Dilemmas

Wow, it's been almost a year... Screw the excuses, I just didn't feel like blogging. And I'm still not totally sure I do.

I thought that being funemployed would give a lot of time for blogging and that the stress of writing my thesis would encourage my to seek comfort in this diary-like therapy. Somehow that didn't happen. The thesis went as usual: it started with a feeling like "I'm writing the best thesis ever!" and ended with "I'm so tired of it! When will it be over?". Of one thing I am absolutely sure (got the Twilight allusion?): school is not my happy place. Happily, school is over: I graduated last December. I now have two masters. It's really cool when it's over.

What do you do when you graduate? You get a full-time job. (Well, depending on your industry, this my be easier said than done, but in mine, staying unemployed is more of a challenge than finding work.) That's what I did. Since it's only one query away, I'll just say it: it's at WebInterpret. (Now my physical location is only another query away - is that the way things should be? Dilemma... Can I openly write about where I am or is that an entry for please-rob-me.com? Dilemma...)

My life is so much more grown-up now. Grown-up in the sense that my party small talk involves tales of recent purchases and maintenance actions performed in my home. I come home from work tired (being tired is a common denominator for all adults) and cook and clean. When I browse the web, it's for cooking recipes. Am I interesting enough? Will I provide entertaining content? Dilemma...

Or maybe I'm just ranting too much? (Forgive me, I'm currently in bed with a cold.) Because on the other hand, I'm feeling like I'm gradually getting so much stronger. In October-December, I was just getting used to full-time work and it drained all my energy. I came home, made dinner, sat at the computer. In January, I added 3 hours of physical activity a week. In March, I was up to 6. (I still am.) Maybe it's time to add some more hobbies and interests to the mix. Maybe it's time to read, do and write more cool stuff. Let's hope it is!

Geek goes funemployed

Hi guys, I'm funemployed!

This is good news for two reasons:

1. I now have more time to do loads of great stuff,
2. I'm gonna blog more, since I'll be looking for a job and trying look my best out there in the interwebs.

So what exactly are these loads of great stuff?

1. Meeting lots of friends (I've started already and it's going great.)
2. Writing my master thesis in CS (I've started already and it's going to be going great.)
3. Getting another Microsoft certificate, 70-562 this time.
4. Writing the best Android app ever, the one from the Big Bang Theory that solves differential equations (yeah, I'm 100% serious).
5. Running and biking in the sunshine.
6. Surely many more - funemployed doesn't mean idle!

I am told not to show off my material status on the Internet, so I won't get into the details, but let me just say I am now the lucky owner of an Android device - all the app out there are really great and I feel inspired to contribute some of my own. Even cooler, I have a few friends who feel the same way - bring on the SDK!

I got to level one at Project Euler (and would like to thank my boss and everyone...)

I go to level one at Project Euler! I got this pretty picture as a reward:


Now what does this have to do with my boss...

First, let's precise that the term "my boss" means "those guys who make the decisions and I don't know which one decides what" - no sucking up! So, "the boss" transferred me to a Python project and with a bunch of guys, we're learning Python.

Remember how I wrote I started learnig Python by solving Project Euler problems? Well, that's what we're told to do at work! There's a contest going on, in which many problems are from there, so when I solved one, I submitted it both to work and Project Euler and it was the last one I needed to get to level one, so here I am.

Can something be more motiviating than a contest at work? I have to code...

I knew I forgot to blog about something

I knew I forgot to blog about something: I passed the70-536 exam!

I got 841 points and 700 was the passing score, so I was pretty well prepared. And they had good coffee at the center.

What's next? The asp.net one, as I have a bit of experience in that. And then maybe WPF, as it's the closest thing to Silverlight - or is there a Silverlight certificate coming up? I don't know about any so far.

Yet another programming language

I blogged about learning Java and C#, and here I am again, learning a new language again: Python.



They made me. At work. First, I was a bit mad: I'm learning Objective Caml at school, C# for the 70-536 exam, can my brain take much more?

But as soon as I tried it, I loved it for the easy syntax and operations on lists. It also supports supports multiple programming paradigms (primarily object oriented, imperative, and functional) - how cool is that?

Okay, so I started learning. First thing I did was, of course, "Hello, World!". Then, my new favourite way of learning programming languages - Project Euler! That was cool - doing something I love, learning and getting paid! Ain't I a lucky geek?

Spend 20 months learning and earning

Yes, you can spend 20 months learning and getting paid! I just came across two serious offers that allow you to do that.

First, you can spend two months learning C/C++ in Samsung's R&D center. Starts on the 5th of January. Full offer here.

Then, you can spend 18 months in an administration school. Starts on the 2nd of March. Full offer here.

(See how the dates match? It must be destiny!)

The catch? It's 18 months of administration school and then you have to work there for five years or give the money back. But hey, isn't it great how many opportunities to learn and earn are there?

I just registered for the 70-536 exam

Wish me luck, everyone! I'm taking the 70-536 exam (Microsoft .NET Framework - Application Development Foundation) on the 16th of December. So I have a bit less than three weeks to get ready. Maybe the fact that two colleagues from work are doing something isn't reason enough to do it, but I don't care - I'm doing it.

Okay, so how do I get prepared? Boss bought us the training kit:

It's a book with practice tests, so I'm reading it when I can and taking the tests. I really hope it will work. I'm a bit worried as I haven't heard the best opinions about it, but, well, we'll see.

My 6-months programming experience should help too, I recently learned how to use reflexions, for example. Basically, that's what the exam is supposed to measure: your level of experience.

A lovely school day

Today was a totally lovely school day.

First I slept until nine. Ate breakfast watching "Lipstick Jungle", showered, read the daily portion of LifeHacker. Ran out of the house afraid to miss the train and had to wait ten minutes. You know, the usual.

School started for me at twelve with a geometry seminar. Just before, I had an "ooops, I forgot I had a blog again" moment and blogged. But back to the seminar, it was really good. The guy was well-prepared, had read a few different sources, understood the subject very well, published the notes... excellent work.

Then a break, during which I got a free coffee (with a mug) from Citibank. Grateful, I decided to honor them with my presence at a case study, which turned out to be a long talk about career opportunities that convinced me that I was already working at the right place, as they were looking for network people and not programmers. I also got a call from a long unseen friend and set up a meeting for tomorrow.

Next came a law class, where I was distracted by the thought of my coming-up presentation about the Weil Pairing. Whatever that is, the fact that I keep getting the n-th power of one instead of a root is highly disturbing. I'm still working on that now that I'm home - and that's how a typical geek day ends.

Time to set some goals

The good lazy days of holidays are over. School has started, it's just two days a week, but with three days of work, it's hard to catch me home. And it's at least imprudent for me to stay lazy. So it's time to get organized and set some goals.

First goal, of course, it to do all the required schoolwork. That's three exams, one lab and one master paper. School... I've done that ten times already.

Second, professional goals: get my salary up and get certificates. I got a raise recently, but my work speed is still very limited by the need of learning how to do something before actually doing it. Well, it's not like in this job you get to a point where you know everything, but you do get to a point where you know the given technology, you know the available tools, you know which to choose and all that kind of stuff I often have to ask my workmates or Boyfriend.

Third, a personal goal: get rid of as much stuff as possible. I will most probably be moving out next summer and I don't want my first adult flat to be as messy over-stuffed as my room is now. In our society, everyone owns too much stuff anyway. Lifehacker has a lot of advice about that and when I started reading it, I very quickly started watching more what I buy. I want to have control over everything that enters my personal space. I can't just leave a mess at my parent's place, so a lot of things have to go. So, this morning, two dozens of magazines are gone. I also got some ideas about some other stuff.

Things are going good, and I hope it stays that way.

New direction in programming

I had lots of fun learning Silverlight at work, but fun doesn't last forever. I finished the website and joined a big project in asp.net. It's not as easy as Silverlight was, but that's a great thing. Silverlight alone is not much more than a Flash replacement (a good one imho, but still), it's the .net framework that gives it its power.

So I'm not learning Java anymore. I finished the school assignements I had in Java and have no intention of going further in that direction (but let's wait for the semester to begin and see what school brings). I'm learning asp.net.

Does that mean my Silverlight blogging is over? I hope not, but now I will only have my free time for that. And if you know me or have read the colorful paragraph on the right, you know how little free time I have and how much stuff I try to fit in it. Still, I love Silverlight and will do my best.

How to learn Silverlight in 10 steps

I'm feeling like the luckiest geek on Earth. I had mixed feeling about starting work because I wanted to have some free time to learn Silverlight. And guess what - that's exactly what I've been doing at work for the last two weeks!

Here's what I started with: a strong background in programming, but mainly in ANSI C, a minimum knowledge of C#, a bit of experience in creating a GUI in Java... and that's all that's relevant, I guess. And here's what I've done so far, put in an as systematic way as I can, so if you wanna learn Silverlight too, follow me.

-1. Find out what Silverlight is and where it fits. If you're just gonna use it as a Flash replacement, there's no point.
0. Get the tools from http://silverlight.net/GetStarted/. (You might as well learn from that website and be really happy, but for me, it's not systematical enough and I hate video tutorials, so I've been to many other places).
   
1. Make a "Hello World" application to understand what is what in a Silverlight application. This tutorial is a great place to start and you can follow all the 8 parts right now for a quick walkthrough of the basic features. That's what I did, and then I googled for specific stuff I needed.
   
2. Learn about the layout controls: grid, stack and canvas. Now you can add stuff to your application without wondering why they all are in the left top corner and overlap each other. And to make a more custom user interface, learn about basic geometric shapes.
3. Learn about the basic controls: buttons, radio buttons, text boxes, and whatever you might need and is already out there ready for you.
4. Learn about event handling.
5. To use lists, grids and stuff, learn about data binding and data collections.
6. Learn to make your own controls and to style them, in XAML directly or with Blender. See also this glass button tutorial.
7. Learn to make animations: in XAML, in C#, with Blender. Why three ways? Blender produces XAML code, probably faster than you'd type it, but it's useful to understand how it works to be able to modify it. In C#, you may have problems keeping the logic separated from the presentation, but sometimes you need to create or modify animations at runtime or reuse them. Before you do too much with animations, learn about the Visual State Manager. This tutorial explains it in an excellent way, read it carefully. It has issues, unfortunately, see here.
8. Learn about accessing the HTML DOM from managed code.
   
9. Learn about networking and communication in Silverlight.
   
10. Learn using isolated storage and application settings.
    

I've been done the steps up to number seven. You're not exactly done after number ten, there might be stuff I'm not yet aware of and there are more advanced topics like inheriting from User Control vs. Custom Control or security. You may need to improve your C#. Plus, no tutorial will ever replace experience, but if you wanna gain it, I hope I've helped you figure out how to start.

First day of work

The title of the post is misleading: today is my second day of work. But I was so busy on the first one that I didn't get to tell my fascinating adventures.

I had to get there after 11p.m., so I decided to learn a bit of C#. I printed made Brother print for me the advanced chapters of "C# Programming" on Wikibooks - cool and useful. That page lead me to a tutorial entitled "learning C# in 5 minutes" which I tried in the 5 minutes before going out, but I don't really feel like that made me learn C#.

And the I went to the real work. Finally. And spent the whole day preparing my workstation, whcih means mostly installing Windows XP. That went not too bad, reinstalling my systems in March was a good idea as I knew pretty well everything I had to do.

Well, and that was all on my first day. Today I installed Office and I'm gonna discuss with the boss wich project I will join and therefore what developement environment to set up.

I Twitter!

Twitter. It's everywhere now. I couldn't have missed me, could it?

Basically, Twitter is like a blog, but there is a140 character limit, which makes it more suitable for some uses.

I first thought Twitter had only two uses:

1. reporting details of your life nobody cares about, like "I just went to the bathroom and made the biggest... mistake ever reporting about it".
2. losing weight publicly (or tracking any other goal).
   

And then Penelope Trunk blogged about Twitter and some people called it a "new technology". That's two very wrong things.

First, Penelope Trunk. I like reading her career advice blog, but I don't really trust her advice. She writes not to post one's naked pictures on the web - what a wisdom! A few months later, a guest blogger called "Google Guy" writes: "Those photos don’t matter as much as you think". She gives "advice at the intersection of work and life" but is getting divorced and blames it on the fact that her husband stayed at home with the kids. And she twitters:

Asking my therapist: on my blog post about kissing the farmer, should I leave the comments from my not-yet ex?

(Want some advice at the intersection of love and life? Don't let your marriage fall apart. Don't blame divorce on a single bad decision. Don't kiss when you're involved with someone else. Don't kiss a guy when all you can say about him is "the farmer". Don't give intimate details to thousands of readers. Do hide the lame stuff.)

Second, "new technology". Twitter is a bit like a blog, but with shorter posts (who forbid you to write shorties before?) and a bit like your info on your instant messenger (except it's logged better). You gotta give me a lot more to call something "new technology".

Okay, so that was me and Twitter two days ago. Until my dearest Lifehacker gave me great inspiration. I added a few Twitters on the side of the blog and found more smart uses to the thing. But the biggest thing is: I have starter my own one! It's a combination of goal-tracking, note-taking and bookmark-managing and it's dedicated to learning languages. I'm just starting the summer holidays (and work on Monday!), so I'm trying to plan language learning for this summer. I was thinking about setting up a new blog for it, like Lila Loves Yoga, but a blog is too much work, so let's all welcome the new Twitter: Lila Loves Lingos.

Two important life goals reached

I have achieved two extremely important goals today. More specificly, I found stuff, really cool stuff.

1. I found a job. Two actually. I went to two interviews and got both jobs. I rejected the PHP programmer offer and chose the job where I will learn C# at work.

2. I found a Hello Kitty item that wasn't listed yet on Hello Kitty Hell. It's a Hello Kitty hole punch:
The image credit goes to HelloKittyMuseum and the entry on Hello Kitty Hell is now here.

What the geek is up to

Here's what I'm up to right now:

• Jobhunting. I didn't get the internship I was applying for and I'm really disappointed. So, the search goes on.
  
• Working out. I've finally updated my gym routine and my other blog (the details are over there).
  
• Learning how to make a GUI in Java. Like this. Because, as you all know, I'm learning Java.
  
• Studying, studying, studying. Finals are coming. Actually, one has already come, psychology, and I passed.
  

Geek works on soft skills

I am officially job-hunting, so I have plenty of thoughts to share. Last topic was career experiments, and today's is soft skills. Yeah, I know, geeks and soft skills...

I'm not gonna get into details about times when I couldn't answer any question that wasn't perfectly precise and small talk was just a programming language for me. Let's just say I've always been a true geek.

College is a bit easier with better soft skills, but it's not really the place where you get to work with people a lot or gain a lot of charisma. Well, you can in different clubs and associations, and these are loved on resumes, but with my two majors, I don't have time for that. I am co-founder of the .net club at my Uni, but, well, actually, I am on the co-founders list and not much more.

There are however some cool career days for students and I have been to a few. My first case study happened at one of these and was a disaster. In the first part, my team didn't do the task in the given time, so we kept talking when the presentations began, which was disturbing and made a really bad impression. In the second part, the team got much better, but my role was "living calculator". I was great at this - we were faster that a team with a real calculator - but the soft skills... I did find a good way to help the team, but wasn't really in it, didn't communicate much and stuff.

A few months ago, I went to another case study organized by a consulting company. I was hesitating, but Boyfriend told me to do it, saying that I could use any experience of the kind. I didn't like it at all - all we had to do was read some text, find out the problems of an imaginary company and offer solutions. I decided to stay away from consulting (in favor of coding) and further case studies, considering that last one a waste of time.

Back to the present and the job-hunting: I'm applying for several jobs and as part of the recrutation for the first one on my list right now, I took part yesterday in something called "assessment center", which included making a business plan for a circus... in a team. As I was sitting there wondering wether five jugglers were too much - it hit me: I've done that already! Not running a circus, but teamwork: I knew what it looked like and I knew how weak I was in it, how little I took part in the discussion, how I ended up hidden in the corner,... This time was different from the previous ones when I had nothing but a few hours to loose. I wanted the job and hiding in the corner was the last thing to do. I decided to do anything not to remain unnoticed. So when I was running out of things to say, I took the initiative and started writing down the team's ideas, sorted in categories. It lead me to becoming the moderator of the discussion: since I wanted things written down, I had to know how, so I forced the team to decide on each thing before moving to the next one. Finally, I did the final presentation without almost any stage fright.

I'm really happy about that last teamwork of mine. I still have to wait a week before I know whether I got the job, but, I have gained one thing for sure: better soft skills. Additionally, I have proved that they are learnable - that's good news for all the geeks!

Career experiments

We're living in a bit difficult times when it comes to career choices. As kids we have those illustrated books about jobs and we see: teacher, doctor, stewardess, shoemaker, butcher, baker, tailor. This list has very little to do with the real world. In high school, most people still have no idea of what to do in life and in college, they start finding out what they like to do but still often don't know how to make a career out of it.

That was the case of 26-year old Sean Aiken. After graduating as valedictorian of his class from British Columbia's Capilano College, he didn't know what he wanted to do and decided to try one job a week for a year. He blogged about it on his website during the whole year. The thing is that, as far as I know, he still doesn't know what he wants to do.

Now a slightly unrelated, but really inspiring story. Adam Shepard decided to try te american dream and start life with only one gym bag of personal belongings and 25$ (literally - he slept in a homeless shelter at the beginning). Ten months later, he had an apartment, a car, and $5000 of savings. You can read interviews with him here and here, as well as his own book.

The last, but biggest, career experiment I'd like to mention, is called "Vocation Vacations". It's a project that lets you get an internhip at your dream job to see if it really is your dream. Here's an article about it. Too bad it U.S./U.K. only. There's no programming category, no cryptologist either. But, one of my dream jobs is chocolate taster, and there is a chocolatier position:

Package: Two days of one-on-one mentorship in your dream job as a Chocolatier
Price: $999 per person

Besides chocolate taster, my other dream job it stylist in a magazine. You get to pick clothes and take pictures of them (but this part of the work is done by a photographer) and where do the clothes go afterwards? Here we go, fashion stylist:

Package: Two days of one-on-one mentorship in your dream job as a Style Expert
Price: $1149 per person

Finally, songwriter. There are quite a few positions as songwriter and music publisher, all about 2000$. Yep, the internships are paid, but the other way around. Still, it's a great opportunity to try our dream job, so I guess it's worth it.

[Update] I just learned about a very similar French project for students called Pro d'un jour.[/Update]

So I was saying we were living in a bit difficult times because it's so hard to find one's way in life. But, on the other hand, we're living in times when we can literally do whatever we want, and that's awesome.

Announcements

I have two major announcements for whoever tries to keep track of my life.

1. I have completed the operating systems course. That's great news. Otherwise, I'd have to take it again and that would be another few months of hard work, and this time, I wouldn't learn much. Plus, that's the hardest course at this faculty. This means that if I could do it, I can do anything. Well, actually, that means I can get a bachelor's degree in CS at the end of this year (unless I screw something else up), and with all the classes I have done in advance, my master's degree will be only seven classes away.
   
2. My Google Summer of Code application has been rejected. I'm a bit disappointed, but that was to be expected. Maybe next year... I'd love to work for OLPC a bit, so maybe the next GSoC would be a great opportunity. Maybe. We'll see what life brings.
   

Now, I can focus on completing the classes I have until June and start thinking about my next career move. And I'm learning Java.

One Laptop Per Child

One Laptop Per Child is one of the coolest projects I have ever seen. The mission of the One Laptop per Child association is to develop a low-cost laptop—the "XO Laptop"—to revolutionize how we educate the world's children.

Nicholas Negroponte says on the website:

It's an education project, not a laptop project.

Well, my reaction is:

Did somebody say laptop?

Anyway, it's really an awesome project and I've been thinking of participating for a month now, but school has been keeping me very busy all the time. I've actually been thinking of volunteering somewhere for a very long time. I even did it a bit in high school (with elder people, I'm a good listener). However, in college, I could never make time for that. When I'm already overwhelmed by my classes (this two-majors thing ain't easy) and exhausted by all the travelling (it takes me an hour to get to school), I'm not really eager to do some more travelling. I'm also not really able to make some commitments right now with everything that goes on at school: the operating systems lab is not yet over for me, the team is already kicking my pretty little but about the team project...

Anyway, OLPC seems like the best opportunity ever for me. I could contribute form home, evening, whenever I have time. Also, what is really important for me, I could make a good use of my skills. I know that the most important kind of help is not technical and doesn't often look impressive from the outside, but geek volunteers are needed too. So you won't see me walking homeless dogs or something when I can use my tech and lingo skills to do something great.

So, now that OLPC has been accepted for the Google Summer of Code, it' on absolute top of my whishlist. I'm just a bit afraid that this project is really popular (quite a few project ideashave already been taken!) and that I might not be selected (which would mean plan B: get a normal job for the summer ). I only have a week to pick one and write an awesome proposal. Wish me luck!

Materialism

I've been getting quite frustrated lately over my lack of money. So, here are some thoughts about all the material stuff around that have come to my mind as a result.

First, I needed a solution to my problem. I saw two:

1. get money
2. get over it.

Number one. Asking parents was done a few months ago with a positive effect and I feel I can't really ask for more right now. Getting a job is a wider subject. I am considering it, but I have quite a bit of work at school and the only useful thing I can do right now is coding in php (or C, which I hate). Staying at home for a few more months and learning something like ASP (or Java) would get me a salary 3 times higher, so doesn't investing a little bit more time in education seem reasonable?

Number two doesn't exclude number one and can do wonders. First question: what do I intend to by and what do I really need?

1. A good mascara and a good blush. These would actually better wait a bit, like until I get a job and show my face to someone. The products I own are good enough for my couple of hours long trips to school.
2. Well fitting jeans. I brought some recently. My choice was very limited by my budget, but I found some. And besides, any skirt or dress looks better, so I don't need many pairs of jeans.
   
3. Some comfy pants for yoga. I found these among my stuff before I had the opportunity to buy some - isn't that way better?
4. Radiohead CDs, because I've heard they have great lyrics. These can wait a bit too, and in the meantime, I can listen to them on-line. This applies to other positions on my "music to get" list (Bowling for Soup, Three Days Grace...)
5. Some beads and stuff to make my own jewelry. Cool and way cheaper than actual jewelry, but I don't have time for crafting right now anyway. Again, can wait.

The conclusion is pretty obvious: I've got everything I need! This one has lead me further: for me, "hunger" means "move your butt downstairs to the kitchen", "no electricity" means "they'll fix it in a couple of hours, take your laptop to school or Boyfriend's office meanwhile". So let's take a while to appreciate all those things we've got and take for granted.

Okay, I'm slowly getting over it. I still know in the back of my head that I'm in IT and money-wise, great times will come soon. Just be a bit patient.

Besides thinking, I like reading sites with good advice, like Life Hacker (although they really abuse of the term "hacking") and Zen Habits and one day, I came across Oprah's organizing tips and among them, an article called "the urge to purge". In the article, the following advice:

"You should own nothing that is not useful, beautiful, or loved."

Sound simple and smart. But my question is: why do we own things that aren't any of the three above? Okay, there are all the mistaken gifts and free samples, but when we buy something, how do we know it's not going to fail that test? How soon until it does? No easy answers here. I got an idea, though. I try to postpone all my purchases (well, not shower gel, but you get the idea). I try living without the thing and see how it goes. Some things have been dumped and I don't even remember what they were - these are unnecessary expenses avoided!

Feel like reading more on the subject? Penelope Trunk has an interesting article, "5 steps to taming materialism, from an accidental expert", that really gives a lot to think about. My favourite part is the one about moving and having to leave almost all possessions behind.