In a true liberal-arts school, searching for the right word may take two weeks...
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Tuesday, March 25, 2008
Searching for the right word
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Informatics Weekly, written by Mihai Pătraşcu.
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16 comments:
Since I'm running a faculty search right now, I'd make the suggestion that you're not recognizing the substantial amount of work and effort involved. I'll grant you it's a kind of funny mistake, but it was just a mistake, and in projects of the size of a faculty search, mistakes will happen. So perhaps this isn't blog material.
Or perhaps I'm just prepping people's minds for my own mistakes.
Another error: Vassar Street has two a's in it, unless they changed the spelling since I was at MIT.
michael, nice gestures but everyone knows subtle suggestions for toning down outright arrogance is not welcome on this blog.
We are all fed up with reading your ego-blog! Stop posting what we think is no good! Your blog is for our pleasure, and you shouldn't disappoint us. Next time before posting ask your readers advice. Why don't you post this for example:
Dear Tree (as in forest, not graph)!I am happy to work in this community, where people do not make mistakes.
Hey, Mihai, no wonder you got divorced.
I don't see what is arrogant about the current post. It is a silly mistake Yale's part, and quite amusing to the recepients of the letter.
Michael, I would say that being so close to the events (ie running a parallel faculty search) makes you oversensitive and not able to appreciate the funny aspects of the situation. I don't think anybody would think of criticizing Yale for this. It is just noise in the process, but funny noise.
I was actually surprised to see the 2nd s-mail. They should've just laughed about it, with a secretary posting a copy of the letter on her door or something. Grad students at CSAIL certainly had fun.
As for some anon comments, if you think this blog has a duty to give you pleasure (!!) and you get so aggressive when you're disappointed by the posts, I can only pity you for the frustrating small life that you're living.
Good. Maybe they would be more careful next time writing such letters. Its even more irritating getting all these rejection letters in October when its completely irrelevant. At least they made the effort to let you know in timely fashion that they are not interested in your services...
--Sariel
MIP, people who do not know the (very strong) vibe you give off might find it funny. Those who connect the dots from your previous controversies tend to view it as the latest in a series of cheap arrogant shots.
I think it's hilarious.
Funny think the first one was signed. The ???? seems hard to miss.
Mihai, apparently your prospective employers watch/read this blog (I would do the same if I would look to hire you). This should ring a bell, a big one.
I have been watching this blog for a while and I have to conclude that you have a gargantuan ego. This ego (abundantly exposed here) will only repel most of your potential employers. You know, a very difficult team member (or employee) is not something to desire, look for or willingly hire. Also, I can only imagine what a professor-student relationship with this ego (very grim, very .....).
I recommend you tone down this VIP attitude if you do not want to alienate more people or potential employers.
(My 2.562 cents ;)
Anon, the fact that you detect a "gargantuan ego" in a 16-word post renders a lot of credibility to your arguments.
This is indeed hilarious, but I gather that most of the commenters are missing the point (although anonymous at 12:08:00 PM hints at it). This is a form letter being generated by a word processor's mail-merge function. Of course Dr. Silberschatz didn't notice the error--he never read the letter! It's a machine-generated signature (compare the signatures of the two letters if you doubt that). This same letter has likely been mailed out to scores of applicants. The assistant happily admitted as much when she sent out the correction, which lets Mihai not only savor the rejection twice, but realize that he is not even receiving any individual attention. Come on, people, this is ROFL funny.
Now there is an alternative interpretation, which is also funny: It could be that Dr. Silberschatz really disliked Mihai (from reading his blog?) and also happens to have a wicked sense of humor, and he actually engineered this deliberately in order to make Mihai feel like crap. Some of the anonymous commenters might favor this interpretation.
he actually engineered this deliberately in order to make Mihai feel like crap
If the tone of the post was not clear, he failed rather miserably at his :P
come come, this post is quite funny, especially the final words that got put in place of the "?????"
While i will not doubt the fact that there have been some debatable posts on this blog, this one is just plain funny...
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