Thanksgiving 2010

Sitting in bed browsing the internet all day, Hokkaido buffet and Harry Potter later tonight. Pretty lame Thanksgiving… the best part is not doing work all day despite planning on using Thanksgiving to catch up on work >.<  Oh well, this is my last Thanksgiving not at home, next year I’ll have my own place!

I might as well pretend to be productive and make myself some to-do lists.

For Monday: Chinese essay, Chinese presentation, chess lab, embedded lab part 2, robot obstacle avoidance
Next week: edit Chinese essay, present Chinese presentation, finish chess lab, finish embedded lab, finish obstacle avoidance and combine with other code
Finals week: study for exams, clean my room, pack for winter break
Winter break: make a new layout for BaconFriedRice, update ONiB doc, ONiB script, reserve ONiB dance rehearsal rooms, make responsibility lists for ONiB board members, make sure ONiB board members are doing their jobs, get sick of ONiB, work on PiggyTD, blah blah blah

It’s finally over

Yesterday, I officially accepted the Cisco offer.

I’m quite bitter about it. My Qualcomm offer was nearly approved but not quite, so the recruiter could only tell me what the recommended package was. My Cisco recruiter was apparently out of town, so I couldn’t ask for (yet another) extension. I basically had to make a quick decision, and I chose Cisco.

I think I probably would have chosen Cisco even if I had a longer extension and I knew my final Qualcomm offer. It was mostly about location… I’d much rather be in the bay area than San Diego. Unfortunately, everything else about Qualcomm was better.

I’m a bit sad though, because Intel was still trying to get me an interview, and he called me just today to talk about it. No more free trip to California :(

Anyway, job shit is finally done. Now I can relax! Or actually focus on school, I guess.

Halloween

This is my Halloween costume.
http://i18.photobucket.com/albums/b118/stipe108/IMG_0144.jpg

Based it off of Sandwraith from Heroes of Newerth.
http://img.131.com/www/2009/09/30/200909301107290b5.jpg

Had Mark take the picture outside in our yard. Used the image to enter into the Heroes of Newerth costume contest. The 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place get $100, $50, and $25 respectively. If I can place I’ll be able to at least cancel out the cost required to make this costume.

Bought a normal grim reaper hooded cloak and a plastic sword. Went to Lowe’s and bought a 50lb bag of sand and some plastic black chain. Made the hourglass out of a bunch of cardboard, glue, tape, and two 2-liter Sierra Mist containers. Took an old red shirt of mine and cut it into the front cloth thing. The mask is a piece of cardboard that I poured glue on and then poured sand. Everything else is thrown together with duct tape and string. This costume wouldn’t last 10 minutes outside of the apartment, but it’s good enough for a picture. I also couldn’t see because the eye holes weren’t lined up to my actual eyes.

For the picture, I got a spray bottle of water and completely soaked myself. Then I took a bucket (which we accidentally left in the picture) of sand and dumped it over me. The sand didn’t stick as much as I had hoped, but I guess it worked. Overall, it was a pretty amusing experience.

Meow

While my parents have been in Hong Kong, Jack has been taking care of my cats.  Elli is still afraid of everything, but Rhomba seems to have been warming up to Jack.  Today I watched him try to steal Jack’s milk and taco on Skype… so adorable!

Jack’s roommate was really nice and bought toys, treats and catnip for the cats.  Rhomba has been the only one to play though.  Here is a photo Jack’s roommate took of the result.

Expenses

Expenses

September is the first month completely without Allison. Therefore, I figured it would be informative to share my monthly expenses.

This month had two unusual purchases. First was the $220 at Walmart for my bicycle/helmet/air pump/lock which I now ride to work everyday. This cost, in theory, will eventually balance itself as I save 6 miles of gas and car wear per day. Given the Eclipse’s modest 18MPG city (probably worse now that it’s 9 years old) and an average $3.25/gallon, I’d say that it saves around $7 a week. There was also my plane ticket home for $240 which, although phenomenally cheap, was not a typical expense. Albeit, this was partially counteracted by the fact that I had no food expenses while I was at home.

In total though, I think that is pretty reasonable. Combined with my rent of $687.50, I hit $1508.31 total this month. If you take into account those unusual purchases, I’m sitting very close to my goal of $1200 total per month.

Free Penguins game

These last two or three weeks have been so busy and stressful, this is the first time I’ve been able to sit down and do something non-productive.  I’ve consistently had career fairs or interviews or exams or homework or ONiB preparation or some ARCC event… It’s made me so tired that I’m either working or sleeping (note the lack of eating).  Saturday night I slept for 12 hours, went to dance practice at 12:00pm, then went back to sleep 3:00pm-9:00pm!

The TOC was okay.  I talked to a lot of companies the first day, including talking to four alumni.  I was going to go again for the small window of time I had the second day, but I ended up having a Qualcomm interview during that time.

I wasn’t expecting to have interviews that quickly, so I wasn’t that prepared for the Qualcomm interview Wednesday the 15th… other than asking me about projects on my resume, he asked me to write a tweaked version of the atoi function.  The next Tuesday I had my Microsoft and Citadel interviews.  I actually studied for these, but I never needed anything I studied!  Microsoft was pretty good.  The interviewer used to work with processors, trying to improve branch prediction, so he was really interested in the 18-447 processor.  I was surprised at the coding question, because it didn’t really require any special knowledge, but I guess it was just to see how I think.  Citadel… haha.  Let’s just say I know ABSOLUTELY nothing about finance and they’ve already rejected me :P  The interviewer kept asking if I read things like the Wall Street Journal, etc. and I was just like …no…

I have a GE interview on Friday and an Exxon interview next week.  I’m feeling good after getting five interviews, but honestly… none of them are in locations I want to work and I think I would only want to work at two of the companies.  The closest location would be Qualcomm, but it’d most likely be in San Diego… Jack got to choose to go to Santa Clara, but I interviewed with QGov, the division that works with the government, so I’m not sure I’d have that choice if I got the job x.x

I’m just going to have to wait for Cisco to tell me if they’re giving me full-time.  Why do they give their offers so late??? >.<

Anyway, on to the Penguins game.

My suitemate won free tickets to the Penguins vs. Blue Jackets game on Saturday (this was the game where all tickets were given away for free), so she took me to see them.  We sat really high, but it was right in the middle between the two goals, so the view was good.  I did not expect so many fights!  There were five fights that resulted in penalties, but there were a few fights that were stopped by the referees early enough not to warrant any penalties.  After the very first fight, Letang (#58) took off his helmet and my suitemate was just like, omg so manly… I have to agree :)  I mean, look at him (as a side note, when I found this photo online, the filename was sex_hair.jpg):

Penguins won that game… although it was only a pre-season game, so it wasn’t that important.  Also, there was a couple sitting beside me that had their baby girl with them.  She was adorable – they had her decked out in Penguins clothing, and even a little Penguins hat.  They put noise-cancelling headphones on her so that she wouldn’t be too bothered by all the noise; I even saw her fall asleep at one point.  So cute!

ONiB meetings are starting up soon – I’m going to set the board application deadline to next Friday, and start meetings the Thursday after that.  I’m going to be so busy!

I ramble too much.

Games

I think I mentioned this before in the past, but I still find it funny that the very first person to wish me happy birthday is always some random game forum I signed up to in the past.

This year, arenajunkies.com, a wow arena strategy forum, wins that honor. It was followed shortly by gamebattles.com, the MLG website.

Off-schedule already…

Went to the TSA/ASA/etc. Labor Day party yesterday.  We were planning on getting on the 11:30pm bus, but there were SO many people that we didn’t end up getting there until 12:30am because not everyone could fit on the bus.  It was PACKED.  There were so many sweaty dudes all over the place.  Oh well, it was fun, and I got a good use out of my new dress!

I think I’ve ruined my sleep schedule.  I woke up in time for a lunch today, but took a nap at 6:00pm.  I meant to only sleep until 7:00pm, but that totally didn’t happen – I just got out of bed at 11:30pm.  I also didn’t get any work done today.  I think I’ll stay up late to get work done, since I seem to be most productive late at night, and sleep in tomorrow, then just do work until around midnight and try to sleep then.  I need to stop staying up until 3:00am just to talk to Jack >.>

I’m still not sure how I feel about being a senior.  I’m looking forward to graduating and living in California, but I’m scared of having to find a job first.  I’m so terrible at technical interviews.  I’m worried I’ll be a failure and not find a job at all.  But Jack said he’d support me anyway, RIGHT??? :P

I miss my cats.

EDIT: I changed the temporary theme since you (Jack) were complaining about it.  I’ll find time to make a real one featuring Piggy, probably after TOC.  Also, I guess I miss you too.