February, 2013

It is the second month of the year. This month was mostly unproductive. I spend most of my time looking for jobs, mail corresponding and stuff like that. Good thing is I got some positive feedbacks. I hope I can concentrate on my dissertation now. I have to finish my dissertation by April, since May third is the last date I can defend. I am hoping I would be able to do so before that. Let see how it goes.

I got a great deal of experiences I can say. I have seen all kinds of interviews. I attract quite a lot of wrong guys. I had an interview with a company where I applied hoping they are going to some cool stuff with cloud. Later I realized it is just a CRM software management. Then I was interviewed by people who are looking for UI guys. Technically I have zero experience with UI. UI is something I never thrilled to work at. Anyway experience matter, bitter or sweater :)

I feel like I should thank countless recruiters who helped me in the process. What matter most in job hunting is persuasiveness and networking. I guess they are pretty handy regardless the task at hand. Now that we have spring around the corner, it's time for a new beginning. I am trying to make myself ready for the next phase of my life.

Google play store

I stole Lipa's Nexus 7 today. I reset the device and erase all of her contents and login using my id. That's when the surprise came on. Google play installed all of my apps that I use in my phone. That was a pure surprise. It did not do the same thing with my phone though. I changed my phone last, I still had to install of apps. So I guess it is either new version of android or a feature of pure android.

It was really a cool feature. If changing device is now become really simple. I wish Google would do the same for app data as well. Specially, some apps required tons of data. I really hate to configure them again.

BTW' Swiftkey mobile version on Nexus 7 sucks. The default android keyboard is way better. And overall nexus 7 is way better for blogging compared to smartphone. Technically I guess blogging is the only potential use I have now for this nexus 7. It is really fun blogging with nexus 7.

Looking for job?

Looking for job itself is a tough job. Sending resume to thousands places and then wait for the call. Sounds like fishing :) well in many respect it is fishing. Your job is to pick an appropriate one for you. You have to do everything right for the right fish. At least it is told that one simple miss step can slide you down at the ground level again. I think those who are good at fishing should do a real good job at finding the right job.

I have a feeling that the job market is not that bad now. At least I saw plenty of openings in every company's website. But the game is just not right for fresh graduates. I still have not cracked the job searching problem. I guess I need little more time to understand the problem better.

Some people call it number game, at the beginning I thought so. But I have a feeling now that I was wrong. If it is simply a number game then flooding with your resume would be sufficient to secure one job. But that did not work for me. I don't thing flooding is the right strategy.

Spending hours for one job sounds like promising. But there is no guarantee that it gonna work end of the day. You need to spend your time for the right position. Which is by definition is a hard searching problem. Let say you spend 5 hours a day to look for jobs. If you spend 2 hours for one position you can apply for at best two positions per day. In order apply for 10 companies you have spend an entire week. And at the end of the day you may not heard anything from any of them.

Networking is a really good strategy. I think networking works better than aforementioned twos. Networking helps a lot to get the interview call. Of course you are on your own after that. In my case I have real trauma about phone interview. Somehow phone interviews don't work for me. I have a feeling I never gonna pass any phone interview. I don't get nervous, it just doesn't work for me. Here, in America employer's first screening is always via phone that limits my probability to extremely tiny. If one thing I am never short of is hope, let's hope for the best :)

Multitasking is evil?

I was reading an article on therumpus.net yesterday. It was about some things about mediocre. One interesting section caught my attention is multitasking. The author was trying to established a point that multitasking is evil. We should avoid it. I remember I have seen similar idea in other popular best selling books. What is so evil about multitasking that turns these people against multitasking.

The first and most common thing in these articles is statistics. They provide such and such statistics to justify how our brain fail to perform its regular operation while multi tasking. Okay buy that. Now what? So our brain cannot perform multitasks. Well, I have a problem with the statistics and experimentation as well. Surely, our brain can multi task, you don't pause your breath to see what you have in front of your eyes. What is missing? I think most of these statistics is flawed because when we measure these statistics we essentially ignore the bias of instrument we are using for the experiments. Sure, you cannot text while drive but that does not mean you cannot do anything!

Well, if that is true we can design a whole variety of things those are multitasking friendly. Or can we make multitasking friendly instruments? I think it could be whole different area of product design philosophy. The author of that article cannot play chase while talking on phone and so he asked us to avoid multitasking. But suggestions would be change the design of the phone so that our author can play chess while talking without interfering one another. Is such a design possible?

Dissertation

I need to start writing my dissertation. I have been so busy with job hunting that I could not manage any time for dissertation. I guess I have two more months to wrap up my dissertation. I guess that's okay. Once I have an offer I can finish writing anytime. Writing the entire thing and putting them together should not be too difficult.

I need to collect few results as well. That's okay. I have the preliminary results for the extended approach and I noticed the final results are not too different from my preliminary results. I hope I can use some parts from my masters thesis. That's a big relief. I guess my introduction can be made out of my SIGMOD paper.

I need to complete the approach description part and theoretical analysis part. Result and analysis should not take more than month. Technically, I have March and half of April. I think I should start writing. This is middle of February and a dissertation would take at least two months.

My idea is I will finish first draft of four chapters by next week! Let see how it goes :)

Snowy Norman

Here is my mobile photography again.

Sweet Dreams

Sweet dreams are made of these

Who am I to disagree?

Travel the world and the seven seas

Everybody's looking for something

Some of them want to use you

Some of them want to get used by you

Some of them want to abuse you

Some of them want to be abused

Sweet dreams are made of these

Who am I to disagree?

Travel the world and the seven seas

Everybody's looking for something

Some of them want to use you

Some of them want to get used by you

Some of them want to abuse you

Some of them want to be abused

I wanna use you and abuse you

I wanna know what's inside you

Movin' on, movin' on, movin' on

Movin' on, movin' on, movin' on, movin' on

Sweet dreams are made of these

Who am I to disagree?

Travel the world and the seven seas

Everybody's looking for something

Some of them want to use you

Some of them want to get used by you

Some of them want to abuse you

Some of them want to be abused

I'm gonna use you and abuse you

I'm gonna know what's inside

Gonna use you and abuse you

I'm gonna know what's inside you

[Marilyn Manson]

Foggy Norman

I think you can see all kinds of weather you can imagine in Norman. Here is one for yesterday's foggy Norman.

Looking for something

We were watching an indian movie. The movie was about the struggle of a pregnant indian woman who is looking for her husband. In the middle of the movie we realize that if the a movie is about finding someone or something, it tends to capture viewer attention very well. I am pretty busy these days, maybe right way to say is, I am pretty consumed these days. Then, I realized looking for something can bring all kinds of fun. Sometimes I am excited, sometimes I am frustrated, sometimes I feel hopeful, sometimes I feel desolate. I have all kinds of feelings just by pursuing a single thing. Isn't it amazing? Somehow pursuing something desperately can be anything but boring. I don't get it, how come something seemingly similar can dig up all these different feelings from a single mind. Human mind is an amazing thing.