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.

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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...

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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