Plaidophile

Thanks for your work, you seem to have very good programming skills. Is it possible that I give you a call tomorrow Wednesday at 2pm EST? I will do a quick interview to know a little bit more about the projects you did and to give you a presentation of the company and the position.

The problems on it were just like the sorts on the ACM annual programming contest (which I've done very well at in the past), with the usual "it seems simple but there's a catch" bit to it. I completed all four in an hour and a half, with code which is fairly well-tested so I'm pretty sure I got the right solutions, though there's a couple where if I'd had more time to work on it I could have done some clever stuff to make it more efficient. Each of the puzzles has a subtle "gotcha" which makes the common clever solutions not work, however.

The problems are repeated inside (verbatim, all grammar weirdness and ambiguities being on the part of the interviewer) for anyone else who wants to take a crack at it. My solutions are also included in the page source in case you want to see them.

This is only the second win I've been involved in.

But, nearly every act made use of my better guitar, and everyone will definitely benefit from the work I've put in to recording the show (and hopefully people will appreciate how much work it'll be to mix and encode 12 hours of three channels of single-take audio into the individual songs).

Last night was great. Tonight should also be great.

Rather than try to write a nice long rambly thing, though, I'll let the recordings speak for themselves. Hopefully I'll have them mixed, assembled and posted within a week. (12+ hours is a lot of audio to parse through though.)

• 12-pack of Bawls ($18)
• 250GB Maxtor hard drive, 7200 RPM ($130)
• External USB2/Firewire enclosure ($50, came with all the cables too)

Oh, also, I participated in an Elvis In Space entry ("Elite Inner Echelon Blood-Circle," the name being a reference to it being three long-time Songfighters who were all born on June 14, the due date of the fight, though the name was come up with by Mr. Blue Lang).

Like, yes, my resume says that I do graphics programming. It also says I do database programming, network programming, technical writing, and systems engineering. Whenever I've applied for a graphics job, those other skills have been an asset, because I had breadth.

I approached, and shifted my weight uncomfortably, unsure if I would be able to do it again after so long. I removed my shoes, and braced myself for unknown pain.

I began to feel the rhythm burning in my veins, and knew this was my only chance for a while. I accepted the man's offer, and got ready.

I took a deep breath.

One of those "improvements" appears to be the disabling of playback of (legally-acquired) m4p songs which were neutered using hymn — when I try playing a decrypted m4a file, it says that this computer "is not authorized to play this song," even though the original was purchased on this system.

So, it looks like Apple has added in a check to see if iTMS metadata is there but the DRM isn't. I guess the hymn folks will just have to start stripping that stuff out, which they purposefully left in to show that hymn was intended solely for fair use and not for piracy!

Ultramarine: A vivid or strong blue or purplish blue.

http://www.grillsexpress.com/ProductDetails.asp?ProductCode=CUmbrella

And the day after that!

And probably all of next week too!

Just one little push is all it takes now.

Fortunately, I might not have to quit, 'coz he hasn't been paying his fluffy bill (and is past-due to the tune of around $10,000) so the staffing agency is going to pull me from the project on Friday anyway if they don't have a check in hand by then.