Digital Dave

Is when I plan to leave Kansas.  It’ll be a rough 21 hours, and hopefully I don’t have to make the 21 hours back to Kansas at the end of this evolution.  I’m going to go over to Glendale, CA to stay for 2 weeks, and then going to San Diego, CA for a month.   While I’m there, I plan to aggressively pound every bit of job juice from my network.

If I have no leads by then, I’ll see if I can head back to Burbank, CA for 2 more weeks.  The rules on apartments out there blow.  I basically get 12 days to stay with a friend and her roommate as a “Guest”.   I’ll decide then if I want to head back to Kansas or rent out an apartment with somebody.

Hopefully it will not take 2 months to lock on a job.  In a stretch of 2 to 3 weeks here in Kansas I had one job offer and another offer revoked due to a hiring freeze.  Considering that I applied to about 5 companies, that’s not too bad.  I’m hoping that having my feet on the ground in California will help tremendously.

That’s the plan for now.

And if you’re hiring and reading this… I am a super-master-epic-licious toilet cleaner.  A product of the Midwest, formed by the Corps.  I know how to work my ass off doing all kinds of crazy things.  Let’s talk.

Well, the holiday’s are officially over.  I can hardly remember that they even started…

It’s troubling to think that I could be starting a new job today…  But, instead, I’ll be heading out west 1,500 miles.

The plan is to hang out here for two weeks while I get things in order with my new living situation out in California.  I’ll be taking a road trip over to Glendale, CA to find a job somewhere in California.  Laptop.  Suitcase.  Suit… That’s basically it.  This will be my second 21 hour road trip for me, with one more coming this year when I get married in July and have to drive all of my stuff from Kansas over to California.

While I wait around for the next couple of weeks I plan to do some programming.  A local business needs a new website, so I’ve been contracted to whip something together.   I finished the majority of it over the holiday.  Other than that, I plan to do some other things with the iPhone and the plug-in toolset.

The last couple of days I’ve been reading Beginning iPhone Development – Exploring the iPhone SDK. I’m pretty happy with it so far.  Clearly written, and really thorough.  What they don’t cover in the book, they give some good references outside.  They don’t write much about Objective-C, only things that are new to Obj-C 2.0.

I also started and finished Bioshock within the last week… Phenomenal story.  I actually listened to Ken Levine during the GDC.  What a mind. I tried the game out on the PC when it came out, but never had the chance to really play it due to school and the girl. I’m really interested to see what they do with Bioshock 2.

So I have been incredibly busy recently.  Not only with school projects, but with this daunting challenge of finding a job.  The process is not only time consuming, but mentally draining (much more so if it’s a programming related interview, for obvious reasons).  The build-up toward an interview, and the come-down after the interview wears me out, and in the past few weeks I had 4 companies interviewing me, sometimes on the same day.

One of the companies spoke with me for nearly 2 hours and I just realized I wasn’t going to be able to fit the position.  They really needed an experienced candidate, not an entry-level candidate.  Or, they needed a super-genius-magical-abnormal-code-monkey entry level candidate, that, I am not.  So I turned down their second interview request.

Another company ran me through the grinder in two on-site interviews to end up telling me that they are not in a position to hire anybody right now.  Ok, fair enough, the economy sucks and I couldn’t imagine that consulting isn’t getting hit hard by it.

A small company in southern cal interviewed me a couple times, and really liked me, but decided to go with somebody else.  This one was a bummer, but I understand the crutch that small businesses have.   I’m sure I left a great impression on them, and we’ll see if something can happen in the future.

The final company in the Kansas City region interviewed me a couple of times, and offered me a position.

Now, part of me feels like I’m crazy.

But the other part feels like I really had little choice.   Financially, it wouldn’t have made any sense for me to take it, and for Megan to move up there, jobless, in an area that is not hiring in her discipline.  We would essentially reverse positions, I would have a job, and she wouldn’t.  The job didn’t pay very much more than hers.  I applied to a different position with the company back in August, so it’s not like I knowingly applied this month and got the interview.  A lot has changed in these 3 months.

So I’m just going to go on with my plan to move out to California.  I’ve applied to a lot of places in California, with little bites.  So far in Kansas, I’ve interviewed with everybody I applied to, and have been approached by companies.  Obviously, having your feet on the ground helps.  Luckily, I have the luxury of having someone to fall back on if things don’t work out.

So I have been blitzed with interviews for the past few weeks.  The ups and downs (nerves) from all of this is definitely tiring.  I’m excited to get back to work.  I’m definitely NOT looking forward to turning down offers.  There’s quite a bit of cool things that I’ve been discussing with local companies, and so far I haven’t ran into anybody with an ego I couldn’t deal with.  Though, I have dealt with Marines, so that probably has something to do with that.

It’s been unfortunate that I haven’t got anything from the California region, even when I offer to pay my interviewing expenses.  It really looks like I need to get my boots on the ground to have any hope.  I’ll likely stick around the midwest for a few years, continue doing some independent things, and then use the experience I gain here to hopefully get more bites in the future.

Another project that I am working on is a computer vision problem for my software engineering class. Our goal is to use a robotic arm to find and pick up a fallen soda can to set it upright.

My position on the project is dealing with the computer vision.  I’ve basically written all of the code for this rather large piece of the puzzle making good use of Intel’s OpenCV library.  This library helps to connect to the webcam, capture a frame, conduct an edge detection algorithm, and to draw some pretty circles for me.

As far as the algorithm for detecting the corners, it’s rather expensive.  It’s close to o(n²) 4 times, but it doesn’t really search the entire image. For each corner, I move in on the object. A picture would do better justice.  Imagine each line moving along the image until it gets to the object.  So the top left scans right, and moves down.  The top right scans down, moving left…

It gets the job done for this project, but I can’t quite figure out how I could improve it (not that I’ve had a lot of time to think about it).  The arm of the bot needs the center point of the object  (x,y) and the angle of the object. The angle is computed with point B and the line intersection.

The project isn’t done.  The next big step is figuring out what side of the can is the TOP.  But I’m ahead of the curve and thought I’d share what I’ve been doing.

This is my first involvement in this sort of financial disaster and I have to admit that it has been one hell of a ride.  It definitely takes a gut of steel to stomach these steep declines in the market, and I’ve got to imagine that we are close to a bottom.

But just remember, every disaster has a bottom.  Professional investors are just sitting on the side lines with their cash on hand to dive right back into the action.  I’m looking at stocks that are extremely discounted because they have been beaten to death. There is nothing fundamentally wrong with these companies! People just jumped off the ship because they were scared as hell.  Which, is a natural reaction.  Nobody in their right mind wants to lose money.  But if you sell, you LOCK IN those losses.  If you don’t sell, you have time on your side to recover that money unless you are very close to retirement.

And you’ve got to realize.  You’re not the only one getting thumped.  Order will restore itself eventually, and I believe it’ll happen pretty soon.

In other news, this job search is a pain-in-the-butt.

I can say without a shadow-of-a-doubt that network contacts are so freaking vital it’s not even funny.  It’s not like I didn’t know this (see: Darius, this applies to even more than the gamedev industry), but seeing the value of it first hand is mind blowing and it really makes me wish I would have pounded MUCH harder on it.  So if you are a freshman or sophomore, listen up.  Get on it.

It doesn’t help when you are searching for a job in a recession, nor does it help when you are applying during the time when companies typically go through a hiring lull (Fall).

I’m optimistic.  I know I’m valuable.  I’ve been admired by those who have led me, and those who have followed me.  I also know how hard I work in a business environment.  I mean, hell, some day I want to be an entrepreneur.  Not just an entrepreneur, but a successful entrepreneur.   Raw passion, an eye for initiative driven opportunities, and a motivated attitude all drive my work ethic.

65 days until graduation.  I’m excited.

*ring*

“We have the results from your test. At this time we’re going to continue searching for other candidates to fill this opportunity.”

I know I have a hell of a lot of passion, enthusiasm, determination, and leadership that I would have been able provide.  I definitely could have made an impact on their software suite.

The key to unlocking our potential is being persistent in life. Things do happen for a reason.

But hey, thanks for the birthday present! In all seriousness, it’s a pretty damn good company.  Considering that they could have just sent me an e-mail rejection, they actually called me.

Side note: Good luck Robert. E-mail me on how the interview went.

I’m going to start writing a little about my little adventure toward employment.  This includes each step through the process, introduction, face-to-face interview, etc.  I’m also doing this during the process so I don’t forget the details.

So I got back in touch with them last month and they gave me an opportunity to prove my worth. Today I drove out to Shawnee to complete an in-house exam. The first major barrier.

The place is phenomenal. Both the company and the area. I’ve never been to Shawnee, but I enjoyed what I saw. The few people I met at the company were extremely friendly, and the building has an extremely nice atmosphere. Heck, they also gave me a $10 gift card for Starbucks in return for taking their exam, which I promptly went across the street to get myself a nice Frappuccino with.

I still need to figure out who designed that building. I’m sure my girlfriend would appreciate what they’ve done with it as an Interior Designer.

So what do they do? Simply put, they built and continue to improve a document management system based on customer feedback. The system allows you to put documents in the system, link particular information between documents, and find/send documents with ease. This has turned out extremely well for them as they’ve grown a LOT recently. Apparently, they found a good niche and tackled it head first. We’re talking $5 million back in 2001 to a projected $67 million this year. They focus heavily on the customer while also putting great emphasize with taking care of their own employees… As they have a 98% staff retention rate… Not bad.

So how did the exam go? I was confident as hell taking it… But once I started the 3-hour drive back home I started to analyze things that I did… Yeah, a couple oops. Some were blatantly obvious, but that’s the love of a pencil and paper with no compiler to smack you in the face. And only one thing on the exam really tripped me up. I might discuss problems in a future post.

Overall, I highly recommend that you scout this place out if you’re looking for a good place to work in the Kansas area.

The first rule in iPhone development is apparently that you don’t talk about iPhone development.  It’s still ‘hush-hush’ in apple land when it comes to their fancy touch technology to the extent that they try to rip down anything that is put up. That is, if they find your stuff of course.

So, not only am I still getting used to using a Mac (dear God…), and Objective-C (God?), but I’m developing a rather simple game that I’ve made before in C++ back in the day, and adding some twists to it.  When I get some more progress on it, I’ll fill in the journal space.  I really hope to get this thing done by the 25th (school starts), but we’ll see.  I’ve decided to work on an iPhone game for my next semester independent project.  I have so many ideas on iPhone applications that it isn’t even funny.  The beautiful thing is that these things are all casual.  I love casual games.  I hope I can get some distance with this thing.  Independent game development FTW.  I deployed a test version of my game to the iPhone today (what a pain-in-the-ass process) and it blew my mind. Very cool.

I have a programming test with a company next week, so I’ll have to spend some time getting ready for it. It’s an in house programming test and I’m not looking forward to it at all… Well, I am… But I just fail pretty hard (depending on the structure) with exam-like conditions which makes this job hunt that much more interesting.  I wish I’ve been programming for 10+ years, but that just isn’t the case.

Speaking of the job hunt.

I’m starting to get denied from places out in California due to the distance between Kansas – California… It’s only 1,550 miles (I know, I’ve driven it in (almost) a day *yawn*). Anyway, I might have to move out there for a few months if things don’t look to be going my way.  Luckily, I know 2 people in San Diego, 1 in Burbank, and 1 other in long beach. I wish I knew somebody from the bay area… But that won’t stop me from camping out in a Hostel ($12 a night! Pfft.).  I want a job in California if you couldn’t tell.

If you’re a web developer and you find yourself dealing with a crap load of CSS files, you’ll probably find some use for this new application.  A buddy of mine fell in this pit, and needed a solution.  So, I opened up C# and whipped him up something.  It’s pretty simple.  It will build a CSS file from a bunch of other CSS files based on a build file.  It’s similar to JS Builder, which groups together java files.  It’s open source, and I’ll get a download to it soon.  If you need it now, find a way to contact me and I’ll hook you up.

Pending that things don’t continue to get in my way, I’ll be fiddling with developing iPhone applications. I got my hands on a Mac finally.

Dealing with interviews. Not the most exciting thing in the world.  Well… It really is, but I’m so massed in stress that I can’t really think of enjoying the opportunity to turn to a new page of my life. But reality is what it is… I suck at exam like interviews. Unless they’re more of an implementation project, but that’s rarely the case.