Posts in Category "personal"

We use the terms "bad dream" and "nightmare" almost synonymously. I contend that this is a frightfully naïve perspective. When we wake from a nightmare, we shortly realize that the floor isn't made of spiders, that all of the clowns are safely at the circus. But a dream in which we are happy… ah! Such a dream can color the real world world a darker shade long after the dreamer has awoken. These are truly the bad dreams.

I got a letter in the mail on Saturday from a company named Afni, Inc., a debt collection company. This letter informed me that my debt of $188 to DirecTV was being collected by them. Of course, I've never had any dealings with DirecTV (aside from interviewing for a job there a couple of years ago), so I knew that this was a bogus notice. Come Monday morning, I called their 1-888 number and, after waiting on hold for 20 minutes, was connected to a bored-sounding agent. She asked me for the last four digits of my social security number …

So, Sunday was my college graduation. I'm now a college graduate. Wow, that's weird to write. If you're curious about we details, I hold a Bacheleor of Science in Computer Science from Harvey Mudd College with overall academic distinction and with departmental honors in two departments. Woo.

It's really weird to be done. I keep expecting that this will just be a break, that things will be back to normal soon. I'd really gotten used to things at Mudd, I was really happy there. Mudders: I already miss you. In retrospect, there are a lot of things that I should …

This post is a follow-up to Real-Life Update

Well, it was brief but exhausting. My job search has now come to a close. I interviewed at a large number of companies, got offers from a smaller number, and accepted an offer from Yelp. I'll be starting in June on the Infrastructure team, doing something between software engineering and system administration. Which sounds, you know, awesome.

For the unaware, Yelp is a local search company based out of San Francisco, CA. They've got a pretty large userbase, and lots of views, and, in general, interesting problems to work on. There's already a Mudder there. Plus, it's a really small company. Should be a great atmosphere to work in coming out of Mudd's tight-knit community. And, of course, San Francisco is an awesome city.

I'm about to finish my second-to-last semester of college. That in and of itself is perhaps a somewhat stunning thing to think about. Equally important, of course, is the question of what I'll do once I leave. I've been interviewing with a half-dozen companies, and just got back the other day from a trip up to the Bay Area to do in-person interviews with Yelp and NVIDIA. I'd forgotten how nice the Bay Area was. I stayed in downtown San Francisco, at The Mosser Hotel, and it was, well, really nice. Caltrain is also an awesome commuter rail system.

The …

I spent Saturday at the 50th Newport Folk Festival, and it was excellent. Some of the highlights? Well, let's see… I saw Iron & Wine, The Decemberists, Fleet Foxes… the list goes on. Aside from a little bit of sunburn and a lighter wallet thanks to having my chair set up perilously close to the Del's stand, it was awesome.

The festival was held at Fort Adams State Park in Newport, RI, and started at 11:30 in the morning. We even managed to get there for about 11:30, after waiting only about half an hour for a parking spot. Right off the bat, the festival opened with a legendary name in folk: Ramblin' Jack Elliott. He was fun to listen to (lots of stories, obviously), although not quite as dynamic a musician as some of the others. Other early acts that I took in part of were Tift Meritt and Ben Kweller. Merritt didn't make much of an impression on me, but I rather liked Kweller.

Around lunchtime, I watched Billy Bragg, about whom I have somewhat mixed feelings. He was very… politicized. On the one hand, I agree with him and his songs about why socialized medicine is good and deregulated banking is bad. On the other hand, even a rather staunch social liberal such as myself might want to listen to some music without the prosthelytizing that seems to be part of his music. I also saw a little bit of Tom Morello, who I won't even give a link to. He did not appeal to me.