Pug’s Place

Last weekend was the first weekend I spent in Gainesville since the 14th of October. To recap, the month of lost weekends went like:

1. Weekend of October 21st: In Melbourne, FL interviewing with Harris Corporation
2. Weekend of October 28th: In Statesboro, GA competing in the southeast regional programming contest
3. Weekend of November 4th: In Phoenix, AZ interviewing with General Dynamics
4. Weekend of November 11th: In Boston, MA interviewing with Microsoft / Groove Networks

This put a major damper in keeping ahead of projects and general deadlines, which, of course, meant that I was in a state of pretty high stress for the past month. Ignoring the stress aspects, I did have a good time travelling around like this. I wrote about Statesboro and the programming contest already, and I posted an entry from Phoenix, so now I’m going to talk about my trip to Boston (and Odette!), then I’ll mention my interviews with Google, my plans for January and ideas about the future.

(Random note: The picture to the right here is one I snapped of a bee landing on a flower in the Desert Botanical Garden in Phoenix)

Despite being a Linux guy, last January when I was contacted by a Microsoft recruiter I decided to go ahead and do some phone interviews with the company. My recruiter was quite interested in having me fly out to interview in person but since that was January and I don’t graduate until next month I asked to hold off on that bit of excitement until it was closer to the time when I was really going to be job searching. I would be willing to accept a job with Microsoft given sufficient incentive, so I wasn’t just leading them on, don’t worry. At the start of this fall semester my recruiter got back in touch with me and we began talking about once again flying me to meet with a Microsoft product team. Due to time conflicts with everything else that was happening throughout October (and the first week of November), this interview trip got pushed back until the second week of November. I readied myself to fly to Redmond, WA during the start of Winter. After plenty of mental preparation I received an email with instructions on reserving my airline tickets… to Boston, MA. Perhaps I was being dense but I had no idea that I wasn’t going to Washington. I was chatting with Odette at the time the email came through and our conversation went like this:

Pug: WTF!
Odette: ???
Odette: Holding chips good, wtf bad.
Pug: Wiping potato chips off hand so I can type faster…
Pug: holy crap
Pug: Mind if I come visit?
Pug: It appears that I’ll be in Boston in two weeks!
Odette: Ohmygosh!!

Moving forward in time two weeks, early on the Thursday morning of the 10th of November I drove to the airport to catch a 6:20 am flight to Boston via Atlanta. By 11:30 am I was with my gal again! Thank you, Microsoft! That afternoon Odette had both work and class to take care of and I had a phone interview with Microsoft folks in Redmond, WA, so we parted ways until evening. I made good use of the time after my interview catching up on sleep rather than doing homework as I had originally planned… Anyway, the next day was Friday morning and I had to make my way north of Boston to the suburb of Beverly, MA (formerly part of Salem, MA, actually) via train to meet with Groove Networks.

Groove is located in a truly massive office complex called the Cummings Center which was at one point the largest factory in the world. It’s not only very large, it also has an unintuitive method of numbering its offices. Despite getting there about 30 minutes early, by the time I found the right place I was only 5 minutes early. I learned that in anything other than clement, moderately warm conditions that walk from the train station would be miserable - some of it was without sidewalks, for example. Regarding the actual interview, Groove’s people greatly impressed me with their expertise and humor. I spoke to a couple of closet Linux fans, heard about Windows Vista upgrades failing, got to discuss C++’s implementation of a vtable and discuss non-blocking I/O, massively parallel algorithms, lock-free and wait-free implementations of common concurrent programming problems and other geeky topics of which I have decent familiarity. Groove (and by extension Microsoft) gave me my most technical interview, even in comparison to my phone interviews with Google engineers. However, the atmosphere was still light and humorous - I think it would be more accurate to say that I had a day of geeky conversations rather than a day of interviews.

The whole experience was a positive one, though I could not imagine myself living in the Boston area. Fall color might be pretty, but despite the unseasonably warm temperatures everything looked cold. That didn’t stop me from having a great time exploring Boston with Odette the following day. She and I began our Saturday with a walk through Harvard, then around Boston Common, the Public Gardens and the surrounding areas with views of several Emerson buildings, the old State House and other historical landmarks. I got to have my picture taken with the adorable statue depicting the protagonists of Make Way for Ducklings as described in this earlier photograph from Odette which pleased me to end. They were fuzzy ducklings and I was prepared! Our wanderings extended in the afternoon to eventually finding our way to the New England Aquarium where we spent several hours ogling the penguins, the various fish and the crush of people who were doing the same.

Night was strolling its way across the harbor at the time we departed the aquarium but we still decided to continue poking around the city - after all, how often am I in Boston? (answer: this was my first time in Massachusetts) So we wandered around some shopping areas near Faneuil Hall Marketplace, watched a street performance by a man climbing a free-standing ladder and then walked to the Paul Revere House before returning to Cambridge.

After a nice lunch at Zoe’s near Harvard Square, I flew back to Gainesville on Sunday to feverishly work on neglected homework. Anyway, I had a great time — thanks, Microsoft!

In the midst of these weekends out of town I was slowly progressing through phone interviews with Google’s new office in Phoenix, AZ. If you look up comments on Google’s hiring practices they tend to point toward multi-month interview processes. I didn’t have multiple months so I didn’t expect anything to come from talking with Google and I wasn’t surprised to find they weren’t even close to being able to meet my desired schedule. Anyway, their interviews were mostly problem-solving. Not much to say there except that I’m not going the Google route, but my cover letter did manage to get some attention, so agonizing over it had some positive effect.

Last week was my deadline to decide what was going to become of me in January and where I’d go to work. After lots of deliberation I did reach a decision: I’m moving to Phoenix, AZ and going to work for General Dynamics C4 Systems. This probably won’t surprise anyone since I’ve been talking about moving to Phoenix since high school, but the decision finally came down to the factors of “want warm weather” and “want Odette to be able to get a job in the area”. I’ve secured a sub-leaser for my room here in the apartment and am in the process of setting up a moving company to pack up and haul my stuff out of here around graduation time. Then I’ll be driving home for Christmas, having my car loaded onto a truck in January and then flying out and having my stuff (and my car) meet me there. Sorry, Jachyra - I’m not going to drive all 1,800 miles, so I won’t be stopping in on my way. Then I’ll have a residence where less than a 2.5 hour private flight will take me to Las Vegas, ski slopes or San Diego Beach.

Oh, speaking of: I’m studying up to start private pilot training in January. In moments of free time I’ve been reading Rod Machado’s Private Pilot Handbook, studying everything that seems to be handy and trying stuff out with the latest version of Microsoft Flight Simulator on a Windows partition installed for specifically for the purpose. I even bought rudder pedals so that I can learn how to drive a plane on the ground and make coordinated turns in the air. (I figure $200 on simulator equipment could save me considerable amounts of money in plane and instructor hours throughout my training.) The awesome flying weather in Phoenix and the surrounding areas also factored into my decision to move there, as does the idea that winter sports, mountains and beaches are within reasonable flight range.

Wednesday I’m going home for Thanksgiving and one of these days I’m going to do some video editing.

In other news, the hood of my car (and two cars next to it) was spray-painted by vandals Friday evening. I got to give a statement to the local police and spend some time Saturday morning carefully applying pure acetone to the affected areas to clean it off without damaging the car’s real paint job. More graffiti was sprayed on the walls here in the breezeway, too.

I get my Master of Science degree in Computer Science on December 15th.

Two weeks ago I was in Melbourne, FL interviewing with Harris corporation. Last weekend I was in Statesboro, GA participating in that Programming Contest. I am writing now from Scottsdale, AZ (a wealthy suburb of Phoenix) after having interviewed yesterday with General Dynamics C4 Systems (formerly a part of Motorola). Next weekend I’ll be in Boston, MA interviewing with Microsoft via their new acquisition, Groove Networks. My parents think all of this means I’m terribly busy.
So I’m in the Valley again, though my eldest brother is overseas so I can’t hang out with him. Instead I’m on my own until my flight out tomorrow morning, just me, my rented red 2007 Mustang and the lush desert that is Phoenix. Actually, that’s not entirely true: I have a company event this morning which will last into the very early afternoon, but after that my time is my own.

I’ve been toying with the idea of living here in Phoenix for years, ever since I first came out here the weekend of my 13th birthday and got to wander through the Desert Botanical Gardens. It still seems like a good idea, living out here, but I am keeping my enthusiasm curbed for now. I want to talk to more people about this company with whom I just interviewed before I solidify my opinions.

Interviews yesterday with GD were remarkably laid-back (I hesitate to call my interviews ‘Interviews’, they were more like fun, geeky conversations, but I digress). When I arrived I was greeted by my recruiters with the question, “How did you get a Mustang?” I do not think I answered that question, as others quickly popped up to take its place, but they were confused and amused since Mustangs aren’t on the rental list for which the company was paying. Notably, at the end of the day I was with the last trio of interviewees walking from the building to the visitor parking lot. The two guys with whom I was walking asked me if I needed a ride back to the hotel - I said I had that covered. The visitor parking lot was nearly deserted, just a Taurus and a red Mustang in the immediate area that we were walking toward. As that became increasingly apparent, one of those guys asked again if I was sure I didn’t need a ride (as it didn’t appear that any rental cars were over there, just the Mustang). About this time I unlocked the Mustang and its doors did the Corvette-thing with the windows falling down a little ways to allow the doors to be opened. Immediately came the indignant cry, “How did you get a Mustang!?”

There are many advantages to being a Hertz #1 Club member - you get Mustangs for the rental price of Tauruses, and Porsches for the rental price of Mustang GTs. I had the other guys take a couple of pictures of me with the Mustang for posterity, but I can’t pull them from the camera until I get back to Gainesville.

To close the topic of me and this Mustang, I don’t much care for it. The car has a great, powerful-sounding engine with lots of medium-end acceleration but it feels too heavy to be nimble and too wide to be comfortable (for me). I think small sporty Japanese cars are now my top choices.
Now I depart for this company event, then I intend to wander around (possibly the Desert Botanical Gardens again, woo!) and finally meet Chris’s girlfriend Amy for dinner.