::::: : the wood : davidrobins.com

My name is David Robins: Christian, lead developer (resume), writer, photographer, runner, libertarian (voluntaryist), and student.

This is also my son David Geoffrey Robins' site.

Interviews north and south

News ·Sunday October 2, 2011 @ 17:52 EDT (link)

This is just a brief note to file away dates, written 2012-11-27.

Monday: working on the "RT" (Render Target) abstraction for Word; checked in a fix for region performance improvements: regions should still use GDI for calculations even in D2D (v1), because they're massively faster.

Tuesday: Flying out to New York, NY for Bloomberg interview. Airports are as much fun as ever and I don't miss it. At least someone else is paying! Took a cab to the hotel, a small but clean place called the Da Vinci; it took the cabbie (from JFK) a little while to find it.

Wednesday: Bloomberg interviews. Actually headed over (by cab from my hotel) to Solomon-Page (technical recruiter) first to meet with Darren Ogoff, and then their tech director, Steven Wolff. The morning interviews at Bloomberg had fallen through—a principal had called in sick and they couldn't find a replacement—so I cooled my heels in a conference room for a few hours. Fortunately I had brought a book. Then I had a technical interview with Steven, which went well, although he noted I was almost a "low talker".

I had interviewed with Steven earlier via Skype (I had to create an account). I've still got my solutions to the longer exercises: there was a skills assessment (Excel worksheet), then a question to reverse the last five items in a linked list, implementing a stack then using it to implement an RPN calculator, and some shorter items, most of which were pasted to him over Skype: reverse a string, implement strcmp, reference-counted string, and binary search a string array allowing for empty entries.

For lunch, I went with Darren to a nearby deli and got a pita sandwich, which I brought back to "my" conference room to eat. I really didn't get to see much of the city, although I doubt it would have helped.

I took another cab to Bloomberg, went in, had my photo taken and a temporary ID made in the lobby, then passed a guarded turnstile (using the ID) to get to elevators. I was met on I think the 5th floor by someone from Bloomberg, allowed to stash my bags, and waited to be met and taken the rest of the way up to I think the 30th? floor. It's been almost a year, but I believe I was then taken to an interview room (small room, table, metal chairs, Bloomberg terminal, glass walls, very modern) and interviewed by two pairs of developers.

I don't recall all the questions, although I do recall one that took me longer than it should have: the old "use an array to count frequencies" trick (array[ch]++ rather than, say, using a hash or tree map). They were decently in-depth that I could tell they knew their stuff, but not difficult. Eventually a manager of the department (trading solutions?) asked me some questions then showed me around where I would be working if I got an offer. To be honest, I was unimpressed: I would have part of one long table in a room of such tables; little privacy and noisy. He took me past a display with old Bloomberg terminals, which was interesting, and past a "free food" area which rather put Microsoft's kitchens to shame, where I picked up some chips. I asked if there were any prohibitions on employees trading (outside work), and he said no.

Afterward, I took a cab back to Solomon-Page, since Darren was anxious to talk about the interviews; he was glad they went well (that I was there so long, past, I think, the scheduled time, was a good sign) but I couldn't stay: had to get a cab to the airport to catch my flight. (I was, of course, later reimbursed for all costs, except cap tips; there was a bit of a misunderstanding where someone in their accounting department dropped the tax on the flights, but it was eventually cleared up.)

Thursday: Wheels down, wheels up… I flew out to St. Peterburg (TPA), and was greeted by warmth and palm trees. Freedom Scientific put me up in a La Quinta (Ulmerton and 34th—with a Chick-fil-A right next door, which we couldn't get in Washington). It was a "regular" hotel, i.e., a room with two queens or a king and space to walk around in, not like the rather cramped room in NYC, and probably cheaper to boot. I was also given a rental car (Chevy Aveo). I settled in and ordered a wake-up call to be up in plenty of time for interviews the next day.

Friday: Someone let me in the door (swipe-card access, like most places), and I sat in a small lobby with only an "Authorized Personnel Only" sign keeping me from the offices. I think I met with Miguel first; he was my main phone contact. I was put in a conference room, offered coffee, water, etc., and then questioned by various interviewers. I remember I definitely talked to Sriram and Nataliya, and Glenn (CTO) over the phone (he works remotely, and is blind), then went to lunch with Rob (a director—manager/team lead anywhere else) and talked to Carl (the other director, both reporting to Miguel, VP of Software Engineering) after lunch. Sriram and Nataliya asked some coding questions, where I wrote up solutions on the whiteboard or paper (tree traversal, that sort of thing); the interviews were not quite as rigorous as Bloomberg, but certainly sufficient for screening (if the interviewers are listened to!; the area is a bit of a seller's market).

I recall Rob asked about getting things done, dealing with resistance to ideas, that sort of thing, and I talked about making a business case to build things a certain way to persuade that what I wanted to do was the right thing—which I've done a few times (yes, I accepted their offer; Bloomberg's was higher, but factoring in cost of living and having to live in NYC, not enough to persuade me to work there).

Saturday: They were kind enough to pay for me to stay another day to look around the area; so I went to downtown St. Pete's, talked to a realtor and learned a bit about homes and pricing, and generally explored the area. I was rather expecting to get an offer, and the warm and sun was pleasant contrasted with Washington's rain and perpetual cloudy gloom; and prices for houses and apartments were reasonable, and they were decent-sized, not cramped (or hours of commute away) like NYC.

Sunday: Flew back to Redmond, and made plans for breaking the news to my boss….

Books finished: The Myth of the Robber Barons.

Another lounge shoot, with food

News, Work, Guns ·Friday September 9, 2011 @ 23:31 EDT (link)

1030 - 1500. Ate around 1300. Shot the SCAR-H and AR-15 and Glock 34. Bipod is great. Need to get another one so both AR-15 and SCAR can keep one attached.

Books finished: The Bishop.

8th anniversary - Russell's, Olive Garden

News ·Sunday August 28, 2011 @ 19:06 EDT (link)

We went to Russell's in Bothell (1900) for our anniversary dinner; nice place, good food, then for dessert at Olive Garden in Kirkland the next day.

And so it goes: leaving the west coast

News, Work ·Tuesday August 23, 2011 @ 01:37 EDT (link)

We have been planning to leave here, to go back east to be closer to our parents, to find a place (hopefully in Tennessee or another friendly Southern state) with some space to settle in (and for a range, perhaps, even), and have a family, and reconnect a little perhaps. It has been isolating out here, especially for Honey since she doesn't work and have the connections I get from that (although some CLAMS folk wrought great evil; although I have forgiven, it remains, but I think the positives outweighed). We have been planning to leave here for over a year, but I wanted to finish my Master's degree; and it was finished in July, so now things are beginning.

Speaking of mailing lists ("DLs" or Discussion Lists, in MS-speak), I have been unsubscribing (and deleting folders) of ones I don't really read (e.g., Canucks, Investment, Litebulb); CLAMS has been archived, and others will be closer to the date so I don't miss much (especially msgun and prepare). This is the beginning.

There's a lot to do before actually packing and moving. Of course, first is finding a job, likely via Dice (since I don't want to let contacts on, e.g., LinkedIn know, so I can't leverage them, which may have been helpful); so I'm dusting off my resume (luckily I have a fairly recent one since my Master's program required it, so I'm just cutting and trimming and doing a little reformatting).

We need to get rid of whatever we don't need, either selling if we can get some money (like the DVD cabinet, since they've all been ripped to an external HD), any books we don't need, files and papers and (ancient) journals that aren't needed or can be recorded electronically (with backups), and so forth. There will be more to move than when we arrived in the state (treadmill, set of living room couches, maybe a bookcase, a bed after a tree fell on the first one, although it's still usable; we just got rid of the side cabinets, piano, and smaller items), and this time I expect we'll be loading a truck again rather than having commercial movers do everything (help appreciated!)

It's been an interesting time; worked with and interacted socially with a lot of good people; came into libertarianism, fully—anarcho-capitalism, principled respect for self-ownership, reading the great authors like Rothbard and Bastiat and newer ones like Molyneux and Kinsella. I learned about shipping (shrink-wrap) software: shipping is a feature, and we deliver. I learned that "Micro$oft" isn't the big bad, nor incompetent; it's a great group of smart people that accomplish diverse goals (which may not make everyone happy), although I remain a Linux and open source software user, contributor, and fan. I got to do a lot of fun, interesting, and globally useful development in Word, from the object model to OfficeArt to co-authoring, the drawing abstraction layer, D2D printing, and immersive commenting.

I learned some of the things I want in life and how I want to obtain them and what I will and will not do; I gained confidence and skills, and perhaps learned a little about people, too. Facebook arrived, and we finally hopped on board, and I got to know some people that I'd never met. We want a quiet place to live and grow in a quiet part of the country with friendly but not nosy neighbors, not too close, with fast Internet and not too far from both sets of parents—or from work, if I can't telecommute (which is down). I want to continue to develop the 7 habits.

This stage is done; the next beckons.

Books finished: Liberty Defined.

Deciding against a doctorate

News ·Thursday August 18, 2011 @ 20:38 EDT (link)

I entertained for a while the idea of going on and getting my Ph.D, most likely in Computer Science, but possibly—due to the influence of various articles by Dr. Walter Block—in economics; the math wouldn't be a problem and I could pick up the undergrad econ courses fairly quickly.

I looked into various schools, general admission procedures, and talked to a few kind individuals to gather information, among them DP and AS. I became confident that I could put together a good application with sufficient references (from professors from project courses or those with paper or presentation components primarily, to avoid the damning "did well in class" faint praise), and grades and GRE scores are not a problem (they also apparently don't count for much, to the point that it seems surprising they even bother asking for them).

Ultimately I decided against it for a combination of reasons: the long (5-6) year program with low pay and (potentially) miserable hours; the extremely poor job market for teaching or research (even privately), and I learned about the "postdoc treadmill"; I like reading, but there are limits, and this might push them!; earnings tend to be no higher, or even lower than a Master's degree holder (in science fields); I can learn most items of interest on my own while working a good job (the Internet, and accessible school libraries and online journals, are wonderful things); I can probably teach (adjunct professor?) without a degree if I want to give it a try; I can live without being called "doctor"; and while I would have liked to get some of my tax money back in the form of the paid tuition and stipend, I wasn't looking forward to being perceived as a parasite; basically, I want to move on, find a place and a bit of land to settle down on, not take a long timeout like this. I should note that Honey fully supported me doing a doctorate. But it does not seem like the right thing at this time; I may revisit the possibility at a later date.

Books finished: The Declaration of Independents.

A tale of four mailing lists

News, Political, Work ·Sunday August 14, 2011 @ 01:22 EDT (link)

The first list presents itself as an out of the way park. On the front gate, the company logo—it's clearly company property, but there's also a little plaque saying that the opinions of the park maintenance staff do not reflect those of the corporation. The hedges are generally well-trimmed, the grass manicured to within an inch of its life, and signs direct people to stay off it. Upon someone new entering the park, one of the fussy groundskeepers hangs up his rake and scuttles over, demanding the credentials of the individual that would dare seek admission. They are grilled as to how they found this secret park, assured that their association with it will be kept secret, and their bona fide adherence to the groundskeepers' (professed) creed is examined. Many are found insufficiently pure, and asked to leave. Others may enter, and converse with the other people in the park, although the groundskeepers are always listening in on the conversations and sometimes stamp their feet in rage and scream at the conversationalists if they are unhappy with what is being said. Although imperious, they can sometimes be calmed down and then they go back to their raking and clipping. Except sometimes, they get so angry at conversations others are having that they go home to their parents' basement, return with their father's shotgun, and violently drive the hated speakers of logic out of "their" park.

Our next is a park without gates (but a quiet sign lets entrants know they're still on company property, and again we see the plaque noting the opinions of the individuals within are not official Microsoft policy), and where the lawns and wild gardens may sometimes get a little unruly. But people speak freely; nobody monitors them; the groundskeepers keep the lanes clear, but on nice days people just stroll across the grass. People know the groundskeeper will stop any physical altercations if any should arise—none ever have, but he keeps the lawns and path free of damage and disease, and can sometimes be seen hoisting a mug with the others in the park and engaging them in fervent, even heated discussion.

The last one doesn't actually have any boundaries, exists outside of corporate property, and people are frequently seen beating others to death with shovels. They tend to come back as zombies and do unspeakable things to their attacker's pets, although at the end of the day they present very tasty-looking meals.

(I know I promised four, but the second park is really a two-fer.)

The interesting thing was that the last park made a change this year to move its users off of corporate property; so it is in fact two parks next door, one being the old corporate park which is sometimes still used, and the other the new private one (owned, not merely raked and maintained, by individual denizens). I haven't seen much of a difference, but I suspect HR is much less concerned with what goes on in the private one. It might be worth privatizing a few other parks, too; but the selected management would have to be a laissez-faire crew, not prone to bringing their shotguns around when their betters are having a discussion. That lesson has been learned.

Books finished: The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, How Capitalism Saved America.

Pollocks, zoo, Mars Hill

News ·Sunday August 7, 2011 @ 20:45 EDT (link)

Honey's uncle and aunt and cousins from Pullman arrived Saturday afternoon (they stopped at a hotel half-way); we went to the Woodland Park Zoo in Seattle for the rest of the afternoon and evening. We were going to drive there but were saved the trouble by taking the free shuttle from the South Kirkland Park and Ride (@ 1415) across Lake Washington.

Unfortunately I didn't have my Microsoft Prime Card, which would have gotten us a substantial discount, so we ended up paying something like $35 for two tickets (even with a coupon that Aunt Lynn gave us). Oh well.

It was a beautiful day; the zoo was fun, lot of walking, glad I brought a water bottle for us. We took the second to last bus out, the 1745, heading back to Redmond. We stopped for teriyaki (I had chicken katsu) at Niko Teriyaki on Redmond Way; the Pollocks kindly treated us. That evening we played Scotland Yard—they caught me—and watched Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows part 1, which was quite good.

In the morning we got up early (for us) and went to the 0900 service at Mars Hill Bellevue. We had sandwiches here for lunch (toasted banana!) and I talked to uncle Dave about doctoral programs, admissions, the process, etc. They left a little after 1330.

Books finished: A Patriot's History of the United States.

Cirith-ungol: new case fan

News, Technical ·Friday July 29, 2011 @ 17:34 EDT (link)

Cirith-ungol, the media box, got a new case fan from Hard Drives Northwest today. The old one had apparently died a while back, leading to the machine shutting down under high CPU load (uncompressing large RAR files, usually, while running MythTV), and also likely causing a blown capacitor on the motherboard, which may or may not lead to eventual death. I picked up a Stealth fan which is doing pretty well so far; runs quiet, and seems to be keeping the CPU fan quiet too.

Sliders: California Reich: stupid question

Political, Media ·Saturday July 23, 2011 @ 21:28 EDT (link)

Watching Sliders, episode California Reich: the "Racial Police" are rounding up all of the "impure" (nonwhites) into camps, calling them "migrants", chanting "America for Americans", etc. At one point Remy (Rembrandt Brown) is talking to another black man in the camp after they have been sent to work on processing piles clothing confiscated from other prisoners and their families. The other man, an older man, while he had resisted when they turned the firehoses on him at Selma, had given up in this present time; it's politics, he said, and it would cycle around back and they would eventually be free. "They took a vote," he shrugs—making the excellent point that majoritanism ("democracy") does not morally justify harming people; and from that we can see that neither is law necessarily moral (and by observation we can see that it rarely is, but I digress).

However, they ruin it a great deal with Remy's next question: "Did you get to vote?" It is unanswered and presumably the answer is meant to be "No" (although since the vote was necessarily before people were rounded up and their rights infringed in every way, "Yes" would be more reasonable). However, the question is irrelevant, and the writers seem not to understand that. Consider the two possibilities:

"Minorities" (not so much in California now, really) didn't get to vote. Violence was done against them simply by the choice of the rest of the populace, presumably because those others controlled the biggest gang around—the state.
They did get to vote, but were outvoted. This is more interesting, because the writers seem to have missed that this still doesn't justify violence or threat of violence—coercion—against peaceful people.

That is, in neither case is it right that violence was done against peaceful individuals: not when a majority including the victims wants it, or a majority excluding the victims, nor if the "representatives" chosen by either majority want it (a republic isn't any better than a democracy when you get down to it). Violence of this blatant sort against innocent people is not justified, nor any other, such as the extortion of "taxes" or the "laws" (opinions with a gun) against peaceful pursuits (drug use being a big one in the US, but consider the gigantic scam of licensure for a moment too; and there are many other categories of such harm done against peaceful individuals).

Books finished: Confessor.

2A day, Tinkham pit

News, Guns ·Saturday July 16, 2011 @ 17:15 EDT (link)

Another Microsoft gun group "Second Amendment" (2A) day was held at Tinkham pit (off I-90 exit 42) today, and this is the way of it. The meetup was scheduled from 1100-1600, but that seemed a tad early for a weekend so I didn't leave until a little after 1100, arriving at the pit at around 1230? perhaps. On the last stretch of road, where I was wondering if I had gone the right way (right at the fork), the driver of a green Nissan, Adam, hailed me, coming the other way; he too was looking for the pit and despaired of finding it, having turned after going about another quarter mile in my direction. I said I thought this was the right road, and so he followed me and indeed, about a half mile there was the pit and 4-5 vehicles. Some people had put up square tents to keep the rain off; it rained intermittently while we were there and the sun shone brilliantly as we prepared to leave. Such is the Pacific northwest.

I backed close to the firing line and set up my camping chair and brought my AR-15 and boxes and target cardboard over, as well as some bowling pins and pop cans, and waited for a ceasefire to set up. While waiting, I loaded some Glock and XDM magazines (AR-15 mags were already loaded, as was my one, lonesome SCAR 17 magazine). I set up a shooting gallery of pop cans for pistol, then further back the target cardboard (piece of cardboard with 3x2 printed bull's-eye targets on it), also stapling the 1040 guidebook to it (since it's illegal to shoot politicians and IRS bureaucrats). I also set up a row of bowling pins further back. When the range went hot, I preceded to demolish them all with abandon. The AR-15 sight needed a little adjustment, so I used the paper targets for that. Next ceasefire, I set up the pins again and another box of (cheap, diet—less sticky) pop cans; and that was about it. I shot my Glock 34 and XDM9, and AR-15, but not the SCAR 17S, although I did get it out for the picture and for some people to take a look at. Josh came out; apparently Tony was there earlier; Ken was there, and a few people I knew from the group but hasn't met previously; perhaps 10 in all. Not like some of the bigger gatherings at Sultan in times past, but a good-sized group for this pit.

That took us to just after 1500, which is when cleanup began, drinking was done (it is not snobbery to drink bottled beer!), and people started to leave. Got home about 1700—time to clean up, dry everything out, and clean guns.

Books finished: Phantom, Who.