Sam's L33t Journal

I've put up some selections from the engagement photoshoot at the beginning of June.

My parents are in town this week, so Julie and I have had a chance to visit family friends with them. Tomorrow, I'm off to Sandy Island Camp with my parents (consequently, I will be offline for a week). Julie is not coming along this year due to insufficient vacation time. It will be odd to be at Sandy with just me and my parents, that hasn't happened since I was very young (not since my sister was born).

I've been incredibly tired this week. Partly due to the weather (though it's fortunately cooled down the last few days). Partly it's that work and wedding planning have been incredibly busy. I'm looking forward to the vacation, plan to relax and read and catch up on sleep.

Thinking about saying something about news / current events / politics, but I'll leave that for when I get back.

One of the side benefits of getting the job is that you can look back at the notes for your own hiring process. When it came to getting that interview at ITA, my programming puzzle just barely made the cut (which I more or less expected). The factors working for me:
1. I knew some of the more advanced idioms and data structure of Python
2. I went to Olin (well, at least one commenter on the ticket viewed that as a positive)
3. Some of the more negative commenters deferred judgment because they didn't know Python that well
4. People thought I could have gotten a more optimal solution if not under time pressure (maybe so)
Go figure. I haven't seen the notes from my actual interviewing, don't know if those are kept anywhere (internally) public.

That aside, work progresses apace, my adjustments to my fitness routine seem to be on the right track, and life is good.

First, the photos from my Okinawa trip are up here.

Second, a few more book reviews:

The Golem's Eye - Like the first book in the series, this is excellent pop fantasy. The alternate-history feel of the series is pretty cool, and the main character shows that a demon (in some sense) can be quite the excellent anti-hero.

Never Let Me Go - I bought this strange novel due to the critical acclaim it received. The story is sci-fi in some technical sense, but it more closely follows the conventions of the coming-of-age story, albeit in an extremely surreal and subtle manner. I'm not sure if the book lived up to my expectations. I felt a little disappointed when I first finished it, but I'm not sure that makes sense in retrospect. Maybe it just needs a bit of time to sink in.

V for Vendetta - Reading this graphic novel confirmed what I'd heard before: The movie is a horribly watered-down version of the original work. While I don't oppose all of the director's changes, many of the elements omitted from the movie make the story much weaker. However, although the book is far and away better literature, I still think the movie is more entertaining. Hope that doesn't say something too bad about me...

The Wind-Up Bird Chronicles - Beautiful and surreal, this was one of the best novels I've read, ever. This book is also cited as a possible influence for one of my favorite anime series, Haibane Renmei. While I can see the possible connections, they could easily be coincidence, as wells and wings are not that uncommon as symbolic elements. (However, the series was definitely influenced (according to ABe, its creator) by another novel by the same author.)

Yesterday evening, Kyoko-san cooked noodles with tuna and rice salad from a new cookbook she bought, on "American Comfort Foods". It's an interesting book, with recipes in English and Japanese, and Japanese definitions for the English cooking-related vocab. The recipes are indeed for some of the sorts of food I've had at home, but the selection seems well tailored to Japanese tastes. (For example, for the chili recipe, they chose one with tofu.)

Another story from yesterday: On the way home, I saw some crazy dude on the train platform pretending to be (believing he was?) a conductor, speaking nonsense syllables (with very polite syntax) into his hand (the conductors make announcements with handheld mikes) and waving to the train drivers. It was very odd.

No class on Wednesdays for me, since I'm not doing field placement. Today, Kyoko-san took me to the Inba Village office to apply for my alien registration form. After, we did a bit of sightseeing around the village. Inba Village is really quite a pretty place. Our neighborhood, Gakuendai, is really hidden away, a dense cluster of a few hundred houses tucked between fields on either side. Kyoko-san noted that she likes Tokyo, but prefers to live where it's more quiet. On the way back, we stopped at a nearby garden / greenhouse. Kyoko chatted with the older man who runs the place. Apparently, Kyoko-san grows some vegetables there during the summer.

A random question: Japanese stores almost always have a tray on which to put your money. You don't hand your money to the cashier directly. Why is that?

I uploaded more photos. As always, you can see the full set here:

( A few samples... )

I had my first day at work today! I'm now officially a corporate drone, cubicle and all (plus random schwag; I now know where my IBM towel is). To honor the occasion, the entire day was taken up with orientation and red tape; I didn't get any real work done at all. Hopefully the red tape will be less of a problem once things are worked out accounts-wise and my mentor returns (he's away the first few days I'm on the job).

After work I picked up my PS2 from UPS, then headed home. Speaking of home, here are some pictures (inelegant segue w00t!):

( The Residence )

Six states (MA, NY, PA, OH, IN, IL, currently in IA) and eight tanks of gas so far. Lots of music (in great part thanks to my brother Solomon). Lots of books (in great part thanks to my sister Melissa). No AC (an unexpected occurrence; we'll probably get that fixed tomorrow). Gigantic poof chair tied to the top of the car:

( Photographic Proof )

Monday: Dinner with Sarah's parents, sleep in Syracuse.
Tuesday: Lunch at a picturesque diner in Barcelona (didn't take pictures, unfortunately), evening at home in Cleveland.
Yesterday: Cleveland to Des Moines in record time.
Today: On to Denver.
Tomorrow: We're spending the day in Denver, then meeting up with _skye_, takumi, and exploding_candy for DDR and dinner.
Saturday: We plan to head on to Vegas.

I finished my Comp. Mod. final today, and that went well. I also know what I'm doing for Expo: I'm giving a presentation on OpenLayers, an open source project I helped found as part of my job last summer. (I checked with my boss to make sure that was all okay under my NDA, and it is.)

I had an appointment in Wellesley today and had an interesting conversation with the cab driver on the way back. Apparently, she had previously worked as a software release engineer. So I had a conversation about software design and object-oriented programming languages with the cab driver. :-D

Last, but not least, here's a picture of me and Liana at the Snow Ball:

Today, I went down to Harvard to participate in a psychological study on memory and problem solving. My team in the study consisted of me, another Oliner, and two other people. The study consisted of teams attempting to solve a mystery puzzle in 45 minutes. The study wanted to find correlations between earlier data from an online memory test and the teams results on the problem.

On the minus side, I almost missed the train heading downtown, and I lost my ID card. The plastic holder the card was in has become a bit loose, so the card probably fell out while I was running to catch the train.

When I got back, there was a carnival themed study break going on. The sight inspired me to take out my camera and took a few snapshots. I'll share two:

( Pictures! )

A few other things to share. I finished Metroid Prime 2: Echoes, which was a really good game. I started playing Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door, which is extremely silly but a ton of fun (better than the original, I think). (Note that it's probably not a good idea to start a new video game during finals week. I probably spent more time playing that game this week than studying.)

In politics, I'm wondering what the implications of this are going to be.

Well, I can't log in properly for some reason... apparently they're doing some work on my cluster.

Halloween party-ness last night was very fun. I didn't have a costume until the last minute, when a bunch of people were going as HP characters and I was pigeonholed into being Neville. I still had a great time, though...

As a Halloween treat, here's some spooky fun with Photoshop:

( Zombie Sam! )

(I didn't make it, though... Sean (random Oliner upperclassperson) is a photoshopping genius, and I just don't have that kind of skill.)

On a related note to Halloween-ness, I just finished Half Life... that game is creepy.