interviewed by jducoeur
I've been writing this off and on over the course of a few days. I hope it's not
too choppy.
1. Which appeals to you more, the emotional or intellectual aspects of Judaism?
If forced to choose, I'll have to go with the intellectual aspects. Mind, the emotional aspects are significant too, but if it were only about emotion, I'm not sure it would be any more meaningful than getting high. There has to be something else going on too.
The strong tradition (commandment, actually) to study and probe and turn the torah over and over looking for new insights is very appealing to me. It says that there isn't one pat Answer, and when someone tells it to you you're done. It says that the mere process of engaging is meaningful, even though it's inefficient to have imperfect humans try to figure out stuff than an omnipotent God could just tell us. There are no (well, very few) stupid questions, and it's ok to ask "why?".
But it's not a complete free-for-all, or at least when it is that's a lot less interesting to me. The quest, the struggle, and the what-ifs are within a certain context. It's bounded but very open within that. There's lots to learn and explore and not enough time in a lifetime to cover it. That could be scary or futile, but to me it's exciting.
2. Which of your engineering-related positions have you most enjoyed? Why?
While I've enjoyed various aspects of all of them, the overall winner would be the company I most recently joined, before it was acquired. It was at the time I joined it a team of about 30 smart, passionate people with a very flat organizational structure. I was the sole technical writer within the engineering group (which was most of the company), and the engineering manager gave me free rein. It was pretty clear that most of my coworkers had not previously worked with a tech writer with strong technical clues, but it didn't take too many interface challenges, bugs found in source code, and exploits of gaps in specifications to fix that. :-) So I became "one of the guys" in what was much more of a meritocracy than usual, and it was great. And we were doing some very nifty work, technically speaking.
I don't think my being a tech writer was actually all that significant in terms of my satisfaction; that I was working with good people on interesting stuff in an environment where your skill mattered more than your official rank was what did it for me. It's been a while since I was anything like a full-time tech writer and that's fine too.
Somewhere around 50 people the character of the place started to change; not everyone knew what was going on everywhere anymore, and of course by then we had middle management. We got bought and some of our technical focus changed, and we continued to grow. I'm still there so it obviously doesn't suck, but it's not what it was. It probably wasn't what it was since sometime before the acquisition, actually; I think the departure of that original engineering manager was in retrospect pretty significant. He didn't posture and hide stuff; you always knew where you stood with him. Too few managers are willing to be that direct.
3. Having had some years in it, was the Pennsic house worth the effort?
Yes, definitely, though if I were doing it again I would make some changes in the construction. I think it would be worth the loss of a little headroom in the loft, and a steeper ladder, to make it a foot or so narrower, which would make it more stable when being moved without costing much in usage. (And also buy the camp a few more square feet of land.) I would put (mesh-covered) drain holes along the bottom of the wall cavity, so moisture that gets in wouldn't do so much damage. (We had to replace a fair bit of the sheathing a couple years back.) I might make the railing on the loft hinged so that it could be opened for loading large stuff up there, which would support an actual mattress rather than an air mattress. Oh, and given how much stuff we want to store in it, I would look into a beefier trailer in terms of supported weight.
But just to be clear, these are small things (aside from the weight issues on the trailer). The house is great to live in during Pennsic and I'm fortunate to have a camp that supports it.
4. What single characteristic matters most to you in a political candidate?
If I thought I could judge it, integrity. But since that's pretty much impossible to evaluate, I'll say a demonstrated record of valuing individual liberty. In particular, I'm looking for evidence that the person supports liberty in areas where he personally disagrees. This would be good evidence for viewing his role as serving the people and not just his own agenda.
5. What TV show do you most wish had not ended the way it did?
Restricting this to shows that I watched to the end... I have two candidates. First is "St. Elsewhere", which was an excellent show (that I haven't seen in 20 years) with a cop-out last episode. (I'll elaborate in comments if asked but want to keep the entry spoiler-free.) Second is "Earth: Final Conflict", where I resent the entire last season for taking a previously-good show in a sideways, banal direction and never recovering.
"Honorable" mentions go to "Star Trek: Enterprise" (same class of complaint as "St. Elsewhere", but Enterprise wasn't nearly as good a show so it didn't fall as far) and "West Wing", where I was really hoping they would have the courage to have Vinick win the election. A spin-off series with Alan Alda as President Vinick could have been excellent; Matt Santos just isn't compelling.
Sorry, I couldn't do just one. :-)
1. Which appeals to you more, the emotional or intellectual aspects of Judaism?
If forced to choose, I'll have to go with the intellectual aspects. Mind, the emotional aspects are significant too, but if it were only about emotion, I'm not sure it would be any more meaningful than getting high. There has to be something else going on too.
The strong tradition (commandment, actually) to study and probe and turn the torah over and over looking for new insights is very appealing to me. It says that there isn't one pat Answer, and when someone tells it to you you're done. It says that the mere process of engaging is meaningful, even though it's inefficient to have imperfect humans try to figure out stuff than an omnipotent God could just tell us. There are no (well, very few) stupid questions, and it's ok to ask "why?".
But it's not a complete free-for-all, or at least when it is that's a lot less interesting to me. The quest, the struggle, and the what-ifs are within a certain context. It's bounded but very open within that. There's lots to learn and explore and not enough time in a lifetime to cover it. That could be scary or futile, but to me it's exciting.
2. Which of your engineering-related positions have you most enjoyed? Why?
While I've enjoyed various aspects of all of them, the overall winner would be the company I most recently joined, before it was acquired. It was at the time I joined it a team of about 30 smart, passionate people with a very flat organizational structure. I was the sole technical writer within the engineering group (which was most of the company), and the engineering manager gave me free rein. It was pretty clear that most of my coworkers had not previously worked with a tech writer with strong technical clues, but it didn't take too many interface challenges, bugs found in source code, and exploits of gaps in specifications to fix that. :-) So I became "one of the guys" in what was much more of a meritocracy than usual, and it was great. And we were doing some very nifty work, technically speaking.
I don't think my being a tech writer was actually all that significant in terms of my satisfaction; that I was working with good people on interesting stuff in an environment where your skill mattered more than your official rank was what did it for me. It's been a while since I was anything like a full-time tech writer and that's fine too.
Somewhere around 50 people the character of the place started to change; not everyone knew what was going on everywhere anymore, and of course by then we had middle management. We got bought and some of our technical focus changed, and we continued to grow. I'm still there so it obviously doesn't suck, but it's not what it was. It probably wasn't what it was since sometime before the acquisition, actually; I think the departure of that original engineering manager was in retrospect pretty significant. He didn't posture and hide stuff; you always knew where you stood with him. Too few managers are willing to be that direct.
3. Having had some years in it, was the Pennsic house worth the effort?
Yes, definitely, though if I were doing it again I would make some changes in the construction. I think it would be worth the loss of a little headroom in the loft, and a steeper ladder, to make it a foot or so narrower, which would make it more stable when being moved without costing much in usage. (And also buy the camp a few more square feet of land.) I would put (mesh-covered) drain holes along the bottom of the wall cavity, so moisture that gets in wouldn't do so much damage. (We had to replace a fair bit of the sheathing a couple years back.) I might make the railing on the loft hinged so that it could be opened for loading large stuff up there, which would support an actual mattress rather than an air mattress. Oh, and given how much stuff we want to store in it, I would look into a beefier trailer in terms of supported weight.
But just to be clear, these are small things (aside from the weight issues on the trailer). The house is great to live in during Pennsic and I'm fortunate to have a camp that supports it.
4. What single characteristic matters most to you in a political candidate?
If I thought I could judge it, integrity. But since that's pretty much impossible to evaluate, I'll say a demonstrated record of valuing individual liberty. In particular, I'm looking for evidence that the person supports liberty in areas where he personally disagrees. This would be good evidence for viewing his role as serving the people and not just his own agenda.
5. What TV show do you most wish had not ended the way it did?
Restricting this to shows that I watched to the end... I have two candidates. First is "St. Elsewhere", which was an excellent show (that I haven't seen in 20 years) with a cop-out last episode. (I'll elaborate in comments if asked but want to keep the entry spoiler-free.) Second is "Earth: Final Conflict", where I resent the entire last season for taking a previously-good show in a sideways, banal direction and never recovering.
"Honorable" mentions go to "Star Trek: Enterprise" (same class of complaint as "St. Elsewhere", but Enterprise wasn't nearly as good a show so it didn't fall as far) and "West Wing", where I was really hoping they would have the courage to have Vinick win the election. A spin-off series with Alan Alda as President Vinick could have been excellent; Matt Santos just isn't compelling.
Sorry, I couldn't do just one. :-)