On an unrelated note, today I had an interview with Genesys Communications Laboratories, a part of Alcatel-Lucent.  The job is for a research position in mobile software.  It’s the first time the positions been offered, so my interviewer Adrian warned me that the daily job activity would be uncertain and in flux.  He didn’t know what specific platforms or technologies I would work with if chosen.  Still, it’s an exciting opportunity.

Finally, findthehotties.com has been hacked (again), but, have no fear, for at some future, undefined point in time, we’ll fix the exploit!

Anyway, concerning the two interviews I had:

• Ipeak Networks – Very demanding co-op position, but also very interesting.  I would writing low-level code for a cool networking protocol.
• Moxymedia – I’d learn how to build large scale web infrastructure using C#/.NET 3.5.  I think the interview went well, and I think I’d enjoy working there.

I’m glad this week is over.  Now to fix FTH (find the hotties), watch some BSG (battlestar galactica), and do some HW (Homework).

Unfortunately, Noah and I could not fix the site because the hotel took away our internet access for going over our bandwidth limit. (Note: Never stay at a Best-Western).  Today, we finally got the site working again, this time with marginally better security.  To make the site properly secure, we need to do a major overhawl, but that will have to wait because we are both very busy making up school work, preparing for exams, and attending job interviews.

So far, I have five interviews lined up for the coming week.  Finally, I left my fridge open while I was at the conference.  This is most unfortuate because I’d just bought three bags of fresh milk.  Oh well, Murphy’s law, right?

It’s too bad Pounce wasn’t successful, but I’m confident she’ll have a lasting influence on the software industry, as evidenced by her involvement in open source projects, such as OAuth.  Not to mention, she knows quite a few other famous people (some more than merely “internet” famous), to whom I’m now only seperated by two degrees!  I was lucky enough to speak with her for a few minutes before her presentation, but hopefully I’ll have a chance to ask her advice about building a website before she leaves.

I’ll have more to report in the coming days.

It’s likely to be a very difficult job market this year.  On top of that, the summer co-op is always the most competitive, because UW students must compete with those from traditional schools who are only available for internships during the summer.  Exacerbating the situation, I’m a first year, first time co-op student, which makes me less likely to get a good co-op job, if I get one at all.  The next few weeks should be interesting, to say the least.

Also, I must complain about the quality of the Jobmine interface.  It’s ugly, and un-intuitive.  Sections of the site are located in seemingly random locations, with no thought to asthetic design.  I can’t open job descriptions in a new tab properly, because javascript is used to open the links.  Once you’re on the description page from a job, you can’t actually apply to it unless you go back a page.  The system logs you out every 20 minutes, which jarringly interrupts my job searching.  Jobmine is not available at night, which is why I’m writing this rant instead of applying for jobs!

Resume’s must be uploaded as HTML documents.  If the HTML contains any syntax error, the parser spits out an ugly error description that inevatibly complains that the problem is on line 1 of the document (no it isn’t).  Apparently support for CSS is limited (Why?), and we are only allowed to have 3 different resumes uploaded at once (Why?).  Jobmine provides an interface for adding predefined “skills” to one’s profile, such as “Java”, “MS Office”, and “Project Management”.  Each skill must be added one at a time, and selected from a giant list.  It’s a royal pain in the fanny.

If Waterloo can’t even design a decent website, what hope should we have for the software engineers who graduate from it?