Working on confidential material is cool because it’s an interesting concept/technology that (we think) no one has done or that no one has done it “our way”. On the other hand, you can’t talk to anyone about it.

At least I can talk to my Eclipse friends that work at IBM about it. If I couldn’t talk about it to any of my “casual” hacking friends (as in, not being able to talk to anyone about it outside of the “work” scope), I think I might’ve died already.

You’ve all had “feature freeze” phases during your software development life cycle, right? But what about a “bug fix freeze”? That’s what our team’s in right now. Due to the fact that we’re going to be doing a major demo to our mentors on July 4th, our MBA intern is pushing us all to work on features instead of fixing bugs. This simply goes against all programming principles I hold dear and everything I live by. Have I been living a lie?

While my team has done pitches for other people before, this one’s going to be a serious one. Quite a few big wigs at the SMT (Senior Management Team) level are going to be listening in on the conference call. Eclipse players like Dave Thomson and Kevin Haaland may not be present, but there are other ones like the lab director for the Ottawa lab (or is he only the lab director of the one lab I’m in instead of both Ottawa labs, well, whatever). I don’t know if it’s a good thing or not to not have Dave and Kevin show up since our project is “Eclipse-related” (I can say this much according to one of my mentors, Kim Horne, it’s certainly vague enough), and our salaries are being paid for by the budget Dave Thomson’s been given for the projects he manages, but anyway…

I’ve got most of my lines memorized (haha, don’t we all claim that) although it sure was tough concentrating last night. You have no idea as to how badly I wanted to hack on code instead of reciting my lines. Anyway, for additional practice, I’ll likely be reciting them on an endless loop whilst biking to work today. Wish me luck!

Well, today’s end marks the end of my first work week. Things have been pretty rough and not everything has been going our way, but I guess everyone that’s signed up for this program were well aware that this wasn’t going to be a ride in the park. I’m going to be doing a bit of research this long weekend (it’s “long” since we get Monday off because of Victoria Day, as an aside for my American readers) in hopes of being prepared to completely flesh out our project idea, scope, and direction by Wednesday.

Due to the nature of our project and the technologies we are dealing with, I am obligated to not disclose as much as I’d like to since a fair amount of what my team is working with is confidential. How long they will remain in that space is questionable since I obviously don’t know what is the next thing that IBM is planning to go public with. I merely ask that you, my readers, be understanding of the fact that when I am vague about something I am doing at work that it is not my intention to tease and poke fun at you but is because I would rather not say anything than say something that might violate my non-disclosure agreement. Of course, when in doubt, you can always talk to me directly for clarification purposes.

My name is […] and I am a recruiting representative with Microsoft Corporation. One of our recruiters recently came across your resume and is very interested in speaking with you about the Software Design Engineer Co-op Position when Microsoft comes to campus on February 26-27.

Well, as you all know, I’m going to go to IBM Ottawa next term, so I regrettably had to turn these folks down. Regrettably, you say? Yes, regrettably, I say. Despite the fact that I don’t use Windows as my primary operating system and Microsoft does not actively endorse or promote open source (they do have this Port 25 thing, which I’ll admit I have no idea as to what they do), I have to say that I don’t really have any qualms with working for them. For the record, I would really rather work for Microsoft than Google, Google just scares me way too much. Also, Google doesn’t want me anyway since they didn’t even offer me an interview.

Now going back to this interview thing, what I question about this is why is Microsoft interested in me? On my résumé, the only programming language I have down is Java, I do not make claims of knowing C, C++, or C#, so why? Why oh why are they interested in me?

Well, I just got a verbal offer for the internship program via a phone call from Marcellus Mindel, the Extreme Blue program coordinator for IBM Ottawa. So it seems I’ll be in that area from May to August, so if any of you folks are going to be that area around that time, we should find some time to meet up, then. ;)

I was actually informed by Tod Creasey about this on IRC last Friday but didn’t want to blog about it until I got the real offer. Getting a job offer on IRC is kind of strange, after all…transcript of the first part of the conversation on Friday as follows.

TodC: You around Remy?
rcjsuen: Hi Tod
TodC: You are going to get a job offer early next week
TodC: Welcome to the Platform!
rcjsuen: Oh, wow
rcjsuen: I really was worried after the first question ;_;
TodC: We needed a good Eclipse cowboy and you have what it takes

Well, my phone interview with IBM just completed a little while ago. The IM client was actually unused although Chris told me I would have been writing code in it for technical questions if I did. Anyway, I don’t think it went too well (that’s what we all say, right, but I’m serious), considering that I was unable to answer the main question, which was a brainstorming of solutions for the problem that needed to be solved by the Extreme Project (or at least just try to get somewhere).

If I don’t make it I’m probably just going to go to school again this summer term with a light load and just send an application in for the 2007 Summer of Code.

I just got an email from Canada’s Extreme Blue staff and they’re looking to schedule a phone interview with me on next Monday, Wednesday, or Friday. Apparently, it’s going to be an hour long and will also require the use of an instant messaging client. I’m not too sure as to what that’s all about just yet, but I’m guessing I might need to maybe type out some code onto it…? Or not…because that sounds kind of retarded now that I think about it. Oh well, I’ll find out soon enough.