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Upcoming Incoming

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…

Back to Work

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)!

CSE Affiliates

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.

Riding in From Redmond

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.

Alternate Summer Plan

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.

Summer 2007 Schedule

   Monday       Tuesday    Wednesday   Thursday       Friday    
 8:30  E E 233 A
EEB 037
E E 233 A
EEB 037
E E 233 A
EEB 037
  E E 233 A
EEB 037
 9:00   
 9:30           
 10:00           
 10:30           
 11:00           
 11:30           
 12:00           
 12:30           
 1:00  CSE 461 A
EEB 037
E E 233 AB
EEB 137
CSE 461 A
EEB 037
  CSE 461 A
EEB 037
 1:30   
 2:00   
 2:30        CSE 461 AB
EEB 026
 3:00       
 3:30         
 4:00         

In addition, I will be working at Microvision Mondays and Wednesdays at 3:00 and Thursday all day. Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday between classes I will be doing CREE research.

On A Sunny Sunday

Yesterday I woke up surprisingly early considering a rather late night where I was only harassed by police once, so I went for a ride around Greenlake, then later down to the U-Village and back. After a truly fabulous dinner with the parents, I headed to IS for some basketball, then I wandered back home and proceeded to text message like crazy. I’m going to have to get some sort of messaging plan added, I think I’ve been using it too much recently.

In other news, today, I rode into work on a bike, after taking a bus across the lake.