Found 20 Matching Entries!

11.09.2004 -

thought of the day: you know you should stop eating cheesecake when the side whipped cream tastes like styrofoam. losing my sense of sweetness would kill me.

spam count (from 10/25/2004): 1937

i'm finally back! it's been a really fun trip to seattle. a bit nerve-wrecking, but i think i enjoyed it more. it started off on sunday when i realized i didn't have a belt. so i headed over to gap and just randomly picked out one that i thought looked nice. then while i was packing, i realized that i didn't want to take my big suitcase, yet i didn't have any small suitcases or something comparable. then i found it, my laptop bag that came with my ibm laptop. i put all clothing, shoes, toiletries, and etc into my backpack, and the laptop, documents, and binder got put into the laptop bag. it's really more like a messenger bag due to its size. then decathanerd called me and said he'll be over in 10-15mins. he was nice to offer to drive me to the airport so i didn't have to take airbart. i flew alaska airlines for the 1st time. the flight took a little over 2hrs and before i knew it, i was in seattle. so i take a cab to my hotel lodging. after awhile, i was thinking... do cabs take credit cards? so i was staring @ that meter as it jumped in increments of $.20 and by the time we reached my hotel, it was already $40. i asked the cab driver if he accepted credit cards and he replied no, so i paid him in cash and he goes, you know, after tip, the total is usually about $45. did you know you had to pay tip for taxi cabs? i only had about $100 of cash w/ me and thought to myself that if all the cab drivers here took cash only, i'd run outta money before i can get back to the airport. my atm account was also low in money since most of the money was stored somewhere else where it required a 7day transfer time. so i was thinking through all the possible scenarios of what i could do. with that and tomorrow's interview on my mind, u could say i couldn't really get that good of a sleep the night before. i had called the taxi company that microsoft suggested and asked for a pickup the next day @ 7:30am. in the middle of the night, I received a fone call. i thought, wow, was it 6:30am already (wakeup call time i requested). i picked up the fone and the front desk tells me that my cab was here. i was like, what!?!? did i sleep through my wakeup call? i looked @ the clock, it showed 4:30am. i was like what!?!?! i told the front desk that i had requested the cab to be here @ 7:30am, not 4:30. she apologizes and told me that she would tell the cab driver to come back @ 7:30. i was like, did the cab service take down the wrong time. i called the cab company and she confirmed w/ me that the time is still set for 7:30 and the call has not been sent out. i let out a sigh of relief and returned to bed. so my wakeup call did come on time and i got dressed and went out for breakfast (really just orange juice and a muffin). my cab arrived on time and this time i saw the credit card machine. i'm like YES YES YES!! so he drove me to microsoft which was like a 6 min drive and i paid with my credit card. i walked into the reception and told the receptionist i was here for an interview and gave her my driver's license. she looks up my info and tells me, you know you're early right? i go, yah (since my email said to arrive by 8:30am). so i sat down in the lounge and began programming for my cs169 class. another lady calls out for me and says, toland, you do know your interview appointment begins @ 11:30am right? i'm like wo... i explained how i was told to be here by 8:30am and they apologize for the confusion. they told me my recruiter should be in by 9:30, but i was still scheduled for 11:30. they said they could order a cab for me to return to my hotel, but i declined since that would just be a waste of time since i can program my cs169 project here while i wait. i really got a lot of work done while waiting and when i finally got to meet with collene, my recruiter. she basically tells me i'm going to have about 3-5 interviews today and the two groups i'll be interviewing with are directory services and core file services. she was really nice and explains how my day was going to go, what to expect, how to get around the campus, and more kewl things. so i went to building 40 to meet my 1st interviewer gokay. so i sat there for about 7mins waiting for him. turns out i was suppose to ask the receptionist to call for him. the interview started off simple with questions like if i had a box of oranges, a box of apples, and a box of oranges and apples, but every single box was mislabeled, how many fruits would you have to pick out before determining what each box contained. then there was the question about 25 race horses and a race track which had only 5 lanes. how many races would it take to determine the 3 fastest horse? then i had to write a function that counted how x-digit a particular # had, which i was able to write. then he asked me how i would black box test it, which i didn't do that well on (but i've gotta say, i did try my best). so this was my "lunch interview", we headed downstairs to the cafeteria and i got to ask him questions and stuff. he then tells me i did great besides the testing part (as expected), but he said it wasn't something to worry about. then i got sent to see my next interviewer: kevin. kevin was another kewl guy. i was first asked to write a reverse string algorithm and then a reverse word algorithm, which wasn't the optimal solution he was looking for. he showed me the easiest way being to use the stack and to push and pop words in, which i thought was extremely kewl. but i never really used the stack much. he then went onto how to recognize when a project plan was going offtrack. i told him what i thought and he then asked me what i could do to fix it. i gave him the increase resources on the areas which aren't meeting the deadlines, delay features and add them to future releases, or just extend the ship date. he asked me for the pros and cons for each one, which i answered. the next question he asked me was something to the effect of if microsoft suddenly decided to compete in the fork industry and wanted to create the world's best fork and if i had 72hrs, how would i test it to make sure it is the world's best fork. i told him a series of tests i would do. he then tells me that instead of thinking of edge cases immediately, i should think about the general cases since if i can define the general cases, the edge cases would come naturally, which is true. (learnt something there). he then asked me why do i think manhole covers are round? and i gave him every possible reason i could think of, but once again, i goofed, since i was only thinking mostly of the use cases. he mentioned one of the possible reasons why it was round could be the fact it was easier to move around being manhole covers are so heavy. i was then sent to core file services dept and i apologize for not remember the 2 interviewers name. this was the interview i think i royally screwed up. he first asked if i knew the difference between user and kernel mode. i recalled it being taught in cs162 but i couldn't remember the difference for dear life. then we went onto BST (binary search trees) and asked me what the purpose of it was. i gave him the definition and told him the run time to do a search was nlogn (another mistake). the search time is really logn, but i was mixing it up with sort algorithms. sigh... then he asked me what would happen when i removed a node in the BST. which i sorta goofed, but came to realize my mistake and was able to fix it. he then told me to write the algorithm delete a node. that took me a long time, but it was mostly correct, but it took him a rather long time to figure out what my function did. he then asked me how i would test it, which i dont think he was satisified with my response. leaving the interview pretty depressed, i went on to my next interview (if you're wondering, each interview is about an hour long). i was able to regain my confidence in my 4th interview. this guy was a really kewl too and reminded me of my ee122 ta for some reason. i dont recall what exactly he asked me anymore, but the final question he asked me was he handed me a toaster and asked me how i would test it. i did a pretty good analysis of it and i think he liked it. my interviewer got a call and told me to wait at the lobby and someone named stuart would come and pick me up. i was taken back to the directory services building and had my 5th and final interview. he brought up a funny story about how his wife wanted to play this soltaire game, but because the game was shareware and the company had screwed up the registration process, she was really unhappy and wanted him to help her bypass it. so he then asks me if i was programming a shareware and want to enforce a 30-day trial limit, how would i do it? i told him my solution which i think he was satisfied with. he then tells me that the soltaire software had created a hidden registry file with some weird name and width="" height="" length="" attributes and after deleting that obscure registry entry, the trial mode on that software worked again. i'm not too sure what else i was asked during this interview. it's been a long day. woke up @ 6:30 and my last interview ended @ 7pm. i was suppose to meet back with my recruiter, but she had already left. 1 thing i did asked was that during this whole interview processs, i did not got one of microsoft's infamous riddles. not sure if that was a good thing or not, but i would've liked to take the challenge. riddles are fun, even if i don't get the answer. he tells me that microsoft used to ask these riddles and still do, but they've decided that they're not really interested if someone can come up w/ a solution since it's usually a hit or miss with these riddles, but what they're more interested in was the the thinking process and how our logic works (which many of the riddles can't be applied). my interview was finally over and i called a taxi and drove to cheesecake factory. food was good there naturally, but i can't believe even after such a hard day w/o eating much, the only thing i was able to finished outta the 3 items i ordered (fried calamari, tropical smoothie, oreo mudslide cheesecake), was the smoothie. i then called another taxi and returned back to my hotel. my dad had suggested me to contact my uncle to ask him to show me around the city, but i had a midterm i had to study for. turns out i made the right decision since immediately after returning to the hotel, robtrust ims me and asks how i was doing w/ e190's essay. i had completely forgotten about that! thank god i had most of it written already and i just wrote 2 more pages and added a figure. all this time i thought my return flight was @ 8am. i even called the cab company to have a cab ready for me by 6 and had a wakeup call to wake me up at 5:30. then liam imed me offering to pick me up. i told him the time and he said it was fine. then i went to double check to make sure. turns out my return flight was actually 10am. i'm like o shoot! i called the cab server and changed the time. called the front desk and changed the wakeup call time. liam also tells me that i can get reimbursed if i took a cab home from the airport, which i thought was awesome, so i didn't need to take airbart. hehe. so i'm finally back here in berkeley and i took a 6 hour nap after such a hectic 2 days. but i've gotta say, i had a really fun time!

so tonite, i receive a fone call from vmware telling me they're going to have a representative in berkeley tomorrow and would like to speak to me. not sure if this is a good thing or bad thing since i have a midterm right after our appointment.

mozilla firefox 1.0 was finally released yesterday. not too sure what's new yet, but i'd like to show you a kewl new feature i found out about a week ago: live bookmarks. any website that has an rss/xml feed, you can probably use it was a live bookmark. i currently have one for AnandTech Hot Deals, DownloadAnime, Tokyo Toshokan, Slashdot, and Yahoo! Top Stories. too bad cnn doesn't have one. creating live bookmarks does require a few extra steps though. click on Bookmarks -> Manage Bookmarks... -> File -> New Live Bookmark... and enter the RSS/XML feed into Feed Location. what you end up w/ is something like:

thanks to leara for donating this link: Homeland Security Threat Level 0.2. the mozilla extension plugin. be aware of what the current threat levels is at all times! ;p

got these from