They say that cats and fish can predict earthquakes. Apparently not mine.
This this the extent of the damage:
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| From My Blog Photos |
Developers! Developers!! Developers!!!
“… When I was interviewing for jobs, I got more questions about the very oldest job on my resume than any other. Interviewers would say “Monkey Boy? You put Monkey Boy on your resume?!”
“Well, sure. I spent a summer in high school in charge of the care and feeding of 120 juvenile new-world monkeys. And I learned plenty that was relevant to the software industry. Like, when someone is being really disagreeable, you can just pin their little arms behind their back with one hand and control the legs with the other. Just keep their teeth away from anything you don’t want bitten.” … “
(full article)
I used to include my job at Nathan’s Famous of Coney Island in my resumes. Coding is just like working in a clam bar — you hands hate you for it.
Empire State Building Checkmark
Get to the top of the Empire State Building? Check.
The triangle in this picture is formed by my favorite skyscraper of all times — the Flatiron Building.
My fascination with the Flatiron started when I read O.Henry’s “Little Speck in Garnered Fruit” (in Russian translation, of course).
Here is the quote that interested me:
The druggist made an examination. “It isn’t broken,” was his diagnosis, “but you have a bruise there that looks like you’d fallen off the Flatiron twice.”
The translation went something like “your face looked like it was flattened by the Flatiron Building”, but that doesn’t matter.
I’ve never seen a picture of the Flatiron, but reading that story, I tried to imagine what it looked like. Upon seeing the building in Manhattan 5 years later, I instantly realized what it was.
But wait, there is more.
In the first couple of years of the Internet boom I learned about Flatiron Partners, a venture capitalist partnership. At the time I did not even know who venture capitalists were. These guys had a really crappy site though. I wrote them an email, offering to code a better looking website for free, because I liked the Flatiron Building so much. I even got a response, thanking me for my offer, and saying that they were working with some professionals on the new version.
Soon, when I was working at iXL, I actually did some very light coding on their site anyway. iXL was the company that got their account. Talk about destiny, huh? :)