Monthly Archive for February, 2007

Page 2 of 3

Good News From Google

Published on February 16, 2007 in Google, Internships and Life Events. 2 Comments

This pleasant surprise was waiting for me in my inbox when I came back from class earlier tonight:

Tyler:

Your first interview went well! We will now begin the process of matching your experience and preferences with groups within Google who are looking for interns this summer. Once we find a match, we’ll set up your second phone interview.

Google CampusI’m looking forward to it. Now that I’ve gotten past the initial screening, I feel like I can relax a little bit. Hopefully the second interview will be less of a quiz and more of a way for my potential coworkers to determine if I would be a good fit on their project.

The first interview went really well. I got asked about my previous internships, then I was grilled on data structures and Big-O analysis. The culminating task was solving a design problem based on the one of the data structures we had just discussed in detail. My first solution was inefficient, but after a bit of prodding I had a stroke of genius and came up with one of the two optimal solutions.

My advice to anyone who has a phone interview with Google is to know your data structures. Know them well. If it has been a while since you took a data structures class, review them. I was really lucky that the stuff I reviewed was exactly what I was asked about. The questions aren’t simple, but having a good core understanding of data structures and other computer science fundamentals will help immensely.

And now I will cross my fingers while I wait for next week to arrive!

And the Weather Tomorrow Will Be … Snow!

Published on February 14, 2007 in Musings. 0 Comments

Rochester got hammered with about a foot and a half of snow since last night, and judging by the radar, it’s not only us. Almost every school in the region is closed, including some of the colleges. And it’s not going to stop soon, according to the Mac OS X weather widget. Even the army of Rochester plows and salt spreaders can’t keep up with the storm…most of the sidewalks are only wide enough for one person. Bring on the snow!

Mac OS X Weather Widget

UR Puns Everywhere

Published on February 14, 2007 in Musings and School. 0 Comments

Apparently Brach’s employs UR puns in the making of their Valentine’s day candy.

UR MineUR Bad

We here at the University of Rochester see a sickening amount of UR puns throughout the year. The prize for winning Intramural sports is a shirt that says “UR A Champion,” the orientation packets say “UR Here,” and the money on our debit account is called “URos,” pronounced like Euros. There are even Facebook groups dedicated to curbing the proliferation of UR puns. And now they show up on not one, but two different Valentine’s Day hearts. Maybe the Admissions Office should start sending out “UR Mine” hearts with acceptance packages, and “UR Bad” hearts with rejection letters. OK, that idea was even worse than the original pun. Happy Valentine’s Day.