March 08, 2006
It Was Just The Season
I have a cavity.
It's on the side of one of my upper left tri-molars or something like that.
It's been there for a couple of years and the doc was watching carefully to make sure it didn't get to this point. Due to my policy of flossing heavily for a period of time after seeing the dentist and then stopping altogether once it got inconvenient, the cavity has finally grown to the point where I now need a filling.
A filling.
I mean, that just seems silly. Only kids get fillings. I haven't gotten a filling since god knows how long.
My appointment is for April sometime.
Sigh.
My interview went okay I think. It went from 0900-1130. Five separate interviewers, five separate, individual interviews, thirty minutes each, one after the other. I met with the two team managers, the department manager (manager of the managers?), the "Principal Equipment Engineer", and the HR consultant. Altogether, I think all of it went well except the manager manager interview.
I got all flustered while explaining the workings of a solenoid 'cause I couldn't remember Maxwell's equation relating current and magnetic field. That just made me kinda on-edge for the rest of the interview, which made me double nervous when he gave me the stupid "What is your greatest strength and your greatest weakness?" question. I answered it in a weird sort of way, and actually, in a moment of unguarded honesty, gave an honest opinion of what one of my greatest weaknesses was. Unfortunately, the weakness I gave had little to nothing to do with the workplace or how I would fare as an employee and I think he was probably thinking something along the lines of "WTF?!" as I explained my weakness and how it helped me grow as a person.
One thing that really bothered me were the technical questions. Only one was an EE question, and it was trivial. It was a 12v battery in parallel with two 1k resistors, and then a 12v batttery in series with two 1k resistors. The question asked me the equivalent resistance for both circuits, the voltage across all resistors, and the current through all resistors.
Trivial.
And after I turned it in, the guy said he was gonna assume I got it right for now, then said that he'd had a few EE majors actually get it wrong. How a fourth year EE major could get such a basic question wrong is kinda mind-boggling.
The other tech questions were of the problem solving kind, although there was one fairly complex mech engineering one : there was a diagram of some sort and some points labelled and the first question asked about point A, "Write Bernoulli's equation for this point". I stopped at that point and kindly informed the interviewer I had no idea what Bernoulli's equation was. He then became confused and asked whether I had taken fluid dynamics before, which I had not and informed him so. So, I got to skip that whole question which was something like five parts.
But yeah, the tech question. There were no difficult EE ones. There were no questions where I could show my analog circuit skillz or digital design abilities, whereas anyone who was familiar with fluid dynamics would have had that entire question, which seemed pretty in-depth, over me. Oh well.
After the interviews, two of the engineers on the team and one of the managers that interviewed me took me out to lunch. This was cool and all, but I was dead tired and more than a bit shell-shocked after the interviews and Kevin, one of the engineers, kept asking me questions. I mean, the questions weren't out of the ordinary, "What do you like doing?", "Do you like this/that?", "What is your dream job?" (that one was kind of a 'wtf?' question), and some other stuff like how my Japanese was and such, but I was so tired I was answering just to answer them and not to continue a conversation. In retrospect, I could have been a bit more congenial, but damn was I tired. After the meal was over, I had regained enough strength to finally hold a conversation with the guys about the job and how they felt about stuff, but I don't know if that was enough to salvage that particular faux pas.
After the meal, Kevin took me on a tour of the plant which was kinda fun.
They said I would hear back in a week. I'm really nervous now. The thing is, there's a lot about this job that really appeals to me, and a lot about this job that I really, really like. I'm hoping fiercely that I get it, but once again I worry that the more I want it, the more likely I am to jinx it. And I'm just nervous in general. And stuff. Augh.
Anyway, things have been blah. Recent interesting events include seeing the Mingus Big Band. That was amazing. Good, live jazz is an amazing experience. I only wish they had had a harmonica, but it was okay 'cause the ringleader had the sweetest tenor sax I have ever heard in person. His blues solo was absolutely amazing; the instrument had an incredible sound and he was able to put so much emotion into the playing, it was all quite awesome. The other band members were also quite good, especially the vocalist. My only problem with live jazz are the excessive, twelve minute long, masturbatory solos. I mean, I like solos and all, but sometimes too much is just too much. Luckily, this was really only a problem in the first couple of songs, and things picked up real quick after that.
I also saw Grupo Corpo: a Brazilian dance group that does, uh, dance stuff. I really haven't the words or jargon to describe what exactly I witnessed, but I do know that it was a lot of fun. The pre-intermission section was largely couples dances; something somewhat in the style of traditional social dance, but with more in the way of ballet-level technical stuff thrown in. Made me wish fiercely that I had continued with dancing. Maybe some other time.
The second half was more in the way of modern dance numbers. It started off with a really good group tap piece, went on to some other stuff, and some other stuff, and then a naked dude, and then some more amazing stuff. I could try to describe them, but as I said, I haven't the jargon and I don't really know how I could do them justice.
Other things include snowboarding, which was sweet. And really.., that's about it I guess. School has been largely dominating my life as of late, and I'm eagerly awaiting the quarter's end. Senioritis has been kicking in and absolutely destroying my productivity. I think being burned out as hell doesn't help much either.
And then I seem to be particularly fixated on the past lately. Events I thought I was long over seem to come back and plague my mind at odd moments. And some things I just don't seem to be getting over at all, and end up dwelling on them for way longer than I should be.
Anyhow, life goes on; I just need to stick it out these last two weeks and then I can go crazy during the Spring break and the subsequent Spring quarter.
It's on the side of one of my upper left tri-molars or something like that.
It's been there for a couple of years and the doc was watching carefully to make sure it didn't get to this point. Due to my policy of flossing heavily for a period of time after seeing the dentist and then stopping altogether once it got inconvenient, the cavity has finally grown to the point where I now need a filling.
A filling.
I mean, that just seems silly. Only kids get fillings. I haven't gotten a filling since god knows how long.
My appointment is for April sometime.
Sigh.
My interview went okay I think. It went from 0900-1130. Five separate interviewers, five separate, individual interviews, thirty minutes each, one after the other. I met with the two team managers, the department manager (manager of the managers?), the "Principal Equipment Engineer", and the HR consultant. Altogether, I think all of it went well except the manager manager interview.
I got all flustered while explaining the workings of a solenoid 'cause I couldn't remember Maxwell's equation relating current and magnetic field. That just made me kinda on-edge for the rest of the interview, which made me double nervous when he gave me the stupid "What is your greatest strength and your greatest weakness?" question. I answered it in a weird sort of way, and actually, in a moment of unguarded honesty, gave an honest opinion of what one of my greatest weaknesses was. Unfortunately, the weakness I gave had little to nothing to do with the workplace or how I would fare as an employee and I think he was probably thinking something along the lines of "WTF?!" as I explained my weakness and how it helped me grow as a person.
One thing that really bothered me were the technical questions. Only one was an EE question, and it was trivial. It was a 12v battery in parallel with two 1k resistors, and then a 12v batttery in series with two 1k resistors. The question asked me the equivalent resistance for both circuits, the voltage across all resistors, and the current through all resistors.
Trivial.
And after I turned it in, the guy said he was gonna assume I got it right for now, then said that he'd had a few EE majors actually get it wrong. How a fourth year EE major could get such a basic question wrong is kinda mind-boggling.
The other tech questions were of the problem solving kind, although there was one fairly complex mech engineering one : there was a diagram of some sort and some points labelled and the first question asked about point A, "Write Bernoulli's equation for this point". I stopped at that point and kindly informed the interviewer I had no idea what Bernoulli's equation was. He then became confused and asked whether I had taken fluid dynamics before, which I had not and informed him so. So, I got to skip that whole question which was something like five parts.
But yeah, the tech question. There were no difficult EE ones. There were no questions where I could show my analog circuit skillz or digital design abilities, whereas anyone who was familiar with fluid dynamics would have had that entire question, which seemed pretty in-depth, over me. Oh well.
After the interviews, two of the engineers on the team and one of the managers that interviewed me took me out to lunch. This was cool and all, but I was dead tired and more than a bit shell-shocked after the interviews and Kevin, one of the engineers, kept asking me questions. I mean, the questions weren't out of the ordinary, "What do you like doing?", "Do you like this/that?", "What is your dream job?" (that one was kind of a 'wtf?' question), and some other stuff like how my Japanese was and such, but I was so tired I was answering just to answer them and not to continue a conversation. In retrospect, I could have been a bit more congenial, but damn was I tired. After the meal was over, I had regained enough strength to finally hold a conversation with the guys about the job and how they felt about stuff, but I don't know if that was enough to salvage that particular faux pas.
After the meal, Kevin took me on a tour of the plant which was kinda fun.
They said I would hear back in a week. I'm really nervous now. The thing is, there's a lot about this job that really appeals to me, and a lot about this job that I really, really like. I'm hoping fiercely that I get it, but once again I worry that the more I want it, the more likely I am to jinx it. And I'm just nervous in general. And stuff. Augh.
Anyway, things have been blah. Recent interesting events include seeing the Mingus Big Band. That was amazing. Good, live jazz is an amazing experience. I only wish they had had a harmonica, but it was okay 'cause the ringleader had the sweetest tenor sax I have ever heard in person. His blues solo was absolutely amazing; the instrument had an incredible sound and he was able to put so much emotion into the playing, it was all quite awesome. The other band members were also quite good, especially the vocalist. My only problem with live jazz are the excessive, twelve minute long, masturbatory solos. I mean, I like solos and all, but sometimes too much is just too much. Luckily, this was really only a problem in the first couple of songs, and things picked up real quick after that.
I also saw Grupo Corpo: a Brazilian dance group that does, uh, dance stuff. I really haven't the words or jargon to describe what exactly I witnessed, but I do know that it was a lot of fun. The pre-intermission section was largely couples dances; something somewhat in the style of traditional social dance, but with more in the way of ballet-level technical stuff thrown in. Made me wish fiercely that I had continued with dancing. Maybe some other time.
The second half was more in the way of modern dance numbers. It started off with a really good group tap piece, went on to some other stuff, and some other stuff, and then a naked dude, and then some more amazing stuff. I could try to describe them, but as I said, I haven't the jargon and I don't really know how I could do them justice.
Other things include snowboarding, which was sweet. And really.., that's about it I guess. School has been largely dominating my life as of late, and I'm eagerly awaiting the quarter's end. Senioritis has been kicking in and absolutely destroying my productivity. I think being burned out as hell doesn't help much either.
And then I seem to be particularly fixated on the past lately. Events I thought I was long over seem to come back and plague my mind at odd moments. And some things I just don't seem to be getting over at all, and end up dwelling on them for way longer than I should be.
Anyhow, life goes on; I just need to stick it out these last two weeks and then I can go crazy during the Spring break and the subsequent Spring quarter.
# posted by Yann : 00:37
