I need to post here about all the stuff that’s happened in the last… long while. Okay, where do I start…

There was the fantastic trip to the San Francisco area to visit Joey and Monica. We went to this distillery called Hangar One for a tasting. By far my favorite was their spiced pear vodka, but they also have raspberry liqueurs and weird citrus or kaffir lime hard liquor. Monica drove Joey and me up to Sonoma where we sampled the local wines and chocolates. We even got a chance to hit up a concert, and I got to see Monica’s laboratory with the subterranean-industrial-evil-genius plasma whatsit. Very chic, I’ll have to put one of those in my underground lair someday.

I got a girlfriend. She was having lunch with a friend in this kinda hippie cafe place where I was reading a book and having some coffee. She got up, I started talking to her friend, and then wound up spending the afternoon with them at the local street fair. It turns out she went to my high school, and her older sister and I were in the band together for all 4 years. Since then I was invited to the older sister’s wedding. Fun, interesting, and yet very bizarre.

The end of the semester brought quite a bit of chaos as everyone threw parties for everyone else, and because my undirected graph of friends is well-connected, there were n squared parties in the span of a week. This in concert with the unexpected 40 hours per week expected time in for my summer research job had worn my sanity rather thin. Meanwhile my girlfriend had been wondering why I’m so goddamn busy. So we decided to just eschew work for a bit and go camping. That was its own adventure.

Meanwhile I’ve written a paper with lots of help from my professor and submitted it to a conference. If it gets accepted, I might have a chance to go to Europe and present it.

That’s all I can remember for now. I’m going to drag my camera a couple places and hope to get inspired. My lenses and equipment are fine, I just need to take them out of the bag and take some photos with them.

I think I’ve almost settled into grad school. I really enjoy tossing ideas back and forth with my fellow students, though at times I feel out of place: about half are from India, half from China, and there a handful of white guys like me hanging in there. I still feel ahead of the curve, but only slightly. My friend Monica says I should have gone to Berkeley, where coincidentally much of the current ECE research is being done, and perhaps she’s right. But I’m not sure if I’d be able to keep up there. Maybe for a PhD, someday, when I can think up clever things to write papers about. I need to prove myself first, prove that I really do belong. But school certainly makes a lot more sense now than it ever did as an undergrad. I needed those years in Japan to get my motivation straight, to allow me to really extract the most from my university experience. It’s like an idea bakery here, all the smells of genius and burnt failure mingling together in an inseparable melange. But when it all comes to a head in a couple years, spending the rest of my life locked away in industry is still no more appealing than it was five years ago.

Most days I feel as if I’m in the right place, but every once in awhile, like today, I’ll look back at things and it seems as if my soul is in a thousand pieces, scattered to the four winds. I took a swig of liquid courage and made a phone call back to the board of education to take care of some paperwork, and chatting with native speakers brought me right back to that point in my life… minus a few forgotten words here and there. I didn’t stutter too much. But days like this make me wonder if there are two people fighting inside my skull for control of my life. One wants to follow the logical path of my strengths as an engineer, while the other says I should give that up and go do something, anything in Japan. I’m in my element here, I’m in my element there. The real world says I have to pick one or the other. Maybe I need a door number three.

My good friend Diana invited me to go up to Phoenix this weekend to the comic con. I’m not the hugest fan of dead tree comic books (although I do read my share of online ones), but I’m not one to say no to a unique opportunity like that. So I went, and it was a lot of fun.

Even though I don’t read tons of comics, I’m still a colossal nerd. Or at least, I thought I was… but really I’ve got nothin’ on these folks. It nearly brought a tear to my eye to see my fellow geeks dressed as various comic book characters, mostly Japanese. *sniff* It definitely brought tears to my eyes to walk behind one or two rather pungent individuals who NEED SHOWERS BADLY. But it was all fun, mostly because I enjoy people watching in all its forms. These folks weren’t just dressed up, they were literally clad in glee. You couldn’t help but get the vibe that these people were coming together for an almost spiritual communion of sorts, a temporary graphic-novel Mecca.

I tagged along with Diana and her cast of characters to various panels and exhibits. Some of them were artists or writers talking about their work, which was interesting to listen to even if you hadn’t seen or heard their work (and yeah I was probably the only one… but I did buy the first book in a series that came highly recommended by everyone in the party and got it signed). Others were a little bit more interesting, like the body art seminar labeled ominously “18 and older”, which involved watching an artist apply paint to two very attractive women each wearing nothing but a thong. I’ll never think of the phrase “airbrushed models” the same way again.

Of course there was cool swag, like the Star Trek posters they were giving out, and the free DVD of “Death Race” I somehow acquired. And it was cool to go say hello to Wil Wheaton and thank him for his promotion of Child’s Play (he’s well-known for his role as Wesley Crusher on Star Trek: The Next Generation, but of course moved on to other things like books and voice acting by now). He’s become this sort of cornerstone geek icon recently, mainly by just being a normal guy with geekish interests like games and comics, who amazingly hasn’t tried to overplay his celebrity or let it go to his head. That’s pretty commendable I think.

I should post about my new RA position, but I’ll let it wait until I actually go in to see the lab on Wednesday.

Things have been hectic the past few days as I’ve been applying to graduate school and applying to graduate school, and registering for classes, and applying to graduate school. (I think there are several different departments which all have to be informed of your desire to apply to graduate school.) And of course, there’s getting money, and finding a place to live.

I’d planned on moving into a little pink house not a mile from the university earlier this month, but either communications broke down or they decided to ignore my phone calls, email, and the little note I slipped under the door. So last Friday after applying to graduate school (parts 3a and 401.7.lambda?) I took a look at a pair of share homes in the general vicinity of the university. I kinda fell in love with the second place, a beautiful 1920s era home with an eclectic owner. Tons of artwork, antiques, and knickknacks adorn the place. Sure, it has its flaws, chief among them substandard 1920s wiring (with no bathroom outlets, and no ground, ick), pipes that sometimes bleed orange if they haven’t been used, and no central heating/cooling. But its creaky wood floors and curved plaster walls give it a charm that modern cookie-cutter white square houses just can’t match. And not only do I have a bedroom, but also an attached study, complete with a 50s RCA Victor tube radio. All of this less than 2 minutes from campus by bike.

So I moved in the important stuff on Tuesday, hooked up the computer to a wireless network, and have been spending most of my time making the place look shipshape. It helps that my desk sits adjacent to an antique steamer trunk from an ocean liner.

Job hunting is a pain in the butt. Most companies have their own application areas that require you to manually copy your resume information into their web forms, and most job descriptions aren’t descriptive at all. Supposedly professional job-hunting websites don’t really make things any easier– for some reason, a simple search for “computer engineer” turns up jobs in sales, tech support, and mechanical engineering. And heaven help you if you want to sort by something useful such as required experience or salary.

Job applicants are expected to follow certain conventions when writing a resume or cover letter. I think expecting HR and management to follow similar rules isn’t out of the question. If you want to be taken seriously, be professional and follow these simple rules:

-Don’t waste applicants’ time. This is the cardinal rule. Filling out a job application takes a lot more time than it should, and yours isn’t the only company I’m applying for. I know you want to sort by experience and have things in a neat nice database, and I know you’ve got a computer to sort through the garbage, but I’ve already written a resume with the information on it. Respect my time by requesting a resume file first and then using it to pre-fill those forms as much as possible. (I’ve seen exactly one application site that did this, and it shows the company pays attention to its hiring process.) Don’t ask for information that isn’t computer sortable, because it’s all in the resume already. If your application process respects my time, I’ll take your job offer much more seriously.

-Write a descriptive job description. I’ve slogged through job descriptions that left me scratching my head afterward. “Assists senior project leads in achieving project goals.” Yes, but what is it that you actually DO? Most managers are good at mentioning the skills they want their applicants to have, and I may have a clear idea of the type of things your company does, but if you don’t describe specific duties and projects it’s hard to get excited about the position. Give specific examples if you can. Linking to the project page or Wikipedia is even better. Finally, don’t use terms that don’t apply. For example, using the title “Sales Engineer” to refer to a sales position is despicable. It clutters up every engineering listing, and just pisses off all of us who have real engineering degrees. You wouldn’t stick the word “Marketing” in an engineering position.

-Money talks. If you think your offer is truly reasonable, provide a salary range. Give me numbers, not the words “competitive salary”. Feel free to mention your fantastic benefits package somewhere, but if I’m going to spend time filling out your web form and flying out to your interview I need to know about how much you’re going to pay. Not disclosing this information implies that you know your competitors will pay more and your company is trying to rip me off.

-Sort your positions by experience. It’s extremely tough to find job offers for engineers with less than a year of experience, and senior staff don’t want to waste their time looking at junior positions. Why is it that I haven’t found a single site that lets me enter “Computer engineer” and sort by expected years of experience? I’d even settle for one that lets me post a resume, enter in the years of experience I have, and actually provides me with jobs that I’m qualified for, automatically excluding the ones I can’t take (no Master’s or PhD, for example). “We have job openings in every state” sounds great until you realize that the openings in your state are all for Senior Aviation Defrosting Technicians. “There are entry-level marketing positions available in California, New Mexico, Ohio, and Florida” is useful information. Your potential applicant might say, Hey, I never thought about it but Albuquerque sounds nice. I’ll apply for that job.

-Make sure your site works. General Dynamics has a professional-looking website, but clicking a referral link to a specific job doesn’t work. Searching by the reference number kicks back an error page saying I don’t have cookies enabled (I do). I had to open it up in Internet Explorer for the search to work properly, and then it required me to log in before even seeing the job description. Intel’s site won’t let you open up and compare several job offers in tabs, complaining that you need to close other windows from their site first. An unprofessional job site design reflects poorly on your company. Qualified job hunters will go elsewhere.

-Don’t list entry-level positions under “recent college grads”. Some people switch careers, some shift from one sub-specialty to another, and some have taken a break for one reason or another. Quite a few of these people are still highly qualified. Some might even be better at broad-discipline skills such as teamwork and presentations than those right out of university. These people aren’t college grads, nor are they “experienced professionals”. Rename your “college grads” link to “entry level positions”, and watch the unique resumes roll in.