Archive for the 'Life Events' Category

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A Slightly Important Phone Interview

Published on February 12, 2007 in Google, Internships, Life Events and Programming. 3 Comments

Google LogoAfter Apple didn’t respond to my inquiry about an internship a few weeks ago, I started to pursue other options. It turns out that the “contact” that I thought I had was not actually a recruiter, so I decided to just send my resume through their standard job site on the web. As I suspected, this dramatically decreased the my chances of getting a response. My next option would be to find a real technical contact at Apple through someone that I’ve worked with at IBM. I’ve put that on the back burner for now, though, in hopes of getting an internship at Google.

I did things the right way with Google from the beginning. One of my professors has a colleague who works in Google’s NYC office; I got in touch with her by email, and had a recruiter contact me to set up a phone interview within the week. I was extremely impressed by their quick turnaround time.

The phone interview is 4pm on Tuesday. I’m nervous and excited. I’m hoping the Googler on the other end doesn’t completely own me, but I also realize that this could be the gateway to a really awesome opportunity. The interview is scheduled to be 45 minutes, and the email that I received said, “In terms of what to expect in your interview, you will be asked a variety of technical questions including questions around coding, algorithms, design, problem solving, and general computer science fundamentals.” I consider myself a decent interviewer and a good under-pressure thinker, but I keep having dreams in which I am drooling in front of the phone saying “Huh” as the interviewer asks me to write a complete operating system kernel in 5 minutes.

Luckily, I believe that Google is looking for people that know how to think, not people that have memorized the solutions to all the problems they have ever come across. After all, Google is inventing new areas of computing science as they construct a massively parallel system that has to deal with a truly staggering amount of data. The people there are inventing new algorithms that have revolutionized internet search, not implementing something that every student is taught in CS101. I say “luckily” because this is the type of interview I believe I will excel at. I know my CS fundamentals, and I hope to be able to use them to come up with a solution to anything they throw at me.

That being said, I still plan to review a bit. Today I read the chapter on sorting in my data structures book. I plan to review my labs from C++ class last year, specifically the ones on templates, memory management, object-oriented topics such as polymorphism and overloading and linked lists and trees. I’ll try to remember the details of the stuff I did the past two summers, in case I get asked about that. Toss a bit of general OOP theory on top, and I’ll be good to go. Wish me luck.

Seven for 2007

Published on January 26, 2007 in Life Events. 1 Comment

It might be a little late in the year to enumerate the goals that I want to accomplish, but all of these have been floating around in my head for so long that I wanted to get them down in print. Do you have goals for the upcoming year? If so, leave them in the comments!

  1. Learn Digital Photography.Canon Powershot SD450 If you haven’t done this yet, go to Flickr and just browse through some of the featured photos. It is inspiring what people can do with a digital camera and a bit of post-processing. Every time I look at my own photo library, everything about the shots looks amateur. A really good picture is about 1 in 1000 for me. I want to learn how to take amazing pictures. This involves learning not only about cameras (focal length, shutter speed, exposure), but also about the digital toolset that is integral to producing a good photo. I know very little about how to use Photoshop. It also requires expertise in color theory. When people throw around terms like saturation and tone, I have no idea what they are talking about. I would love to someday be taking pictures that I would be happy to use as my desktop background.
  2. Finish Snake World Tour. This one doesn’t require much explanation. Snake World Tour is a game that I started writing while I was recovering from jaw surgery. I never got around to finishing it, but it’s so close. I may have to drop the 2006 from the name, though.
  3. Run Fast. I had jaw surgery this past summer, and it ruined an entire cross-country season. During recovery, I wasn’t allowed to run at all, doctor’s orders. I lost six weeks of training, which is about half the summer. And when I came back, it wasn’t pretty. My legs looked like sticks and I could barely run 3 miles. Losing two pints of blood will do that to you. It was a long climb back up, but I wasn’t ready for the fall season, and I ran really poorly. Nike MayflyI was so discouraged that I seriously contemplated quitting for a long time. But I stuck with it because running is something I need in my life, and I knew it would be hard to run every day if I wasn’t on the team. Right now, though, I feel faster than ever. My goal for indoor track is to break 9:00 in the 3K. For outdoor track, I want to break 4:10 in the 1500 and 16:00 in the 5K. And for cross-country, in the 8K, I need to get myself under 27 minutes if I want to be taken seriously. These goals represent significant increases over my current PRs, but my training has been going really well lately, so I’ll see what happens.
  4. Learn to Draw. Drawing BookI used to hate art class, because I believed that some people had drawing talent and others didn’t. I used to place myself in the latter group. Then a few months ago I bought the book “The New Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain” by Betty Edwards. I read the first chapter; it explained that the ability to draw has nothing to do with motor skills; rather its all about perception. I began to look much more closely at things in my everyday life, seeing them as if I was going to draw them. “I can do this,” I thought. But I have yet to read past the first chapter. I believe that I could become a competent artist, but I’m nervous about the time it would take me to achieve that goal. Drawing also requires patience, which is not something that I always have. The one good drawing I remember making in my life was of my yard. It was a side-by-side of how it looked at night versus how it looked during the day. I was so proud of it when it was done.
  5. Read More Books. It’s hard to find time to read in college outside of all the reading and homework that I have to do for class, but I should be able to devote a half-hour each night to books of my own choosing. I’m currently in the middle of “Hard Times” by Dickens, and there is a gigantic list of stuff that I want to read after that. More of the Ender series, Moby Dick, Hamlet, The Jungle Book, Vonnegut, Catch-22, A Clockwork Orange, Fitzgerald, and Alice and Wonderland are just what I came up with in 5 seconds. Pile of BooksMy next book, however, is going to be “The Prestige” by Christopher Priest. I just saw the movie and it was incredible; I was on the edge of my seat the entire time, and the movie never came together until the last 5 minutes. (A side note: I absolutely hate books that have been rereleased with a new cover that ties in with the movie version. It’s like destroying a work of art.)
  6. Find a Research Project. This is important. At every college I toured, I asked how easy it was for undergraduates to get involved in research. At the University of Rochester, it’s really easy, but I haven’t done it yet! I have a meeting on Monday with a professor that I had last year who I really liked. He does research on Computer Architecture – how to design computers at the block level to make them more energy-efficient and, of course, faster. This is an area that I am really interested in myself.
  7. Go to a music festival. My friend at home put the idea in my head, and another friend at school found me the perfect one. Just check out the lineup. It’s in California. Travel is expensive, tickets are expensive, and it’s on a school weekend. But we can all dream…

A Third Semester Done (Well, Almost)

Published on December 14, 2006 in Life Events and School. 2 Comments

Busy StudentI guess I can’t call myself done when I still have a paper to write, four exams to study for, and a random problem set that all must be completed by next Thursday at noon. But I have been absolutely immersed this past week and a half in wrapping things up, and little milestones mean everything to me right now. I’m done with webwork (possibly forever!), a project for one class, a paper on RFID for physics, lab reports, and almost all problem sets, but I still have the aforementioned items to get through. Tonight is off-limits for work, though, and tomorrow morning I am going to sleep in for once in my life get up early and go to the Mt. Hope Diner with some awesome cross-country alumni.

I’m hesitant to speak about the semester when it isn’t actually done yet. Although 23 credits was absolutely insane, and I’m entirely sure that I won’t take that much of an overload ever again in my life, I must say that it was a really good experience to have. It will make next semester feel like vacation in comparison, and it has really gave me an idea of what it is like to be so busy you feel like you are going to go out of your mind. Another great thing about it was that it made the semester absolutely fly by. Most weeks I didn’t have a spare minute to think, from Monday at 8am to Friday at 3pm, and I really enjoyed it. It also helps that my classes were interesting.

Looking back, I thought that:

  • My Multivariable Calc class was going to be easy (Hell no)
  • My Discrete Math class would be interesting (Turns out I already knew most of the course material, and the homework was really long and repetitive busywork)
  • My Physics class would be moderately hard (There were pages, and I mean pages, of math every lecture. I still haven’t wrapped my head around all of the derivations)
  • My Arabian Nights class would have really good discussions (There were classes where only one or two people talked)
  • I would really like my Circuits class (I loved it)

Top prize for my favorite class of the semester was my circuits class. The lectures were well taught, the labs actually helped me learn the material, mostly because they required designing circuits as pre-lab exercises, and the homework was almost fun in a nerdy way. Physics was a close second. That class took me to a whole new level in calculus, and made me want to get a minor in Physics. Lectures were good, but not outstanding, but the lecture notes that our professor gave us every class were fantastic. It was like he wrote his own textbook. So if you attend the University of Rochester and you ever have the chance to take Circuits with Professor Jones or Honors Physics with Professor Cline, I highly recommend it.

Next semester is the first semester that I am taking not a single liberal arts class. Quantum Mechanics, Data Structures, Signals & Circuits II, and Computer Organization are all on the horizon. I’m pretty excited, but first I have four exams and a hopefully fun and relaxing holiday break to get through. A thoroughly satisfying fall semester, but one that I’m glad is almost over so I can stop being so busy! Now back to the books for the next seven days straight…