Author: cheerfulchaotic

I got all nervous & flustered, but then I warmed up….

First he wanted me to talk about a technical problem, and I finally felt like I had something worth talking about. Yay, Ro. But this problem is mostly math and very little architecture, so he wasn’t terribly interested in that angle.

He was like write me a function to reverse strings, preferrably in place. At first I pulled out pen & paper, but it wasn’t coming to me. Then I opened up emacs, & the juice started to flow again. I’m not sure if my function puts the terminating null at the beginning, and I did confuse a variable name, and I forgot to return. Did I mention I was flustered? Fortunately, the confusion was probably unnoticed, and the method was basically sound. Phones, bleh!

Then another one where I was reducing the order of a function from the obvious O(n^2) implementation (well, he didn’t give the O(n^2) implementation, but it was, as I say, obvious. I got it down to O(n*log(n)) with little prompting (sort first, then do something qsort-esque for a linear time implementation), and then, with a moderate amount of prompting, down to O(n) (lookup tables, it’s all about the lookup tables).

Some object oriented design questions. I had the technicalities right, and I gave strong stylistic reasons, and after prompting, gave the technical reasons for a virtual function in a toy example.

For the last technical question, we played with in order and pre order binary tree traversals. My intuition was completely correct, my solution was suboptimal, but good.

He asked about my goal of being a contractor on my resume, and I assured him I was looking for something full-time-ish with them. I asked for the next step, “I’ll give them my evaluation and our people will call you, and possibly schedule an in person interview”, and then asked for the insider’s perspective on what they did. His answer added some to the description, but more by way of flavor than detail.

I think I did well. All the right answers, if not exactly smooth. We shall see what comes of it. Laundry, and work, and stuff. I may not say much before monday. Wish me luck.

Confirmation recieved. Getting on a bus this afternoon. And we’re stopping at mcyd’s. Guess who is bringing like 12 clif bars with him. , if I be staying with you, I’ll need some contact info. =) scu @ club dot cc dot cmu dot edu

I should also be getting my old phone, with my old numbers, back this afternoon. Let’s hope I can still find the charger. =)

And t-minus an hour and a half to Amazon technical phone interview. I sense an eventful day in my near future. =)

It’s been an Amazon called, laundry doing, room cleaning, starkeee hanging, gymnastics membership getting, work doing, gymnastics practicing kinda day. I’m beat.

Amazon called

It’s basically an inventory tracking thing. Supply chain logistics and what not. They want C++/database experience. Distributed systems, asynchronous messaging. Simulation and mathematical modeling are other biggies. In short, a good fit for my skill set.

full description

So, I got up at 3am. Didn’t especially feel like going back to sleep. Ended up signing up to go to Phoenix to do dean stuff (though I still haven’t recieved confirmation).

Went to the gym at 5:30. 659 calories in 30 minutes on the elliptical crosstrainer (!!). No hot married guy w/ boner in locker room. Worked an 8 hour day. Made progress. (currently my desktop is trying to solve a system of 42 equations, with 37 variables. I wonder if it’ll be finished by the time I get in tomorrow. I should have done something to get it to record the time it finishes. Ah well.

My back is still a piano of pain from the gymnastics, though I’m recovering (and it’s all good muscle pain, not bad tendon/bone pain). I loved that metaphor so much I had to share it. Taut/painful strings/muscles. And when I lean forward, it produces the most interesting ‘chords’. The fatigue is centered in my lower back, but spreads around to my abs, down to my butt, and up to my shoulders. It’s kinda cool, actually.

Bart found my old phone, so whenever I get around to hitting the oakland/12th street station during their funky hours on the right day, I can pick it up and recover my missing numbers.

Plus, Amazon just now called me back. ‘s name was recognized (who here remembers the “everyone knows Dee” principle? (well, actually, it’s the “Dee knows everyone” principle, but details, details).

This may go on record as one of the more fabulous days I’ve had in awhile (in a calm/quiet sort of way).

[Add watching the sun rise behind the oakland hills, and watching the sun set across the bay behind the golden gate to the list]

“Take a gulp and take a breath, go ahead and sign the scroll…”

Well, I’m signing up to volunteer for dean doing canvassing stuff in phoenix this weekend. I doubt I’ll have alot in the way of spare time to hang with the locals or whatever, but if any of y’all would like to meet me and/or volunteer to put me (and possibly a friend or two, maybe including ) up for the weekend (read, saturday night), I’d be much obliged.

So, two of the people who show up on my little lj subscriptions have adopted (different) Ivanova icons (neither subscribes to the other’s journal, I think). It’s confusing when I see it next to the entry. I approve of Ivanova, and yet… =)

sparing you the banality

Also, why are my *biceps* sore? You don’t use them nearly as much as the triceps in gymnastics. Totally wacky.

Um, there was something else, I meant to say. But I can’t remember what it was. Hippie geek job in marin I didn’t hear back from. Sadness.

Learning Lagrange Multipliers for work. Neat stuff. Expanding my powers of differentiation.

I’m sure there’s something more I wanted to say…

…

Oh yeah! I found a video to go with the “if there are girls there, I want to *do* them” audio clip. It’s indescribable. So painful, because it’s so true. =) as soon as it finishes downloading. (it’s a big puppy) it can be found at http://www.club.cc.cmu.edu/~scu/summoner.avi

Sadly, not quite as cool as the version showed us a couple years back whilst I was living in chicago. (It doesn’t have the ominous “dangers of rpg’s” envelope, and instead has a game ad, but I make do =)

Which reminds me. Any of y’all in a group housing setup in pittsburgh that could use an extra roomie? Sounds like chris is going to be coming out soon on a semi-frequent semi-resident basis.