Useless Conversation

[Morat20]

I have had the hiccups for four hours.  I'm exhausted.   

I feel for you. A medicine I took a few years back had that as a side effect. Hiccups for  hours after taking the pill -- a pill I took twice a day.

It is a fucking nightmare after about 5 minutes.

[bhodi]

Whatever you had couldn't have been worse than those side effects. I'd have either stopped taking them or thrown myself off the roof.

[Reg]

The only drug that gave me hiccups like that was Percodan.  And the hiccups were much preferable to the pain.

[ghost]

Ah, the four year old has discovered the console games.   

I hope he has is a quick learner at this. 

[IainC]

I have had the hiccups for four hours.  I'm exhausted.   

[Morat20]

Whatever you had couldn't have been worse than those side effects. I'd have either stopped taking them or thrown myself off the roof.

It was a last ditch effort to avoid surgery. I was off my feet for a day, was in a dumb-ass boot for six weeks, pain was minimal (orthoscopic surgery)...I'm leaning towards you being right.

Then again, it would have been better long-term not to have needed the surgery, so....eh.

(Drug was a steroid pack of some sort. Last-ditch attempt to get the swollen tendon back down to a normal size and stop tearing everytime I took a step. Although what it felt like was having a stone bruise on my heel for like...a year?)

[Fabricated]

Well, this is interesting.

I get an email in my gmail account that's a T-Mobile password reset request. I carefully check out the links and raw message and it's legit.

My gmail account has a strong password and I use two-factor authentication, and the account activity log shows nothing besides my own IP and access times that make sense.

I reset the password on the account and log in, and get the guy's name/number. It's a prepaid account. I call T-Mobile and give them all the info and they say they can't do anything since I don't have the device PIN. They say not to worry since I'm not liable/responsible for the account or anything done with it, and that if the guy can't get into it he can call in and get the email address changed to the proper one.

So uh, weird.

[Bunk]

Was it the sort of address that a person might intentionally/accidently type in? I know I've spammed whoever has fake@fake.com for years...

[Hammond]

Ah fake@fake.com or my personal favorite donotspam@donotspam.com. How many million (or is it billion) email addresses does gmail have now? You are bound to have someone that is close enough to yours.

[Signe]

No one in the world sneezes as loud, hard and explosively violent as my sister.  I'm pretty sure she's responsible for most of the recent "natural" disasters all over the world.     Her sneezing makes my cat cry.

[Numtini]

I get a ludicrous amount of stuff in my gmail box that I never signed up for. Most of it is idiots who are name1988@ or whatever who just put name@

[Shannow]

Lantyssa, have you been in D.C lately?

[bhodi]

He's been found and crated safely! Red panda adventures are complete.

[Sky]

I've got all kinds of stuff linked to my gmail. All of us who were so happy to have 'my first initial + last name'@gmail.com learned that the world is filled with people who have your first initial and last name. I still probably have some guy's kindle registered to me, though after amazon wasn't helpful (several tries), I just took over the account and stripped all his info out (except the kindle because you need the s/n for that).

[Merusk]

Yeah, adding periods and both first and middle initials certainly have cut-down on any related spam.  The unusual last name is also of great assist.   I feel bad for you 'normal' namers.

[Viin]

Normally I don't have a problem with my gmail getting used by some tard, but there is a guy in Canada with my name and a different middle initial. He has signed up for all kinds of stuff (liberal party of ontario, wedding planner, school admin letter for teachers) with his gmail, missing the middle initial. Over a year later and I still get "get out and vote" emails for Ontario elections.

[Yegolev]

My wife wants me to read Are You Smart Enough To Work At Google and after three pages I obviously am.  Not sure what to do with the rest of this book, though.

[Bunk]

I've got all kinds of stuff linked to my gmail. All of us who were so happy to have 'my first initial + last name'@gmail.com learned that the world is filled with people who have your first initial and last name. I still probably have some guy's kindle registered to me, though after amazon wasn't helpful (several tries), I just took over the account and stripped all his info out (except the kindle because you need the s/n for that).

I have first initial last name on gmail, but I'm fortunate enough to have a pretty rare last name. Still, I do get signed up for some odd mailing lists. I'm on one from a school board somewhere in the rural US. I know when all of their bake sales are.

[ghost]

Went to see Flashdance the Musical with the wife last weekend.  I'm typically not opposed to going to this sort of thing, but if you don't typically like musicals this would be the perfect time to pull out the man card and refuse.  This one was absolutely horrific. 

[bhodi]

My wife wants me to read Are You Smart Enough To Work At Google and after three pages I obviously am.  Not sure what to do with the rest of this book, though.

Did she want you to read it because in a NY Times interview, the entire google interview process was revealed to be utter nonsense with no correlation?

“We found that brainteasers are a complete waste of time,” said Bock. “How many golf balls can you fit into an airplane? How many gas stations in Manhattan? A complete waste of time. They don’t predict anything. They serve primarily to make the interviewer feel smart.”

[Yegolev]

[Samwise]

Brainteasers are a complete waste of time, said every dumb person ever.  

I've heard the same thing from fairly respectable sources, but a part of me is still convinced that weeding out people without basic reasoning skills can't be a bad thing.

[ghost]

I think giving light brainteasers in interviews is interesting, not because I am expecting the person to get the question right but I'm interested in seeing how they react to something odd and possibly unsolvable. 

[bhodi]

Does that part of you want to feel smarter than everyone else, Sam? :)

I wish the interview wasn't "Condensed", I'd have liked to see more of the number theory behind their conclusions.

[Samwise]

Does that part of you want to feel smarter than everyone else, Sam? :)

Just the opposite, really.    It's the part that wants to not be surrounded by dummies that I feel smarter than.

[Ironwood]

I think giving light brainteasers in interviews is interesting, not because I am expecting the person to get the question right but I'm interested in seeing how they react to something odd and possibly unsolvable. 

Most react as if the interviewer is wasting their fucking time.

[ghost]

I think giving light brainteasers in interviews is interesting, not because I am expecting the person to get the question right but I'm interested in seeing how they react to something odd and possibly unsolvable. 

Most react as if the interviewer is wasting their fucking time.

I had one or two react similar.  They didn't get the position. 

[Ironwood]

You're a fucking dentist.  Stop wasting peoples fucking time with that shite.

[Paelos]

If you gave me a brainteaser to be your CPA, I would walk out of the room. Especially from a dentist. Most of that profession is already insufferable know-it-alls about everything, and then SHOCKINGLY, when I looked at their books they were being robbed by their own people. No shit, about 50% of the dentists we have had people embezzle money within the last 5 years because they know fuck-all about financial controls. /rant

As for the hiring thing, this is so true.

Another reason is that I think academic environments are artificial environments. People who succeed there are sort of finely trained, they’re conditioned to succeed in that environment. One of my own frustrations when I was in college and grad school is that you knew the professor was looking for a specific answer. You could figure that out, but it’s much more interesting to solve problems where there isn’t an obvious answer. You want people who like figuring out stuff where there is no obvious answer.

There is nothing truer in business than that. Very little you learn in business school translates to the real world. You have a framework, but that's it. The rest of the job is all about training, learning programs, and getting experience on what matters.

[WayAbvPar]

I think giving light brainteasers in interviews is interesting, not because I am expecting the person to get the question right but I'm interested in seeing how they react to something odd and possibly unsolvable. 

Most react as if the interviewer is wasting their fucking time.

In my last job interview (13 years ago), I was asked to walk the interviewer through the peeling of an apple verbally (job was a customer service/help desk/troubleshooting position). Apparently I was one of the few applicants that actually gave it a try which was instrumental in my being hired. Who'd have thought that the countless hours helping cretins set up their Nintendo Entertainment Systems would pay off?

[Samwise]

In my last job interview (13 years ago), I was asked to walk the interviewer through the peeling of an apple verbally (job was a customer service/help desk/troubleshooting position).

   That's fairly brilliant.

[Ironwood]

It's also wildly different than what we're talking about and entirely applicable to the position.

 

[ghost]

If you gave me a brainteaser to be your CPA, I would walk out of the room. Especially from a dentist. Most of that profession is already insufferable know-it-alls about everything, and then SHOCKINGLY, when I looked at their books they were being robbed by their own people. No shit, about 50% of the dentists we have had people embezzle money within the last 5 years because they know fuck-all about financial controls. /rant

As for the hiring thing, this is so true.

Another reason is that I think academic environments are artificial environments. People who succeed there are sort of finely trained, they’re conditioned to succeed in that environment. One of my own frustrations when I was in college and grad school is that you knew the professor was looking for a specific answer. You could figure that out, but it’s much more interesting to solve problems where there isn’t an obvious answer. You want people who like figuring out stuff where there is no obvious answer.

There is nothing truer in business than that. Very little you learn in business school translates to the real world. You have a framework, but that's it. The rest of the job is all about training, learning programs, and getting experience on what matters.

Why the fuck would I do that for my CPA?  That's just idiotic.

I'm talking about interviewing applicants for residency positions or doctors for associate positions, not the people that scrub the floors. 

[Samwise]

It's also wildly different than what we're talking about and entirely applicable to the position.

 

Depends what sorts of brainteasers and what sorts of job positions.  I mean, if you're interviewing for a position as a fry cook and the interviewer hands you a Rubik's Cube, yeah, it's a waste of time.  But the interview "experts" that I've had to sit through classes with (and some of y'all in this thread) tend to dismiss the entire concept of testing mental acuity as part of an interview process -- the idea as I understand it is that you're supposed to just ask them if the things on their resume are true, and trust that if they say yes and if the resume indicates they're qualified, they're qualified.

Which, I mean, you do weed out a LOT of people who lie on their resume and then crumple when confronted in person.  So there's something to be said for that.

[Paelos]

If you're interviewing academics, by all means use brainteasers. It's not like they are living in the real world anyway. 

If anybody asked me a brainteaser in a business job interview, and they were going to be my immediate superior, I'd probably answer the question and try to end the interview as fast as possible. I'm not working for that guy.

The best interviewers I've had were people that asked open-ended questions about projects I'd done, achievements I was proud of, and honest assessment of my career progress. The worst were people that asked very narrow questions about specific problems (stuff that wouldn't come up on the fly), asked the "weaknesses" question which is such bullshit at this point I honestly don't know why it's still taught in HR, or went completely in an esoteric direction about problem solving.