it took so long to get out of bed that i hardly had time to cover the basic differences between java, asp and jsp - but it turned out that i didn't need to know any of it anyway.
i arrived for the testing about half an hour late, as i'd taken a severely wrong turn and been taunted by rain in addition to being lost. good thing i wore my ski jacket!
i was briefed (briefly, by a man who can barely speak) and seated in front of a station in a conference room packed with people hunched over their monitors and apparently fretting. instead of jsp, i was offered a choice between c++ and java: considering that i'd interviewed for jsp, i assumed java was the way to go, even though i would probably have handled the c++ more effectively.
first order of business: check message validity according to a provided protocol. aside from getting around java's enum with a regular class (because enums in java *suck*), it was all fairly straightforward... i wrote everything in visual studio because that's what opened automatically, but only once i was ready to compile did i realize that there was another ide available that was actually helpful.
then i got a bit stuck: i'd glossed over a minor detail in the instructions, and it took me a frustrated few minutes to figure it out. no matter! i required regex handling, and java's String class provides!
problem solved.
second order of business:
"okay, so i forgot to tell you that there's a performance requirement. your code runs in 2.5s - unacceptable. if you can just bring it down to below 1s..."
playing with my structures didn't make any difference; it suddenly struck me that i had no idea how complex the aformentioned regex matcher is. i rewrote a highly simplified version of it to see if it'd help me reduce my performance.
less than 400ms. all good.
third order of business: linux ftp, installation, editing and compilation. you have got to be shitting me. it had all the instructions, we just had to follow them. do applicants fail this section? really?!
the challenge was in the fact that one of the virtual machines (thank you, vmware) was so damn slow that the two of us who had completed the first bit were stuck waiting for about half an hour for the system to boot, and it was a half an hour where the "invigilator" wasn't around. at least i had my iphone with me, and i always have reading to do (thank you, kindle app!).
we couldn't even call the guy, because in his infinite wisdom he wrote down the wrong phone number on the board. wtf?! where do all these monkeys come from?! developers need to work with numbers, for chrissake!
last order of business: redesign a ui based on received complaints. all very basic stuff, and the only mistake i made was actually using the simulation software correctly when all we had to do was create something exportable to pdf. i really pulled out all the stops on that one.
everyone shuffled out when he yelled "time!", and i was done. i'm fairly certain i'm the only one who finished.
i walked out after almost four hours of testing and not a hint of caffeine, with a massive headache that had been following me since getting out of bed, feeling good about myself and not particularly affectionate towards a company that can make CS graduates feel stupid. one of the guys caught up with me to vent his frustration at not so much as completing the first part, and i explained to him that he's applying for a job programming and that's not what he studied.
i gave him a few pointers, i hope they help. poor bastard claims never to have failed at anything in his life before - i told him now's as good a time as any to begin. you can't succeed if you don't know how to screw up. don't they teach this stuff anywhere?
i walked into work, met with the boss, made myself a quick tuna-mayonnaise sandwich, drank coffee and sat down at my desk to... discover that i had half an hour to get to a mandatory guest lecture that i'd completely forgotten about :S
i ran out telling the boss that, officially, our meeting had been over the phone :P
i arrived *just* in time for an argument with one of the vegans in our rollerblading group, then settled down to hear a talk about diderot. it was an interesting talk with an intriguing point: the fact that the virtuous "ME" (or "MOI", if you're reading the french) doesn't push the argument in either direction bears witness to his sense of justice.
at the end of the session i made an ass of myself by having a go at him about his abuse of the word "happiness" and a bad example that he gave, to which he responded fairly well. i was applauded for telling him that i'd like to see him telling his best friend that he's not going to be happy with the woman he's marrying, and for backing that up with an argument that you can't say that someone who claims to be unhappy is wrong.
when his response to that ended with "that could just be self-delusion", i immediately quipped "isn't everything?" - one of the hosts immediately stood up and informed us that we were out of time.
one of my fellow students scowled at me afterwards for my inability to grasp that absolutist moralism is completely correct. what? because mommy and daddy told you so?!
in spite of its relevance, i shouldn't have tried to talk about in praise of doubt
. i confused everyone because i couldn't actually put my reference in the form of a question :$i waited for pg for a few minutes, who turned out to be a decidedly bad influence - instead of going to work for an hour, i went home and tried to rest. that was a really good idea. so was the thai food on the way: i see people smiling, and can only assume that they're enjoying the fantastic idea of walking with chopsticks in small cardboard take-away. i know i do.
once i'd determined that feeling sick and exercising are not known causes for auto-immune diseases (as much as i could), i re-laced my blades, quaffed an energy drink and joined pg and her mum on the way to the group. it was a good ride, although some of it was spent fighting with pg about the semi-planned ski-trip. unpleasant, but better to sort these things out before arriving there and being horribly disappointed:
i'm big into snowboarding. i don't know if that comes out so much on my blog, but i'm a complete addict and i enjoy letting go and doing stupid things like flying down mountain slopes at silly angles and pushing the experience as far as i can go, mostly less safely than is wise.
pg is happy to just ski, but with me. i thought we were talking about going together, meeting up for lunches and spending the evenings together while the rest of the time we'd be taking classes and going wild... but after some deliberation, it dawned on me that it's a different kind of ski-trip than i'm used to. if it's my money and not a romantic holiday, it's different. if it's hers ('cause i can't afford it right now) and it is, then i'll not only take what i can get but i'll enjoy it thoroughly - it's just a different headspace. it'll still be freakin' AWESOME to be strapped in and sliding, but it won't be about the challenge.
i can handle that.
after a pleasant course through the religious city of bnei brak, the lord gently informed us that that sort of behaviour has consequences by opening up the skies on our heads. we slipped and skidded home completely soaked.
physical notes for the day:
i've had a headache until soon after getting back from the rollerblading, and on my way into campus the right side of my jaw made an ugly cracking sound and it's been hurting me since.
i think *touches wood* that my helix has healed. i hope so, because i want to put the ring back already! this teflon thing doesn't have the look.
in order to combat dandruff (and i have hair now, so this is an issue) i've been doing the head & shoulders thing for a few days straight. i think it's made my hair breakable.
...
it's now past 4am, i've done most of the readings and i think i'm back in tune with my sleepless reality.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.