Public Apology

So my buddy at work said something to me that really threw me for a loop. He's been noticing my interactions with Eliza on this blog, and he says that it looks like I don't really respect her. In Jay's words: "you look like a jerk." Looking back at my posts, I can see his point. I haven't tried to show all the things about her that I like, that are more than just how she looks. She's smart, talented, driven. She puts up with my corny jokes. She's got a wicked sense of humor that pops out when you least expect it. And when she smiles at you, it's like everything will be alright, whatever it is.

She really is more than a pretty face to me. And it was wrong for me not to imply otherwise. In my excitement, forgot how things on the internet can easily be misconstrued. I am sorry. I guess this is my warning to be more clear in my posts.

Eliza stops by the ol' cube

Here she is and she’s a little more open to the camera than last time. Good times. But it's hard to concentrate on work as you might imagine.

Damn whippersnappers

Check out this kid. 17 years old and he's well on his way to building a multi-touch table for OS X. Great project and the kinda thing you read about in the biographies of the big buys in Silicon Valley. I wish I could get stock in him right now. This is a guy to watch.

Bridger's Multi-touch

Hmm

So I am back at work and looking at this puzzle again. And something's not quite right. Here's the puzzle again.

And here are the clues.

There's way too much going on today (you'll see why soon), but I'll take a closer look later.

Great weekend

Things have been going really well with Eliza since the conference. We hung out all weekend. It sucks that it's already Sunday, but at at least I get to see her at work.


Yeah, I'm pretty psyched.

YouTube badge

Thanks to Harper Reed of skinnycorp fame, I added a YouTube badge for all my videos. Neat, lightweight, and I didn't have to do it myself. What's not to love?

The Onion: Nearly 80% Of Roommates Got So Drunk Last Night

Study: Nearly 80 Percent Of Roommates Got So Drunk Last Night

Haha.

Checking in from InterOp

From earlier today. Gonna go do the Vegas thing with Eliza. Maybe she'll fork over that corporate cash and we'll gamble.

Puzzles huh?

So as part of my recruitment into Holomove, I had to go through all these puzzles. The founder of the company was all about puzzle so it's part of the company "ethos." Okay. But today while looking in the his office for some kind of inspiration (the office which is still completely intact which I find a little weird) I find this crossword puzzle.


Now Dr. Gough was supposed to be this big puzzle guy. But he's got this super simple puzzle on his desk. I am feeling like these guys built him up when really he just liked to do crossword puzzles in his spare time. I guess that's how myths start.

More from the inside

Just another video from around the office.

How I got my job (part 3)

Wow. I really need to get it together. I was supposed to post this weeks ago. Anyway, this part took me a little longer anyway, just not that long. My explanation is below (highlight to reveal):

It took me a while to figure out what was going on with this punch card. I assumed that they would expect me to have access to an old style computer or card reader. And I wasn’t about to use a key punch to actually duplicate the pattern on the card to see if it meant anything. The old “work smarter, not harder” eventually paid off. It wasn't until I was staring at it and noticed how the top couple of rows looked like binary, just 0's and 1's, that I figured it out. The whole damn thing is a string of binary code:

011000010110111000100000011001010111100001110000
011001010111001001101001011011010110010101101110
011101000010000001101001011011100010000001110011
011001010111001001100101011011100110010001101001
01110000011010010111010001111001

If you decode the binary into the alphabet, you get:

An experiment in serendipity

After a crazy amount of searching, I figured out that the phrase is what this scientist Dennis Gabor called his work. He’s known as the Father of Holography and he even has a his face on a stamp. In Hungary, but still. I want my own stamp. Gots to get me one of those.


Anyway, so I respond with saying “Dennis Gabor” and “holography.” Then I get another reply (at this point I’m both intrigued and a little annoyed).

Who was responsible for taking Gabor’s work into another dimension and what was required for him to do it?

More searching. I reply back with “Dr. Emmet Leith” and “lasers.” This was pretty much the last puzzle I was going to solve. After that, I finally got the “send us your resume” and the next day I got a call. How’s that for a pre-screener? Crazy, right? And I’ve been hearing about some developer challenge in the works so I bet these guys aren’t done. They are trying to out Microsoft Microsoft and out Google Google.

Job: check. Now to get to those other pesky items.

Live from the office

Well, it was live when I shot it anyway. This is my new boss. So you can imagine I have no trouble coming into work. I’m trying to get her to warm up to me. Time to apply the old Bozeman charm. She’s not so buttoned up that she doesn’t have myspace page. The internet stalking stops there.


I think I’m already getting in her good graces cause she's taking me to a conference (InterOp) to help man our booth. Back to Las Vegas, baby. For business travel. Not as exciting, but I’ll take it.

Zealous Autoconfig

I love you xkcd.

Two post in one day? Welcome to crazyville.

It's a quick one, but I'm pretty excited. They are finally trusting me to work on something bigger than minor debugging and upkeep. Things are looking up my friends.

My Life in a StartUp , now in Technicolor

Ok, in my (renewed) attempt to document the life and times of a developer in at a start up, I’m going to kick it multimedia style. Here’s a video from inside Holomove. I promise, I am going to update more regularly. And less typing and more live action.

Coding for 24hrs straight?

Hackontest. 24 hours of coding. Non-stop. In Switzerland on Google's dime.

Hackontest is a 24 hour programming competition between teams of three open source software projects. The event takes place at OpenExpo on September 24/25, 2008 in Zurich, Switzerland.

There are some pretty interesting projects already registered. I would guess you'd have to be a pretty solid team to be able to work under that pressure all night. Just the time difference alone would mess with my head.

1 week in

Yup, this my first full week at work, since I started on a Wednesday. The weekend was spent getting things arranged in my apartment. I think I’m pretty settled now. Sorry, in addition, to that I was dealing with some family issues of late, so posts have been more sparse than I hoped.

After interviewing and orientation, they finally let me know that Dr. Gough died in a scuba diving accident last year. It's horrible and I was really hoping to meet him. It would be nice to have a mentor around who knows how to stick to his guns and stick with it when he has a good idea. Sounds like he was a pretty focused guy. Here’s a little clip they played in orientation.

Another gorgeous day in San Diego

Finding it harder to unpack the last little bits when it’s so pretty outside. And the lack of internet access also helps me not stay inside. Just for comparison, take a look at the average temperatures of the last few places I’ve lived compared to San Diego.

Average Temp in Newport News

Average Temp in Troy, NY

Average Temp in San Diego

San Diego is a serious upgrade.

Some pics of the place:

Friday

Still not much to report. They are still trying to get me up to speed on all the projects so they can determine what is the best fit. And they are kind of “need to know” around the office, so they seem slow to show me anything. I guess they need a little while to figure out how Nate-tastic I am.

Looking forward to getting unpacked all the way and being done with the whole move in. It’s always when moving you realize how much crap you have.

First day at work

Nothing too big to report. Orientation. Forms, forms, forms. Checking out the office in more detail. Checking out my desk set up. Per my request, they got me a sweet Dell XPS M1530. With pretty much the max configuration. I couldn’t get them to spring for the Blu-Ray, but I convinced them of everything else.

Feels weird starting work on a Wednesday, but they were in such a hurry, I guess it makes sense. So far, so good. I’m stoked.