New Name

After hearing from a friend at work about the $2.99/year domain name registration from yahoo, I decided I couldn’t pass it up.  I figure for $3 a year it won’t be much of a burden to keep it, and I have always wanted to have an address better than http://www.et.byu.edu/~amp76.  This will also give me the ability to migrate off the school servers when the time comes, without any down time.  Anyway, in the spirit of pink pigs my new address will be http://pinkpigger.net.  Naturally the old address will still work, but if you use the new one, it will mask the old one.  Not bad for $3, eh?

Microsoft Intern

Over the last couple of years, I have always thrown my resume into the pile when Microsoft came asking.  I never really expected anything of it, but figured it was worth a piece of paper at any rate.  This year however, I only have one summer left before I graduate, plus I have quite a bit more experience than a year ago, so I thought I would give it all I had and see what happens.

I must have turned my resume in about 5 times, twice online and three times at Microsoft events etc.  I waited to see if I would be one of the 52 or so people who got an interview online.  It paid off, and I had my first personal contact with Microsoft on Oct. 28, 2005.  This interview was only 30 minutes long, and unlike any interview I have ever had.  There were a few get to know you questions, like ‘Why do you want to work at Microsoft?’ and what not, but for the most part it was just problem questions with the object seemingly to be how many solution I could come up with.  I didn’t feel too comfortable about it, but I must have done alright because here I am two weeks later and I’ve been accepted for an interview in Redmond.

I’m still not sure if I am going to make it, but I don’t feel overly nervous either.  I’ve been trying to get back up to speed on C# since then but maybe I’ll still just be in my Java web developer position where I am now come next summer.  Time will tell.

Javascript = Programming?

Who would have thought that javascript is really an object oriented language?  It turns out that it is, and in future revisions, it is actually going to be a strongly type language as well.  I’m currently working on coming up with a javascript standard for my company, but there is a lot there that I didn’t know about, looks like fun.

New System?!

Well after three months, there is obviously not a new system in place, but I do know where things will be going now. I have been working a new job for ekiwi and it has been great and well paying. I have been doing a lot of stuff with Java and J2EE, so what I decided was that I would build my own system, at least on a small scale. I might even post a mock up when I get one, but don't hold your breath, it might be another couple of months.

Time for change?

I think it's time to admit to myself that this site is never going to be what I had envisioned. There are just too many things that take priority over it. With that in mind, I thought about changing over to a different CMS (content management system). I don't know if that is a real acronym, but it sounds neat anyway. I've been looking at movable type or typepad, but it will probably be Movable type, as that seems to give more control over everything. Ultimately the address will be the same, (at least for 2 more years while I'm in school), but at first I'll probably give it a different file name and folders to play with. The trick will be to see if I can convert everything over. That shouldn't be a problem from what I've heard, except for comments, but I only have two of them, and neither really relevant, so I think they might disappear.

As for content, I'm just going to keep it a personal blog of random info, and if someday I actually decide to write some real content (preferably after some writing courses, because my writing is pretty much crap as you can probably tell), I'll put the appropriate navigation up at that time.

What was I doing?

It's been almost two months since my last entry, and I'm not sure I know what happened in the interim. I had way too many big projects for school, but they are finally over. I don't think I did that bad, as I still have a perfect A record for programming and digital classes. This next semester will be the real test as I start getting into some classes that aren't trying to weed me out of the program. Another benefit of this last semester is that I now feel comfortable in C and C++. I had one class that pretty much covered each, and it was hard keeping them straight, but now it's done and I can move on. I'm looking at C# and maybe getting a copy of the most recent Visual Studio .net package to start making some real applications. Anyway, I'm still alive and so are the piggies.

Security

There are two predominate groups around when you start talking about browsers and internet security. The IE group says that IE is not a bug ridden, dismal attempt at a secure browser, but rather is a rather good browser that just happens to be under attack more often than anything else because it is so popular. The non-IE group says that that is a joke and that IE is just poorly written. Well written web browsers or anything to do with internet security should be bug free or at the very least safe to use no matter how many people use it.

This article is clearly on the IE side, claiming that now that Firefox is gaining popularity it will be next to be hit with all these security attacks. I bet it will, and some of them might actually work, but why is popularity being equated with security. If anything, it should be the inverse relationship, the more popular a program, the more secure it is.

Take for example, web servers. Apache is used much more than IIS, but which is more secure? Which do you hear about getting broken in to? Now, which do you think has more attacks against it? Maybe this says more about Microsoft than it does about security, but I think they need to change their emphasis a little. To their credit, MS has pulled off some incredible feats of making software user friendly, but in their quest to make everything so easy to use, they forgot to make it hard to break.

Real Programmers

I think I really like programming. This may sound obvious as my major is computer engineering, but it really hit me last week that I enjoy doing this stuff. The incident that brought this realization upon me was a lab for my C/C++ class. The object was to use a buffer overflow bug to manipulate a program that the professor had written into doing various things it wasn't made to do. It wasn't really that hard as everything was contrived to make it doable for the average student, but there was this extra credit involved that was only given if you could make your solution work in a more real world like situation. I was (and still am) very busy, but I felt compelled to finish it all. So with 5 minutes to spare before the deadline I turned in the completed assignment, extra credit and all. After reviewing the scores, it turned out that only 8 people out of 88 had finished everything, me included. This got me to thinking, maybe only a tenth of all the people in the class are truly interested in programming for the love of it and not for some ulterior motive. I know that extra credit completion doesn't necessarily signify a love of subject material, but it just felt like I had finally passed on to the ranks of a real programmer instead of just your average programmer who does nothing more but what he is told or required. I'm probably late coming into the fold, but for what it's worth, here I am.

Where am I?

How did I end up at work? Wasn't I at home just a second ago? Maybe it was school? I'm not sure, but I do know that my legs are through with any more stairs after climbing the same 3 flights 100+ times in the last couple of weeks. Now that we are finished moving back into my parents home things should calm down, but it will probably be a little longer till I realize where I am at all times.

Blogworthy

I've been reading a lot of other blogs lately, trying to figure out what makes a good one and such. It seems to come down to content, and in two kinds. First is the interest groups, something a lot of people are interested in. This would include news and hobbies and other topic specific sites. The other kind is varying in topic, but always amusing to read. The most popular of course are the ones that can pull off both of these, but it's hard when your writing about dry academic stuff and you don't have the sense of humor to get a snort out of a hyena.

Undo!

You know you have been programming for too long when after making a mistake on your math assignment, you search around the paper for ctrl-z to undo it. I've been getting a little behind in my math class and so I am trying to catch up, but sometimes it's just really hard to write and erase on a piece of paper. Maybe I'm the only one who has this problem?

Over posting

I'm tired of writing about the same old stuff all the time. I mean, who really cares how my life is going anyway? All we ever really want to read is something that might pertain to our own live, not somebody else's who lives thousands of miles away. With this in mind, I've decided to stop writing about myself in particular and start writing about myself in general. In other words, generalize whatever happens to me so that it could be applied to anyone at some level. I also am probably going to put up a lot more stuff that I find on the web that looks interesting and partially relevant.

Brain Dead

This semester is just pounding me with C/C++ programming problems. I don't mind it that much because I have wanted to learn it for a while, but when they are asking me to do 15 optimized bit wise operations... it just starts to hurt my head. I did finish it, and better optimized than probably all but 1/5 of my class, but is just felt like too much work for a simple assignment. Required homework time is increasing exponentially the closer I get to graduation.

I was thinking about redoing the site design. I would of course keep the pigs in some fashion, but then maybe just a background and a banner. All these different types and what not just causes me to not be able to read my css files. We'll see how it works out, the current version isn't all that bad, it just feels slow. As long as I have my pigs I'll be happy. Css sites are the way to go, but I think it's way to easy to go overboard.

Betrayed Again

I should stop writing about when I get into search engines, it almost invariably causes my site to stop showing up in them. As anybody who has checked the links in the previous post knows, there is no mention of my site on the first page or any subsequent pages. It's really quite annoying, but at least I know that Google and Yahoo! know that this site exists, even though they may decide not to index it. I'm not too worried though, someday it will be up permanently and I might actually get some valid traffic from them. For now it will just have to come through blogger.

Yahoo!

I was checking my logs today, and it looks like Yahoo! has indexed my site. After the google incident I'm wary of getting too excited, but from the looks of it I may be in for good. Now I just have to finish my pig pages, as that is generally what shows up in the searchs.

What's in a username

I've used the same user name since I returned home from Japan in Dec. 2002. It's my middle name backwards and has always been easy to remember for me. Also, I have never seen it in any form anywhere else. The neat thing about that is that now whenever I type it into google, it spits out most of the comments I have made on various forums under that user name. Pretty neat, huh. I suppose it would work with any username, but it depends on your uniqueness on what's going to come back to you.

Back to work

I thought school started today, but apparently it isn't until Tuesday. I don't know why they did this, but it certainly causes confusion. Despite a break from my one class on Monday, I decided that I needed the money and went to work today for the first time this year. On that note, Happy New Year!! Is it already 2005, it seems like it was just 2002 not too long ago. Somebody should do a comprehensive study on time perception based on age, I can almost guarantee that it changes exponentially with age (ie if you double your age, time seems to pass at a rate equal to the square of what it was before your age doubled). This all just makes me feel more busy and more stressed.

This semester looks to be just a lot of programming work. I finally get into C++ which doesn't look that different from Java, but a lot more powerful in a systems perspective. I did manage to pass all my classes last semester, although I expected a B from my engineering class and got a C+, and a C from my math class and got a B. Oh well, the gpa all works out in the end, and I don't have to retake any classes. The trick will be to see whether I have enough time to do all the homework as last semester I pretty much did all during lecture time which doesn't really help in understanding the material. With Ryuki getting bigger and easier to manage, it shouldn't be too hard.