Saturday, October 28, 2006

Phily



I'm sitting in a hotel room in the middle of Downtown Philadelphia, I have a nice view of tall building and I am doing my best to get some studying done. I have just attended ETCC for my school chapter of SHPE.


So anyway, I still don't know where I am going. But I have a feeling I am about to find out pretty soon. The job offers should come in anytime now.

I wait.


***********UPDATE*****************


Our Chapter, has just won the Chapter of the Year Award!

Go FAU!!!!

Wednesday, October 25, 2006

Error-Free Software



Exciting stuff. This is the reason I studied computer Engineering. This article explains it.

Software is Everything

Monday, October 23, 2006

Senioritis



Help! 7 weeks left and I feel no desire whatsoever to do any course work. All I can think about is how wonderful life is going to be once I don't have to take classes anymore. What's wrong with me? I have a case of the senioritis chronica.

Please do not worry about me. I will get over this.

Saturday, October 21, 2006

Saturday Morning



I love Saturday Mornings. I like it when I can just relax for a while. Dear readers I have to confess I am one of the weirdest people in the world. I am strange indeed, I could blame it on the Marines, Iraq, or my engineering education. But it would be a lie, I am just different. Why am I warning you? Because I am about to make a statement that will make you go huh?

I love to clean up.

I know, I know, but it's so relaxing and I like to sit back after the house it's picked up and enjoy how it looks. I am not a neat freak, like anyone that was my roomate in the Marines can atest. But, I don't like messyness. As you can imagine our house it's not always in the best state of cleaningness. We get up early to go to work and school and when we get back Martha is too tired to do anything and I have too much homework to do anything else. But on the weekend I try to pick up a bit.
So there, I said it. So what.

Yesterday my sister gave me a great gift. Kurt Vonnegut's A Man without a country. I read most of it last night and the last few pages just now. I don't agree 100% with him but it's awesome to read his stuff, I would love to have a converstation with that man. I can tell that WWII affected him a lot, I can relate, in a smaller scale. I wish I can just write why I liked it. But is the feeling I get that we all ask ourselves the same questions, some people act like they have it figured out, some do not. But at the end. None of us know a damn thing. We just got here. "Life is no way to treat an animal". "Do you think arabs are dumb? they gave us our numbers, try doing long division with roman numerals". Great quotes from the book.


My first Wikipedia edit



I added a pic and a paragraph to the entry on Ramadi. It's not much, but it gave me some satisfaction that I made some contribution to the World's Free Encyclopedia.

Thursday was a very long day



So Thursday Morning I woke up at 3:30 AM to get ready for a big day. I left home at 4:15, drove myself to the Ft. Lauderdale Airport, caugth the 6:00AM flight to JFK airport in NYC, on the plane I tried reviewing everything I was taught about software engineering at FAU, I tried to memorize pieces of code and concepts, I was very scared. I arrived at 8:40, at 8:45 I was outside the airport trying to catch a cab. the line was extremely long. Then I met Juan.

Juan was a cab driver from the Dominican Republic driving an old Black Town car, I don't know if it was legit taxi or not, but he just asked me I was going to the city and I was in a hurry so I said sure, no problem ( you got to understand there was long line to catch a yellow cab ) So Juan and I talked about life, life in NY, the Mets, Venezuela and Hugo Chavez, how nice it is down in Florida and everything else in between, one hour and twenty minutes later I was in the southern tip of Manhattan in the Financial District walking around in a blue suit amongst a bunch of stock tradin' cowboys. I entered the tallest building in the area and I was very scared.

So I called Martha, but she was at work and could not answer. I called my sister next and she made me feel better. Finally I went up to the 3rd Floor where HR resides and I threw myself in the pool of sharks. Overall it wasn't bad, first there was an orientation, there were 20 candidates competing for I don't know how many positions they had, there were 4 kids from MIT, 5 from Cornell, One from Stevens, One from Purdue, One from the University of Florida, one dude from FAU (me) and the rest were from NYU. So after the orientation we had lunch and a discussion panel with recent hires in the firm. After which we had some sort of Logic Symbolic Processing test, it was some sort of IQ test, I only got to question 28 out of 40 when time ran out. So I don't know how well I did. After that we had a group activity where they split us in groups of 4 and put us in a room to perform a task as a team, I remember those from ROTC and the Crucible in the Marines. But never with 4 people with clipboards evaluating you. Then I had a professional interview and two technical interviews one after the other. They were not as hard as I thought they would be, but they asked me about everything. Operating System, Network, Object Oriented Programming, Computer Architecture, after that. Dinner and farewell, the day went by fast, it was 6:00pm by the time I was done. I wanted to go to a Barnes and Noble and get a good book to read on the flight back, but suddenly I felt very tired, however I didn't want to just go back to the Airport, so I decided to walk around NY for a couple of hours, I didn't know that part of Manhattan too well, so I ended up walking up to where the World Trade used to be. Ground zero they call it. Then I cought the A train to Howard Beach station and the Air train to the Airport. One the subway ride I saw New York in a different light. Too crowded, Too Dirty, people too mean. But maybe it was my tiredness. Truth is, it's an awesome job. I think I did good but I'll find out next week.


More Options



Well, I rambled long enough. It's time for me to go. I have a family function to attend. More later.

J.V.

Tuesday, October 17, 2006

Update



I still don't know where I am going to be working 3 months from now. My internship with IBM ends in December and I have not heard anything about an offer. So I've been looking around, and it's interesting, I've been applying to the big chip making companies but have not heard anything back from them, so I figured the next best thing is to try to stay here in FL, there aren't many choices when it comes to Computer Engineering, I heard from one of the two main software engineering companies here in Florida, I finally got through their screening process, I have a second interview with them soon. I also got a second interview with a big financial institution in New York City (to work at their IT department), their office is right in Downtown Manhattan and that's where I am going on Thursday for my interview, on one hand it would be extremely awesome to live in a city like New York, but it would be so expensive to live there, and do I really want my family to be raised in NY? We'll see how it goes, everything is up in the air, the idea of having good baseball, good restaurants and museums and being in the capital of the world does sound appealing, but staying home in FL with all my family and friends also sounds good. Plus Minnesota is still not out of the question...what would you do?

J.V.

Sunday, October 15, 2006

FAU



I've always wondered what type of training was required to be a Lab TA at the S&E building. Now, I know.

Thursday, October 12, 2006

Halfway there



Yesterday I finished my last mid-term, which means that I am halfway through my last semester. I have roughly 8 weeks until graduation. I can tell you three things that are going to happen.


I am going to cry like a girl


I will be so freaking happy, I know I am going to be crying, just like I did in Parris Island when I finished that last mile out of 60 in the Crucible when they handed me the EGA and told me I was officially a Marine, I cried then. I will cry in this graduation,
7 semesters, 3 summer terms, one wedding, one war in Iraq, one internship in MN, one Son, one closing on a house, 2 cars, 4 jobs, I went through a lot while I was getting this degree.

I will have my TI-89 in my pocket


Sounds funny but, after taking Calculus I through III, Differential Equations, Statistics and Discrete Math, I still can't do a simple integral...but I know how to punch it in my trusty TI-89 calculator. Thank you Texas Instruments! My TI deserves the degree as much as I do. It was there for me when I needed it the most.

In my other pocket I will have something from Iraq


I wish our guys will come home soon. I am not into rituals and crap, but, I want to honor those of us who didn't make it back. This one is for you guys. We all embraced the suck, but you gave more. I came back, I will carry on, but I will never forget. Iraq will always be a part of me.

My wife and my family are getting the presents


I will not accept any gifts from them, I should be the one throwing them the party. If it wasn't for all that they did, all the faith they had in me, I don't think I could have made it, Thanks to my wife who thinks I am the smartest guy on earth, obviously I am not even the smartest person in my house. But thanks anyway. To Mom and Dad, Thank you. To my sister, thank you sister, I am proud of you, you will always be a Gator to me. (inside joke)

Ok, that's all I got, busy day today, it's been really busy.

J.V.

Tuesday, October 10, 2006

4 year Anniversary today

Sunday, October 08, 2006

FL



Ft.Lauderdale is beautiful this time of the year.

J.V.

Sunday, October 01, 2006

Go Twins!



The Minnesota Twins just clinched the AL Central title, they are going to the play offs.

I have three Midterms coming up, what do you think I did, a) Study all weekend, b) Catch up on homework c) spend the day at the park watching a ballgame.

If you answered c) Congratulations! you are correct!!!

Now, I have to spend the rest of the night doing what I should have done all weekend.


J.V.