schlagging.com

Your mom runs in O(|V|+|E|) time!

Posted on August 9th, 2005 by Josh.
Categories: work.

Prim’s and Kruskal’s algorithms to find minimum spanning trees. Union-find data structures. Bipartite graphs. Ford-Fulkerson method and Edmonds-Karp algorithm to find maximum flow in a directed graph. Strongly connected. Maximally connected. Singly connected. Convex hulls…

Yeah. I am going nuts right now. Final exam is a little over 4 hours away. I’m going to rock its socks off. But damn is this stuff craptastic.

As much as I’d like to discredit all of it, a lot of these topics have real world usage (i.e. shortest path? mapquest. max-flow? any company that lays wire/pipe/etc). Whether or not I’ll ever have to use it in my profession is up to debate. But then again, who knows what I’ll be doing in ten years. Video game industry? Maybe. Working my way up the corporate ladder after having attained an MBA? Perhaps. I really don’t know. And you know what? I kinda like that. So many opportunities, and I’m just getting started..

Okay, back to studying..

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I don’t like CSc 445 (Algorithms)

Posted on July 26th, 2005 by Josh.
Categories: work, sports.

Two things I will guarantee:

• The Colorado Rockies will never win a World Series
• I will never use anything I learn in Algorithms in a real-world situation

Informal proof for the first statement:
A major league baseball team needs a solid pitching staff to make it to, let alone win the World Series. Coors Field is a terrible stadium for pitchers. The high altitude causes the air to be thinner, and balls will fly higher, allowing batters to dominate. For this reason alone, no respectable big-name pitcher will want to sign with the Rockies (except, of course, Byung-Hyung Kim.. haha, right). If no big-name pitcher will sign with the Rockies, then they can’t have a solid pitching staff. And therefore, they will never win a World Series. Sorry, Colorado.

Very informal proof for the latter statement (if you can call it that, even):
Who the f writes proofs? Mathematicians. Computer science researchers. That’s pretty much it. I will be neither. I want to be a web developer. I want to code for a video game company. I want to help write software to run an infinite number of devices. Never would I need to write a proof to do any of that. And no, I’m not going to take seriously the idea mentioned in my software engineering class that proofs can be written to prove correctness of a program. Nobody does that. Well, except maybe life or death situations, where the code HAS to be perfect - i.e. NASA. Meh, if NASA wants me to work for them, then I’ll do the whole proof thing if I must. Else, proofs can bite me. Two more weeks, and this class is over…

Update: I have to correct that entire last paragraph. Disproof of the second statement, by contradiction: http://schlagging.blogspot.com/2005/08/your-mom-runs-in-ove-time.html

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Job search mode: engaged

Posted on July 24th, 2005 by Josh.
Categories: work.

So today I finally went into full job search mode. I’d signed up on all the big sites (monster, hotjobs, careerbuilder, dice) but hadn’t uploaded my resume or started searches til now.

I’ve got resumes posted all around, and a folder of dozens of job opportunities bookmarked so I can start sorting through them all. I figure I’ll just put myself out there, see who’s interested.. and hopefully get a few responses that way.

I’ve also applied directly to Intel, Lockheed Martin, GoDaddy.com, and The Arizona Republic. If you can think of a big Phoenix company off the top of your head, let me know and I’ll probably apply there too.

I’m a bit overwhelmed with it all right now, so I’m going to take a break from that and probably come back to it tomorrow. The rest of the night, I’ll be working on a website for Julie and her ultimate frisbee team. Busy busy busy…

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