Author Archives: Alan V

Interview’d

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So today was my interview with Google. Overall, I feel like I wasn’t nearly up to par. I had a couple of “Oh god, DUH” moments when the interviewer said something about my algorithm(s). I should also learn to start trusting my instincts… my first instinct on one of the problems (floor of sqrt) was right-ish but I tried to over-complicate it, which was actually a worse solution (same runtime, but with much more memory usage).
I also screwed up one of the problems which *should* have been straightforward to do.
Oh well.
I really wish I interviewed better. I know the stuff, really… meh.

Pittsburgh has been kinda crazy lately. According to the papers, there’s a highway that motorists have been stuck on since Wednesday evening due to the snow and road closures and everything. The T light rail system also shut down due to freezing rain on the power cables that make it go.
On the plus side, all the freezing rain around makes for some pretty damn nice pictures.

Also on the plus side, I’ve been photographing again. I spent most of last night in the darkroom and studio making images. Whee.

Housing for next year has more or less been taken care of, so that’s one thing down at least. Now I just wish I could get a job for the summer. Meh.

OMG workdeath has started. I now have 3 major projects that I’m working on concurrently, plus a photo presentation for Monday, plus an exam in graph theory on Monday. Grrr.
*goes off to do work*

Life foo

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Hey look, it’s an update.
I actually don’t have much to talk about. Meh.

There was an EOC. As usual, no one was interested in me. I really want a summer job… I wish someone found me talented enough to employ. Meh.

I’m generally feeling much better. I dunno.

It’s too early to think. Bleh. I have class in about an hour in Shadyside, so I should probably leave and start walking there in 20 minutes or so.

I had a strange dream last night where we (me and some people not from real life) were being hunted by some robots, and cast a spell to summon futuristic super-robots to our aid that annihilated the other robots (the entire battle was very RPG-like, with a huge long summoning animation and everything). Then I recieved a package in the mail a few days later saying that I had been selected for their internship (it was all apparently a test). However, it was a drama/acting internship, addressed to the wrong person (since I’d been staying at someone’s house this entire time). I walked upstairs to give it to the right person and I was suddenly in Fairfax running back and forth between peoples’ rooms with Ev. He was saying it was 5 AM and he had to go home, and I was saying it was 4 AM and I had to sleep, but we just continued running around the floor. I probably would have found out the reason for doing so if I hadn’t woken up.
Meh.

I wish my life involved more than job searching, housing foo, and homework right now, but alas…
Whee?

Musings

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I have a bunch of angst I want to write, but I’ll spare you. If you’re really all that interested, you can ask, but I won’t promise I’ll tell.

I finished my web apps homework today in about 4 hours. We had to write an online dating service program that users could create accounts for and use to search the userbase for people matching their criterion, implementing sessions and authentication and all that good stuff. It was fairly easy, given I’ve done a lot of php before (even though this was written in Java as a servlet). So yar.

My partner (Mike) and I are done (pretty much) with our networks project 1. We had to write an SMTP client that would send email using the SMTP protocol. It was easy enough… the hardest part was implementing DNS lookup for MX records due to horrific documentation on the resolver() set of functions. Meh.

So yeah, between those two classes, my life is full of coding, and it’s making me feel happy (….somewhat).
Code is so straightforward… so precise… unlike pretty much everything else in my life right now. Which is to say that nothing in my life is going right at the moment, except for my CS courses.
Meh.

I bought a ton of legal MP3s last night from MP3 Tunes and eMusic. I paid something like $10 and was able to get 4 complete albums (thanks to the free trial downloads thing from eMusic). The best part is that the artists get the large majority of the purchase price, unlike with other methods with the large record companies. Meh. DRM is stupid as hell… buy your music from these sites instead. Whee, I’m starting to sound like Zeke.
Yay for Adam Pascal, Christopher Jak, and Groove Coverage being on independent labels who aren’t assholes with their heads up their butts trying to scam the artists and, to use Zeke’s words, biting the hands that feed them.

Um… yeah.
I don’t want to post pictures at the moment, because thinking about photography right now is making me feel shitty. It’ll probably be a while before I voluntarily pick up a camera again (not counting class assignments, obviously).

Ben is teh awesomely awesome. I have amazing friends… I’m so lucky…

ZMONGS TRUFFLES!

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So I’ve spent the past 12 hours with Ben making fresh, made-from-scratch truffles. We have plain chocolate truffles with almonds and mint truffles with sprinkles. Mmmm.

Yeah, that’s all I have to say. We probably ended up with between 170 and 200 truffles (of which I took about 60). If you want one (or two or three) poke me sometime.

I’m in a good mood today :)

Edit: If you’re one of the few who follows my photography, I’ve uploaded a bunch more photos into art (the studio shoot of Ben and my final assignment from color photo).