Blog Entries for "Personal"

I'm not really sure why it took so long for me to try this out, but I just installed uShare on my desktop PC and started streaming videos to the Xbox 360. It took about 2 minutes to setup and configure. Now I just drop files in my ~/media directory and they pop up as a playable source on the Xbox. My desktop isn't powerful enough to transcode HD video on the fly, but the NAS server should be capable of that. On that note, I've finally laid out the specs for the NAS server:

• Intel Core 2 Quad ... [read more...]

When we decided to move to Stamford, we knew the apartment was a little more expensive than we would have liked - but it was in the perfect spot for Brooke and I to get to work - so we went with it. I had some estimates as to what our electric and gas bills were going to be, but I was apparently off by quite a bit. In the last week, I finally got the first electric, gas, water and cable bills.

On top of our rent, I'm now paying nearly $400 a month for utilities. Is that ... [read more...]

Today, much like every other day since we moved here, I woke up at 5:30am. I showered, got dressed and was ready pretty quick, and ended up playing Beautiful Katamari to pass the time until I left to go pick up Jason.

Once we arrived at work we hung out in the reception area until we got picked up by Sean from HR. We did some paperworky stuff for a while, and then we got our desks and laptops. Getting the laptops ended up being pretty exciting, because they were brand new ThinkPad T61s (read: really ... [read more...]

It doesn't really feel like it, but I've been done with school for two weeks now. Since I've been home everything has been a bit of a blur, but there hasn't been any stress or feeling of real urgency - so that means I'm having fun. Aside from getting some things in order before I move out in a few days, my time has been spent coding (very casually), assembling and painting my Warhammer 40K Necron army (which has been base-coated for well a year now), and collecting and scheming about Magic cards every waking moment.

The code I've been writing ... [read more...]

I apologize for lack of updates recently, two weeks ago was our last week of classes, last week was finals, and this week is "Senior Week". On Sunday I went to Long Island for Mother's Day, I came back Tuesday afternoon, and I've barely been around since then.

On Wednesday, Jay, Nina, Brooke and I took a trip to the city. Our adventures brought us to the Museum of Natural History, which they neglected to tell us (when we bought our tickets) was only open for another hour and fourty-five minutes. Once that closed, we ... [read more...]

Last night in Theory of Programming Languages we briefly discussed nested functions and procedures. I made the point that Javascript supports this (obviously) and it facilitates object oriented design in the language, as there isn't a notion of "classes". No qualms there. But when I suggested that the same functionality permits for encapsulation, people seemed to disagree, claiming that fully qualifying calls to nested functions implies they are always publicly accessible. So, I went to my quiet place and decided to address it today in this post.

The people that suggested nested functions were public were wrong. You see, depending on ... [read more...]

I've been asked a few times recently if I'm suffering from "senioritis", a debilitating disease that instills an overwhelming sense of apathy in nearly-graduated Seniors. The truth is, my Senioritis carried over from about Junior year of high school and ended around Junior year of college. Since that time, the closer I came to graduation, the more work I did. Being only two weeks away from finals (for the last time) has really got me in work over-drive.

I've written enough papers in the last two months to be compiled into a short novel (not a joke), often times longer than ... [read more...]

So, today Brooke and I took our third trip down to Stamford to check out apartments. For the first time, it wasn't raining, and was quite possibly the nicest day of the year to date. I discovered yesterday that I get a reimbursement for my housing search that is completely seperate from the relocation stipend, so that was a pleasant surprise.

Anyway, we've really been waiting to find an apartment that struck as "the place"; and today we did. We actually cancelled two of our later appointments so we had time to leave a deposit ... [read more...]

The last few days I've been building a new feature into the network monitor to visualize topologies. Turns out that if you can build a tree out of your topology, you can render it with Graphviz pretty easily. This has actually be a ton of fun, despite the fact that the ruby-graphviz gem is slightly dated and lacking some attribute support, has a slight TempFile issue when executing via (at least my) Rails app, and hard coded support for only Graphviz dot and twopi (though it's really trivial to support circo and neato). If ... [read more...]

1. Just ate a Cocoa Pebble the size of a Frosted Flake. How cool is that?
2. My gallon of Poland Spring water has a "Best by" date. ?????

Dear Diary,

Today I wrote my first and last COBOL program.

Anyway, just another quick update here. I've posted a new tutorial, Overview and Introduction to cfengine . It's really just a study sheet for myself - I'll be adding to it over time (there's only very basic stuff in there now). Second, you'll notice that the Projects link on the top of this page works now. That's because I finally added a Project model to the Django app. I have posted my monitoring tool in there, and you can reach the project wiki, and also view screenshots of the ... [read more...]

Last night I gave my presentation on Smalltalk and Ruby. I enjoyed sharing what I had learned on the subjects and I feel like I had a lot to cover on both topics, we were allotted only 10 minutes to present and I ended up going for 35 minutes. I only stopped because I felt as if I had gone slightly over my 10 minutes (I thought maybe 5 minutes over). If it weren't for that, I could have probably talked for another hour or so, and that would have only covered the basics. No one stopped me, so I ... [read more...]

First off, Aunt Theresa and Uncle John had a baby! Joseph, who is my first cousin on Mom's side of the family, is the first child on that side of the family in twenty-one years (since me!). So this is quite a momentus time, and I look forward to heading home over Easter break and meeting him. A baby and a NY Giant's superbowl win, not sure it gets much better than that for them!

Second, I was just reading Danny's blog and learned of something incredible. As you all know, my favorite TV ... [read more...]

I say second impression, because this isn't my first encounter with EVE Online. EVE is such a massive game in every respect, that my first attempts at understanding its complexities ultimately lead me to uninstall it. I simply cannot express in words how insanely huge the game feels from the minute you begin creating your character. And even given that fact, it is amazing that at this very moment, there is something like 40,000 players online (and there are many more who are subscribers).

But at second glance, I am not at all surprised that the following is so significant. The ... [read more...]

Let me start with Amazon S3, since that is what I'm most excited about right now. I signed up for an Amazon Web Service account last night after I got home from MCCS. In about 30 seconds, I installed s3sync, and in about another 30 seconds, I had a little BASH script that initiated backups of the directories I care about (/home, /etc, /var/lib/mysql, /usr/local/directadmin). Execute, go to bed, wake up this morning.

Magic.

Everything on the file system that I would need to recover accounts is now synced with s3. Did I mention this cost me about 5 bucks?  Doesn't get ... [read more...]

It's official! Today were my first classes of my last semester here at Marist. It's been a while since my last update, so there are a few things to note, which are best presented in list format:

• Bears, Beats, Battlestar Galactica: Brooke and I started watching Battlestar Galactica (including the 3 hour mini-series) and we're hooked. My only gripe is that while their CG is "movie-quality", the frequently reuse these scenes. I'm sure it will get better as the seasons progress (we're only on season 1).
• XBox 360 + DivX + XviD = Excellent: Over break I downloaded the Dec. 4th Xbox ... [read more...]

I didn't want to post anything until I declined my offers with other companies. But I have officially accepted my offer from FactSet and I'll be taking up the position of a System Engineer there. Start date is June 30th, 2008.

So now that that's out of the way the next step is finding a place to live. It's already been decided that I'll be living in Stamford, so it's really just a matter of finding some apartments in the area.

Managed properties in the area are really pretty nice, but they're expensive and there ... [read more...]

These past four years have been great. I have successfully avoided colds, stuffy/runny noses, sore throats and other ailments generally instigated by allergies or cold weather. This is an accomplishment I've been very proud of, because I hate feeling sick, and I have a few guidelines that I follow to keep it that way. Sadly, two days ago, I got the first runny nose I've had in 4 years, this lead to a sore throat the next morning. I was bummed, I broke one of my own rules, and I had paid the price! Thankfully, I've already recovered and I'm ... [read more...]

As I previously mentioned, Morgan Stanley was my final interview. I heard back from them today with my offer. So, after is all and said and done, here's the results of all my interviews:

My poor computer has been through a lot the last few days. I needed to install Visual Studio 2008 for LINQ support, and it turned out to be a disaster. Stupidly I followed the advice of someone in someone's forum post to fix this particular issue I was having, and in doing so brought Vista to a completely unusable state. Each successive reboot made things worse. Finally, I bit the bullet, booted into safe mode, backed up my file, formatted and started fresh.

But that's not the only change on my PC. I've been sadly disappointed with Firefox's tabbed-browsing performance which generally ... [read more...]

Thursday was my day of interviews at Morgan Stanley. I think everything went well, and I will hear back from them some time this week with a definite yes or no.

So you would think, now having all of my interviews out of the way, that I might finally be able to sleep well not having to worry about how I might answer interview questions better. Clearly this is not the case, because it's 6:30am and I've been awake for an hour now. I think choosing where I really want to work, now that it's all done, is going to be ... [read more...]

Just got back from NYC. Was up at 4:15am, didn't sleep well at all last night. Took a train -> subway -> ferry to Jersey City, interviewed with Firmwide Technology and Infrastructure. Six interviews total, tag teamed in one of them - but I had no problem answering any of their technical questions. Should hear back from them in about seven days.

Morgan Stanley has invited me back for second round interviews as well, next Thursday (Nov 8th). What I find interesting is that no one from Marist (apparently) has ever gone to Morgan Stanley under any track but Infrastructure, and ... [read more...]

On several occasions now I have been asked to why I was applying for a software engineering position as an Information Technology major. The fact of the matter is, I enjoy web development (in any language) more than hardcore, low-level system programming. I like to have my left hand very lightly in design and user experience, and my right hand in backend development for that application.

I came to Marist College knowing that I wanted to be a network engineer. Then I got here and knew that I didn't. I realized that what I was truly good at, was web ... [read more...]

My interview at RoundArch went very well. I had two technical interviews and one personal interview. I should be hearing back from them on Monday (tomorrow), good or bad.

Heading to and from the city I managed to get on an express train, which was a 90 minute trip to/from Poughkeepsie, so that saved me some time. I also got on an express subway train, which took me back and forth from Grand Central to Wall St. in way less time than I expected. So, yet again, I ended up being about an hour early to the interview. This time though, ... [read more...]

Yesterday I had a full day of interviews at FactSet (www.factset.com) in Norwalk, CT. I had a great time, interviewed with a bunch of very cool, very smart people, and got taken out to lunch.

I woke up at 5:30am, left the house at 6am, arrived at 8:10am, began interviewing at 9am. Didn't finish until 4:30pm, but that was quite alright, because I didn't really want to leave!

Today I got my offer for a Systems Engineer position (Unix system administration) and so far it is the best offer I've recieved (by a significant amount, too...plus a sign on bonus).

Some interesting ... [read more...]

First off, today is Brooke's birthday! Happy 22nd Birthday Brooke!

Second, regarding the post title: seriously, I want all the jobs. Everything sounds so good. So many opportunities to learn new things and get free lunch and health care and candy.

Last week I interviewed with RoundArch for a Developer position, which went really great and sounds like a awesome opportunity. I was asked to visit the NYC office, so hopefully I'll be taking a trip down there within the next week or two.

Today I had an interview with FactSet for a Unix System Administrator position, which also went ... [read more...]

Hits have dropped off dramatically (and no surprise), I've been so busy since the end of the summer, I've neglected to add any new content.  With the exception of "matt savona" and "matt savona marist" hits from potential employers (hello to you, by the way :)!) my friends have not visited in a while.

 Here at loopforever.com, I crave your attention. I want you to read this stuff. Don't leave me. Please.

 Many, many things have happened since my last update. It really isn't feasible for me to recap it all in detail (and honestly, I don't remember it all anyway)...

• IBM Internship: ... [read more...]

As if 28 Days Later and 28 Weeks Later wasn't enough...there are talks of 28 Months Later (link). It would appear zombie lovers are looking forward to it, if it actually happens.

I suppose I'm too facinated with the notion of living, breathing, talking actors in a movie to be excited about this one. I'll pass. 99% of Americans would agree. 100% would agree if they saw 28 Weeks Later.

Update: During lunch today, Brooke received a phone call from the woman we spoke to in the office yesterday. After talking with her boss, we are being reimbursed in full for the towing ticket.

As I write this, I'm in Stamford, CT in awe at the idiocy I've experienced today.

Every other weekend I visit Brooke here and park my car in assigned Visitor Parking. As a resident here, Brooke was presented with two diagrams of the downstairs parking garage (which is two floors) when she moved in. These diagrams clearly state Parking Slots 21-27 are "Future Resident / Visitor Parking".

Today, after ... [read more...]