The Man
So, it's finally over. Well, at least for a couple of days. I finished up my last midterm this morning (which SUCKED [finite automata is horrible stuff]), took care of a few chores and now, I'm ready to depart for the fertile soils of the Rogue Valley. It's been awhile since I've been there, I'm somewhat excited to get back there. The sunsets in that fucking town are insane. Sledg/ Ian/ Bean/ een/ eenie/ etc and his brother are hitching a ride down with me. Their bus is supposed to arrive any minute... I'll try to type as fast as I can.
My interview with "The Man" (the makers of the popular operating system "Windows") was absolutely fucking nuts. I've been through a bunch of interviews, so I wasn't TOO stressed out, until I got an e-mail a few days before, telling me (kind of) what to expect. It's always a bit scary when they describe the interview as "very technical" in bold, red, capital letters. I must have studdied for 12 hours the night before, just to prep. And it's a goddamn good thing that I did.
::11/23/2005, 2:10pm -- Ian calls and Eric abandons his post::
::11/24/2005, 1:38pm -- Eric remembers he didn't finish this post::
Anyway, back to the "interview" -- Now, most interviews that I've done, especially for IT positions, especially with big-money companies, they usually start off with some "ease-in" questions to help the interviewer get comfortable with the interviewer. These are the questions that I tend to excell at: "Tell me about a time when you overcame a problem," "Tell me about a time when you had a disagreement with a coworker -- how did you resolve it?," "Why did you pick Computer Science?, " "Why do you want to work at [insert company name here]?" and so on.
I was prepared to show them my uncanny charm, but alas, the opportunity never arose.
Upon answering the phone, the first words out of my interviewer's mouth were to check my e-mail and click on the link they had just sent me. Doing so led me to an internal site on their system and loaded a program called "Live Meeting," which was basically a multiplayer notepad type setup: I could type, they could see it, they could type, I could see it, etc.
Veryifying that I was able to use this program and they could see what I was typing, they asked the first question: "Given a fixed length character array, write a function to reverse the letters in said array"
Now, thankfully I had studdied my basic array operations. It's not that difficult of a problem, something I probably picked up my sophomore year, but I've been out of practice.
As I am typing out this function, the interviewer (who speaks in a THICK indian accent [it takes all of my concentration just to understand him {I must have said "I'm sorry, what was that?" 37 times}]) asks me to explain what decisions I am making as I am coding, which just adds a whole new layer of stress to the mix. I finish writing the function and I walk the interviewer through it. He says that it looks good and we move on to the next question:"Rewrite the function you just had, but make it better"
"Better" means that it takes less time to execute and uses less memory. I pause for a few seconds to think about the solution. I felt my start heart pound harder because when I wrote the first answer, I did it to the best of my ability. I stall, ask a few questions, then dive right in, without a solid plan.
Somehow, I managed to come up with a new algorithm for sorting a character array in-place. No extra memory allocation (yay!) and it runs in O(n) time (half-yay!).
They ask a few other tough programming questions, I answer and before I know it, the hour is up. I say goodbye, hang up the phone and fall on my bed. Cathartic. Then I realize I have 5 minutes to get to class. Then I start running.
The Valley
It's strange to be back. I always get a weird feeling when I hit the home stretch on I-5 before exit #21. Things change so quickly around here that it's almost like driving into a new town. New building pop up, building disappear, new stores open, old stores remodel, etc.
Got home around 7-o'clock and hung out with the parents for a few hours, which was magical. Caught up on all the new happenings of the family farm and enjoyed the sheer coziness of the Feigner family castle.
Ten o'clock rolls around and I get a call from een. Apparently there is a mini-reunion at Bearded Jon's house. I get prepped, pick up een (sledg) and hit the road.
We arrive at Jon's house to find the whole jumpfighter crew there. Jon, Val, Jeryl, Darla, Zac, Eli, Sledg and me. I got a lot of hugs. It felt good to be around company that I would almost certainly take a bullet for (except Zac, he's a bitch). We talked about things until early in the morning, then I drove home and slept for 10 hours. Wonderful way to start a trip.
Thxgvng
The house smells like turkey, which brings back a flood of (good) memories. I love this time of year. And I love all of you.
Holiday Haiku:
i am thankful for:
my friends and my family,
may you all find joy.
