When I was tiny I always wanted to be an astronomer. Alas, I'm not there and probably never will be.

But then, I've always been easily distracted. It seems that my destiny, such as it is, is to be a generalist — to know a little bit about variety of things, and where feasible to have foggy notions about some of the fundamental principles underlying diverse phenomena. Then the trick is to apply that knowledge in helpful ways.

Frankly, this wasn't my first career choice. The job security could be better, for one thing, as could the pay. And there are far too many shoddy impersonators who call themselves "generalists" but who don't really have a good handle on how little they know. At least I try to be honest about my limitations.

But hey, it's a living. And in a dilettantish way it's kinda fun ....

(see perhaps No Concepts At All (22 February 2001), SemiAstrophysicist (14 May 2000), FocusAndFanout (11 December 1999), ...)

TopicPersonalHistory - 2002-07-28

(correlates: ElectricalEngineer, ThreePhoneCalls, PrincipiaPrincipia, ...)