• Mood: tired

Embarrassment, Sorta

There's a weird sort of embarrassment/annoyance/loss of self-worth that happens when you've been misunderstood by someone, and as a result classified as incompetent.  It's especially bad when it happens to you in a field that you know you're damn good in.

This happened to me last night, and it still rankles.  Nothing much to do about it, but still - thought I'd get it off my chest.  At neo83's party, I was talking to a guy named, I think, David, who I gather is Scott's boss.  He asked me what else I was doing than karaoke, and I started - just started - to talk about the project.  I mentioned synchronizing to within 10ms, and he went off on that not being very accurate, and how T1 lines are synced to within 8ps, which is probably about right (Haven't checked the figure), and then walked away.

There's just no way to catch up with somebody like that, and explain that T1 lines and PCs are different worlds.  Yes, the synchronous protocols used in telephony require amazingly accurate synchronization - and achieve it.  Your average PC, on the other hand, can drift by 10ms in a matter of minutes.  The requirement for PCs used by brokers is that they be within 3 seconds of the correct time.  In fact, our product spec is to be within 250ms, because it's achievable and sufficient for pretty much any network.

I've had a few interviews go wrong like that.  Not fun.