With the blink of an eye, we are already at the second last episode of this series. It’s been quite a ride for the past three months and true tears has shown no signs of slowing down despite the fact that we are fast approaching its final climax.

Upon the completion of this episode, one might get a little too hung up on cliffhanger ending but we really shouldn’t just brush off the other events that occurred. I’m mainly talking about the deal with Jun here. Hell, that was certainly quite a shocker. All this time I didn’t really believe it since it just seemed a little shaky to me but this episode’s certainly slammed the nail in that coffin, that’s for sure.

It’s anyone’s guess as to how Noe’s recent actions will affect Shinichirou’s heart. I think we can all agree that he has feelings for Hiromi, but can he come to terms with that after what Noe did? Will the two be able to get along knowing that they (in)directly caused this accident?

Well, this episode finally concludes the main arcs that encompass the original visual novel game. Unfortunately, I think I’d be lying if I said that the second season was truly up to par with the first. Quite simply, “祭囃し編” just felt a little anticlimactic.

While the writers did a very good job with the build up and everything with the other arcs, “祭囃し編” just seemed to feel a little underwhelming. While some things did go against our protagonists, I was never really worried about them.

Still, I can’t deny that the series as a whole has been extremely enjoyable thanks to some excellent writing. The way that the story unfolds is probably not very original but it keeps you engaged and wanting more because of its clever execution and intelligent plot twists.

I just watched episode 12 and oh my, they sure know how to time an ending. I wouldn’t really call it a “cliffhanger” though, if you know what I mean. Note that you will only get it if you actually watched this episode.

Ugh, this episode has made me feel very uneasy about the (unconfirmed) Shinichirou x Hiromi pairing. Why did Shinichirou have to keep thinking about Noe when he had that little date with Hiromi down by the beach? I know I got to see a kiss and all but it’s completely meaningless if Shinichirou ends up being with Noe at the end.

This episode wasn’t a complete disappointment though as it was nice to see Aiko and Miyokichi get back together. It was also a little reassuring to see that Hiromi’s line was for Jun and not Shinichirou. It’s still all very wobbly but I mustn’t give up hope!

The previews for the next episode didn’t really offer anything particularly enlightening but I suppose that might be because they want to try and keep things under wraps. The episode already ended off on a cliffhanger so they might have figured that there’s no need to make their audience feel any worse than they already feel.

This would’ve been an absolutely wonderful ending to the series if this was the last episode…but, for better or worse, we actually still have three more episodes to go. They’ll probably try to keep Noe in the running but I’m not sure as to how that’s going to happen since Shinichirou clearly likes Hiromi and not Noe.

I was so very frustrated when I saw this scene but the thought quickly dissipated as I soon remembered that Shinichirou was going to be riding on his bike from the previews. Still, the fact that I didn’t get to hear him say those important words to Hiromi ticks me off. I guess that’s what the ending is going to be for, right? Right?

Unfortunately, we also got to see a rather disturbing preview after that climactic ending because of what you hear Hiromi say. I don’t want to believe that she’s saying it to Shinichirou because these previews are always so misleading…but hey, you never know. :/

Every time I listen to a track from FFXII, I start wishing I was playing the game right then and there. :/

Wow, the art quality of this episode has made quite a dive. While things looked okay here and there, there were quite a few oddities and utter ridiculousness that slipped in here, particularly near the end of the episode when Yuji showed up, that was just plain awful.

If you forget ignore the problem with the art, you might actually enjoy the episode. I know I did. I think the screenplay of this episode was particularly well done and the music selection of the various scenes were very appropriate.

I don’t know how they plan on wrapping up up the series here given the current events. Will we get a third season or will it just be concluded with an OVA or something some time later? We’ll probably get a third season but I can’t imagine it lasting for 24 episodes again. I mean, surely the series just has to end.

I got back to my place at Waterloo at around 1800 yesterday. I’ll try to get some writing done later today or later in the week.

I’ll be making a little detour at Seattle tomorrow before going to Santa Clara on Sunday for EclipseCon to visit Jacky and Mark over at Microsoft. If anyone knows of any places I simply have to go, let me know! ;) We will be dropping by Kinokuniya, so you don’t have to tell me about that one.

While I told a few of my friends that I had been rejected by Google, I never publicly announced this fact. I think it’s a little unfair to my readers here, so, well, here you go, I got rejected. ;)

However, as the title implies, the main reason I’m posting up an entry is to share the questions that they posed to me to the wider public. Hopefully, someone somewhere will be able to find these useful. Good luck, whoever you are! :)

Note that these questions were asked in the context of the Java programming language and its standard libraries.

• How would you (unit?) test your networking code?
• What’s the difference between an array and an ArrayList?
• What’s the difference between a HashSet and an ArrayList?
• How would you implement a HashSet?
• How do you write write a good hashCode() function?
• What happens if hashCode() returns the same integer but invoking equals(Object) on the two objects returns false?
• You have a path object like ‘/home/remy/foo/./../bar’, how would you canonicalize it (as in, resolve /. and /.. properly)? So, the end result in this example would be ‘/home/remy/bar’. Can it be done in O(n) time?
• How would you test the above method?
• If an argument shouldn’t be null, should you throw a NullPointerException or an IllegalArgumentException? Note that the interviewer was only asking for my opinion.
• How does a Hashtable / HashMap work? How do they store their data? How fast can you get stuff out of it (with the get(Object) method)?