Relax, Everything Is Deeply Intertwingled

Less-than-a-Grand Theft Auto

Humans have a wonderful capacity to create things, and a wonderful capacity to destroy things. Today I was on the receiving end of having one of my things destroyed.

Someone stole the 1993 Nissan Sentra that we parked on the street outside our home in relatively crime-free Palo Alto.

The Palo Alto Police said that recently in South Bay there have been a lot of thefts of Nissans, Hondas, and Acuras by a professional ring that chops the cars for parts.

So in all likelihood, I'm never seeing the car again. Which reminds me that in life, we often do not get a chance to say goodbye -- and that I should count my blessings that what I lost was a vehicle I loved for the last eight years, and not a pet, friend, or family member.

The biggest shame comes from the Insurance Company, of course, which would only reimburse the appraised value of the car, which is something less than a grand.

This is neither the value the car had to me yesterday -- as someone who just spent 800 dollars to replace the brakes -- nor the value of the car to me today -- because buying a car that was kept in such good condition is likely to cost me several thousand dollars.

It's not even the value the car had to the thieves -- the radio alone was worth several hundred dollars, for example.

And yet, the Insurance Company believes the whole is worth less than the sum of the parts. And since it is a Corporation, it cannot be reasoned with. A policy is a policy, and policies do not cater to the whims and wants of humans.

So I'm sitting here in stage three of the five stages of coping with loss -- denial, bargaining, anger, despair/depression, acceptance -- and I'm angry because there's nothing a person can do about such loss. Such loss just randomly happens -- it can happen at any time -- and when it does, the person... just... loses. Even if they catch the person(s) who thieved, in all likelihood the car is long gone, and there's no way to repair the damage if it did, indeed, get chopped.

Deborah said to think of it as an altruistic organ donor, giving its life so that other 1993 Nissan Sentras can live (and pumping up the economy, because the thieves will spend their money consuming, and other Nissan owners will spend for the parts and labor to get their cars fixed with pieces of my car). That thought made me smile a little, and made the anger subside a little.

Tapping into the remaining anger, I remind myself to go home to see the presidential debate tonight. I ask myself if I'm better off than four years ago. Gasoline costs more but I have one less car than I did; health care costs more (both for humans and for pets) but I have lost some weight; university tuititions cost more so I have dropped out of school; my salary is flat and I went into deep debt to start KnowNow but I have paid back some of that debt and have a plan for paying back the rest in the coming years; and my rent costs less but if I wanted to buy a house that would cost a lot more. I don't feel better off than four years ago, but I don't feel a lot worse off, either.

I did quit caffeine 5 days ago and have had bad headaches for the past four days, so I'm sure that's contributing to my mood. Rohit sent me an article, Is Caffeine Withdrawal a Mental Disorder? (subtitle: 1 in 8 People Can't Function Without Daily Fix) by Sid Kirchheimer:

Griffiths' analysis shows as little as one cup of coffee can cause an addiction and withdrawal from caffeine produces any of five clusters of symptoms in some people:

• Headache, the most common symptom, which affects at least of 50% of people in caffeine withdrawal
  
• Fatigue or drowsiness
  
• "Unhappy" mood, depression, or irritability
  
• Difficulty concentrating
  
• Flu-like symptoms such as nausea, vomiting, muscle pain, and stiffness.

"Onset of these symptoms typically occurs within 12 to 24 hours of stopping caffeine and peaks one to two days after stopping," Griffiths tells WebMD. "The duration is between two and nine days."

A new revelation in Griffith's analysis may be what upgrades caffeine withdrawal from its current "more study is needed" status to "disorder" status: These withdrawal symptoms are severe enough in about one in eight people to interfere with their ability to function on a day-to-day basis.

"The withdrawal symptoms can be mild or severe, but it's estimated that 13% of people develop symptoms so significant that they can't do what they normally would do -- they can't work, they can't leave the house, they can't function," he says.

Lovely. Feels like I'm in a perfect mood to watch the presidential debate: I've got a headache from caffeine withdrawal, I'm pissed off about my car getting stolen, and I've realized that I'm not better off than I was four years ago.

So now I'm thinking about the person (or people) who stole my car, and wondering how bad they have it that they had to desperately resort to Less-than-a-Grand Theft Auto to feed themselves (and/or their drug habits), and wondering if they're worse off than they were four years ago. If I met the person (or people) I would probably be sorely disappointed that they are far less needy than I imagine them to be. But in all likelihood I've been dealt a better hand in life than they've been dealt, and therefore I should count my blessings instead of whining about my loss.

I think about my family. I said earlier that in all likelihood, I'm never seeing the car again, which reminds me that in life, we often do not get a chance to say goodbye. I'm glad my family is still around. Tomorrow my grandmother turns 90 -- and I think about 0, 30, 60, 90 and decide that tomorrow morning I will surprise her with a "Happy Birthday" phone call.

As for tonight, I think I'll give my mom and dad a call... just to tell them that I miss them and I love them. A person really cannot say those things enough.

One Treeelyun Dollars

Forbes: "The list of the wealthiest Americans hasn't changed much over the past year, but their combined net worth now tops $1 trillion [up $45 billion in 12 months], and you'd need $750 million just to come in at No. 400... not all the new names are family money: only four of the 45 arrivals made their fortunes in technology. Google made billionaires out founders Sergey Brin and Larry E. Page, Chief Executive Eric Schmidt and early investor Andreas Bechtolsheim; bond guru William Gross' steady hand on volatile markets created his $1 billion fortune; and Kenneth Hendricks shows a guy can still make a buck in the unsexy trade of building supplies. High oil and gas prices also helped: T. Boone Pickens, a perennial suspect for two decades, finally makes an appearance on the list, but his $750 million pile is dwarfed by the $4.2 billion net worth of Houston pipeline maven Daniel Duncan... The rest of the class of 2004 made their money in a more old-fashioned way. It seems that bonds, booze and even sandwiches can still create wealth that's on par with PCs and processors."

Apparently it's hard to stay on the list. Of the original Forbes 400 list in 1982, only 50 remain on the 2004 list, while 205 dropped off because wealth did not grow enough or it eroded. Says Forbes:

The minimum in 1982 was $90 million. A family that cashed out of a single position worth $100 million that year and bought the S&P 500 would easily have crossed the $750 million minimum for 2004 (allowing for some income taxes but no estate tax). Diversification is the key to survival. A single stock position has a less than 50% probability of sustaining wealth over 20 years. But a diversified portfolio increases the probability to 85%...

Anybody who has cowered over a pile of Treasury bills over the past 22 years has seen 44% of his real wealth evaporate in inflation and income taxes. The founding members who survived compounded their wealth (in nominal terms) at an annual 12%, less than the S&P's 13.5% return. Sustaining wealth against the ravages of time and chance is not a small challenge.

The top 10 Forbes 400 List is no surprise: Bill Gates ($48b) and Paul Allen ($20b) from Microsoft, Warren Buffet ($41b) from Berkshire Hathaway, five Waltons worth $18b apiece from Wal-Mart (so if Sam Walton were alive today he'd be worth twice what BillG is worth), and Michael Dell ($14.2b) and Larry Ellison ($13.7b), who are both barely ahead of #11 Steve Ballmer ($12.6b). Scanning the list I see the three M&M/Mars co-owners (tied for #17) are worth a combined $30b -- not bad for candy; Philip Knight of Nike is #22 with $7.4b; Beanie Babies purveyor Ty Warner is #34 with $5b; George Lucas is tied for #60 with $3b; Ralph Lauren is a fashionable #72 with $2.7b; the owner of Slim-Fast is #124 with $1.8b (tied with many people, including Fred Smith of Fedex).

My favorite peeps on the list are the Internet dudes. Pierre Omidyar is #16 ($10.4b) thanks to eBay; Jeff Bezos is #38 ($4.3b) thanks to Amazon; Page and Brin are tied for #43 ($4b) thanks to Google; David Filo is #74 ($2.6b, tied with Steve Jobs, Steven Spielberg, and Donald Trump(!)) and Jerry Yang is #97 ($2.2b) thanks to Yahoo!. In ten short years four Internet companies have created 6 of the 100 most wealthy Americans. Ten years ago, eBay, Amazon, and Google didn't even exist, and Yahoo! was just getting started... which shows how much difference a decade can make. Paul Graham said it best, "Over the long term, what the Bubble got right will be more important than what it got wrong."

Crude, Glorious Crude

(Here's a little brain teaser that's answered at the end of this post. Put the following liquids in order of how much they cost per gallon: Dom Perignon, Gasoline, Evian water, Minute Maid orange juice, Starbucks latte, Children's NyQuil, Liquid Paper correction fluid....)

Oh joy, crude oil prices just passed fifty bucks a barrel. Can you say "bubble in crude"?

There is talk of the price of gasoline hitting three bucks a gallon sometime soon (especially in California, where gasoline prices are higher thanks to our own reformulated gasoline program with more stringent requirements than Federally-mandated clean gasolines).

Let's see, George Bush and Dick Cheney both used to be CEO's of energy companies, so they of all people should be able to govern us toward cheap crude, right? And yet...

Summer 2000 Average Gas Price: $1.46 per gallon

Current Average U.S. Gas Price: $1.92 per gallon, a 32% increase

So much for the expertise of this administration leading to cheaper energy.

I think back to a piece by Stanford University economist Frank A. Wolak on April 25, 2004 in the SJ Mercury News called "Driving Home Some Reasons For Hike In State Gas Prices". (I would provide a link to the online article but sadly searching mercurynews.com I cannot find it.)

In the article, Wolak writes,

California prices are roughly 30 cents per gallon higher than average prices in the rest of the United States [due to]...

• The price of crude oil has increased substantially
• The markup earned by both gasoline refiners and wholesalers has increased
• There are few out-of-state suppliers with long-term commitments to provide California gasoline
• Californians are using ever more gasoline, with no new refineries built for more than two decades
• The regulatory process for the approval of new refinery and storage facilities is extremely costly in both time and money

...Virtually all of the difference between retail prices in California and the rest of the United States is due to higher sales margin earned by California refiners -- the difference between what they pay for oil and what they charge for gasoline they produce. There are two explanations for these higher wholesale margins that have parallels to the causes of high wholesale-electricity margins during the summer and autumn of 2000. First, gasoline costs more to produce in California [because it's required to be cleaner-burning than the rest of the country]... Second, there is insufficient competition in gasoline refining and wholesaling... Six firms own more than 90 percent of the refining capacity and four refiners own almost 70 percent. In addition, CARB gasoline can currently be produced by only a few refineries outside California, which further limits the competition in-state refiners face.

The article goes on to recommend a study to help policy-makers understand why California gas prices are so high so they can formulate an appropriate response. My favorite part of the article, though, is a sidebar that offers a comparison of how much we're willing to pay for other liquids (which, granted, would be cheaper if sold by the gallon):

Gasoline at the pump in California................. between $2 and $3 per gallon

Evian water, 1.05 quart for $1.69.................................... $6.44 per gallon

Minute Maid Heart Wise orange juice, 64 oz. for $4.49....... $8.98 per gallon

Starbucks tall latte, 12 ounces for $2.30........................... $24.53 per gallon

Children's NyQuil, 6 ounces for $7.99............................... $170.45 per gallon

Liquid Paper correction fluid, 20ml for $2.19...................... $414.46 per gallon

Dom Perignon Vintage 1996, 750ml for $177......................... $893.26 per gallon

Once again, booze is the winner. Fill 'er up!!!

Live With Intention

While I was in Southern California I picked up several Quotable Cards (which apparently are available online, too). Since they cost me a pretty penny, I'm transcribing them here...

We do not remember days. We remember moments. (Cesare Pavese)

Do not go where the path may lead. Go instead where there is no path and leave a trail. (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

No act of kindness, no matter how small, is ever wasted. (Aesop)

In the middle of difficulty lies opportunity. (Albert Einstein)

be glad of life, because it gives you the chance to love and to work and to play and to look up at the stars; to be satisfied with your possessions; to despise nothing in the world except falsehood and meanness, and to fear nothing except cowardice; to be governed by your admirations rather than by your disgusts; to covet nothing that is your neighbor's except his kindness of heart and gentleness of manners; to think seldom of your enemies, often of your friends... and to spend as much time as you can, with body and with spirit. these are little guideposts on the floorpath to peace. (Henry Van Dyke)

Just when the caterpillar thought the world was over, it became a butterfly. (anonymous)

The whole theory of the universe is directed unerringly to one single individual -- namely to you. (Walt Whitman)

live with intention.
walk to the edge.
listen hard.
practice wellness.
play with abandon.
laugh.
choose with no regret.
continue to learn.
appreciate your friends.
do what you love.
live as if this is all there is.
(Mary Anne Radmacher)

Friendship is when people know all about you but like you anyway. (anonymous)

risk more than others think is safe,
care more than others think is wise,
dream more than others think is practical,
expect more than others think is possible.
(Cadet Maxim)

To laugh is to risk appearing the fool.
To weep is to risk appearing sentimental.
To reach out for another is risk involvement.
To expose feelings is to risk exposing your true self.
To place your ideas, your dreams, before a crowd Is to risk their loss.
To love is to risk not being loved in return.
To live is to risk dying. To hope is to risk despair.
To try is to risk failure.
But risks must be taken, because the greatest hazard in life is To risk nothing.
The person who risks nothing dies nothing, Has nothing and is nothing.
They say they avoid suffering and sorrow, But they cannot learn, Feel, change, grow, love, feel.
Chained by their attitudes, they are slaves.
They have forfeited their freedom.
Only a person who risks is free.
(anonymous)

Once you have tasted flight...
...you will forever walk the earth with your eyes turned skyward, for there you have been, and there you will always long to return. (Leonard da Vinci)

Life is not measured by the number of breaths we take, but by the number of moments that take our breath away. (anonymous)

This is my wish for you:
comfort on difficult days,
smiles when sadness intrudes,
rainbows to follow the clouds,
laughter to kiss your lips,
sunsets to warm your heart,
hugs when spirits sag,
beauty for your eyes to see,
friendships to brighten your being,
faith so that you can believe,
confidence for when you are in doubt,
courage to know yourself,
patience to accept the truth,
love to complete your life.
(anonymous)

To see a world in a grain of sand
and heaven in a wild flower,
hold infinity in the palm of your hand
and eternity in an hour.
(William Blake)

Never let the odds keep you from doing what you know in your heart you were meant to do. (H. Jackson Brown, Jr.)

dwell in possibility... (Emily Dickinson)

"There is no use trying," said Alice, "one can't believe impossible things." "I dare say you haven't had much practice," said the Queen. "When I was your age, I always did it for half an hour a day. Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast." (Lewis Carroll)

Much unhappiness has come into the world because of things left unsaid. (Fyodor Dostoevsky)

Only those who risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go. (T.S. Eliot)

If we all did the things we are capable of doing, we would literally astound ourselves. (Thomas Edison)

It is never too late to be what you might have been. (George Eliot)

Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could. Some blunders and absurdities have crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day. You shall begin it serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense. (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

The sun, with all those planets revolving around it and dependent on it, can still ripen a bunch of grapes as if it had nothing else in the universe to do. (Galileo)

Practice random acts of kindness and senseless acts of beauty. (Anne Herbert)

The great thing about getting older is that you don't lose all the other ages you've been! (Madeleine L'Engle)

The only people for me are the mad ones... The ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn, like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars. (Jack Kerouac)

Everything that is done in the world is done by hope. (Martin Luther)

One must still have chaos in oneself to be able to give birth to a dancing star. (Freidrich Nietzsche)

Some stories don't have a clear beginning, middle, and end. Life is about not knowing, having to change, taking the moment and making the best of it, without knowing what's going to happen next. Delicious ambiguity. (Gilda Radner)

Do one thing every day that scares you. (Eleanor Roosevelt)

Happiness is a journey, not a destination. For a long time it seemed to me that life was about to begin - real life. But there was always some obstacle in the way, something to be gotten through first, some unfinished business, time still to be served, a debt to be paid. At last it dawned on me that these obstacles were my life. This perspective has helped me to see there is no way to happiness. Happiness is the way. So treasure every moment you have and remember that time waits for no one. (Alfred D. Souza)

Happiness is like a butterfly: the more you chase it. the more it will elude you. but if you turn your attention to other things. it will come and sit softly on your shoulder. (Henry David Thoreau)

If you are going to doubt something, doubt your limits. (Don Ward)

Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn't do than by the ones you did. So throw off the bowlines, sail away from the safe harbor, catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover. (unknown)

This is what you shall do: love the earth and sun and the animals despite riches, give alms to every one that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning god, have patience and indulgence toward the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown or to any man or number of men, go freely with powerful uneducated persons and with the young and with the mothers of families, read these leaves in the open air every season of every year of your life, re-examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss what ever insults your own soul, and your very flesh shall be a great peom. (Walt Whitman)

Leap and the net will appear. (Zen koan)

Life isn't about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself. (unknown)

Everything will be okay in the end. If it's not okay, it's not the end. (unknown)

What would you attempt to do if you knew you could not fail?

Entrepreneurship 101

Ross Mayfield's post on Venture Capital blogs reminds me of a few of my favorite entrepreneurship blog posts...

• The Torturous World of Powerpoint by Bradley Feld -- what to include in a startup pitch
  
• You Are Only A First Time CEO Once and Why CEOs Fail by Fred Wilson -- on being self-aware
  
• Oh, the Difference a Decade Makes by Joe Kraus -- on how it's much easier to start a business on much less capital
  
• Hiring: No False Positives by Joe Kraus, and Hiring: False Positives and Negatives by Tim Converse -- on the challenge of hiring
• Superhacker and Phoneboy and Hiring 101 and The Three F's of Success by, uh, yours truly...

...and, since I'm on the subject, here are a few of my favorite articles as well...

• How to Start a Startup by Paul Graham  (see also as Ev suggests the chapters "How to Create Wealth" and "Mind the Gap" from Paul Graham's book Hackers and Painters)
• The Guerilla Guide to Interviewing and Fixing Venture Capital by Joel Spolsky (who has lots of gems in his archive as well)
• The Art of Starting, by Guy Kawasaki (and transcribed excellently by Brendon Wilson)
• An Engineer's View of Venture Capitalists by Nick Tredennick, with Brion Shimamoto
• Why Startups Fail by Robert X. Cringely
• The Sales Learning Curve by Mark Leslie
• Diary of a Start-Up, the rise and fall of ArsDigita by Eve Andersson (see also Phil Greenspun's ArsDigita: From Start-Up to Bust-Up)

And remember that "Every company's got four kinds of risk: market risk, people risk, technology risk, and financial risk. A valuation is dependent upon how much of that risk has been removed." Hmmm. I think I need to read more business books.

Update, April 2005. Allen Morgan just completed his Ten Commandments for Entrepreneurs, which have a lot of excellent thoughts and ideas for people thinking about starting a company. They're worth a read:

1. Do your homework, and contact the right person
2. Be on time
3. Tease, don't overwhelm
4. Know your audience
5. Create the "Aha" early
6. Explain the idea by analogy to, or contrast with, older ideas
7. Go with 13 or less slides
8. Know what you don't know -- and admit it
9. Be like Goldilocks, when it comes to competition
10. Control the meeting -- but be smart about it

Saddlepeak Lodge

Early this afternoon we went to the excellent Saddlepeak Lodge on 419 Cold Canyon Road in Calabasas (phone: 818-222-3888). The owner Ann Graham Ehringer has a Ph.D.! The service was unparalleled thanks to waiter Darron Smith, and the cuisine was heavenly -- from a Happy Sunday libation called a Bellini (1997 S. Anderson Blanc de Noir Champagne and fresh peach puree) to wonderfully fluffy souffle pancakes with warm blackberry compote and creme fraiche, from the ever-popular "goodie basket" of fresh pasteries to the homemade Kennebec potato chips. A culinary delight, in a delightful environment. We also saw Rebecca Romijn and Jerry O'Connell there, and I was struck by how often lives intertwingle every day all around the world.

Late this afternoon we went to the Santa Barbara Zoo, where at sunset Melissa Rosenthal wed Michael Patrick on a hillside overlooking the Pacific Ocean. I went to high school with Michael in Wilton, Connecticut, in 1986 and 1987, and after undergraduate college he and I moved to Los Angeles in September 1992 -- me to begin graduate studies at Caltech, him to begin working on screenplays for The Industry. To pay bills, Michael works at a sports club with a woman named Jill (who happens to be Melissa's sister) and a woman named Suzanne, who introduced Michael to Melissa. Suzanne knew Melissa because her husband (also named Mike) went to high school with Jill and Melissa. What's interesting about this story is that Michael and Melissa were both at Brown University in the late 1980's and early 1990's but apparently never met there. Melissa is from southern California and Michael moved to southern California to find his destiny. Apparently his destiny was to find a woman a decade after moving to California who happened to have lived in Providence at the same time he did. Sometimes lives intertwingle several times over the years and it can take years before they actually connect... and when they do, it's like... magic.

Songs that will forever remind me of the wedding:

• "Somewhere Over the Rainbow / What a Wonderful World", by Israel Kamakawiwo'ole (interestingly, my father's favorite song of all time)
  
• "At the Zoo", by Simon and Garfunkel (which also reminds me of childhood visits to the Bronx Zoo)
  
• "Your Love Gets Sweeter Everyday", by Finley Quaye (which I think was used by a Kodak commercial as well)

My two favorite quotes of the evening:

• Kevin Patrick: "This set of people will never all be at the same place at the same time again."
• Michelle Rifkin: "Do you sometimes wish we could stop time?"

A few years ago, Michael and Rohit both thought they would never find the right person. Now, within three months of each other, both are wed. Never lose hope. When the time is right, great things can and do happen.

Serendipitous Arrangement

Anne Galloway pointed me at this Jean Arp picture, Collage Arranged According to the Laws of Chance, 1916–17.

I find it exquisite.

On Joy and Sorrow

Last night as I celebrated a new year, I noted that Kragen has undergone a process of continual improvement in the years I've known him, and I thought that was impressive, because I don't think most people strive to continually improve over the course of years.

I didn't know why most people don't strive to continually improve, and Kragen offered three potential reasons:

1. They're comfortable.
2. They're distracted. And/or,
3. They're afraid.

Kragen also referred me to Kahlil Gibran Prophet passage, "On Joy and Sorrow":

Then a woman said, "Speak to us of Joy and Sorrow."

And he answered:

Your joy is your sorrow unmasked.

And the selfsame well from which your laughter rises was oftentimes
filled with your tears.

And how else can it be?

The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain.

Is not the cup that hold your wine the very cup that was burned in the
potter's oven?

And is not the lute that soothes your spirit, the very wood that was
hollowed with knives?

When you are joyous, look deep into your heart and you shall find it
is only that which has given you sorrow that is giving you joy.

When you are sorrowful look again in your heart, and you shall see
that in truth you are weeping for that which has been your delight.

Some of you say, "Joy is greater than sorrow," and others say, "Nay,
sorrow is the greater."

But I say unto you, they are inseparable.

Together they come, and when one sits alone with you at your board,
remember that the other is asleep upon your bed.

Verily you are suspended like scales between your sorrow and your joy.

Only when you are empty are you at a standstill and balanced.

When the treasure-keeper lifts you to weigh his gold and his silver,
needs must your joy or your sorrow rise or fall.

I wonder what it all means...

Google Labs Aptitude Test (GLAT)

Joe Kraus has a new typepad about entrepreneurship, and one of his first posts is about Hiring -- No False Positives, a great subject. It's important to remember that there's no one who's great in every environment, so great candidates need to be interviewed as much for cultural fit as they do for skillset. Joe writes:

Any hiring process should focus on never letting in a bad fit. Even if that means accidentally rejecting a lot of people that would be good fits. Said another way, it optimizes for no false positives, even at the expense of false negatives.

The Google hiring process is notoriously long and complicated. Internally, it's kind of a Liberum veto thing - a single no-vote of the hiring committee means you're not in. Why? Because they put the principle of 'no false positives' to work. They assume that there is a huge talent pool of great people and that they can afford to pass on people that would be great fits in order to make sure they never let someone through who doesn't fit.

Trust me. It's so hard to do. Especially in a startup where you've got much more to do than you have people to do it. But, slip up, even once and it's trouble fast.

I totally agree with Joe on this, and have been burned when I didn't listen to this advice. I would rather be understaffed, with everyone productive, than hire someone who does nothing (zero productivity) or -- worse -- takes away from the productivity of others (negative productivity).

So I was flipping through Dr. Dobb's Journal for October 2004 that came in the mail this week, and discovered after page 28 the Google Labs Aptitude Test, test code WR-426F: "How much aptitude do you have for the sort of mind-bending engineering problems encountered each day at Google Labs? Take the GLAT and find out. Simply answer all questions to the best of your abilities (cheaters will answer to the karma police) [and send it to: Google Labs Jobs, 1600 Amphitheatre Parkway, Mountain View, VA 94043-1351]. Score high enough and we'll be in touch. Good luck."

A few comments before I list the test.

• Philosophically, I have a slight problem with their desire for people not to cheat. One set of skills is the raw talent to answer the questions oneself, derived from first principles and creativity, and I guess this test is meant to probe that. On the other hand, another set of skills that is also useful is having the perseverance, the searching skills (uh, hello, this is the friggin' Google Labs Aptitude Test, and the sheer willpower to find the answers by any means necessary shows a lot about a candidate). I'd like to think that the best candidate is someone who's smart and creative enough to answer some questions, and who's tenacious enough to glean the answers to some other questions, and who's ethical enough to tell me when they went for additional help. I believe the answers to most of life's (and a company's) questions do not come from within; they come from constructively collaborating with others; that is why a team is often greater than the sum of its parts.

• That said, I think this test is awesome. I love the idea, and I enjoyed noodling on some of the problems just for the fun of it. Kudos to Google for taking the first 10-digit prime found in consecutive digits of e billboard up a notch. By the way, finding the answer to that question is not brain surgery, but it sure does make one feel smart for solving it because for a moment you think to yourself, "yeah, I'm smart enough to work at Google", before going back to whatever it was you were doing before you fell down that rathole.

• Wouldn't it be cool if there were also a Google Labs Attitude Test? :)

If, after reading the following questions, you decide you're Google Caliber, by all means apply for a Google job, because heaven knows that with only 2200 employees they'll need to do more recruiting before they can be "the biggest and most important company in the world in 5-8 years".

Google Labs Aptitude Test:

1. Solve this cryptic equation, realizing of course that values for M and E could be interchanged. No leading zeroes are allowed.

   WWWDOT - GOOGLE = DOTCOM

2. Write a haiku describing possible methods for predicting search traffic seasonality.

3. What's the next line?

   1
   1 1
   2 1
   1 2 1 1
   1 1 1 2 2 1

4. You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike. There is a dusty laptop here with a weak wireless connection. There are dull, lifeless gnomes strolling about. What dost thou do?

   A) Wander aimlessly, bumping into obstacles until you are eaten by a grue.
   B) Use the laptop as a digging device to tunnel to the next level.
   C) Play MPoRPG until the battery dies along with your hopes.
   D) Use the computer to map the nodes of the maze and discover an exit path.
   E) Email your resume to Google, tell the lead gnome you quit and find yourself in a whole different world

   (editor's note: I always thought the acronym was MMoRPG, not MPoRPG?)

5. What's broken with Unix?

   (editor's note: I would love to hear Allan's answer to this question...)

   How would you fix it?

   (editor's note: Allan's pontification parable rave about this question is far better than an actual answer to this question...)

6. On your first day at Google, you discover that your cubicle mate wrote the textbook you used as a primary resource in your first year of graduate school. Do you:

   A) Fawn obsequiously and ask if you can have an autograph.
   B) Sit perfectly still and use only soft keystrokes to avoid disturbing her concentration
   C) Leave her daily offerings of granola and English toffee from the food bins.
   D) Quote your favorite formula from the textbook and explain how it's now your mantra.
   E) Show her how example 17b could have been solved with 34 fewer lines of code.

7. Which of the following expresses Google's over-arching philosophy?

   A) "I'm feeling lucky"
   B) "Don't be evil"
   C) "Oh, I already fixed that"
   D) "You should never be more than 50 feet from food"
   E) All of the above

8. How many different ways can you color an icosahedron with one of three colors on each face?

   (editor's note: "An icosahedron is not-necessarily a regular 20-faced polyhedron! Examples include the regular icosahedron, Jessen's orthogonal icosahedron, rhombic icosahedron, 18-sided prism, 19-sided pyramid, or 10-sided dipyramid..." Jiminy crickets, am I a geek...)

   What colors would you choose?

9. This space is intentionally blank. Please fill it with something that improves upon emptiness.
   
   

10. On an infinite, two-dimensional, rectangular lattice of 1-ohm resistors, what is the resistance between two nodes that are a knight's move away?

11. It's 2pm on a sunny Sunday afternoon in the Bay Area. You're minutes from the Pacific Ocean, redwood forest hiking trails and world class cultural attractions. What do you do?

    (editor's note: I should stop interrupting this test with editor's notes, but I cannot help but ask myself if there's any possible answer to this question better than do some laundry....)

12. In your opinion, what is the most beautiful math equation ever derived?

13. Which of the following is NOT an actual interest group formed by Google employees?

    A) Women's basketball
    B) Buffy fans
    C) Cricketeers
    D) Nobel winners
    E) Wine club

14. What will be the next great improvement in search technology?

    (editor's note: It's gotta be Fisher, right? Gotta get me a pocket Fisher, man...)

15. What is the optimal size of a project team, above which additional members do not contribute productivity equivalent to the percentage increase in the staff size?

    A) 1
    B) 3
    C) 5
    D) 11
    E) 24

16. Given a triangle ABC, how would you use only a compass and straight edge to find a point P such that triangles ABP, ACP, and BCP have equal perimeters? (Assume that ABC is constructed so that a solution does exist.)

17. Consider a function which, for a given whole number n, returns the number of ones required when writing out all numbers between 0 and n. For example, f(13) = 6. Notice that f(1) = 1. What is the next largest n such that f(n) = n?

18. What's the coolest hack you've ever written?

19. 'Tis known in refined company, that choosing K things out of N can be done in ways as many as choosing N minus K from N: I pick K, you the remaining.

    Find though a cooler bijection, where you show a knack uncanny, of making your choices contain all K of mine. Oh, for pedantry: let K be no more than half N.

20. What number comes next in the sequence: 10, 9, 60, 90, 70, 66, ?

    A) 96
    B) 10 to the 100th power
    C) Either of the above
    D) None of the above

21. In 29 words or fewer, describe what you would strive to accomplish if you worked at Google Labs.

    (final editor's note: I still have 23 words left over after scribbling "don't be evil; do some laundry"... any suggestions?)
    

Note that cruftbox has a scan of the GLAT in stylish green-and-white jpg's. (Spoiler alert: some of the test's questions are answered in the comments of that post.)

I wonder how they'd feel if I submitted the form completely written in collage-style, cutting and pasting passages from newspapers and magazines. Or if I answered all the questions in crayon.

By the way, you can find at least two answers on Dion's blog. And I do agree with Mark Szpakowski's answer to the most beautiful equation ever derived:

Most beautiful equation ever derived? It's gotta be:

(e**(i*pi)) + 1 = 0

Brings together e (the Google [IPO offering] valuation :-), pi, i, 1 and 0, not to mention equality, addition and multiplication/exponentiation. What more can you ask for?

I try to grok this in fullness.

Euler, you magnificent bastard, all I can say is, Amen, brother. And remember, kids, don't drink and derive...

Interconnectedness of All Things

On the Internet, we believe in the interconnectedness of all things, and things happen so quickly that we often have to remind ourselves to relax. I just paid the bill from Six Apart that gives me another year filled with typepaddy goodness. Which makes me introspective.

13 months ago I started this typepad on the dual principles of relaxation and intertwinguilarity.

I still haven't found my rhythm, other than to declare that "it's a small world after all" and to believe in the "interconnectedness of all things".

And it was in searching for interconnectedness of all things today that I stumbled on a post I made five years ago:

I'm very glad you asked me that, Mrs Rawlinson. The term `holistic' refers to my conviction that what we are concerned with here is the fundamental interconnectedness of all things. I do not concern myself with such petty things as fingerprint powder, telltale pieces of pocket fluff and inane footprints. I see the solution to each problem as being detectable in the pattern and web of the whole. The connections between causes and effects are often much more subtle and complex than we with our rough and ready understanding of the physical world might naturally suppose, Mrs Rawlinson. Let me give you an example. If you go to an acupuncturist with toothache he sticks a needle instead into your thigh. Do you know why he does that, Mrs Rawlinson? No, neither do I, Mrs Rawlinson, but we intend to find out. A pleasure talking to you, Mrs Rawlinson. Goodbye.

    -- Douglas Adams, Dirk Gentley's Holistic Detective Agency

(I also found myself seven years ago.) When you search for something and find yourself, it's deja vu all over again... and the best thing you can do is just, relax...

In relaxing I realize that milliseconds matter (for example, to an Olympic athlete). A single vote can swing an election involving a hundred million people (for example, a Supreme Court judge). And the Butterfly Effect, though simple, is profound:

The butterfly effect [is] the idea in meteorology that the flapping of a butterfly's wing will create a disturbance that in the chaotic motion of the atmosphere will become amplified eventually to change the large scale atmospheric motion, so that the long term behavior becomes impossible to forecast.

The "Butterfly Effect" is often ascribed to Lorenz. In a paper in 1963 given to the New York Academy of Sciences he remarks:

One meteorologist remarked that if the theory were correct, one flap of a seagull's wings would be enough to alter the course of the weather forever.

By the time of his talk at the December 1972 meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Washington, D.C. the sea gull had evolved into the more poetic butterfly - the title of his talk was Predictability: Does the Flap of a Butterfly’s Wings in Brazil set off a Tornado in Texas?

The Blogosphere every moment of every day demonstrates this effect in action. Someone will read something or write something, as a post or comment, which sets off a chain reaction as others read and write. The Blogosphere isn't just a million monkeys at a million typewriters tapping randomly. It's all cause-and-effect, where words cascade from brain to keyboard through nothing but net to others' brains, which creates a virtuous cycle. We as humans try to find order through it all, but we can't, because "people keep pretending they can make things deeply hierarchical, categorizable and sequential when they can't. Everything is deeply intertwingled." Rather than fight it, I've learned to relax.

Or at least, to try to relax.