"I can haz dream Job? My rezumez! let me showz u thm"

That's the subject line of a cover letter sent by a job applicant to I Can Has Cheezburger, one of the premier sites for so-called Lolcat pictures.

Don't think the letter will be rejected out of hand - bad spelling is no obstacle to a job in Lolcat world. It may even be an asset.

Lolcats became an internet craze last year. According to Wikipedia, a Lolcat is an image combining a photograph of an animal, most frequently a cat, with a humorous and idiosyncratic caption in (often) broken English - a dialect which is known as "Kitty Pidgin", "lolspeak", or Lolcat.

"We need to make sure that we start jump-starting the jobs in this country again," Clinton said during Monday's Democratic presidential debate in Myrtle Beach, S.C. "That's why I want to put money into clean-energy jobs, green-collar jobs."

Later, when speaking of his plans of an economic stimulus during his presidency, Edwards said what he had "proposed for green-collar jobs will create jobs within 30 or so days, so we will have an immediate impact on the economy and stimulate the economy."

This wasn't the first time either Clinton or Edwards has touted such jobs. In various speeches on the campaign trail, Clinton has used green-collar to describe the employment that'll be created in the wake of job losses in manufacturing and other sectors. She can foresee a future where the manual labor of installing solar power panels or maintaining wind turbines becomes a mainstream occupation.

"These are jobs that can't be outsourced by and large," Clinton said last year on the Senate floor.

Not to be outdone, Edwards himself has been trying his best to to make green-collar part of the American labor-force lexicon. Last July, Clinton's fellow Democratic candidate for president announced his own plan to train 150,000 green-collar workers each year.

Weary of her own job as a career adviser at New York outplacement firm Drake Beam Morin (DKBMF), and anticipating the looming trend of green career-changers, Kerpan in 2000, positioned herself as an environmental career consultant-the first, she claims, of her kind.

Since then, her company, Green Careers, has helped thousands of people assess what cause their skills and interests are best suited to-which could be anything from renewable energy to water conservation-and has helped them get hired. Most of her clients come from middle management or higher, and are seeking what she calls a path-of-least-resistance move, "doing something you already know how to do and putting it in the context of the green agenda," she explains.

• Physical Therapist
• Yoga Instructor
• Aircraft Maintenance Supervisor
• Chemical Engineer
• Dental Hygienist
• Drug Safety Specialist
• Elevator Mechanic
• IT Quality Assurance Analyst
• MRI Technologist
• Nursing Home Director
• Occupational Therapist
• Power Dispatcher
• Speech Pathologist
• Telephone Equipment Engineer
• Ultrasonographer

The business has three freezers. Working in those areas for just a few minutes will quickly cool one down.

"You get to work in temperatures that's about 34 degrees, and if you get in the freezer, it's way more than a shocker. You'll be in there it will be 10 below zero, so you don't stay in there too long even when it's hot like this," said owner Ray Moles.

The purpose for the cold working conditions is to keep the meats from spoiling. Ice cream stores also have cold temperatures to keep their product from melting, leaving employees to find excuses to head to the freezer when it's hot outside.

"If you need a five-second spot away from the customers where it's blazing hot outside, you walk back into the walk-in freezer," said Garrett Hughes, an employee with Ellen's Homeade Ice Cream.

News photographs don't have to be technically accomplished. They sell on their captions. But many professionals make their money from photographs that are no longer news - the stock images sold by picture libraries. This is the market that the web will devastate. It is already damaging it: when I went round to see my friend, he was looking at a pile of 4,500 stock transparencies returned to him by a well-respected agency that had just gone bankrupt.

A picture-sharing site like Flickr contains the work of tens of thousands of talented amateurs, all of them capable of producing one or two photographs a year that could be published anywhere. A British photographers' site, EPUK, has calculated that if only 1% of the pictures on Flickr are publishable, that would mean 1.5m usable pictures uploaded there every year. Most of the drudgery of identifying good, relevant pictures is also done here - by the photographers themselves, who tag them, and by the other users, who notice them and have their interest recorded by the software.

Perhaps none of these people could make a living as a photographer, but few want to. Any money they make is gravy for them - and bread taken from the mouths of professionals.

Engineers, architects and animal lovers are in high demand across Washington, according to a recently released look at the state's 25 hottest jobs.

The state ranked the occupations that will have the highest annual growth rates between now and 2014, based on occupational projections and a job vacancy survey.

The findings: Most high-demand jobs require at least a four-year college degree, or an equivalent amount of on-the job training.

Certain fields are especially hot. Take animal care. Veterinary technologists, veterinary assistants and veterinarians will be in high demand in the coming years, according to the rankings. So will architects, landscape architects and architectural drafters.

Cardiovascular health is, without a doubt, the place to be. Openings in almost every category in the field are expected to grow faster than other careers through 2010 -- some jumping 26 percent a year, according to the U.S. Department of Labor.

Not only are jobs that keep the heart healthy in high demand now, but they are expected to continue to explode for decades as the population ages and more people need heart care.

We know what you're thinking: years of schooling, right? Not quite. You don't have to be a heart surgeon to work in the cardiovascular field.

"There are so many people behind the scenes," says Lori Shannon, director of invasive cardiac care with Clarian Health.

Forget coming up with a new killer app -- the most profitable tech job right now has to be video. You got studio Lionsgate signing an iTunes distribution deal with Apple, existing old-media and online powerhouses building out video content creation studios, and everyone from Viacom to Myspace hoping to create Youtube-killers. Anyone who can help post Flash video should be able to write their own ticket on either coast.

Can you give an example of an emergency call?
We had a scene call in the southern part of the county. We were here at the hospital ... got called. We were on scene at the patient's side before the paramedics arrived. That's how fast we are able to get there. The patient had not even been pulled out of the vehicle yet, and we were right there, and so we were able to get that patient from the scene of the accident into the emergency room with the trauma team right there within 15 minutes. And that is the beauty of the helicopter ... the speed. And if you know anything about trauma care, speed is critical. You have to have definitive care within a certain amount of time; otherwise, your chances of survival go down dramatically.

Let's talk about how you got started in the nursing profession.

I started off, I believe it was '93, taking an EMT course -- emergency medical tech course -- here at the hospital. And then I was going to IUSB -- a biology major.

So you were always interested in life sciences?

Yes ... but after I did the EMT course, then I ended up getting a job in the hospital as what they call a patient care extender, which is basically like a nurse's assistant-type of position, but you get to do a little but more. And I started off working nights here and moved into the ICU.

Were you one of the only guys in nursing school?

No, actually, we had three or four total, in my graduating class. And really, you think, 'Oh, a guy going into nursing; they are probably going to be one of the only ones,' but I found throughout the years, there are quite a few. And if you went throughout the hospital, you would see men in every unit and a lot of times, two or three men working the floor.

You may be surprised to learn that most executives say those who work from home for an employer are less likely to get promoted than their desk-tethered counterparts.

But Julie Kampf isn't. Kampf, the president of Englewood-based executive search firm JBK Associates Inc., knows first-hand how tough on a career telecommuting can be. She tried it and suffered, and she has seen qualified job candidates get overlooked because they dared to inquire about working from home – even for one day a week.

"For me, working at home was detrimental,'' says Kampf, who declined to name the employer. She says that when she worked from home in 1993, she put in about 15 hours each workday, and still couldn't please the boss. "Even though I was extremely productive, I was pretty much told 'I need to see your face here' by my boss at the time,'' she said. "It was miserable.''

The study's results fly in the face though of a growing movement. Since 1990, the number of teleworkers has grown to more than 45 million from about 4 million says the Telework Coalition. Even President Bush and other top administrators have championed telework as a vital part of business-continuity plans. Gas prices, traffic congestion and housing costs are also factors driving telecommuting.

1. Cashiers
2. Couriers and Messengers
3. Inspectors, Testers, Sorters, Samplers and Weighers
4. Customer Service Representative
5. Book Binder
6. Film Processors
7. Fishers and Fishing Vessel Operators
8. Electronic Home Entertainment Equipment Installers and Repairers
9. Procurement Clerks
10. Power Plant Operators

David Hodgson, an author of Paid to Play: An Insider's Guide to Video Game Careers, says the hours are long, the deadlines are strict, the work can be monotonous and, in the case of programmers, the pay starts at around $50,000 a year -- below that of other high-tech industries.

"It's not like working in the industry is sitting around playing video games," said Hodgson, a longtime video game journalist who wrote the book with author and game designer Bryan Stratton and career counselor Alice Rush.

The good news is that jobs can be creative, varied and rewarding, and there are as many video game careers as there are ways of breaking into the business.

"There are multiple paths, which is the best news around," said Hodgson, who gathered information for his book from 100 industry insiders with careers ranging from testing, design and sound to publishing, management, journalism, retail and professional gaming.

Skipping work without good reason? You have lots of company.

Unscheduled absenteeism at U.S. companies and organizations has climbed to its highest level since 1999, according to results of a recent nationwide survey of human resource executives in U.S. companies and organizations.

The survey, conducted for CCH by the Harris Interactive consulting firm, put the U.S. absenteeism rate at 2.5 percent in 2006, up from 2.3 percent a year ago and the highest since seven years ago when it was 2.7 percent.

It found that personal illness accounts for only 35 percent of unscheduled absences, with the rest due to family issues (24 percent), personal needs (18 percent), stress (12 percent) and entitlement mentality (11 percent).

Some parents are writing their college-age kids' resumes. Others are acting as their children's "representatives," hounding college career counselors, showing up at job fairs and sometimes going as far as calling employers to ask why their son or daughter didn't get a job.

It's the next phase in helicopter parenting, a term coined for those who have hovered over their children's lives from kindergarten to college. Now they are inserting themselves into their kids' job search -- and school officials and employers say it's a problem that may be hampering some young people's careers.

"It has now reached epidemic proportions," says Michael Ellis, director of career and life education at Delaware Valley College, a small, private school in Doylestown, Pennsylvania.

At the school's annual job fair last year, he says, one father accompanied his daughter, handed out her resume and answered most of the questions the recruiters were asking the young woman. Even more often, he receives calls from parents, only to find out later that their soon-to-be college grad was sitting next to the parent, quietly listening.

Jobs counselors at universities across the country say experiences like those are now commonplace.

Investment analysts and store managers say Wal-Mart executives have told them that the company wants to transform its work force to 40 percent part-time from 20 percent, a claim that the company disputes.

To some extent, Wal-Mart is doing what business strategists recommend: deploying workers more effectively to meet the peaks and valleys of business in their stores.

Wal-Mart vigorously denies it is pushing out longtime or full-time employees and says its moves will ensure that its competitiveness. The company says it gives employees three weeks' notice of their schedules and takes their preferences into account, but that description differs from those of many workers interviewed. Workers said that their preferences were often ignored and that they were often given only a few days' notice of scheduling changes.

These moves have been unfolding in the year since Wal-Mart's top human resources official sent the company's board a confidential memo stating, with evident concern, that experienced employees were paid considerably more than workers with just one year on the job, while being no more productive.

Court reporter

Professional (life or career) coach

Mine manager

Salesperson

Truck driver

Pressman

Technical writer

Restaurant manager

Air traffic controller

Elementary school principal

As a rule of thumb, if you can't pitch your company in ten slides or pitch yourself in one page, your idea is stupid and you suck, respectively.

Tech companies are notorious for t-shirts-and-jeans dress codes, but whether this is appropriate dress for an interview depends on the position and on the interviewer (it might just be your luck that the interviewer recently joined from another organization that had a much stricter dress code). A good rule of thumb is to dress one level above the company norm: for example, for a t-shirt style company, wear a collared polo shirt. If in doubt, ask what's appropriate for the interview.

The most sought-after corporate IT workers in 2010 may be those with no deep-seated technical skills at all. The nuts-and-bolts programming and easy-to-document support jobs will have all gone to third-party providers in the U.S. or abroad. Instead, IT departments will be populated with "versatilists" -- those with a technology background who also know the business sector inside and out, can architect and carry out IT plans that will add business value, and can cultivate relationships both inside and outside the company.

That's the general consensus of three research groups that have studied the IT workforce landscape for 2010 -- the year that marks the culmination of the decade of the versatile workforce. What's driving these changes? Several culprits include changes in consumer behavior, an increase in corporate mergers and acquisitions, outsourcing, the proliferation of mobile devices and growth in stored data.

What's more, the skills required to land these future technical roles will be honed outside of IT. Some of these skills will come from artistic talents, math excellence or even a knack for public speaking -- producing a combination of skills not commonly seen in the IT realm.

1. Web services
2. Wireless/mobile
3. Business intelligence
4. Service-oriented architecture
5. Identity management
6. Disaster recovery/ continuity planning
7. Data management/ business analytics
8. E-business
9. RFID
10. Antivirus protection

Mouthwash companies employ them in their research labs, where, halitosis-inflicted subjects blow into their faces before and after using the product to test its efficacy.

And just recently, two brave researchers were called in to help determine the most malodorous component of human flatus and the role it plays in disease. In the study, 16 subjects volunteered to eat pinto beans and have their gas syringed into a discrete container. The odor judges then sat down with more than 100 samples, opened the caps one at a time, inhaled and rated just how noxious the smell was.

Don't want to spend your days cleaning toilets? How about plumbing the depths of the human intestines? That's what gastroenterologist Sean Griffin does -- and loves it! "People ask whether I like doing colonoscopies and, to tell you the truth, they're quite enjoyable," Griffin says.

"It's like a computer game with a start and finish point -- and you might find things along the way like polyps that you have to pull off. It requires a lot of manual dexterity and the challenge is quite fun."

Aware of his occupation's public image, Griffin often tells people he's an electrician. However with earning potential of up to $800,000 a year, most folks are able to get over any initial feelings of shame or revulsion.

Biotechnology has been around for centuries. From farming to food production and storage, biotechnology has touched our lives in numerous helpful ways.

As baby boomers age, there has been an increased demand for new medical procedures and equipment. As a result, biomedical engineering, a field that combines medicine with engineering and biology, is expected to grow in the next decade and beyond.

With an insight into both medical and engineering fields, biomedical engineers work effectively in hospitals, research facilities, academia, government regulatory agencies or as consultants.

Biomechanics, which applies biomechanical engineering to biological or medical problems, utilizes scientific principles to produce new ways of keeping the body functional and healthy. These include the creation of synthetic organs and joints, as well as machines that control body functions, imaging systems like X-ray and ultrasound, and the laser systems used in corrective eye surgery.

Director of Mobile Computing: Thanks to the BlackBerry, Treo, laptop and cell phone, every job can be turned into a 24/7 message fest.

So integral are these devices to work life now that when the maker of the BlackBerry was facing a potential shut down of its services this year, you would have thought the business world was bracing for a loss of electricity.

Upgrading all those portable lifelines to the office and keeping them in good working order has now become a full-time job with a big title.

***

Residence Concierge: The latest trend in luxury travel is the luxury residence club, and one of the biggest players in the field is Exclusive Resorts. For a very, oh-so-pretty penny you can join the club and gain access to 300 multimillion-dollar luxury vacation homes around the world.

Membership includes the 24/7 services of a residence concierge. Far more than a hotel concierge, the residence concierge will arrange for everything from stocking your refrigerator, managing your household staff, arranging for all your transportation and setting up customized events for you and your family. After all, when in Tuscany, why not have cooking lessons given in the kitchen of your house?

The aerospace industry is loaded with workers from the baby boom generation who watched man’s first steps on the moon on live television. The average worker is 48, and experts are calling the impending wave of retirements a gathering storm.

Thousands of technical jobs will need to be filled by children now in school, and students are steering away from math- and science-based careers.

Former Apollo astronaut Buzz Aldrin, who was lauded during a symposium luncheon Wednesday, is so concerned about the problem that he has penned two books aimed at turning children's eyes skyward.

"They may not reach for the moon, but I'm sure they'll reach for something," said Aldrin, the second man to walk on the moon in 1969.

Without the safety net of providing a revenue stream to the state, firehouses and the professionals they contain represent a special set of budget and human resource problems for the coffers of government funding.

According to San Francisco Firefighters Union Chief Hanley, when the budget axe comes down, it can put the fire department under a dangerous strain. "When it comes to budget cuts, they [lawmakers] look at the Fire Department. When we lose five firefighters, we can't do our jobs, because the number of calls we respond to doesn't change with budget cuts."

Then there is the very real possibility facing these men and women when they go to work that they might never come home again. In 2005, 106 firefighters lost their lives in the line of duty, according to the U.S. Fire Administration. 48 firefighters died of heart attacks and 26 were killed in vehicle crashes during the same year. It is a life-and-death job that takes its toll on those who are left behind to continue on.

But this doesn't stop them from going back to work and taking that chance, year after year. Nor budget cuts or the promise of fatal danger can hold back a firefighter who knows they are needed.

Maybe you should. But please base your decision on something other than their relative "hotness" at the moment. I mean, Jake Gyllenhaal is pretty hot at the moment, too, but that doesn't make him the boy for me. Same goes for you and these oh-so-fabulous careers that everyone is talking about.

Every time one of those lists of the hottest careers or industries comes out, usually based on data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, I receive a steady stream of questions from readers asking me whether they should pursue one or more of these fields.

Perhaps the most disturbing came from a young man who wanted to know if he should study to be a nurse or an electrical engineer. I told him I didn't know what unnerved me more: the thought of being cared for by a nurse who should have been an electrical engineer or vice versa.

Work and career loom large as areas into which you can put your new-found energy. You can change careers relatively easily at this age if you are not happy in your work environment. Your financial and social commitments should not be such that a move might bankrupt you or leave you destitute. The time for a big mortgage that can tie you to your job lies ahead, if at all.

Time to ask some work-related questions. Are you happy at work? Is this the right industry or field for you? Are you working with people you like and respect? Can you see a career path with opportunities to create a bright future? Do you dread going to work every day? Do you feel the need to study and develop your skills? Can you see yourself staying in this field or industry for the next 10 years?

Careers in which you help people, one-on-one, are rewarding, and the work environment is usually pleasant. Audiology is my favorite. Pay and prestige are excellent, and the job market will be strong because as baby boomers age, their hearing fades. And audiologists will be offering ever better hearing aids. The annoying conventional aids are being replaced by more pleasing computer-controlled ones. A final plus is that audiology is an under-the-radar career—few people consider it, so competition isn't as keen as it deserves to be. One downside: Universities' relentless push to keep more students longer is creating pressure to make audiology programs doctoral.

In another era, the task of caring for elderly parents often fell to the unmarried daughter who never left home and never worked for a living. But now, in a 21st-century twist on the 19th-century spinster, career women like Ms. Geist who have made their mark in the world are returning home to care for parents in old age.

They are embracing a filial role that few could have imagined in their futures and are doing so by choice. In fact, sociologists are beginning to give the phenomenon a name: the Daughter Track, a late-in-life version of the Mommy Track, a career downsizing popular with younger women.

Women, now as always, bear a disproportionate burden for elder care and often leave jobs, either temporarily or permanently, when the double duty becomes overwhelming , according to recent studies of family care-giving, women in the workplace and retirement patterns. Although there is no precise count of how many women have walked away from careers to care for their parents, more of them than ever are financially independent, unmarried or childless, which makes it more feasible than it might be for women with families at home. And never have more parents needed adult children to care for them, what with long life expectancy and disabling conditions like Alzheimer's disease.

"Smart corporations are paying attention" to the challenges that caring for elderly parents presents, said Meryle Mahrer-Kaplan, vice president of advisory services at Catalyst, which has more than 300 corporate members interested in the issues of women in the workplace. "It's so pressing because you can't plan for it, you can't put it off, and it's not a good-news activity. It weighs people down."

"What pharmacists do and what they will do is shifting," said Kenneth M. Hale, assistant dean of OSU’s College of Pharmacy. "When I was a young lad, the American Pharmacists Association had a code of ethics that said pharmacists couldn’t counsel patients. Now, it’s unethical not to. The clear line between doctors and pharmacists has changed." The need to fill prescriptions has been partially addressed by technology improvements and the use of pharmacy technicians. But that hasn’t helped with increasing pressure on pharmacies to become more involved in helping patients manage their drugs, especially elderly patients who might take several medicines, said Dr. David Knapp, dean of the School of Pharmacy at the University of Maryland. "Every hour of every day, dozens if not hundreds of prescriptions are coming across the counter," Knapp said. "They are trying to do that while at the same time counseling patients, calling physicans, helping diabetic patients manage eight or 10 medicines, teaching parents how to help their child use his new asthma inhaler." To train more students to become pharmacists, 20 pharmacy schools have opened in the past five years, including one at the University of Findlay. The Northeast Ohio College of Medicine Board of Regents approved a program at that school this month. Classes will begin in 2007.

His goal, he said, was to land a face-to-face interview the next time a job opened up in the department. That's was the only way, he felt, that he could overcome his lack of experience and training in communications.

"I even made up a mantra for myself: Passion trumps pedigree," he said.

Had that not worked, McCormick says he would have started looking elsewhere. "In my mind I was fully prepared to leave the company to do what I wanted to do."

In January 2003, communications positions opened up, and it wasn't until the end of the summer that McCormick got the job, nine months after he had started his career introspection.

Good technical skills won't be enough for workers who want to hold onto their jobs in IT, as staff need to show off new business skills to attract employers.

Scepticism about the effectiveness of IT, increasing automation and offshoring will lead to the emergence of a new breed of IT professionals who combine technical aptitude, local knowledge, knowledge of industry processes and leadership ability, according to analyst Gartner.

Workers will have to prove they understand the realities of the business, such as industry and customer issues and regulation, as three out of five will have business-facing roles within five years.

Diane Morello, vice president of research at Gartner, said in a statement: "Some will be bolstered, some will be carved up, some will be redistributed and some will be displaced."

Technology infrastructure and services. Opportunities in technology infrastructure and services, the foundation of the IT profession, will grow in service, hardware and software vendors-many in developing economies-and wane in user companies. Network design will remain strong everywhere.

Information design and management. Business intelligence, online consumer services, work enhancement initiatives, search-and-retrieval practices and collaboration all will grow in user companies, systems integrators and consulting companies. Linguistics, language skills, business and cultural knowledge, and knowledge management will be fertile ground.

Process design and management. IT professionals can look at process opportunities from three angles: competitive business processes, design of process automation and operational processes. The first will be the "sweet spot" for companies; the second, for software vendors; the third, for outsourcing vendors.

Relationship and sourcing management. Far removed from the traditional skills that IT professionals pursue, relationship and sourcing management will gain ground, demanding strengths in managing intangibles and managing geographically distributed parties with different work outcomes and cultures.

Registered nurse, $48,090

Customer-service representative, $26,240

Sales representative (in nontechnical wholesale and manufacturing), $42,730

Truck driver, heavy and tractor-trailer, $33,210

Maintenance and repair worker, general, $29,370

Bookkeeping, accounting and auditing clerk, $27,380

Executive secretary and administrative assistant, $33,410

Secretary (not legal, medical and executive), $25,290

Carpenter, $34,190

Automotive-service technician and mechanic, $30,590

Police and sheriff's patrol officer, $42,270

Licensed practical and licensed vocational nurse, $31,440

Electrician, $41,390

All other sales and related workers, $35,170

Computer-support specialist, $39,100

Plumber, pipefitter and steamfitter, $40,170

These days, that lack of a college degree is likelier to mean a steep hit to earnings. "Increasingly, the days of blue-collar jobs that have lower educational and skill requirements but pay an outstanding wage are disappearing," said Jerry Rubin, vice president of Jobs for the Future, a nonprofit research group that works with foundations and federal and state agencies to create job training programs.

1. Tissue Engineers
2. Gene Programmers
3. Pharmers
4. Frankenfood Monitors
5. Data Miners
6. Hot-Line Handymen
7. Virtual Reality Actors
8. Narrowcasters
9. Turing Testers
10. Knowledge Engineers

Nathan Lehman, 18, is a good example. He hopes to earn a degree in agribusiness management and technology before he starts working at his family's grain elevator.

"It's going to improve how I'll market my grain, how I'll go about handling different people and different landlords," he said. "Having a basic degree is almost essential."

Mike Boehlje, an agricultural economist at Purdue University, said farming is shifting to a profession, rather than a way of life.

"To be a successful farmer today, you have to have manager skills and do the physical work, but you also have to have the general manager skills to work as a chief executive officer and manage the people and the financial side of a business," Boehlje said.

Celebrities such as Olympic track star Carl Lewis and singer Macy Gray are featured in ads dubbed "My First" that talk about their short-lived careers at McDonald's. Others include franchisees, who liked their jobs so much they bought a store.

"It's a very strong message about how when you start at McDonald's, the opportunities are limitless," said Richard Floersch, executive vice president of human resources. "You can stay within the organization and work your way up or go through the franchisee route."

Jim Skinner, chief executive of the hamburger giant, for example, began as a crew person in high school. Of the 50 top managers, 20 list McDonald's crew jobs as one of their first places of employment.

"It's the teamwork and the timing that you learn," he said. "I joke about this all the time, but my world is about split seconds. Working back there with people cooking, cleaning and doing whatever had to be done, the timing was so important.

"If something was out of line, the hamburger's soggy and the fries are too old and people didn't like that," he added. "It's something that has always stayed with me."

But Dr. Cerf, whose first official day at Google is Oct. 3, said it was too early to know exactly what he will be working on.

"I haven't spent enough time at Google to know if any of the ideas I have are old hat or already in the pipeline," he said.

And in spite of the widespread use of the Internet around the world, Dr. Cerf said, a measure of evangelism is still in order.

"The Internet has a billion users, and we have 5.6 billion to go," Dr. Cerf said. "Each will come to the Internet in different ways, like wirelessly, and Google needs to be receptive and adaptive to those different circumstances."