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December 16, 2005
Waiting...
Well I thought I'd work on my thesis today, but I'm soo antsy about knowing if I'm going to get my last couple job offers that I couldn't really concentrate on it. So instead I spent all day working on website design for FEH, which was a little bit of graphic design and mainly a lot of coding to port the FEH student database over to a dynamically updated faculty page where everyone can log in and change their info. It's not really a hard port, but it takes time to make things not student-centric, change the account types to faculty, grad, and undergrad, and port it over to the secure site and use Shibboleth to login rather than my custom password solution.
So I got it to the point where the Personnel page is created from the database and am now just working on porting the secure stuff. That mainly involves changing a few include lines, variable names, and adding support for a few fields that didn't exist in the student version. I think I'll be able to finish that tomorrow.
Didn't really look at any houses online today. I shouldn't really spend that much time on it yet anyways since I don't know if I'll be going to Austin yet or not anyways. All that searching could be for nothing right now.
Alright, time for sleep and repeat it all again tomorrow. Lexmark should be calling me tomorrow, or at least that's the impression I got the last time I heard from them. Also I need to call Intel and let them know I'm not going to take their offer. It just doesn't make sense right now to work so hard and still not be able to buy a resonable house on that salary. Oh well guess I'll see how all that goes tomorrow.
Going home this weekend for my brother's birthday and to get my eyes checked finally. The eye doc kept cancelling at the last minute back at the end of the summer, so now I'll finally get there. Plus I guess I'll be wiring up my brother's new air compressor in his garage. That should be interesting of nothing else. OK time for sleep peaceout.
Posted by Plocmstart at 1:29 AM | Comments (0)
December 14, 2005
Breaktime!
So I'm back from Austin and now it's break time! Well sort of break time. It's more like time to get work done without having to worry about going to class or having some homework done by tomorrow. So I have time to work on my thesis, do some web development, and wonder where I'm going to end up working in about 4 months.
Well Austin was real nice. When we got in it was super cold (at least for them). So the roads were still a little frozen over in areas, and since no one knows how to drive when it's slippery then it was better to stay off the roads. So Liz and I went to our hotel room and hung out in that area for the evening Thursday. We went to Buca for dinner since it was right next to our hotel. Then Friday I had my interviews, which were easy. I had no trouble with any of the technical questions, including the one that I was told was considered an evil question to ask. It just involved creating a FIFO buffer out of a standard SRAM part. That's easily done with two pointers that keep track of the head and tail and special cases of when the chip is full or empty so the pointers don't overlap.
Then after that I went back to the hotel and changed, and we went to dinner at a tex-mex place I think called Mancino's. It was pretty good food. We also got to meet Austin's hotdog eating contest winner. He ordered 2 entrees (fish and then shrimp) while we were there. Of course he's a small Asian guy that you'd never expect to eat that much.
Saturday morning we got a tour of Austin, which was mainly just getting driven around in a small bus to see the area. It was still nice to do though. Matt and Lauren showed up after the tour and we went over to Dave and Busters (also right next to the hotel) for food and some games. Then we decided that since we hadn't seen any "normal" neighborhoods in Austin yet we'd drive up north to an area where I'd found some nice houses for sale online and check it out. We drove all around the neighborhood and found some places for sale along with a new area that was being developed. Matt and Lauren actually knew the lady we talked to there. Coincidentally she used to be the manager at the apartment complex they had lived at in Houston before getting their house. That was kind of crazy how that worked out. Then for dinner we headed down to a place called Jazz Restaurant which was again paid for by NI. That was really good food, and afterwards me and Liz met up with Matt and Lauren again at a bar down the street. We hung out there until the band started playing then at least me and Matt couldn't really hear anything so we decided to go somewhere else. The problem was no one really knew where to go so we ended up just walking up and down 6th street checking out all the bars from the outside. After awhile we got tired of that and decided to call it a night.
Sunday morning we met up with Matt and Lauren at their hotel for breakfast, since they had a Fridays in their hotel and it was on our way to the airport. We then headed to the airport around noon and managed to drop off the rental car and catch an earlier flight that was just getting ready to take off. So we had no waiting in Austin for our flight. We did end up waiting 3 hours in Chicago though, and they were asking for 10 people to volunteer to take a flight in the morning the next day since it was overweight. We just wanted to get home at that point and luckily enought people must have volunteered or didn't check in so we got to go.
Also in Austin they gave me a brand new '06 Pointiac G6 GT, or well almost brand new. It had about 6000 miles and still had the new car smell. It was my first chance to try out one of those manual shifter things that comes on an automatic. I wasn't really impressed with that feature compared to a standard manual though since there was no control of the clutch. Downshifting just resulted engine braking which I didn't always want to do immediately. Oh well at least I got to try it.
So I think we both enjoyed Austin, and I'm now waiting to hear back about a job offer on that one. I think if I were to get an offer from them then I'd take that, so long as it isn't too low of an offer compared to the others. I did get an offer from Dynetics on Friday for the same as Intel basically, but the biggest thing is if I can pick between working at a company with great job security that doesn't involved things that blow people up, then I think I'd have to pick that over Dynetics. That'll really be the deciding factor for me.
I did do some more looking online at houses and have contacted a realtor down in Austin so that's all ready to go if I do end up taking that job. Of course if things don't work out I'll have to get in contact with a realtor in Huntsville right after Christmas to get things going there instead. I guess that isn't a huge rush, but in order to get everything taken care of in 3 months I should be starting as early as possible.
Lexmark did call me yesterday to let me know I should be hearing from them later this week regarding an offer. If they pick someone else I won't be offended though. I have two possible good hardware positions, and a software position isn't my ideal job at least right now. Also it didn't sound like they would be able to offer me as much, or at least when I brought up the numbers I got the response that it probably wouldn't be possible. So I'm not curious how much they could offer, and that also makes me wonder what NI can offer initially too since they typically are a bit lower than others and admit that they usually are.
So with all that on my mind I'm trying to work on some website development and my thesis. It's real hard to think about other things though. I wish I just knew the answer and I could move on to other things. Guess I'll just have to try and focus though.
OK time for lunch mmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.
Posted by Plocmstart at 12:04 PM | Comments (0)
December 5, 2005
Finals week
So the quarter is already over. And I haven't written anything on here lately. So I guess I should first do the job interview update.
Well last week was Dynetics and Lexmark on-site interviews. First getting to Dynetics was quite a headache. There was this cold/warm front coming through which meant lots of bad storms and gusty winds. Since it also went through Atlanta their airport had all their flights delayed which meant my flight from Columbus to Cincinatti was also delayed by 1 1/2 hours. This meant I would miss my connection to Huntsville. So I had to stand in line hoping to catch a later flight. Unfortunately when I got to the guy at the counter he said there were no open seats on any flights that night and I'd be on standby in Cincinatti. Since I was supposed to be up and at Dynetics for an interview at 8:30am I didn't see how that was going to work at all. So I called my contact at Dynetics and told her the situation. She called the travel agent and they said there were seats on a later flight that night. So I went back and waited in line again. This time I talked to another lady who seemed like she actually knew what was going on. She said there technically weren't any open seats on any flight, but she would make one for me. So I ended up on a flight out which got me there that evening. There were actually a couple more empty seats on that flight, but since there were no first class seats I think they left the adjacent seat on each side empty. So there were seats, but they just didn't want to fill them. Oh well tough luck. I got there ok though.
So the interview went well. I got to see a lot of things that were being worked on and the variety was really impressive. It looked like a real interesting job and something that would actually be fun to do. At first I thought it was going to be just making simulations in simulink all day, but it seems a lot more exciting than that. At the end of the day I had the manager talking like he was already ready to hire me, so hopefully all goes well and I get a job offer from them.
Flying back wasn't quite as bad. I did have my flight from Cincy to Columbus delayed because the flight attendant scheduled was late getting to Cincy from another flight. Go Delta! Plus on their other flights in the general area I had heard announcements for flights that were overbooked and they were offering Delta money or even an overnight stay to anyone that volunteered to take a later flight for those. I don't know how anyone overbooks that many flights. And one out of Huntsville was overweight and they were asking for volunteers to transfer on that one. Sheesh! I guess it's good they at least check that the flight may be overweight before taking off.
So Wednesday I had class. That was rather boring as usual. Thursday I drove down to Lexington and hung out with the guys that I worked with over the summer. We went to lunch at the Mariott. Then I just hung out with Rob that afternoon and got the latest gossip. That night we went to dinner at Applebees, then I went and finally checked in to my hotel. I then went over to Brian's house and played some card/strategy game called Cattan or something. It was pretty fun and everyone there was friendly. Then around 12:30 I went back to the hotel for a couple hours rest before getting up for interviews the next day.
Interviews went all day from 8:30 to 5. There were quite a few technical questions, and a lot of programming questions, since it was for a firmware design position. I'd rather have a hardware position, but that's all that is available right now. At the end of the day I did talk to another manager for an optics testing position. It involved hardware a bit more, but also a lot of optics which I know nearly nothing about besides the basics. So the positions aren't perfect for my skills or interests, but we'll see what the offer looks like.
This Friday will be National Instruments in Austin. Liz is going with me and we're flying out Thursday, I interview all day Friday, then we get to spend all day Saturday seeing the sights around town. Plus Matt and Lauren are going to visit! I guess it's like a 3 hour drive for them, but they want to see us and I figure we'd at least get to have lunch with them. Then we fly back Sunday evening.
So that's all in the job market area. Now that I have a better feeling for Dynetics, I actually like them better than I thought I would. It's still hard to decide which one I'd pick right away. Down in Texas it is closer to people that I know, but from what I hear NI isn't extremely generous with their offer. I'm sure it'll be enough to live off though. I do want to get a nice house for me and Liz though, with enough room for all our stuff plus some place for visitors to stay. I've been looking a lot and I've found some nice places for less than $200k, particularly in Texas and Alabama. I figure $200k is probably the upper limit, and I'm only figuring living off my income, so anything extra Liz brings in will also be nice.
The random event of the day involves my Paypal debit card. I received an email that said my debit card had been compromised and Paypal had cancelled it. I called the number on the back to verify that this was true since I get so many spoof emails, and it was true. They wouldn't give me any details as to who reported it or how this came about. The last purchase I made was in Kentucky at Applebees after making quite a few purchases in Columbus. So I don't know if that tripped some alert or someone else attempted to use the number online for something. I still have the card, so it's not like they could have used it at a store. And with my old card I cut it up and threw half of it away in one set of trash and the second half a couple weeks later after the trash had been collected.
Oh well, I had to request a new card, and 1-2 weeks I'll get a new one. It's kind of annoying since I was using it to make holiday purchases, but there isn't much money in it at the moment so I'm not really dependent on it. Without more info as to how they got it though I have no idea if they have any of my other information. I don't even use that card online that often, maybe once or twice. I guess I could go back and see what online purchases I've made with it to see who may have been compromised to get that info, otherwise it would have had to come from a retail store or someone just guessed the number.
Posted by Plocmstart at 10:40 PM | Comments (0)