Kevin Reid's blog

Arrived in California a few days ago; setting up assorted arrangements. I start work in a week.

The problem of arranging a set of unbreakable text blocks in columns in an arbitrary order such that the columns are of approximately equal height is equivalent to the NP-complete “multiprocessor scheduling” problem, and the “LPT algorithm” described in the linked article performed excellently for my instance of the problem (4 columns, 6 blocks), which is actually my packing list for traveling to California tomorrow.

(I have a program which generates my packing list for me, based on type, duration, season, and transportation. It encodes all the accumulated knowledge about what to pack and where to pack it; after a trip I review my changes written on the printed list and incorporate them into the program.)

It appears that everyone From The Internet lives in California.

I am right this minute packing my luggage and reviewing plans. I will be getting on the train tonight at 8 PM Eastern, and traveling until 9 PM Pacific on Sunday, May 30.

I will probably not have Internet access for most or all of the trip.

One of the things I’ve been procrastinatingah, not had the time to do, being busy with school and other projects, is announcing and working on a job search for this summer. I have posted my resume, but I didn’t even get around to mentioning that. The process really doesn’t excite me that much — it’s essentially research, comparison shopping, which I have never been very fond of.

But, last October, I was contacted out of the blue by a recruiter asking if I was interested in opportunities at — Google. After checking that it wasn’t a spoof I naturally said yes, and after a number of rounds of information exchange and interviews,

This summer, I will be (well, subject to my completing the process of accepting the offer) working as a Software Engineering Intern at Google, with the Caja team, in Mountain View, CA.

So — whoa and yay and other such cheerful words. And thanks to my friends at Google who referred me and nudged the process along.^*

The most uncertain remaining step is finding housing in or near Mountain View (could be as far as San Francisco or San Jose; Google runs a shuttle bus and is convenient to public transportation). Google has provided some general advice-for-interns, but I’d like to hear input from my readers and friends who already live in in the area.

Some parameters:

• I would consider living with other people, but I wouldn’t want to take a chance on a complete unknown. (So if you are someone or know someone with a room...)
• Speaking of taking chances, make the chance of being mugged on the way home in the evening very small, please.
• I am traveling from the east coast, probably by train, so I don’t want to have to transport a lot of stuff, or buy items that I’ll use for only three months — so a furnished space is better.
• I do not own a car, but I know how to drive one.
• I do not own a bicycle, but I used to know how to ride one.
• This will be the first time I have lived outside of my home city for longer than a week’s visit/vacation.

^*Y’know how job search advice is big on saying you should be “networking”? If you’ve thought you’re too much of the non-face-to-face-social non-polite-small-talk would-rather-talk-to-people-through-the-computer sort for that — take me as an example. This opportunity came to me because of other people who knew me entirely through my work on open source projects (E, and thus Caja-CapTP) — I didn’t do anything that I wouldn’t have done for other reasons anyway. I’m not saying you shouldn't do any of the other stuff you might be thinking of — I’m saying this stuff counts.