TekEmpire.net

Last tuesday I found out there would be a career fair the following day (I was too late for the tuesday part of it). I didn’t have a resume prepared. Tuesday night, I went to Michael’s (arts and crafts) on the way home. I purchased oversized construction paper, glitter glue, and crayons. At the checkout lane I asked the cashier if she could think of anything more obnoxious for a resume than those items. She told me that I was off to a good start.

I didn’t have any time to work on it that night because grandma talks at me for a while when I get home. So the next morning before my compilers class I started working on one, and realized it was going to take a very long time to dry using that much glitter glue. There were 50 sheets of construction paper. Between compilers and physics I wrote my name, e-mail and phone number on the other 49 sheets, in the same three colors of crayons for all of them. After physics I usually help people with their physics homework for an hour or two. During that time I drew the Konami code, a blue’s clues paw print, and a four leaf clover in glitter glue on several sheets (I didn’t keep an exact count). Then I added stickers and something unique to all of those in the remaining space. The best were “Cowabunga” and a Pac-Man eating dots.

After the glue dried and I was done helping people with physics, I microwaved some delicious frozen food I had sitting in my trunk, in a cooler. (This is how I eat at college). Then I headed over to the career fair. I passed out several “copies” (each handmade) of my resume to various companies. Microsoft, by far, received it most favorably.

Here I thought Microsoft was a “suits” company. Apparently, creativity and fun are important to them. When I walked up to them with my “resume” I expected them to politely direct me to a preschool. That was my idea of entertainment for the day. Instead, one of the recruiters, upon seeing my “resume”, said, “Oh I got this one. That’s the most creative thing I’ve ever seen.” (Or something like that). She sat me down and asked real questions about my skills, experience, and interests. It was never stated that I should write up a “real” resume if I were serious. Either she was genuinely impressed with my creativity, or she’s remarkable at humoring people.

If this actually gets me an internship with Microsoft, I think I’ll take it. I haven’t thought very favorably about the company before, but it might be fun if I get to be creative. “Find a job you enjoy, and you’ll never have to work a day in your life.” Even if they don’t seriously consider me, receiving it so well made my day. (It also upset a lot of my peers that spent time and effort tailoring their resumes for Microsoft. Sorry guys. I was just playing around.)

Today I was just minding my own business doing physics homework while waiting for ACM club to start. Then some other people started waiting in the same area for the same thing. I got to talking to one of them about what the ACM club currently entails, and what it could potentially entail.

To verify credibility as a programmer, at some point this person asked if I heard about iPhone jailbreaking. I couldn’t really figure out the connection as it’s quite simple for anyone to jailbreak a phone thanks to dev-team’s programs. Then he mention that he’s a member of dev-team. After a few milliseconds of disbelief, followed by a few milliseconds of awe, I realized he was serious. Yeah, I’d say that gives him credibility. So I shook his hand.

To people in the normal world, this is like meeting a member of your favorite band at the local grocery store.

Apparently both my grandmothers think I sleep too much. I have explained to both that sleep is how I deal with stress (which by the way is actually one of the healthiest ways to deal with it). I have a lot of homework, and I close my doors to concentrate. I would work on it at school but my grandmother complains that she worries when I’m In Tucson. (Why this is my fault I’ll probably never understand.) So I come home immediately to work on homework.
Thus ruining any chance to make friends. But that isn’t good enough. Apparently I’m supposed to get Stockholm syndrome and want to socialize with my captor. Not going to happen.

So after we had our little chat about me never leaving my room, apparently now I can miss dinner twice a week. Hardly compensation for being 27 and having a curfew, but it’s a start. I don’t sneak out here in the middle of the night to go for walks (mostly because it would terrify the locals if something moved outside), but I still spend a lot of time writing email, writing blog posts, and watching anime. All of which are apparently unnecessary, and if I were caught socializing on my computer instead of doing homework I’d get yelled at… And sleep to deal with the stress… Yeah it’s an endless cycle and it was the same in highschool before I dropped out. Except that was more learning unix than socializing, since I don’t keep in touch with people on IRC (except one person who probably doesn’t read my blog). Anyway I do these thing after I say I’m going to bed because it’s easier than justifying them. My brother and ship roommates never seemed to care. I told them what I was doing when they asked and that was that. They never got upset about it.

The chat was Sunday and I didn’t have school Monday, but without being able to sleep or close my doors to pretend to study while I watched anime to deal with stress, I had to get away. Grandmother was at lunch with her friends, so I made sure to leave before she got back and I would have to justify leaving. (Why I need to justify leaving I will never understand).

I sat at school with my computer and wifi waiting for someone, to sign on to facebook, that would also be on campus. I didn’t find anyone that was available to hang out, but I made plans with someone before I left. I killed three hours or so talking to people that weren’t physically present while I waited for the time when the plans started. Thank you DARPA for being paranoid and wanting a fault tolerant communication system (read “internet”).

The rest of the story is normal people hang out stuff. Ate dinner at a restaurant. Planned to play pool but then saw bowling lanes and went bowling instead. Five games I think. Most of them were bad. When I got a 184 we stopped. I figured I wasn’t going to bowl any better since my arm was getting sore. I don’t get a lot of exercise when I’m not sneaking out at night playing foursquare.

Note I’ve been “sleeping” for the two hours it took to write this post. Does it help me with school? No. Does it make anyone happy? Probably not. So why did I write it? I’m mean.

To recap, I don’t get enough sleep, but I’d rather be teased about sleeping too much than yelled at for playing games. It’s not how much time you work, it’s how effective that time is. I can balance it, and I can explain how I balance it, but I can’t reason with angry people. Angry people expecting a dialogue are stress inducing because true dialogue requires reason.

Moral of the story? If you are angry, stay away from me. I’ll blog about you if you don’t.