocoa with Rum. Neither helped.

Since my alarm is set to go off in about 90 minutes, I've given up on getting any more sleep tonight. At this point my only hope is coffee, and lots of it, to ensure that I'm awake and alert at 11:00 am when I have my job interview.

Double Grumph.

Spreadsheets.

A few years after VisiCalc, the worlds first electronic spreadsheet, first appeared in 1979 I gave it a try. Although I was only 15 at the time, and knew little programming, it was clear to me that the product was severely lacking in features. I made a list of a dozen or so features that I thought it desperately needed, and over the decades since, most of them have now shown up. We still don't have reconfigurable topologies or arbitrary cell placement (ie, not just columns and rows), but they weren't the most essential features missing. Now, I've just read a new article that mentions a desperately needed feature that, in all my years of thinking about the problem, never occurred to me. That feature is error analysis and propagation, coupled with probabilities. I never thought of these as been missing, since they are things (I thought) that a scientist would need, and a number cruncher would have no use for. Heck, for all I know the long dead and lamented TK!Solver did all this. It seemed to be a spreadsheet designed for scientists (which may be why it failed).

Well, it seems that spreadsheets are no longer just used for tallying up what is, as I assumed, but are now extensively used for prognostication and trend analysis. The fact that they don't have ANY features that support this makes me wonder why folks are using such a broken tool for this purpose. Sadly, the fact is that the people doing the prognostication probably have no knowledge of error analysis or probability distributions and so are in no position to realize they don't know WTF they are doing. Even IF the spreadsheets had these features, I'm having a hard time imagining them being used, because the required ideas do not fit into the heads of the people making the decisions.

Still, I think that if one did some very careful thinking and market studies, one could write a "trend analysis spreadsheet program" that was specifically designed to lure corporate decision makers into the use of probability distributions and error bars instead of simply taking average or median values. The system would have to have LOTS of built-in smarts to make up for the ignorance of the user, but with some careful UI work, it could secretly be a teaching system as well.

IF (big if) the product took off it would make some real money, and do incalculable good by teaching folks how to make realistic predictions from limited data. Its an idea worth pondering, but I'm not going to put in anywhere near the top of my stack, since its far from clear that what I would like to do is possible, or that I could convince corporate types that they want reasonable projections.

For now, I'm filing this as a project to persue AFTER I've make my million, so I don't mind so much if it doesn't work.

Oh, and a quick web search shows that TK Solver still exists! Apparantly its vanishment from all store shelves 15 years ago was more in the way of a retrenchment than a complete failure.

Networking advice needed.

I need some advice, from all and sundry. First the background:

I'm not much of a networker, social or otherwise, and yet I've long known of the studies that say the best way to get a job, bar none, is by personal recommendation of someone who's seen your work. So, when a friend and old co-worker of mine invited me to join the LinkedIn Network several months ago, I did.

This is an invitation-only network of professionals who use the site to build networks of trust based on folks that they know personally. In other words, you are expected to invite other folks who you know who would either be willing to recommend your work, or you would be willing to recommend theirs. You do this by uploading your contact lists (e-mail addresses of folks you know), and then selecting who, if anyone, on that list you want to invite. It also tells you of anyone on your list who is already a member, and how many links away from them you are. You can elect to 'invite' someone who's already on the site, and if they accept you build a direct link to them.

Later, if you are looking for a job, or for someone to do a job for you, you can perform a search of the database and find folks. You can then send them a message via your network of links, and if everyone between you and them approves the message, they eventually get it. Thus, you have no way of finding out the e-mail address of anyone you don't already know, and the site itself claims that they make no use of the email addresses that you upload other than those you explicitly approve. (Their privacy policy is here.)

Then the question:

So, today I finally decided to trust them enough to upload a select list of e-mail addresses, to fill out my online address book. It turns out that the only person I know that is already on LinkedIn is Austin Hill, executive CEO of Zero Knowledge Systems. I had his e-mail address from some contract negotiations Pooq did with him years ago. So, I don't exactly know this person well, but I have no reason to think he has any negative memories of me. And he's clearly someone who believes in this networking thing, so I'm tempted to just invite him into my network. Still, when I first got my invite, I almost trashed it as spam, because its just not the sort of thing I usually join. Maybe I should be trying to change that behaviour though. I dunno.

Anyway, the BIG question in my mind is whether or not I should send invites to any of my friends, and what they would think about getting an invite message from LinkedIn that was originated by me. How many of you would resent it, or classify it as spam, and who would actually WANT to be invited into a social network like this? I'd like to hear from as many of you as possible, since I would like some statistics to help me judge whether or not to approach the folks who AREN'T on LJ that I might want to invite in.

Interview Results.

Well I had my interview today. I'm really not sure what kind of impression I made. I'm not naturally a people person, and on only 4 hours sleep I wasn't at my best. I think I made some points at the beginning when we discussed their product and I said I didn't see what market they were aiming at, and their UI sucked. Well, he agreed about the UI and said that they had a team working on it.
It turns out that mainly what they do is reverse engineer proprietary file formats so they don't have to pay licensing fees.

Anyway, I was then given a 14 page test and 40 minutes to do it in. I ended up taking 50 minutes because I was feeling dopey and because its been 5+ years since I wrote a line of C++ and 8+ since I wrote any Java. (And my programming style is REALLY cramped by not having an editor -- I don't write code linearly). The programming and math problems were trivial and on any normal day I would be confident I got it all right, but today I don't know. I'm pretty sure I made syntax errors, because I could not, for the life of me, remember the syntax for class inheritance in C++. 

After the test we chatted a bit while the interviewer flipped through it. It was clear that having an 8-years out-of-date knowledge of Java and no idea of the current shape of the libraries, nor what SWING and JSP were, did not make for an impressive test. I think I got all of the geometry and probability stuff right, cause he just nodded as he flipped through those.

Anyway, at the end of it he asked about what kind of position I would like, what salary I was looking for and if he could have some references, so I don't think I've completely wrecked my chances. I gave him  _sps_'s cell number and e-mail since I had worked for him in 1999, and gave the phone numbers of the two folks I was working under at SNT, so they'll probably be contacted.

He then said they're currently just doing interviews. In about 2 weeks they'll take all the resume's and interview data and sort it. Then they'll call people who end up at the top of the pile. So, I have at least two weeks before I know if they're gonna offer me a job. I'm certainly not going to hold my breath waiting though. In the meanwhile I'll continue with my various attempts to find work, and see what comes up.