C-Objectively

As promised in my last post, I took my first trip back to the Bay Area and Berkeley last week. I almost didn’t make it but some last-minute heroic driving on the part of myself and the airport parking shuttle driver saved the day. The football team apparently heard about my visit because they gave me a great “homecoming” gift: a 49-21 clobbering of Arizona State that was way more lop-sided that the score even shows. Ara and Geoff helped sneak me into the student section (shhh… don’t tell, plus the Chancellor snuck in too!) and we were cheering, yelling, helping people crowd-surf, avoiding falling, doing card stunts, and generally having a blast while our team put on a football clinic on offense, defense, AND special teams. We *may* also have had a part in the never-ending “Wave” that kept going around Memorial Stadium for about 5 minutes. Thank you Cal Bears. The memory of that painful game in Knoxville is almost erased. Beat Oregon next week and we shall never speak of it again.

Picture of me thinking I could beat the 2-second auto-timer on the camera
Picture of Ara and me with the 10-second timer

Besides the game I got a chance to see some (but not all unfortunately) of my friends that are still in the area. After a fun impromptu get-together at my brother’s pad we grabbed some Top Dog while Ara rested on the futon. I had my childhood favorite of course, a Bratwurst. Other eateries I had the pleasure of visiting were
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I haven’t spoken much (at all?) about my work here for a number of reasons. I will have something big to share about a project I have been working on since my third week at Expedia soon.

That said, I have been very busy the last few weeks trying to push a project out the door that was under tight deadlines and important to stake-holders. My work on it is pretty much coming to an end however and it is perfect timing in that regard. That’s because tomorrow night I will be heading back to Berkeley for the first time since I graduated over a year ago.

Next week I will be at the EECS Career Fair doing some recruiting for Expedia on campus, followed by a day of interviews. I’ll be in town before that though in order to catch the home football game vs Arizona State and catch up with friends that are still in the area. Oh, and to eat at all my favorite food places like Top Dog, Fat Slice, HOPR, and In N Out of course!

So this is a heads up to any Berkeley CS-type people who are interested in internships or jobs. Come see us at the Expedia booth for jobs and, of course, the real reason anyone goes to career fairs: the cool swag.

Now, about that Arizona State game…

FINISHED! I have officially graduated from UC Berkeley with my B.S. in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. It was a rough and tumble ride that went by much quicker than I can believe. I couldn’t be happier with my selection to attend Berkeley; it was right for me in many ways. I’ve learned a great deal about myself and life in general. Oh yeah, I learned some stuff about circuits and computers too I think

I’ll have a longer post with my thoughts and reflections on my college experience coming soon. Right now I am back home in LA (can I even call it that anymore?) and busy catching up with friends, family, and preparing for my move.

Congratulations to all the rest who are graduating this month as well. I wish you all the best in whatever adventure you’re heading off to next.

Man we already did that
Now I’m into big things
No time to get sidetracked
Now I’m into big things
Get money now besides that
Some more big things
I’m into big things
The big things
The big things

Nas, “Big Things” from “I Am”

Expedia, (.commmmm)

I accepted an offer to work for Expedia, the online travel agency, as a Program Manager. My job will include drafting specifications and making design decisions for various projects and lots of meetings with marketing/business people as well as the software developers and testers in my team working on the projects I will be managing. I will not be doing much, if any, coding on the job but I will definitely be involved in the design issues and coding/testing issues my project-mates will be dealing with. I’m looking forward to the job a lot. I feel like its pretty well-suited to my interests and abilities. I can’t wait to see how it goes when I get up there. I am dreading using a PC every day at work though.

Expedia is in the city of Bellevue, in the beautiful Puget Sound area of Washington State. Apparently Berkeley wasn’t good enough and I can’t wait to go even further north from LA. That’s actually not true, but its just how things have worked out. I hear great things about the area and I’m sure that it will be just as rewarding an experience as my time here in Berkeley has been. I will be moving up to the Seattle area at the start of July.

If any of you live up there or have lived up there, know about the place, want to tell me about it, warn me about it or whatever, please do.

Europe

Amir, my cousin Ara, and myself are planning a backpacking trip to Europe. We’ll be over there for a few weeks this June. The list of places we’ll be visiting isn’t solid yet so I’ll post that a little later. If you’ve been to some cool places in Europe that are must-see, please share them with us. This should really be an amazing trip but I’m trying not to get too overexcited about it because I still have four CS projects, an 8 page paper, and three final exams to do before I can go.

Oh and if you’d like to go its not too late (yet) to join the trip.

This isn’t working for me anymore. Staying up nights working on computer science projects has been eating away at my life for a while now. I’m just not willing to go on with it any longer. And what is it all for anyway? So that I can move to Seattle where I have to sit in the rain for nine months out of the year? No, I don’t think that’s the way to go.

So I’ve decided to pursue an easier major/career as soon as possible. I’d rather just start my travelling for the summer early. When I get back I intend to enroll at Glendale Community College and quickly get through some GE courses so that I can transfer into the local CSUN or wherever and get a degree in Business. I’m sick of sitting here trying to optimize database buffer page replacement policies while my brother studies philanthropy… sometimes.

I told my employer this morning that I wouldn’t be showing up in July. They were disappointed for like two seconds before they realized they were a giant corporation with 17 alternates waiting to take my spot.

I know that some of you reading this have also attended GCC so I am asking you to please be ready to assist me in getting set up over there, enrollment, finding classes, etc. I would appreciate it.

Thanks for understanding everyone. I can’t wait to move back in with my parents in LA. I also changed my mind about the car I want. I will be buying a 1996 Honda Civic and then a friend of mine has offered to make it faster than a Porsche for about 15 G’s. All you BMW drivers I’ll see you at the next traffic light.

Oh and I’m shaving my head. Okay, that’s enough for now.

I did it! I finally turned 21 on the 13th of March. Well, even though I got there later than most of my friends, I didn’t really mind the wait. This year has been going well for me so far and I hope to continue that to December and beyond. Thank you to everybody who remembered and gave me their best wishes in person, on the phone, or by IM or e-mail.

Our ASA threw a party at Kip’s on Saturday night, March 12th, to do some fundraising for charity. It also became my birthday party of sorts and many of my friends were there. I had a really great time. We even had a small Floor 2 reunion upstairs at the bar. Well enough of me talking, you want to see the pictures of the night in question. Without further ado…

Armen’s 21st Birthday Photos

Two weekends ago was the Second Annual UC Berkeley ASA Lake Tahoe Trip. I just gave a long official title to an event that doesn’t really have one. But I think the gaudy title is well-deserved considering how much fun its been both times and how much of a tradition its likely to (or already has) become.

Last year we had just over 40 people in the group and the three-story cabin was so large you’d get lost in it. This year we weren’t so fortunate with the cabin available to us so the group of almost 50 just barely fit. But it was good enough. As usual we took a charter bus over there from Berkeley. Except this year my cousin Ara came along on the trip with us. My brother Ara was there too. So was another guy new to the ASA who has the same name as my cousin Ara including middle initial. It goes without saying that this made for some confusing times on the trip.

So I just realized that there is no point to more details recapping Tahoe events since my brother has done a pretty good job of recapping himself on his blog. Plus he beat me to it. So all credit to him and if you wanna hear the whole story, please follow this link to his blog and read his Tahoe post.

What I will say again is that I had an incredible time. It was also great that my cousin Ara took our advice and made the trip up to join us. To all my other friends and family in LA, don’t say we didn’t tell ya. I’m also quite please that I remembered to take my iPod and the cable to hook it up to a stereo at the last minute before leaving. If I hadn’t we would have had almost no music to party to. What a shame that would have been…

And the best idea I heard while in Tahoe (I can’t remember if it was mine)…? Next year rent a cabin next to the ASA cabin for the alums! Only because I think we’ll be so many all together that one won’t hold us. I’m looking forward to it.

Lastly, Tahoe photos will be forthcoming as soon as I stop by and leech photos from the folks who took digicams there. I can’t depend on the ASA web site to have it up anytime soon (sorry Karen). Fortunately, Ara is the proud new owner of a gorgeous, amazing, Canon PowerShot SD300 digital camera as of yesterday and this won’t be a problem for us anymore this semester. Until I move away and I better buy one for myself then.

Okay I promise I’m gonna finally post by this weekend a huge post all about my new job and the ins and outs of full-time work in SF. Until then…

I think this is really the ideal T-shirt to wear in Berkeley. Anybody have ideas for a better one? I doubt it.

So my last day at work was pretty damn cool I have to say. We had a little team-building meeting in the morning. Then we drove to Todai in Pleasanton. I’d never been to a Todai before (I’m assuming there’s more than one) but this place isn’t bad. Very clean, big, lots of fresh good-looking, good-tasting food. Its an all-you-can-eat buffet style of place with both sushi and non-sushi food. Obviously sushi is the main attraction but since I can’t stomach more than three pieces of it, I avoided it completely.

After an interesting lunch there, spent mostly discussing the underground piracy scene with Francis, Anthony, and Senthil (the new kid), we all headed to the nearest Boomer’s (formerly known as Family Fun Centers). First thing I did was head over to the laser tag with a group of mostly all the sales assistants and Dalip our crazy Dell buyer. Too bad the laser tag was really lame with no teams and no score kept. Nevertheless, we succeeded in running around in the dark shooting each other with red lights for eight minutes.

Once there was a cease-fire to the laser warfare we headed to the go-karts for some driving action. I initially got stuck with the slowest go-kart known to man-kind but in later rounds I grabbed the fastest kart and laid waste to the competition.

Here’s some pictures and a video of the trip. It was a lot of fun and I’m gonna miss the TSW gang. I’m hoping to return in the Fall after my internship is over.

So for those of who don’t know, I’m enrolled in CS162 this semester. That’s the Introduction to Operating Systems course for us EECS and CS people at Cal. So far it has been an interesting class and one that I’ve enjoyed…like most of the CS classes I’ve taken. Last semester I took my first upper division EECS course and for those who haven’t heard by now, it turned out a disaster. My partner for the projects dropped the class right before the project was due and … well I’m tired of telling that story.

Luckily, this time around I’ve got a great group of partners working with me on the projects and its made the experience much better. Now last week we were working on our third project which involved adding virtual memory capability to our operating system. If that term even means anything to you, please in the future, don’t take it for granted. Its one helluva thing to program. Most of us spent almost 50 hours in Soda last week working on that project. One doesn’t spend that many hours with these guys in a basement room surrounded by computers without coming away with some funny stories to tell. These won’t make much sense so its more like I’m indulging myself with these.

Siamack saying calmly, “Bring me unloadSections().” Of course we promptly handed it to him (it hadn’t been written at that point).

Arjun suggesting, “Hey guys, we can mod it with 2.” Referring to our counter variable looping from 0-2 and manually being reset to 0 if it was greater than 2. Leave it to Arjun to take the long way around.

Lastly, we found out that its fun to say the name Siamack with a lot of oomph. Even more-so when you’re frustrated with something. SIAMACK. SIAMAAACKKKK!!! Its almost like the Wrath of Kahn thing from Star Trek from Seinfeld from…nevermind, who gets that reference? Hehe, if you do you’re cool like me.

Anyway Rahul called me yesterday to tell me we aced the project so those hours in the lab paid off. Hopefully the last project goes just as well.