I joined Facebook which is a social networking site for University/College students. Normally I have much disdain for social networking, but the post-secondary nature of the site appealed to me. Oh well, it's a good alternative to work and now I can say that I am familiar with social networking. Damn you kids and your music!
Funny times today. Ryan got this big bag of mini-potatos at the Wholesale Club here in Waterloo a few weeks ago, but since there were too many to eat all at once they've been sitting in our freezer. Unfortunately this makes them hard to get apart when he wants to eat some. Today he tried hitting them against the stairs to break some off...but the bag broke instead! The potatos also chose this time to conveniently break apart, making a really fun mess. The pictures tell a much better story:
So I got back from New York last night at about 11pm...not too bad considering I left La Guardia at about 7:30 and there had to be about 1000 people ahead of me in the customs line at Pearson.
I was in New York for a job interview with Google, at their New York office (located near Times Square). I think it went pretty well, and I have to say that it was an awesome experience. All the things you hear about working at Google (the free food, the on-site massage therapists, the awesome everything) is totally true. It would be such an amazing place to work because they care soooo much about their employees. They go way out of their way to ensure that the environment is perfect so that they can get the best from everyone who works there.
The trip was fairly similar to my California adventure: get on a plane, go to a hotel, do the interviews the next day, leave that evening. The main difference was the city, and the fact that I didn't know anyone in the area so I was on my own for the evening of my arrival. The hotel was pretty sweet (free HBO among other things), but I couldn't just hang out there all afternoon and evening so I went for a 3 hour walk around the area. Went through Macy's (damn that store is big), wandered around Times Square and went up the Empire State Building. I toyed with the idea of getting food from some random tasty looking place that I had never heard of before, but decided against it and just got a sub from Subway. Didn't want to make myself sick on bad food before the interview.
Here are a few pictures I took from the top of the Empire State Building:
Here are some pictures of my hotel room:
Here is a picture of some of the swag Google bestowed upon me for coming down to interview with them:
The last two days definitely count among the craziest I've ever had. I was down in California for my interview with Apple and I managed to squeeze in a tour of Pixar, dinner/hanging with Mike, and a complete trip around the San Francisco Bay in addition to a day of interviews. And I wan't even in the state for 30 hours!
I had to get up at 5am on Wednesday to catch a shuttle at 6am from the University to the airport in Toronto. From there it was on to San Jose with a very brief stopover in Phoenix. Pretty cool to see all the landscapes and stuff as we crossed the continent (although I didn't get a window seat so I didn't have that great of a view). The thing that struck me the most is how flat everything is. I guess they didn't have glaciers carve the countryside into thousands of small hills and valleys like around here.
The flight back (which left at 8:30pm on Thursday) had a two hour stopover in Las Vegas and I must say that was an interesting experience. First of all, flying into Las Vegas at night is a really neat. The strip looks really cool and there are soooo many lights. Other than that though, the experience was mostly strange. The airport was full of slot machines (never saw anyone get any payout whatsoever) and had a whole bunch of designated smoking areas which wern't really separated from the rest of the airport at all. Just places with chairs and ashtrays. Very uncool. Also very old-school, I remember way back in the day when most public places were like that but I haven't seen it in a long time. My plane was delayed in Las Vegas, but not enough to make me miss my shuttle back to Waterloo in Toronto. My plane trip can be seen in the image below (green on the way there and red on the way back).
So I arrived at San Jose just before 3pm local time and instead of checking into my hotel, I decided the best idea would be to go visit Mike. It turned out OK, but I cut it pretty close getting back. I'm pretty sure midnight was the latest I could check in to my hotel and I finally got there at 11:30pm. Crazy.
Anyway, Mike and Pixar (Emeryville) are kinda far from San Jose. I had to take an Amtrak train (in red below) from San Jose to Emeryville which took about 1.5 hours. Pretty cheap though, just $11. Ended up chatting with a random girl the whole way, but I think she was kinda crazy. She told some pretty unbelievable stories (more and more as we went). Pretty sure she was trying to see how far she could go before I called her on it and told her she was a nut. Well, I didn't break so I won the little game!
To get back from Emeryville to Cupertino (where Apple and my hotel are), I took the BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit system) which is basically just a subway, part of which actually goes under the bay (in blue below). Maybe I'm wrong, but an underwater subway seems like a bad idea in an earthquake prone region. Anyway, the BART stops at the San Francisco airport so I had to transfer to a commuter train (like Toronto's GO train; in red below). Unfortunately I arrived like an hour early for the 10:24pm train which meant I had to wait around for an hour in an essentially abandoned train station. In the dark, alone, in some random ass place in California. It turned out OK, but seemed a bit sketchy at the time. The train only took me as far as Sunnyvale, so from there it was a cab ride (yellow below) to the hotel. This map shows my trip around the bay.
So that is all the travelling I did, but I actually did a lot of fun stuff too. Mike took me on a tour of Pixar, which was absolutely insane! It was just so cool to be there, it must be amazing to work there. I got a cool Pixar t-shirt with Luxo Jr. on it and I got to meet a lot of really nice people. Here are a couple of pictures of the Pixar front gates (they are taken at night, so they arn't the best, but still pretty cool).
After the tour we got some supper at a pretty good Indian restaurant and then headed back to Mike's apartment. It was really nice, but I couldn't stick around too long as I had to catch the BART to attempt to get back to the hotel. We did mess around with his mom's new digital SLR though, here is a picture.
The hotel was really good. I actually had a suite with a bedroom, bathroom and living room. King bed in the bedroom, two TVs, and they even gave me a free shuttle to the airport the next day after I had checked out. Here are a couple pictures of the suite:
The next day was the interviews at Apple (you know, the point/funding source of the trip). Eight in total, it basically lasted all day. It was pretty challenging, but the team seems really awesome and I think it would be a really cool place to work. Actually I know it would. The only question is whether I want to live in the US or not (and whether they like me, of course). I think I performed OK, but I missed a couple questions I should have got and I have no idea what my competition is like.
After the interview I got on my plane and headed home. In the last 48 hours I've only had 6 hours of sleep and I've changed time zones twice. I'm pretty confused about what I should do right now, so I did this blog entry. Probably going to sleep/eat now.
Such a crazy day! First was class, then my 2.5 hour Sybase interview and then my Psychology midterm. But wait! That's not all! Between class and my interview I heard back from Apple! They want me to come to California for more interviews! So awesome! And, I finally got chat in Gmail! And I got dairy queen tonight! And Kellie's car got here! Way too much is happening! Hence the exclamation marks!
Crazy times lately, not much time to post.
Last weekend was fun, I mostly worked but on Friday I got to help push Keizo's car around the parking lot and help create a trap for a mouse we found in our downstairs bathroom. Both activities were successful, the car ended up in our parking spot and the mouse was put outside (alive).
Compilers is a bunch of work of course, but I haven't been able to pay enough attention to it because of job stuff and midterms in other courses. At the beginning of the term I applied for jobs at Sybase, Google, Apple and a couple other places. I got interviews for the three listed above: Sybase by phone last week, Google in person this week and Apple in person this Friday. I spent a lot of time preparing for the Google interview and it was still really challenging. Sounds like a great place to work though. The Sybase interview went well too and as a result I have an additional interview with them next week. Hopefully Apple goes well.
This term is disappearing really quickly, it's pretty nuts. I'm really glad that I'm taking an extra term for Real Time because if nothing else it will give me a few extra months to prepare for the "real world." Or something. I'm sure I won't be any more prepared by then but it's comforting for now.
I need to figure out what to do for housing next term. It looks like Kellie is moving out, so I need an extra person if I am going to live here with Mike and Matt. Anyone interested? If not, I will have to find a new place. Residence is pretty tempting since it's cheaper in the summer, it's close, it's air conditioned, and best of all it doesn't require any extra effort for things like utilities.
Update: This post seemed kinda boring without a picture so I took a couple with my camera using a fun new feature I found for using the auto-focus in a manual sort of way.
I suppose I should put in my two cents about the election, isn't that what blogs are really for? Valid social commentary from the point of view of real people? Haha, yeah, right. :)
Anyway, the Conservatives won a slim majority and I think it will probably be OK and even beneficial in some respects. They don't have enough hold on parliament to try anything too risky. Also, they get a chance to show Canada if they are a bunch of crazies or if they deserve to carry on the "conservative" name. My main issue with politics in Canada right now is the lack of a valid right-wing party. Social conservatism has no place in Canada, however fiscal conservatism is a very valid political ideology that can help balance the governing of the nation. Unfortunately social and fiscal conservatism have been merged just like in the United States.
On the positive side of things, the Conservative party has very tight ties to Alberta and so hopefully relationships between the west and the rest of the country will improve. I think that the west was really starting to get pissed off at the way they are treated. They generally feel that the rest of Canada benefits off the vast amounts of money generated by their oil while at the same time giving them essentially no say in the running of the country.
Also of note, the NDP made significant gains. This is nice because it means that we are not a two party system like in the United States. There is a third option that actually can have an influence. The success of the NDP was somewhat muted however by the disproportionately small number of seats they won compared to their share of the popular vote. A parallel of this issue can be seen with the Green party, which achieved the highest number of votes they ever have, but still failed to win any seats in the house. As someone who has never taken a political science course I don't know how to fix this problem, but I'm sure there must be a solution that merges the ideals of regional representation with the nationwide popular vote.
Finally, I think it is a good thing that the Liberals are not in power because a change is good every once in a while. Also, it is time for a new leader so that the party can become disconnected from the negative events of the past few years. While those events did not bother me personally, I think that I'm in the minority with regard to this opinion.
I do have concerns regarding the upcoming government. These include health care (the possible two-tierization thereof) and the various human rights issues that go along with the social conservatism of the hardline elements in the Conservative party. Although Stephen Harper has said that he will not pursue abortion or same-sex marriage related causes, I wonder whether the latent Reform/Alliance members of the party will really just let him go ahead with those plans. Finally, I am also saddened by the loss of a national childcare plan. While it very possibly would have failed, a success like the program instituted in Quebec could have really helped shape the next generation of Canadians in a very positive way. Remember everyone, children are important! Stephen Harper's tax credit is essentially useless. The free market philosophy is not perfect and this is one of those instances (like health care) where government intervention is required.
In other completely unrelated news, I finally tried a White Russian which was the drink of choice of the Dude from one of my favourite movies, The Big Lebowski. I must say, I'm a fan of the drink. Very tasty.
Just a quick update on this cold and freezing rainy night. Last weekend was pretty good, I went skating with Kim on Friday night which was really fun. On Saturday I managed to get a haircut, buy new jeans, finish most of my C&O assignment and complete a few other mundane but useful tasks that I can't remember anymore. Sunday saw the successful return of myself to Waterloo and me finally learning what terms like "1st and 10" mean in American football.
This week I am applying to jobs, making test cases for the compiler and hopefully participating in strange psychological experiments for the purposes of extra credit in my Psych 101 class. Good times!
Oooh, I remembered a picture that was worth posting. On the last day of work all the co-op students got to get their picture taken with the Oscar that Alias was awarded in 2002 for technical achievement for the development of Maya. It was VERY cool to get to hold it. A definite shout out goes to John Gross and John King for making it happen. Here is my picture:
