Monthly Archives: March 2006

New York (Day 2)

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Well, the interview itself went okay, I guess. Was asked about 5 programming questions, no personal questions. Whee. Had some trouble with the n-ary tree algorithms (getNextNode, getPrevNode), but meh… got it to work eventually. I think my implementation (using a linked list to store the children) was a bad idea. If it was Java, I guess I would have used a Vector for simpler access and whatnot. Whee. The other stuff seemed fairly straightforward.

Walked around New York for a couple hours. This city is so huge… still quite overwhelming. It doesn’t seem as scary as it did last night though… maybe the sunlight helps. Went to Central Park, walked around for a while, looked at Times Square. Whee. Will walk around more tonight when I look for dinner. Mark suggested I get pizza, so I think I will do just that.
Signed up for an official city tour tomorrow… figured a guide would be much better at showing me places that I could do myself. The trip also goes to the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island, so it should be interesting.

Still amazingly impressed with the hotel. The bathroom is HUGE… I think this is the first time in years that I’ve incredibly looked forward to my nightly shower. Yay.

I think I’ll pay for internet for 24 hours, starting tomorrow night, so I can check-in to my flight tomorrow afternoon. That means I’ll be online then… although I guess since I won’t be posting this entry until then, so writing this is kinda pointless. Wheee!

Edit: Mark, you give good advice. I am now full of the most incredible spinach and mushroom pizza I have ever eaten, along with an amazingly rich hunk of tiramisu. I can’t decide which is better: that, or the broiled and grilled chipped beef with potato pancakes (with applesauce, of course!) I had for lunch today. Why is NY food so good?
I’m feeling very, very happy right now. You know what? I went in there today and I did my best. I am happy with my performance on all the interview questions. The company seems like a remarkable place to work. Best case, I get hired. Worst case, I did my best and I’m happy with it… and I get a free trip to NY, all expenses paid (including that incredible pizza I just had tonight). And I got practice for future interviews. I went in there today not expecting anything… not worrying about if I get this or not… I went in there just intending to do my best and be me. If they like me, great. If not, oh well, there will be other opportunities later. I am confident in my skills and proud of what I’ve accomplished.

And holy shit… Times Square at night. Enough said. There will be pictars.
I should sleep soon so I can wake up for the 9 AM city tour.

New York (Day 1)

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So the hotel doesn’t have free internet (it’s $15 a day, probably not worth it), so I figured I would write entries and post them all at once when I get back (and backdate them and such).

The flight was relatively uneventful. It was delayed a bit though, but meh. Smallest plane I’ve ever seen… had room for three people plus an asle per row (instead of the usual 3 per side for 6 total per roll). Then, arrived at the airport. Went to the baggage claim. Couldn’t find the driver to bring me to the hotel. Called the company. Apparently, he had been waiting for me at the gate, and I missed him because I had been told to find him at the baggage claim. Two calls and an hour later, we finally found each other.

The hotel room is totally AMAZING. Words cannot describe this room. The bathroom is as big as my dorm at CMU, and has both a full bath and a (clean!) shower. The bedroom itself is amazingly stylish and has a Boise radio/CD player and a flat panel plasma TV on the wall. The only thing that would make it better is free internet, but hey, what can you do.

The city itself is amazingly intimidating. So many tall buildings! So many streets! I’m so stupid! I was looking for where Fog Creek was (so I wouldn’t have to try and find it tomorrow). The streets here are arranged in numerical order (as you probably know) by street and avenue. I was looking for 8th avenue. I got to Broadway. I walked another street. I got to 7th avenue. I figured Broadway had to be what I was looking for (since a lot of the avenues here seem to have “alternate” names). Stupidly, I had failed to notice that the avenues I had crossed before that were 5th and 6th. So yeah, I walked around about half an hour trying to find the building. Then I asked for directions and finally realized I was stupid. Wheee.

Oh yeah, Fog Creek gave me a welcome package too (delivered when I checked into the hotel). Yay for t-shirt and various brochures!

Um yeah, it’s now 11:22 so I should sleep soon so I can wake up for tomorrow.

Ahhh this hotel room is so amazing!

Food for thought

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So I’m in the airport right now, waiting for my flight. Nervous as hell. At least my two exams today didn’t majorly suck… I think I did worse on the 80180 than I wanted, but I didn’t totally flunk.

I’ve been thinking about how the world would be different if humans had evolved without the ability to decieve/lie/kill/cheat/etc. For lack of a better term, what if Pandora’s Box had never been opened? How would society be different… and how much power would the first person who gained those abilities have over everyone else?
*kills someone*
“I didn’t do it!”
I mean, I realize that’s not something that could have happened (all species have that ability; it’s necessary for survival sometimes), but it’s still interesting to think about. I guess.
I mean, there would be no need for police or prisons. You’re sure to get a truthful answer to anything you ask. No deception, no need to have stringent security, no need for supervised examinations…
I wondering if that would make society more or less happy…
And I’m wondering if that would make us advance faster or slower…
I mean, is it the very need to be safe that leads us to innovate and research? If most of the badness in human nature is gone, will we still feel the need to advance, or will we be comfortable with the bare necessities and what we already have?

Mrrrr.
I am completely going to fail this interview and die and be sad.
:(

Don’t know if the hotel will have internet, so don’t know when I’ll post again. If there’s internet, I’ll be sure to post pictars.

Busy, busy

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So much to do before I leave for New York tomorrow. I need to study for 18100 and 80180 exams, and I also have 18100 lab tonight. I need to pack all the stuff I’ll need, and other foo… ahhh. No time…

The JPL interview today seemed to go well. No coding involved, so no chances for me to screw up, but I still feel I didn’t quite do as well as I wanted. Then again, given that I had all of 30 minutes to prepare (just found out about the opportunity yesterday, applied and then was busy all night), I don’t think I did half bad.

Did a lot of hacking to this journal template too. It looks better now… got it customized more how I want it. Will work more on it later when I’m not OMG BUSY AHHH.

Um, yeah. Wheeeeeee.

Testing

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Well, here’s to seeing how WordPress works out. I’ve added in feed redirection so all of you using the LiveJournal feed shouldn’t need to update anything. People using Xanga feeds shouldn’t need to update either since WordPress has a nice Xanga crossposting script.

So here’s to seeing how it works out. Wheee.

If you want to see old entries, you can go here.