What did you do this past week?

This past week I finished and turned in the collatz project. I also had my first Chemistry II exam. I forgot to bubble in the last digit of my test version number and initially ended up with a 20 on the exam. Thankfully, it was a mistake that the TA was able to resolve easily. I ended up doing better than the class average. Much of my remaining time was spent networking with company recruiters. I went to the diversity networking event on Wednesday and the CNS Career Fair on Thursday. Following the career fair, I went to two company diners. I capped off the week with an on-campus interview on Friday.

What’s in your way?

I have a couple of on-site interviews planned for the next couple of week. Unfortunately, I’ll have to miss class for a few days. I’m starting to have exams in my classes. Missing classes will get progressively more difficult as the semester continues.

What will you do next week?

Next week, ABCS will have its first general meeting of the semester. We’ll have a few Google representatives present at the meeting. ABCS will also be hosting a study night this upcoming Sunday. I’ll schedule my Google on-site in the next couple of days. I have an on-campus interview with Microsoft on Thursday. I need to complete my Airbnb coding sample and Dropbox will be sending me one soon. I also have a phone interview this week. Thankfully, I only have one project to complete this week. We’re close to finishing it, but we have a few bugs to work out.

What was your experience of Project #1 (the problem, the overkill requirements of submission, etc.)?

From the perspective of someone who’s taken OOP, I liked the Gitlab workflow a lot more than the Github one. I really like the fact that GitLab has CI built in. TravisCI was one of the most difficult parts of the project in OOP. The overall workflow is overkill compared to the actual project, but I understand how it would be valuable for larger projects. Pylint was finicky, but you can deal with things to don’t quite work the way you want them to in industry all the time.

What’s your pick-of-the-week or tip-of-the-week?

My pick-of-the-week this week is vid2vid (https://github.com/NVIDIA/vid2vid). vid2vid is a python module developed by NVIDIA and MIT researchers to create photo-realistic video syncretization. The things that they have managed to do are pretty cool.

What did you do this past week?

I finished the Collatz project this past week. Other than a few Pylint complications, the project went smoothly. My initial solution only needed a few optimizations to pass all three of the test. I also finished my second Creative Coding project. I meet up with my fellow ABCS officers to plan out future events. It looks like we’ll be doing some exciting things this semester! I managed to complete coding samples for two companies. Hopefully, I did well enough to continue to the next round of the hiring process. Last, I had the pleasure of watching UT destroy USC. I’m not brave enough to say that Texas is back, but it will be interesting if they beat TCU this Saturday.

What’s in your way?

Recruiting season is in full swing now. I’m finding myself with a lot on my plate. In addition to classwork, I have to carve out time for company events, code samples, interviews, and interview prep.

What will you do next week?

Firstly, I need to finish the readings for my UX Design class. Doing so will open up a lot of time later on in the week. I have my first Chemistry II exam on Wednesday (at least it’s not on Thursday). I’ll be studying for the exam for most of Monday and Tuesday. I also need to start on my Intro to Security project. Most importantly, the Technology and Science Career Fair is on Thursday! I still need to need to print out resumes and examine the company list. Although, I did manage to get an invite to a private company dinner that’s happening Thursday night.

What’s your experience of the in-class exercises? (this question will vary, week to week)

On Monday, we had our first in-class HackerRank exercise. The exercise was fairly straightforward. I’m pretty sure it’s the same exercise that we did in OOP last semester. I instantly recalled most of the necessary changes. Although, I did not initially increase the counter my two.

What’s your pick-of-the-week or tip-of-the-week?

Since the career fair is coming up, my picks-of-the-week are the Handshake career fair employer list and the career fair booth map. The Handshake page allows you to filter companies based on the positions that they are offering. Once you have a list of companies that interest you, you can plan your route between them.

What did you do this past week?

It’s been an interesting week. We had the ABCS kickoff on Thursday. Despite starting at the same time as three other kickoff events, we had a nice turnout for our event. There were a lot of new faces and I’m looking forward to interacting with everyone throughout the year. My roommate had an onsite interview with Google, and I was asked to watch his cat while he was away. He said that the interview went well, so we’re hoping for the best! I also finished two projects and started to work on the Collatz project.

What’s in your way?

This semester I have several classes that have assigned readings. One and a half weeks into the semester and I’ve already read an entire book. I’m expected to have finished another book by Thursday. I didn’t expect to be doing this much reading this semester and need to get better at allocating time to complete all my readings.

What will you do next week?

Next week, I’ll finish reading a book for my UX class. I’ll also finish up the Collatz project. I have several coding samples that I need to submit before the end of the week. Additionally, I need to fill out some paperwork for the next ABCS event and meet up with the other officers to discuss future events.

What’s your experience of the class?

It’s only the second week of class, but everything has been going well. So far, we have done exactly what we did in OOP at this point last semester. I even missed the same question on the Academic Integrity Quiz. The major difference between the two classes at this point is that we are using Pythion instead of C++.

What’s your pick-of-the-week or tip-of-the-week?

My pick of the week this week is smenu . Smenu is a handy little terminal utility that allows you to create text menus for terminal applications. The program is capable of creating serval types of menus, including horizontal list menus and vertical scrolling menus. Menus can be configured to use the arrow keys, keyboard shortcuts, and mouse. Smenu is definitely something that I’ll look into more the next time that I have to create a terminal program.

What did you do this past week?

This past week was surprisingly busy. I moved into my apartment and we had problems getting our internet up and running. It took three days, several calls to our internet service provider, and two tech visits for things to finally start working. In addition to moving in, I updated my resume to include my internship and have started to fill out job applications. This week marked the beginning of my second year as ABCS’ financial officer. As such, I have been prepping for the ABCS Kickoff.

What’s in your way?

The bus schedule for the stop closest to my apartment changed over the summer. I need to adjust to the new schedule. I only had a few days between the end of my internship and the start of classes. It feels weird knowing that the semester has already started. That feeling should change as my classes start to pick up.

What will you do next week?

ABCS is having its kickoff event on Thursday. Most of the prep work for the event has been completed, but I need to start planning events that we’ll be having a few weeks from now. My roommate has an onsite interview this week, so I’ll be cat sitting for a few days. I also need to start prepping for my own interviews.

What are your expectations of the class?

Based off my experience taking OOP, I’m expecting to hear a lot of great lectures that get me thinking about details that I usually overlook. I’ve had a lot of friends take this course. Most of them would describe it as a challenging but worthwhile course. I know that some parts of the website are going to be difficult to implement, and I’ll be spending a lot of time learning about things that I have never used before.

What’s your pick-of-the-week or tip-of-the-week?

My tip-of-the-week this week is Mosh. I discovered Mosh during my internship. Mosh is an SSH-replacement application. One of the biggest reasons to use Mosh instead of SSH is its roaming feature. Mosh maintains your connection as you switch between Internet connections. You can start a connection at your apartment, go to campus, and not have to log back in. Mosh is already installed on the lab machines. You can read about some of Mosh’s other features here.