You have a 'Go' for graduation.

Finally, another chapter of my life comes to a close. After five years at UCI I'm finally graduating (provided I pass my last math class). No one will know what the 'I' in ICS means in my degree, but at least I will know that it meant 5 years instead of 3.

Now I (try to) enter the work force, mostly mental exertion I'm betting. Everyone say's I've been limitting my job search too much, and that's probably true. I applied to Apple and Google and Blizzard. I would love to work at any one of them. I also applied at the two computer agencies at UCI, which would be both familiar and convenient.

The few phone interviews with Apple didn't go quite as planned. One didn't call me back and the other I blanked out on the 2nd technical interview and sounded like a unix nub.
Google never called.
Blizzard finally got back to me less than a month before graduation (many months after applying) for a web app dev position. I'd love to take that one, still waiting for a call back after the phone interview.
I went through the whole interview process at UCI, but it's been almost 2 weeks and I haven't heard back.

So I'm still looking, hoping for a 'real' career. Web apps or user interface design would be right up my ally. Lease is up June 30th. I'll be continuing work at Administrative Computing Services at UCI until then (working on the staff web portal, SNAP).

So between now and the 30th I need to have confirmation of a job and find a new apartment or else I'll be moving back home for a while. As much as I love my parents, it kind of feels like failure to have to go home after they put so much into my education.

Apple's just releasing a myriad of web apps and a ton of new iPhone upgrades, and the rest of the world is web app crazy. I didn't think I'd have trouble finding a place to do that. I'm really hoping to avoid startups. The failure rate is just too high. I need some consistent cash flow and some real experience before I would want to throw my fate in with a new company. I'd really like to be somewhere recognizable. For some reason I feel it's important to be able to tell people what I do, where, without getting blank stares.

My dreams for the future:
- Job
- My own apartment (my own room for the first time ever!)
- iPhone3G
- Nissan 350z (or 2009 370z)
- Niki

Math = Programming - Computer

So I made a realization this week about why I hate math so much.

I was sitting in my Topology class and the teacher was going over the latest uber theorem that we have to memorize the proof of. Then it struck me: he was writing a function up on the board. And in the process of writing his function he had to define a couple new types of objects. Then he used those new classes of objects to define a relationship between them and the equivalence classes of the theorem.

But then it dawned on me: I'm gonna have to memorize this source code and not only regurgitate it later but be able to apply these classes and functions to some new object set... It's like writing a couple java classes and then having to do all the execution manually, without the computer to do the actual grunt work.

What sadistic person enjoys this?

Please for the love of god, let me just write the source code once, run it on a couple tests, get the results and refine the procedure. Don't torture me by making me memorize every line of code and make me do all the computation on my fingers!

Who does that!?

There has GOT to be a better way to teach this math. Please.... Anyone?