Good News Everybody
I was informed last night (Friday night) that I was indeed getting an internship offer from Microsoft. Still waiting on the exact details, but woohoo! The position would be with the Small Business Accounting group. They are a smaller group using the Scrum (Agile) development scheme and mostly Managed Code (C#). Their product is pretty cool, too. Version 1 is out there on shelves and Version 2 is planned/waiting for the big Office 2007 release. It's a QuickBooks competitor with heavy Office integration and an eye towards ISV Vertical Application integration.
I celebrated simply with a few pints of BBC's Belgium Quadrupel (double the alchohol of an average beer, tastes like an apple-cinnamon wine), and glass of beershake (sweet vanilla ice cream was an excellent complement to the almost bitter quadrupel). Remind sometime to expound upon the various and interesting combinations of beer and dessert... I settled for the Quadrupel (which my parents didn't like), but I had been hoping for a Doppelbock, as BBC made an awesome Copulator Doppelbock sometime ago, and I was reminded of it by the Celebrator Doppelbock of Pike's Pub in Seattle. (Doppelbock's are also double the alcohol of an average beer and generally taste like mocha. Also, I find it interesting the C--ator commonality in the beer names.)
An Engineer's Guide to The Matrix
A no-symbology, no-pseudo-philosophical explanation / backstory of the Matrix movies from a programmer's perspective. [read the article]
The above article is pretty good and it explains a lot of the technical pragmatism that I use in explaining the Matrix. There are two points left out that I would jump in with, though. I believe both of these I've gone on about at greate length in previous posts, so I'll keep it short. First of all, many of the digg comments mentioned how the article refrained from mentioning the psuedo-religious symbology of the film. The thing I point out, and to me it was made obvious in one of the dialogues in Limbo (Mobil Ave Station), is that the programs use human religious symbolism in metaphorical terms, or to use a better term, they take on religious symbols as a part of their overall paradigm. We've already established that the machines aren't very creative: when trying to come up with a simulation world they simply borrowed large swathes of human (particularly American) history. So they don't make new names for their jobs as programs they simply assume names from religious and mythical archetypes. The best example is the Merovingian and his gang. The vampires were even watching a classic vampire film. The Merovingian himself makes it quite clear that he "enjoyed" taking on the "evil Frenchman" persona and that it made sense for his "business", as an illegal programs dealer program.
The second thing I would mention, that the article skips over, is the question "How was Neo programmed?". I get a kick of this one, but I believe the Merovingian gave it away. The primary metaphor for the machines to send programming to Humans appears to be Food. (Everytime food shows up in the films ...
Revisiting the Synthetic World Soap Opera
First of all, I figure I should preface this with a note on the fact that as much as I disparage the "karma marga" approach to MMO development it isn't because I'm unskilled with it, its rather because I personally find it "boring" and "more work than fun". Just to illustrate that, allow me to point out that I'm quite skilled at the few I've tried (current level 47 main in Paragon City/City of Heroes) and that I've picked up some observations over time. For instance, I have made a reputation for myself and have several power-leveller "friends" in game. Being level 47 I occaisionally get that n00b tell asking to be PLed from anywhere between level 1 and level 30. The key piece of knowledge that they lack is that you don't ask to be PLed, you ask someone if they want to be PLed. Power Levelling generally requires that the Leveller to have a good degree of knowledge of the game (in order to best maximize the xp/time ratio) and it very often requires the Levellee to be relatively skilled in the game to best minimize the debt/time ratio. In City of Heroes in particular there is further knowledge to be taken in consideration: xp/time is often best maximized (for the PLed Levellee) in cases where there is a +4 level difference in Leveller and Levellee, so all those tells/broadcasts from level 1s, or level 30s are pretty useless for them. If they really want to power level they should be looking for 5s or 35s (respectively), and to maintain a good PL they probably need to move through a constant string of +4s, and that requires making a good reputation for yourself (which is why most ...
My Spring Break Mini-Vacation: Job Interview Style
It's only taken two+ years of work and effort, but I finally got noticed at Microsoft (thanks to Mark Brodsky and Craig Lichtenstein). I'll be flying to Redmond, Washington next Wednesday. Thursday will be Interview Day and then I'll have Friday to explore/play in the Seattle Area. I'm not sure what I'll do, but I'm pretty good at improvising, and just like everywhere else there is good Coffee and good Beer to be had. I'm hoping to land a coop/internship for my degree requirements... we'll see how I do. Microsoft's day-long interview process is notorious, but it should be fun. That'll probably be my biggest problem: taking it seriously. Then again, I'd rather be in a fun mood than an anxious mood. As far as I'm concerned, I'm happy just landing the Interview. What ever happens next is icing.
