Checksum Arcanius

:-)

:-)

Tomorrow: Interview at Google

Wednesday: CSE ABET Lunch (Major Accreditation)

Thursday: Physical Therapy

Friday: Lab Due

Saturday: FIRST Lego League Edmonds Regional

Also, running out of time on the big CSE project and two new BioE projects are just starting…

Yesterday I went into work at Microvision for the first time since my surgery. I only remained for a little over two hours, but it felt good to get back into the swing of things.

I can now drive, walk fairly well (I still take crutches along for longer walks), and do most activities without assistance. Stairs are still a little interesting — I still go down with the bad, up with the good — and biking is still out of the question — my right knee doesn’t bend enough to go all the way around yet. I also am having trouble getting my right knee straight, though I have an exercise that I am doing to work on this issue. However, I am thrilled with the progress I have made so far. By next quarter I should be biking, and then its all downhill from there (at least on my way to class)!

Today amidst my classes and lab work, I spent a few hours chatting it up and dropping resumes off at the CSE Affiliates fair, an event where a bunch of companies that want to hire UW CSE students show up to get resumes and convince people they are worth working for. Among the companies I talked to:

• Yahoo (opening office in downtown Bellevue)
• Intel
• Redfin (Real estate… have two friends working there)
• Zillow (Real estate… one friend there)
• Adobe (Two friends)
• Apple
• Cray
• Pluggd (Video & Audio search… they seemed particularly interested in me)
• Microsoft
• Cozi (Family organization products)
• Chief Architect (Home Design software, Coeur D’Alene, ID)
• Pure Networks (Network Setup Software)
• Adapx (makers of a Smart Pen)
• Marchex (Cool water bottle givers, online advertising)
• Tableau (Data visualization)
• Pelago (Outdoing Google Local)
• WhitePages.com
• Teranode (Life sciences modeling software)
• TalentSpring (Resume Social Networking)
• Google

I may have even missed a few that I talked to — there was a lot going on!  At any rate, Google is last on purpose — I didn’t actually drop a resume there, as I did at the rest of the places on the list. This is because I have already been in contact with Google, and I have a phone interview with them on Friday afternoon.

I woke up late and had no Capstone class today, so I went to work after my Networks class. As has become my custom when going to work in the afternoon, I took the 545 bus across the lake and then biked from the Bear Creek Park and Ride to Microvision. At work, I found a bug in the scanner that was mistaken for a bug in the ATF code; then I tightened up the ATF code a little anyway. After finishing up, I decided to bike home since most of my testing duties are on hold until additional units arrive.

I left work a little after 7:00, and started what I consider the real trip at 7:15, on the Sammamish River Trail heading North. Somewhere around Kenmore, the same trail becomes the Burke-Gilman Trail and heads back down to Seattle. The ride was very nice, but still challenging, as I was pushing myself. I completed the approximately 25 miles in about 1:45 before stopping at Safeway for some groceries. I think I could go somewhat faster on my road bike, as I feel that I lose a lot of energy to the shocks, larger tires, and more pliant frame of the mountain bike that I generally take to school. Oh, also, I’m always clipped in when I take the road bike, whereas I am only rarely clipped in on the mountain bike (which has dual platform/spd pedals).

Along the way, I passed the park where I started a geocaching expedition several years ago as well as numerous walkers, roller-bladers, and cyclists. A number of cyclists also passed me — I am pretty sure I was the swifted mountain bike on the trail, however. Somewhere past the halfway mark, I came across an area where a vast expanse of Lake Washington was visible with the Olympic mountains in the background. It was beautiful, but I didn’t think to take a picture at the time.

Once I got home, I made myself a burger for dinner — its been a long time since I’ve done that. It was quite good. I then settled in to watch the Mariners finish beating the Red Sox. A good day indeed.

Recently, I have been thoroughly reevaluating my current summer plan. For a variety of reasons, including the hardware capstone topic & length, I am leaning more and more towards the software emphasis for my Computer Engineering degree. That would mean no more requirement for EE 233 (although I could still sign up for it if I wanted to). That would free up my summer mornings, possible for work. I could then sign up for my Bioengineering capstone and start it early with just a couple of credits — 6 in all I believe. The working hours would be better (early morning to noon or so), the school less intense (just one “real” class), and I would have my afternoons free to do CREE stuff, capstone stuff, and fun stuff. Plus my weekends would still be mine.

The more I think about it, the more it sounds like what I should do.