Duality

Just got back from my on-site interview with International Rectifier in El Segundo. They flew me out Wednesday afternoon, took me out to dinner (Octopus in Manhattan Beach), roomed me in a nice hotel (DoubleTree in El Segundo), interviewed me, gave me lunch, showed me around, and flew me back. It was a fun trip, especially because I knew the three other Berkeley students that went as well. Oh, but the hotel didn’t give me a cookie =(. Connie said it was really good.

So now that it’s over, I have to deal with all the things I temporarily left behind. I had a midterm this morning; I (and the other two guys, Paul and Chris) will have to make it up tomorrow. We all studied on the flight back. I need to go to the 192 lab to re-calibrate our sensor circuits later tonight [it’s already past 10 PM =(… ]. Tomorrow morning, I need to go to BWRC to finish some stuff before the exchange student on the project leaves for good (which might be tomorrow or a week from tomorrow). Everything’s gone craaaaaazy…

I wonder if Dave Taylor read my last entry. He was my first interviewer. At one point, he asked me, “what’s ‘quadoshock’?” I kinda expected him too—after all, practically every other interviewer has. I gave him my usual answer and he followed with, “so what kind of stuff is there?” I replied, “you know, personal stuff.” He suddenly turned to his computer and said, “how about we find out right now?” I totally spilled the beans then. “Well, I currently have a write-up of my interview with Emosyn…” He stopped. Wonder if he checked it out afterwards.

I’ll do a full write-up over the weekend.

(interviewed on Friday, March 25th)

My interview was at 9 AM, so I left the house at 7:20 AM (actually planned to leave at 7). I figured that I’d run into rush-hour traffic. An hour later, however, I pulled into the parking lot of SST’s Sunnyvale office (Emosyn leases office space from SST; Emosyn is a subsidiary of SST). I was way early, again.

The wait was a little longer this time, but I had a couple forms to fill out and was given a folder with SST company info (which I was later told not to read too much into).

You know those images of offices with rows and rows of cubicles? SST’s building is like that. Rows and rows and rows and rows of cubicles. You’d think it would be in their best interest to create a more-pleasant and more-inspiring work environment for their employees. Well, guess not. I could have easily gotten lost there. I made an effort not to stray from the interview room without an Emosyn or SST employee guiding me.

The interview itself was much more relaxed than I thought it would be. I was only given a few technical questions. The rest were behavioral questions and questions about classes, projects and research. I brought that up during lunch (yes, they got me lunch! =)) with Shane (my on-campus interviewer) and he said they were looking for a personality fit as much as or more than a technical fit. Makes sense for a company of about 40 people (half working in Sunnyvale).

Comparing Power Integrations and Emosyn, Power Integrations feels much more distant. Their office is in a new development area at the southern tip of San José. It’s up the hill and overlooks a valley. The place is very quiet—on the outside and inside. Emosyn is the exact opposite. Their office is in the middle of Sunnyvale; there’s a Costco a block away. Looking out the window of the interview room, I constantly saw people walking by. There was a continual hustle and bustle. Reminds me of BWRC, except for the whole cubicle-crazy theme they have.

Spring break has come and gone and I haven’t done any work on Duality. Guess I’ll have to wait for school / research / job hunting to lighten up.

I’ll write about one of the following today:

• On-site Interview #2: Emosyn
• Review: Donkey Kong Jungle Beat (GC)
• Why the GC button layout is great

Btw, this week, Devil May Cry 3 is $40 at Circuit City again. NBA Street V3 is $40 basically everywhere.

(yesterday) 6:30 PM - (today) 9:00 AM: Play
9:30 AM - 4:30 PM: Sleep

Basically Mario Power Tennis (GC), Mario Party 6 (GC), and Donkey Konga (GC) all night with a smattering of NBA Street V3 (GC), Ikaruga (GC), Castle Shikigami 2 (PS2), and Street Fighter Anniversary Collection (PS2). Good times.

Home-field advantage apparently applies to interviews too.

Home-field, in this case, meaning not having to drive 50+ miles to get to the site like I did today. It was only my second time driving to San José—the first time being yesterday’s practice run with my dad. Traffic was light on the way there. I reached Power Integrations‘ site in one hour. Of course, since I left two hours before my interview time, that also meant I was one hour early. Commuting is such a lose-lose proposition.

Luckily, my interviewers were willing to start early, so I didn’t have to wait long. First, Gitte (from human resources) went over employee benefits with me and answered all of my non-technical questions. Heh, I asked where employees eat and sleep. Well, worded properly, of course: “I didn’t see any eateries around here; where do employees typically eat?” (cafeteria on-site or places farther away or bag lunch) and “Where do new employees usually find apartments?” (San José or Sunnyvale/Santa Clara for lower rent).

Next, the head of IC design and both design managers took turns asking me technical questions. The questions were fairly conceptual, like the questions I received at my on-campus interview with Power Integrations. It was a mix of RC and LC circuits, device physics, digital logic, digital circuits, current sources, and PTATs and CTATs. If any of the EE-focused among you (are there any?) want to know the questions I got, leave a message in the comments. I did okay with the questions. There were some I answered easily and some I couldn’t answer at all—most notably why β of a BJT drops when Vbe gets past a certain point and what excess carrier concentration vs. distance (graph) looks like for an NPN.

I was quite surprised to learn that Power Integrations only has seven IC designers (out of approx. 250 employees at their San José site). Three have more than 15 years of experience. The least senior of the group are two guys with five years of experience each (both hired straight out of college in 2000). I find it quite scary to be so much more of a newb than everyone else. I wonder if Linear Tech has such a small design group.

I didn’t realize this while I was there, but after reflecting on my experience today, it hit me: Power Integrations felt eerily quiet. Maybe my interview was held in the quieter side of the building; I don’t know. I didn’t see that many people around too. I’ll have to keep that in mind when I check out other companies.

Never again will I laugh at adults for not being able to do math because my math skills have totally gone down the toilet since high school. Whenever I need to do an operation, I reach for my calculator. Adding, subtracting, multiplying, dividing… can’t do any in my head anymore.

Today’s 240 midterm was a no-calculator test—my first in a long, long time! Sure enough, I made a stupid math mistake that’ll cost me points. I might even have to talk to the prof to get points back because my answer looks far off even though I got the concepts right (I think). Gm^4 instead of Gm^2/Gm^2 = 1. Terrible.

Wonder what my high school math teachers will say when I tell them I can’t do math anymore? At least there’s always SPICE…

In case I need a reminder: go through all the 240 lecture notes carefully. If you think you know enough for the midterm, you’re wrong. Yes, we both know you won’t do that well since you’re taking it relatively easy, but at least get a respectable score.

Let’s just say I had a humbling revelation as I was doing the 240 HW tonight.

The Linear guy was right—240 is the most important circuits class I’ll take at Berkeley. The class feels slow, but it has been filling in many of the gaps that 140 and 142 left behind.

We accidently shorted the output of our boost converter to ground. Consequently, the chip fried and one of the wires on our PCB burned off. Hopefully, nothing else was damaged.

Let me first say that Castle Shikigami 2 (CS2 from now on) is a shoot’em up (shmup). And when it comes to shmups, you either love’em or hate’em. So if you love’em, stop reading right now and pick this game up (it’s only $10!); and if you hate’em, you’re probably better off renting or borrowing it for a one night stand.

Welcome to Bullet Hell
Like other shmups, the goal of CS2 is simple: shoot down anything that moves. But of course, it’s not really that simple. While you’re shooting, you’ll have to dodge enemy bullets—something that the game gives you plenty of. In the later levels, the screen is often filled with so many bullets that the game will lag. In any other game, that would be bad; but in shmups, anything that gives you more time to react is always welcome.

CS2 features a cast of seven characters, each with their own shot pattern, bomb attack, and Shikigami attack. Shikigami attacks (enabled by holding down the shoot button) vary quite a bit from character to character. Ko calls a spirit which automatically attacks enemies; Kim projects three swords around him (type-1 variant); Nigi creates a barrier that reflects bullets back at her enemies (ala GigaWing). Shikigami attacks slow down a character’s movement, but all coins generated when enemies are destroyed are automatically collected.

Live Dangerously
What sets CS2 apart from other shmups is its Tension Bonus System (TBS). The TBS rewards players for putting themselves in harm’s way—in this case, being close to enemies or bullets. The closer you get, the more points you get (up to 8x) and the more coins spewed out from enemies you destroy. As a handy indicator, your character’s normally-green aura will change to yellow, orange, and finally red. When your character’s aura is red, his shot pattern will also be powered up.

The TBS works incredibly well with Shikigami attacks. Without the TBS, Shikigami attacks might go unused because of their start-up delay (0.5 seconds approx.) and how much characters slow down while using them. With the TBS, Shikigami attacks become indispensible when going for high scores. As I mentioned before, coins are automatically collected from enemies destroyed by Shikigami attacks. Thus, to maximize your score, you’d want to jump from bullet to bullet while using your Shikigami attack to destroy enemies—no easy feat.

Concluding Comments
In case you’re wondering, the graphics and sound of CS2 are average, but both are just icing. The cake is the gameplay and CS2’s gameplay is excellent. The TBS combined with Shikigami attacks introduce risk/reward decisions on multiple levels: more damage from powered-up shot patterns vs. less damage but safer position; more points using Shikigami attacks vs. more maneuverability using normal shot. It’s a refreshing addition to the tried-and-true challenge of staying alive.

(boxed rating and few-liner summary goes here)

Yeah, he’s an HKN candidate this semester. I met him at the HKN general meeting a few weeks ago. He’s a freshman with junior standing. There’s another HKN candidate who’s also a freshman, but with senior standing. It’s crazy.

I remember when the candidate list was first put up. Jay, who has been complaining for awhile that he should be allowed into HKN because of his coursework, said, “How come I’m not on the candidate list?” I responded, “You’re not cool enough. See, I’m so cool, I get to join twice.”

Note: the candidate list is handed to HKN by the department. Eligibility is based on GPA. HKN has no control over who is a candidate and who is not.

I filled out the EECS undergrad student survey today. Not because they’re raffling away an iPod mini [it won’t take my email address! =(… ], but because I care—I finally care. I answered that I feel my classes are interesting and useful. That my EECS education at Berkeley has prepared me for the industry.

Three years ago, I wouldn’t have bothered. Just a freshman—younger and more foolish. And I knew nothing too. It’s hard to care when you know nothing. It’s hard to get excited about topics which seem so far from application.

One of the hardest aspects of EE is how long you have to wait before you get to build all the cool stuff you said you’d build when you got in. Not to say that CS is easy, but in CS, you get to build things from the get-go. In my freshman year, I got to code a board game (Amazons) in Java with a GUI and AI. I thought that was cool.

It’s not like that in EE. My first real EE project was designing an amplifier (in simulation only) for EE 140, spring semester 2004. That’s 2.5 years into my college career.

I remember having these plans of building my own DDR pad a few years ago. I remember telling Xero that I’d use my EE knowledge to make it. I never did get to do that. But admittedly, this semester I’m working on something a whole lot cooler.

The archive is now functional. I haven’t finished putting everything in its place, but it has enough right now to make it useful. In the process, I also learned some PHP and MySQL. I should put those two on my resumé. =)

As a side note: how come I never get much done over the weekend?

Stuff’s going to look weird for awhile. I’m simultaneously reorganizing the stylesheets and working on the archive. I’ll let you know when it all settles down.

Today marked the beginning of Spring Quarter up here in Davis. This quarter I’m taking:

Music 10 - Introduction to Musical Literature,
Art History 1C - Baroque and Modern Art,
French 1 - Elementary French, and hopefully
Dramatic Art 170 - Media Theatre

I say hopefully because at the moment I’m wait listed in the number 4 spot. That’s actually a big improvement from when I started. I was originally number 8.

For those of you who know me, you might be saying “But I thought you took four years of French in High School” and you would be right. However, that was four years ago and I can honestly say that I remember…well. I think I can say “Hello, my name is…” Anyway, I need to take three French classes and while I could have attempted a test that would have placed me further along, I felt like it was best to start over.

Today I had French and Art History and it didn’t really involve much, just introductory material, syllabi, etc. Tomorrow will be Music and French and will probably be more of the same.

Oh and for those who might be interested, I got my grades from last quarter, and they’re pretty much what I expected.

Dramatic Art 25 - Technical Aspects of Dramatic Production: A-
Dramatic Art 180 - Loser Production: A
English 101 - Advanced Composition: C
Linguistics 1 - Introduction to Linguistics: A-
Music 3A - Introduction to Music Theory: B-

Anyway, that’s all for now. As soon as the quarter gains more speed, I’ll let you all know what’s up.

Happy Easter everyone. Hope you all get lots of candy, or if you’re actually religious, then enjoy whatever today is supposed to really be about. ;)

Happy Birthday to me,
Happy Birthday to me,
Happy Birthday to Alexis,
Happy Birthday to me!!

That’s two down, and several more to go. As of last night I am now done with Winter Quarter 2005. And how did I do, you might ask? Not bad, I think. I’m expecting an A from both my Drama classes, an A or B from my Linguistics and Music classes, and probably a C from my English class. So not bad at all. Anyway, it’s time to relax for a little bit (oh, and of course watch the CSI marathon on SpikeTV) and then tomorrow night, it’s party time! And for those of you who don’t know, Thursday is my birthday! I will be 22 years old. Anyway, there’s lots of planning to be done, so I’m off!

I recently got Half-Life 2 and have been playing through it nonstop. Well, ok, I’ve been stopping every now and then, but only because this game is that amazing. This game keeps me on edge so much, that my body has been getting too much adrenaline and my nerves are shot. If I play too long without stopping, I start feeling completely sick. That is how awesome this game is. At this point I’m about halfway through with the game, and I haven’t even started playing anything online.

Not only does this game have some of the greatest graphics I’ve ever seen, but the gameplay is so realistic, you’d swear you were actually there. One of the highlights of this game is it’s physics. Everything in the game has perfectly realistic physics. They’re so integral to the game, that it even gives you a Gravity Gun to pick things up and shoot at people. For example, shooting a can of soda at a guard? Not very effective. Shooting a cinder block, muuuch more effective. Anyway, as soon as I get further into the game and can tear my self away from it long enough, I’ll write a full review for you guys. Till then, I’ll be off throwing cardboard at zombies.

That’s right folks, after a long absence, I am back. I’d like to apologize again for having to take that time away, but I feel a lot better now and school is done for until my two finals next Monday. But until then, I’m free as ….well, something thats really free. Anyway, with my new found free time I should have plenty of things to post. Hopefully a few game reviews, perhaps an anime review or so. Anyway, just wanted to let you know that I’m alive and fairly well. So expect to hear from me soon!

I just wanted to let you know that while I may not have died and fallen off the face of the earth, I am incredibly sick and going through a huge amount of work for the upcoming show. And to top it all off, this morning I just found out that our sound board op has been “grounded” and it doesn’t look like he’s going to be able to work the show. Greeaaatt…

Anyway, so sorry I haven’t posted it a while, but the combination of being sick and having a billion things to do sorta puts this place a little lower on my priorities list. As soon as the show is over, and I start to not feel like crap, I’ll be back in full force. I swear ;)