I had my first phone interview yesterday. My corporate contact at Micron contacted me at about noon to set up the phone interview for about 4 PM that afternoon. It was a strictly technical interview and it lasted about 40 minutes. My interviewer asked me some pretty simple questions about programming and semiconductors (samples follow). At the end of the interview, my interviewer expressed in interest in seeing my academic transcript and told me to stay in touch with the recruiter. All told, I think it went pretty well, plus I have a better idea of what to expect in the future.
Here are some samples of the types of questions I was asked.
- Tell me about pointers.
- Tell me about data structures.
- Tell me about object-oriented programming.
- What is the difference between C and Java?
- What is the effect of doubling the area of a capicator’s plates?
- What is the effect of halving the distance between the plates?
- What is does an accumulator do?
I had an enjoyable lunch at the Brick Oven Pizza Co. with Aunt Kathy and Uncle Tinker; Vance declined to join us. We all had a bit of fun performing remote desktop support for MeMe in Virginia when her e-mail went on the fritz. The problem was ultimately attributed to too many different people messing with her computer. Aunt Kathy prepared some delicious home-made tacos for dinner while Vance and I played various video games including Disgaea, Star Wars Battlefront, and Battlefield Vietnam. At this point, I’m thoroughly addicted to Disgaea. Even little things like the Geo Panel puzzles seem endlessly entertaining. The game just feels remarkably fresh compared to anything else I’ve played recently.
I’ve been searching for the one personal information manager (PIM) that will take care of all my needs (e-mail, appointments, etc.). The obvious solution would seem to be Microsoft Outlook; it comes with Office and it purports to have all the necessary features. But Outlook also has a lot of little problems—some by design—that come together to make it a pain to use as an all-in-one PIM. This is where Outlook add-ins hopefully come to the rescue. I’m going to try some of these out and see if I can’t make Outlook usable.
- Outlook-QuoteFix
- Reasonable arguments assert that the way Outlook formats replies goes against proper netiquette. Outlook-QuoteFix runs in the background and automatically corrects the formatting when you reply to a message.
- SpamBayes
- SpamBayes adds a Bayesian spam filter to Outlook.
- Lookout
- Lookout indexes Outlook content for fast searches.
- PocketKnife Peek
- PocketKnife Peek allows you to preview a message, examine any HTML code, and view header information.
Chris Pirillo covers a host of Outlook add-ins in his column from the October 2004 issue of CPU Magazine.
My old roommate from ASMS, Mike, caught me on AIM late this evening. I probably haven’t talked to him in almost two years so it was good to hear from him. It sounds like he’s had a rough time fighting with some real problems in his life. Just chatting with him provided a sobering realization that any problems I think I have really pale in comparison to the problems other people, far and near, have to deal with. It’s a fact I should probably be more appreciative of.
Hurricane Ivan came through Atlanta today and created a nice mess. Classes were still in session because Georgia Tech doesn’t cancel for anything. The water level was up to my ankles in places as I made my way back to my car. A fifteen minute commute home was extended to over an hour and a half as almost every light along the way was out. I couldn’t get any food on the way home, either, because all the restaurants were closed due to power outages. I discovered that we were also without power when I got home.
