Stories From The Final Interview Trip

Just a few interesting stories from the final interview trip:

The hotel I was staying in was next to several Oracle buildings and at one of the cross walks there was a yellow street sign that had one big penguin next to three little penguins. I tried to take a picture of it with my phone while driving and ended up with a picture of a yellow dot.

I lived it up one morning by ordering my breakfast the previous night. They brought up eggs, hash-browns and a really good croissant as well as four small jars of jelly and a pot of hot water and several tea bags. It was great but with the $20 price tag I figured that the next morning I could actually make my way down stairs to get my croissant.

I was driving along the 101 wondering why people think there is so much traffic in CA and then everyone slowly came to a stop and about 20 minutes later I finally drove by a car stopped in the middle of the road and then noticed one in front of it and then another and another and... - I think that was the first 6 car pile up I have ever seen - luckily it looked like it was just 6 fender-benders in a row.

I was interviewing at Linear and met the director of the group I was interviewing with and he asked where I'm from. I told him Kansas City and he said "oh" just like everyone else seems to, but this time he was suppressed because he is also from there. He asked me which part and when I said Overland Park, he said, oh that figures. Later he explained that he figured because of the schools but I found it funny to be in Sunnyvale and get crap about being a Johnson County boy.

I did a presentation of my thesis work at Exponent as part of the interview. At the end most people seemed to think I had done well but one person kept asking me what about my project was innovative and seemed rather unimpressed. Later when I was interviewing with her she asked if that was my PhD thesis and seemed shocked that it would be - then it all made sense to me and when I told her it was my master's thesis she had one of those - oh, I get it moments and became a lot nicer.

Overall I think the interviews went well and I am very glad to be done interviewing.

united.com - United College Plus

If you are a college student check this out:
united.com - United College Plus

especially:
Graduation Bonus

Interview day 1

Today's interview at Maxim seemed to go well. It seems like a good company. I will not go into more detail on the web but feel free to ask me about it. Tomorrow I am off to Exponent and then the next day is Linear.

After the interview I went to Fry's Electronics. As soon as I saw the giant sinc function on the building I knew I was going to like the place. It is an awesome electronics store and they make a good turkey with avocado sandwich too.

I just finished Jon Stewart's book from 1998, Naked Pictures of Famous People. This one is not as good as america the book and the first two chapters are a bit odd but the rest is very funny and is a quick read.

I should start going over my presentation for the interview tomorrow...

www.weather.com - Tenday Forecast

While www.weather.com - Tenday Forecast is not so amazing, it sure is going to beat www.weather.com - Tenday Forecast!

Off to CA for what should be the last set of interviews. I will be up in San Francisco so no family to visit, but I am staying near San Francisco instead of San Jose so maybe I will make it into the city for a bit on this trip.

It sure is nice to be a grad student, I am going to be gone for 4 days and not miss a day of class. Although this has been a crazy weekend since I have a problem set due the day I get back, and after taking a red-eye I doubt I'll be up for working on it when I get back.

Thinking back a bit... Susanna and I had a nice valentine's day. We went to a near by Italian restaurant which was very good.

I have started to make some real progress on my thesis which is a nice change, although of course that's taking a pause due to this trip.

Well I should stop typing and get ready for this trip.

The New York Times > Technology > Circuits > What's Next: A 3-D View of the City, Block by Block

Interesting - especially for those in Philadelphia...

The New York Times > Technology > Circuits > What's Next: A 3-D View of the City, Block by Block

Skype - Free Internet telephony that just works

Good stuff...

Skype - Free Internet telephony that just works

If you want to skype me my user name is dsignoff.

CNN.com - Airport screener misses butcher knife in purse - Feb 14, 2005

Wow...

CNN.com - Airport screener misses butcher knife in purse - Feb 14, 2005

The New York Times > Business > Your Taxes > Review: So Much Software, but So Little Time

Kind of interesting:

The New York Times > Business > Your Taxes > Review: So Much Software, but So Little Time

Antivirus Software

I asked several of my friends at MIT what antivirus/antispyware software they recommend for people running windows. Note that only one of the four actually runs windows (the other three use a combination of mac os x and linux).

The number one suggestion is go buy one of these:
Apple - Mac mini

If you are not willing to do that, the next best thing is to make sure you are running firefox instead of internet explorer and if you can use webmail (such as yahoo or gmail). If you cannot use webmail, use Thunderbird instead of outlook. And of course run windows update regularly!

Once you have made those changes you can get/buy some software to help out. For antivirus it is not that big of a deal which one you get (McAfee and Nortan are the two most popular), the important thing is to pay for the update service and keep virus definitions up to date.

To cut down on the adware and spyware, you can get Ad-Aware and SpyBot off the web (I believe both are free). Be warned that they are a little over sensitive and might report that you have thousands of questionable cookies, you can just ignore those warnings and tell it to clean up whatever it can.

If you have any other suggestions please hit the comment link and leave a message.

Thanks to Susanna, Max, Steve, and Mike for their recommendations.

Google Maps

Google just came out with its own map service, I think it looks a bit better than mapquest.

Google Maps

Boston.com / News / Local / Mass. / Fraternity to face alcohol charges

Well, I figured this would be best coming from me...

Boston.com / News / Local / Mass. / Fraternity to face alcohol charges

The article is somewhat sensational and plays down some rather key points. I was not at the party, but what I hear, and definitely believe is that nearly everyone at the party were North Eastern students who are renting out about 1/2 of the house.

I am rather shocked at the amount of alcohol, but again what I hear is that nearly all of it was in a locked cabinet and the guy with the key was not even at the party...

Well, in the end, I'm glad I'm in my large, clean room across the river from all of that.

Chip is in fab

As of Feb 2 the chip I worked on at Teradyne made it to the fab! (aka the chips are being made)

Blog

For those who are curious about what a blog is...

Weblog - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Skype - Free Internet telephony that just works

Skype - Free Internet telephony that just works

This is a great piece of software. It's an instant messaging client, but in addition to text to you can just like a phone call and as they say on their website it just works.

If you ever want to talk you can skype me, my user name is dsignoff.

Microsoft Security Bulletin Advance Notification

Microsoft Security Bulletin Advance Notification

If you are running windows you will probably want to run windows update on Tuesday or Wednesday.

Bush's Social Security Plan

I think it is fairly clear that Bush just learned that if you increase the risk you are willing to take on you can increase your expected earnings and that no one bothered explaining to him the down side of an insurance plan taking on more risk.

But regardless of how you feel about his new plan, if it goes into affect and you have the option to privately invest part of your social security money would you do it? Leave a comment, I'm curious what everything thinks.

Take a stretch break

I was looking around for free stretch break programs. If you are at MIT then you can get one from IS. Otherwise this is the only free one I found, for mac os it wants to use classic mode, I have not seen how well it works for windows. If you try it in windows leave a comment and let me know what you think of it.

Desktop Yoga from e-stretch - RIGHT HERE, RIGHT NOW

Trip to CA

I am headed out to California, that will be the 7th time in 7 months! This time I am going to San Francisco to interview with two companies. I am flying out on Feb 20 and I will get back early Feb 23.

Real First Post

Hi to everyone reading this.

If you want to use RSS add http://dsignoff.blogspot.com/atom.xml
If you use firefox and want an RSS reader go to sage.mozdev.org

I am not really sure what I am going to post here or how often it will really happen, but maybe something interesting will pop up every once in a while.

Right now I'm working on writing my master's thesis, well really at this moment I'm procrastinating from writing it by writing this blog.

I've also been starting in on my taxes - interesting little fact, if you want to use turbotax to file online you'll save $6 if you go to taxfreedom.com instead of turbotax.com

And classes just started, just taking one class this term, 6.776 (High Speed Communication Circuits), and TAing 6.101 (Intro Analog Lab).

First Post

I got the first post!