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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 December 14, 2005 12:04 PM

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