The Google interview

Went very well last week. Had a splendid time chatting with the engineers there and enjoyed a delicious free lunch. I'm hoping I might hear back from them next week or so.

In the mean time Barnes and Noble has shown a bit of interest in dragging me in to work on the Nook products, so we'll see if that goes anywhere, and I'll be keeping my resume spread around just in case none of these current opportunities pan out.

On the less job-searchy side, the flights down and back were a huge pain in the ass. A broken plane and subsequently cancelled flight saw me arrive in San Jose very late, and a delay on the way back had me almost miss my connection in Denver. The flights themselves, once we were in the air, were quite nice though. I sat beside some lovely folk, including, by random chance, Chris Wiesehan, the receiver coach for the Blue Bombers, who was a very nice fellow and quite enjoyable to chat with.


The hotel was splendid, though slightly less scenic than the one in Saratoga that Apple had me in. Visits with friends went quite well, much sushi was eaten, and good times were had by all.


I'm really looking forward to getting this all taken care of so I can move down to California and get myself settled and comfortable.

Travel arrangements to the Opt-In Village

I'll be heading down to the Opt-In Village in April for an interview. I'll be flying down on the 21st at 1:30 and arriving at 7:30 in San Jose, and then flying back from San Jose on the 23rd from 11:45 to 7:30. Going through Minneapolis on the way down again, and Denver on the way up instead of Toronto.

Got a hotel room in Mountain View near El Camino and 85 this time, which is a very familiar area for me.

There and back again

The trip down to Apple went pretty well. The flight down was reasonably uneventful, the interviews went splendidly, and then on Saturday everything went to hell (sort of).

It started when I was packing up in the morning: I managed to chip my thumbnail. This was the first in a series of annoying events.

Next up, I managed to get a speeding ticket going to the airport. Got clocked at 88mph while the official speed is 65. Of course, none of the traffic goes anywhere near 65, so the actual speed differential between myself and the rest of the vehicles was fairly negligible. All the same, speeding is speeding. I just hope the fine isn't too huge.

Following this, I arrived at the airport to find that my flight to Toronto was delayed, but that they'd make up the time in the air. This wasn't too terrible. I also had to go through that idiotic porn scanner at the TSA checkpoint.

What was terrible was that my flight from Toronto to Winnipeg, which was already scheduled to arrive in the wee hours of the morning, was delayed by 4 hours due to a little flaky white stuff sprinkling ever so delicately from the sky.

Luckily Pearson has free wifi, so it wasn't a total loss, but rolling in at nearly 5am after a long day in the air wasn't exactly how I was expecting to end my californian visit.

But, all's well that ends well. At least I picked up (with employee discount) a shiny new iPod dock for my Touch while I was down there.

I haven't heard back from Apple yet, but I'll be sure to blog about it when I do.

I'm leaving on a jet plane

I keep promising myself I'll never fly again, but here I am, jetting off to California for 2 days. It's for a good cause, though: an on-site interview at Apple.

Google also dropped me an email and indicated they're interested in an on-site, but I won't have any time in my schedule until April, and if Apple comes back with a decent offer before then I'll probably just go with that. It's kind of a shame they didn't contact me a few weeks earlier or I could have doubled up. Such is life, I guess.

Onward and upward...