Plaidophile

Yay, I'm being scheduled for an in-person interview!

A dream I had this morning. Maybe I've been getting too into this new comic style.

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.

Yay!

Part 1 Part 2

Continued from the previous entry.

The UbiSoft/Gameloft guy wanted me to take a test to assess my problem-solving skills as a programmer. This morning he finally sent it to me.

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.

Events from June 18th (before dinner with friends)...

Continued from the previous comic...

So, Thursday night, a whole bunch of us Songfighters (about 20) went out for dinner together.

I've accepted a position with UbiSoft New York, so this entry is no longer pertinent. Yay!

Elvis has left the planet.

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

Listen (more stuff will be posted as I finish parsing, encoding, tagging, and uploading it).

Though, once again I feel like I was excluded from a lot of things and slighted a bit, at least as far as the actual concert went. I need to get better about showing people that I am actually capable of performing on other peoples' music.

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).

Right now I'm sitting in on Octothorpe's rehearsal before day two of Songfight Live: Hot and Bothered here in sunny Austin, TX.

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.)

I bought only the essentials at CompUSA:

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

I'm all set!

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).

Why is it that when I sent my resume to prospective non-graphics employers, the first thing they say is, "Sorry, we don't have any graphics jobs?"

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.

But there he was, calling out to me, capturing my attention from the periphery.

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.

While poking around on UbiSoft's jobs page, I noticed that at the same studio which I may be interviewing at soon there is a job listing for pixel artist.

Hm. iTunes 4.6 just installed, and its update text said that this version allows streaming to Airport Express, and "other minor improvements."

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!

Nigritude: blackness; the state of being black.

Ultramarine: A vivid or strong blue or purplish blue.

'Coz trapped inside was a recent email from someone at UbiSoft who wants to interview me for a job at their new mobile gaming division!

Too bad the content is sorely lacking:

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

Okay, I've been putting this explanation off long enough, so here it is, the history of Dr. Cecil and why I now measure job stress levels in μCecils.

Why, it's John's universe collapsing all around him!

I was experimenting with cooking with orange juice tonight. Here's the result, which came out rather well (my dad said it tasted really good, as opposed to most of my dishes which he's said were merely good.

Day off tomorrow!

And the day after that!

And probably all of next week too!

I'm working from home without his permission, because he was kind enough to actually let me know he wasn't going to be in the office this morning so I figured that there was no reason for me to be in either.

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.