Daniel Spisak on Technology

So last week marked that 10 week annual festival for me known as finals week, or 10 ways to get sleep deprivation on the cheap while chugging Red Bull like it was going out of style. This time the assailants were statistics, operating systems theory, human computer interaction and networking. Overall I feel like I did okay on some of these, I probably could have done better on the statistics and HCI class but I just sort of let myself get swamped around midterm’s time and it took a while to get things back in order after that. This being said, I now have just three more quarters left at UC Irvine Spring, Summer, and Fall 2007 after which point I graduate provided nothing horrible happens.

Of course, today is now officially my 3^rd day of “Spring Break™” and I have the following to do:

1. Call someone in San Diego regarding a project I did network design work on
2. Write up invoice of current outstanding billable hours
3. Do my taxes in a vain hope I will be owed money
4. Try to work as much as possible this week to offset extreme lack of money right now

There would have been an additional item on that list for me to have a phone interview with Apple so their engineers could see if they wanted me for something to do with the company. This is actually now the second time that Apple has emailed me and said that they wished to interview me on the phone. Of course when I get these kinds of emails I am very polite and thank them for the interest and inform then that:

1. I’m taking 12 units during the summer and not available for internship positions
2. I’m graduating at the end of 2007 and thus can’t work fulltime until probably February 2008

I have to admit it is somewhat frustrating to have to append this information to recruiters and HR people constantly. My resume clearly states my expected graduation date. Even more frustrating is the fact that the Apple recruiter that was on campus for the engineering jobs fair that I gave my resume to is what caused these last two interests at Apple to be generated. I specifically told them that I was not available for internships and was interested in full-time opportunities after graduation. I guess it just goes to show what a hard job recruiters and HR people have these days if they don’t have the time to read my resume. I’ve considered modifying my current resume so at the top it reads “NOT AVAILABLE FOR INTERNSHIPS” followed by “NOT AVAILABLE FOR FULL-TIME WORK TIL FEB 2008″. I’d probably put it in blinking text too if I could find a way to do it in a PDF just to make me point clearer.

In any case, Spring 2007 quarter is going to be a bear for me. I will be taking two senior project classes, one in networking and the other in HCI, along with an artificial intelligence class and the first of three world history classes. Hopefully I will manage them decently. I already have a reading assignment for my history class if I want to get a head start on things. Heck, they are even going to have the discussion section meet on the first day of class which I almost never see happen these days.

This brings me to the topic of Spring Break. Spring Break has been turned into this mythical time where students go somewhere sunny and beach-like, or perhaps a large lake. Whatever the case, someplace where multiple people also on Spring Break go and congregate and frolic, imbibe excessive amounts of alcohol and generally engage in casual sex.

Damn I sound like a bitter old man there.

What can I say, the few times I’ve happened across MTV while they were broadcasting whichever particular incantation of Spring Break in <INSERT HOPPING PLACE HERE> it almost seems like an event wholly fabricated from cloth.

Granted, I’m probably not the most hip person I know of, but I tend to at least have a decent grasp of what is going on around me. And the Spring Break of MTV and movies just doesn’t seem to happen with anyone I know of or am friends with. There is a part of me that wonders if I am missing out on something worthwhile, some kind of bonding with friends or whatnot. I don’t know. Of course, being nearly broke during ones massive week long vacation doesn’t really help either.