A slight deviation

I think I’ve sent out 40+ resumes now, only to be continously shot down. Case in point, the following letter (one of three that I received yesterday):

Dear Mr. Blanton:

Thank you for your interest in employment with LearnitCorp. Although your credentials are quite impressive, we have already selected another candidate for the Technical Writer position. We wish you much success in all future endeavors.

Sincerely,

Karen Gandolff
Human Resources Associate

Needless to say, the other letters read the same. In stark contrast to those letters and the past few weeks, I was actually brought in to an Eckerd yesterday to do an interview. Two of my best friends (who are also engineering graduates) currently have summer jobs as pharmacy techs at Eckerd and so I thought I’d give it a shot. I began calling all of the Eckerd stores within a 25-mile radius of Gainesville to see if there were any available tech positions. The second store I spoke with brought me in immediately and I filled out an application and talked to one of the pharmacists. She was incredibly personable (not to mention attractive) and seemed to take to me fairly well. She won’t be there next week but she is giving my application/resume to the main pharmacist who is supposed to give me a call and let me know. We’ll see. I’m told that it isn’t a very demanding job, nor does it have anything to do with my undergrad degree/passion, but it would be a source of income, which I’m realizing is ridiculously hard to come by if you only plan on working for two months at a time.  :P

On a completely different note, I’ve become quite addicted to the chicken wraps at Chik-fil-A. I’m almost positive that these things are put together and wrapped by a machine because they are perfect every time (yes, I know you too were curious).

Too many variables

Ugh. Looking for a place to live clear across the continent is no small task. I’ve been searching and searching and searching. Yesterday my dad brought up the idea of buying a condo out there in the Valley. Well, umm, as I’ve mentioned before, it’s pretty much the most expensive place in the nation to live. To this end, I’ve found that almost anything available for $200K and under is a mobile home. It’s insane. I have found a few possible condos, but won’t know anything for sure until we actually go out there and take a look, which isn’t going to happen for quite a while. Ideally, I’ll end up in a 1br/1ba apartment and/or condo (more likely the former), but who knows, perhaps I’ll just get an RV and rent space at a campground with WiFi. The possibilities are endless. Bleh.

While I’m still on the wonderful-news train I guess I should talk about the job situation. I think I’ve given out my resume to every single employer in Gainesville whose job description merely mentions “computers.” If I hear anything back, it’s usually 1.) You’re over-qualified or 2.) The job has been filled. I almost want to lie; to say that I plan on working there for the rest of my life (not just the next two months) and that I see myself going far within the company. I just can’t bring myself to do it. Damn it, just bring me in, give me a large, demanding project, and ship me back out.

I will be doing some web work for my dad sometime this summer, and perhaps for some other doctors as well. Who knows.

Headed out for some Jai-Aila action now. Hopefully I’ll make a few bucks on the four dollars I have in my pocket. I lost five dollars.

OS X Tip: verbose boot

If you, like me, come from a strong Linux background and have recently migrated to Mac OS X, then I think you’ll really enjoy the following tip. By default, the OS X boot sequence is hidden from the user. This doesn’t sit well with me and so I’ve sought out a way to make it show me exactly what was going on (instead of simply showing the small Apple logo and the rotating circle).

You can do one of two things. If you occasionally want to see the bootup sequence, then simply hold down cmd-V after you’ve hit the power button (until you see text on the screen). If you’d like to enable this verbose output each time your machine boots, then execute the following command from a terminal:

Speaking of terminals, the one that ships with OS X is complete shit. After researching and playing with a few of the available terminals, iTerm was the clear winner.

Should’ve gotten the math minor

Most of you know that I’ve been looking for a summer job for a few weeks now. It’s hard to find a decent job when you can only work for the next two months and then are headed clear across the continent. Anyways, I stumbled upon an awesome opportunity: redesign the online version of the Alligator — our ’school’ newspaper and the largest college paper in the nation. I received the following e-mail earlier tonight:

Hey Justin,

Sorry for the long reply time, but here at the Alligator there is a bylaw that only allows students to work in the Editorial department. Since you are currently in-between student status, I was trying to find a way for us to be able to use you. Unfortunately, the CEO said that there is no possibility of non-students working for any part of our Editorial department, which includes Online. Sorry about this. I thought you were very qualified for the job and would have liked to have brought you in for an interview. Any more questions, feel free to write back.

Alex Bayevsky
Managing Editor/New Media
The Independent FL. Alligator

I’m pretty disappointed. I think it would have been a great job. I should have taken the one class that I needed for a math minor; I would have been eligible for student jobs on campus and this Alligator gig.  :\

A great place to call home

Lately I’ve been looking for (stressing over) a place to live in California as I’m headed out there for law school in the fall. As some of you might already know, the area I’m moving to (Silicon Valley) is just about the most expensive in the nation. I ran across a rather funny ad on Craigslist that kind of solidified how ridiculously expensive it is out there. The following is an excerpt from said ad:

$700 - A Great Place to Call Home

Hi,
I’m looking for a responsible non-smoker to be my roommate. I have a 2BD/2BA mobile-home in Sunnyvale on the Santa Clara border. It’s in Adobe Wells, a quiet mobile-home-park at the corner of Tasman and Lawrence Expressway.

That’s right, $700/mo for a room in a mobile home. Unbelievable. I’ve told this story to a few friends already and am linking to the actual ad to silence the naysayers. Check it out here.

Bluetooth

The D-Link USB Bluetooth Adapter for the PowerBook arrived this morning. As was expected, everything went off without a hitch. Plugged it in, told it to search for “mobile phone,” put my T68i in discoverable mode and then paired the devices. iSync was a breeze — after the devices were paired I simply told it to sync and it began moving all of my stuff over.

When I get a chance I’m going to start messing around with some of the nerdier things.

Current book

I just added another little thing to the menu bar on the left. Below the ’search’ you will find a section called ‘Current Book,’ and you guessed it, it links to the book that I’m currently reading. As long as I’m still reading the book, the book name will remain up there. Hopefully, this will encourage me to finish the book as soon as possible so that it doesn’t look like I’ve been reading it for days on end.

Speaking of reading, the book I’m currently enjoying (see menu to the left, hah) is incredibly engaging. After giving a brief overview of genetics, it goes on to explain how all of us (all 81 billion ‘modern’ humans who have ever lived — a calculation he gives in the book) are more intricately related than most would like to believe. Though none of this is news to me, Mr. Olson scientifically ties it all together using genetics and logic. The book essentially abolishes the idea of race, because that is exactly what it is: an idea.

Speaking of race (wow, this post is just segueing all over the place), be sure not to miss Hitler: The Rise of Evil tonight on CBS at 9:00. It’s a four-hour mini-series (two hours today and two more Tuesday night) chronicling his life and rise to power.

Doing my thang

I purchased a Sony Ericsson T68i yesterday (it arrived today), and yes, I’ve owned this phone before. I’m getting rid of my current Nokia 7250 for four reasons:

• The Nokia doesn’t have Bluetooth
• The PowerBook doesn’t have IR
• iSync in OS X directly supports the T68i through Bluetooth
• Leftover money from selling the 7250

The PowerBook doesn’t have built-in Bluetooth (it’s currently available only on the 12′ and 17″ models — I have the 15″) and so I ordered the D-Link USB Bluetooth Adapter from Apple. Some of you might be quick to remember how I detest D-Link, but the fact remains, I need to sync my mobile phone with my PowerBook. I suck.

The list

I’ve decided to change my archives page somewhat. Instead of linking to all past entries by month, I’m now just listing all of the entries at once (with the date they were posted next to them). As you were.

Al Gore

A buddy of mine, Ty, headed out to Washington D.C. today for an interview (I could tell you who he was interviewing with but I think I’d have to kill you, or I’d be killed, or something). He just called me to let me know that Al-freaking-Gore was sitting in front of him on the airplane. Right in front of him! Ty hesitated for a while, but then decided to go in for the autograph. Apparently he was more than accommodating and was extremely nice to him. Perhaps the best part of this story is that Mr. Gore was using an Apple PowerBook and an iPod the entire time he was on the plane. Damn straight.

I can’t stop drooling

Well, I’m in quite the creative mood lately and can’t seem to stop myself from making changes to the site. These changes include substantial modifications to both the structure (XHTML) and the layout (CSS). I’ve been able to test the site on the latest versions of Mac browsers (namely Safari, Opera, IE, and Mozilla) and IE 6 for Windows — everything seems to work fine (after a little tweaking because of something that broke in, you guessed it, IE for Windows).

Also, if you are in Windows XP and using an LCD screen (or CRT for that matter), then please, for the love of god, enable ClearType on your machine. I can’t believe that EVERYONE isn’t running this yet, but then again I can’t believe that it isn’t defaulty enabled. Oh, and another thing, if you are able to enable ClearType on your machine, then please, for the love of god, get a new computer (i.e., one that doesn’t run Windows).  :P

Misc crap

I’ve put a search box inline with the menu on the left and removed the ’search’ link from the navigate menu.

I’ve been working hard on some other designs that deviate quite a bit from what you’ve seen from me before. The only problem with these designs is that they make heavy use of the latest CSS2 standards and some browsers (*cough* Internet Explorer *cough*) break the design pretty badly. It absolutely flips me out to build a site, conform to all available standards, have everything validate, and then load it up in six different browsers and get three different outputs. It genuinely discourages designers to try new things because they want what they create to look the same across all platforms (as it should if you remain adherent to standards) and so they are forced to not think outside the box; whatever, I’ve made this argument many times before.

I’m debating whether or not to start using an iTunes utility called Kung-Tunes. This would allow me to display, in real-time, the song I’m currently listening to on the site. It works by gathering the relative data from iTunes and then uploading this data every so often to my webserver. From there, I would write a small PHP script to parse the file and display its contents on my page. Like I said, still not sure if I’m going to implement this or not.

I got a chance to play with an iTrip today and walked away less than impressed. The FM signal was extremely weak and just wouldn’t work well in any practical position in my car. I could hold it up and put it near my roof and my radio would receive the signal fine, but that’s obviously not an option. I’m extremely disappointed as I’ve been looking forward to this device for some time. Not only is it the smallest iPod FM transmitter, but it also runs solely off the iPod’s battery and eats up as much power as headphones otherwise would. Speaking of the iPod, I read today that the latest software for the iPod (Mac) will keep track of the number of times you’ve listened to each song (something that iTunes does as well) and will update iTunes with this information each time you sync it. Brilliant. :)

Can’t get enough

Earlier today I picked up the 900-page Mac OS X Bible (Jaguar Edition). I can never learn too much about my new baby.

Get at me

Made some slight aesthetic changes to the site. The CSS has been cleaned up and slimmed down. As usual, let me know if something looks a little odd (keep in mind that I’m now developing on a Mac and so I can only test on Mac browsers). I really wish that IE for Windows would get its ass in line and start conforming to standards — their dotted lines still insist on looking like a row of hyphens instead of dots and since the majority of people out there still insist on using IE (*puke*), I’m going to stick with the solid lines for now.

Apple PowerBook: Forever converted

Where to start, where to start. Coming from a strong Linux background, I immediately wanted to get “under the hood” of this bad-boy and tinker with Mac OS X. It was tough for me to take things slow as I usually feel extremely comfortable in front of a computer, and even though this was a Unix-based machine, on which I’m very well-versed and confident, it was an Apple and was going to require me to think differently about some things.

Let’s start with the initial bootup sequence. After answering a very brief questionnaire concerning the registration of the PowerBook, the machine booted up without incident. Within three minutes of taking it out of the box, I was already browsing web sites through my home wireless network. Yes, three minutes! If this was any indication of what this experience was going to be like, I was in good shape.

One of the first things I did after I started messing around with the machine was download Safari, Apple’s new homegrown browser. I must say that I’m quite impressed with it; so much in fact that it has already become my default web client on this machine. Its standards support is pretty damn good and getting better by the day from what I read. It’s incredibly fast and looks great. The only thing it’s really missing is the ability to restore your previous session (i.e., have it remember all the sites you had open before the browser crashed/was closed and be able to bring those back up), something Opera has been doing forever. I’ll never understand why this hasn’t caught on with the entire browser community as I find it incredibly useful, perhaps more so than any other single feature.

Everyone has seen the switch ads and probably thought that if you switched you would be able to easily move all of your Outlook data to your Mac. Not true. Apple nor Microsoft provide a way to move your e-mail/calendar/contacts from Outlook to Mac. Unbelievable. Either way, I knew this going in and took steps so that I could do it on my own. There are third-party programs out there that will do the majority of the dirty work, but I wasn’t about to spend more money. As far as my e-mail is concerned, I have all of my sent/received mail from 1999 (when I really started getting into my digital-packrat mentality), in a bunch of different formats. Given this, I wasn’t really worried about importing my current mail from Outlook because I can just grep through the .pst file if I need something, as I currently do for mail saved in formats other than .pst. As far as my calendar and contacts are concerned, I used a program (whose name escapes me at the moment) to batch-export all of my calendar entries and contacts to vCard, knowing that iCal supported this standard format. It was at this point that I realized that I had 563 calendar entries — time to clean up. I dropped the entries I wanted to keep into iCal (individually, ugh) and was all set there. The contacts were even easier as it let me import all of them at once.

One of the biggest worries I had was whether or not I’d be able to use my PC iPod on the Mac. I knew that OS X could mount a FAT partition, the filesystem used on the PC iPod, which would allow me to move files to and from the device, but I wanted to use the iTunes software and go completely Apple. I knew from research that it was possible to convert the PC iPod to an Apple iPod, but I didn’ think it would be as easy as it was. I started by installing PodMaster. I used this software to move all of my music from from the iPod to the PowerBook. I then used the iPod Software Updater to format the device to the HFS+ filesystem and to install the Apple software. Next, I just copied the music files over to my iTunes Library and then sync’d it with the iPod. Good to go.

This machine is, by far, the quietest notebook computer I’ve ever messed around with. It just doesn’t make any real noise, save the slight hum of the fan (when it’s actually on).

The slot-loading Superdrive (CD/DVD burner) is incredible. I really like how it is placed on the front of the machine instead of the side. Being a slot-loading drive, the first of its kind in a notebook, it sucks the CD/DVD in just like a car CD player — very neat.

As one might expect, the PowerBook feels incredibly solid. I’m sure its titanium casing doesn’t hurt (so freaking sweet!), but it’s more the construction itself that makes it feel indestructible. I honestly don’t think a bullet would hurt this thing; it feels that tough.

I’ve started to use Apple’s e-mail client, Mail, because I don’t yet have Office v.X (under which I would use Entourage for e-mail). There are a few things that I don’t like about the program, especially the way it handles replies, but for the most part, it’s a decent application. On a related note, I have the filtering software in training mode and received an e-mail from Apple regarding my registration — a simple thank-you — Mail thought it was junk and moved it to the trash. Perhaps I should alert Apple to the fact that their e-mail software doesn’t like the e-mails they send out. I realize that anything could have set off the filter trigger, but you would think that an @apple.com would slip through.

In conclusion, this machine and OS X are truly brilliant and have quickly turned me into a huge Mac proponent. While Windows never really had a shot at becoming my OS of choice, Linux certainly did, and was for a very long time, but I’m afraid they’ve all lost to OS X — Mac interface + Unix guts. You can bet that I’ll be putting all of my obsessive-compulsive energy into learning the ins and outs of this hardware and software — I can’t wait.

I’m a computer engineer

Well, today is the big day — I’m gradutating from college. I’m not going to lie, it’s been incredibly rough at times and I often wondered if it was ever going to end, but I can’t say that I haven’t enjoyed the pressure and competition, not to mention the wonderful friends I’ve picked up along the way. I’ve busted my ass these last few years and feel rather accomplished.

Goodbye engineering; hello law. In three months it all begins anew.