The benefits of late night coding

I don't care what people tell me, sleep is always important. It refreshes my mind, allows me to think more clearly about the project at hand, and really create strong code. Sometimes, we all run into deadlines. We run into times that we need to finish code now, we need to have our part of the project done by tomorrow. It is during these times code can become messy and filled with errors. 

It's bad, it's something that shouldn't be done, but it happens. During this time, I have realized something. My mind flows. It's feels like liquid helium. My thoughts are loose and ill fitting, but end up coming together on parts of the code. It is here that I become extremely creative. My mind loses the constraints of the sobriety of sleep. I begin to enter in, to say the least, the Twilight Zone. I lose meaning with time, with my feelings, with what I hear in the physical world, and the metaphysical. I become, essentially, one with the mind of my code. 

These manifestations are probably bad, yes. It is the sign of a mind deprived of sleep to a critical point. Here, though, I see my code truly. I see all the memory that code controls, I see it's interactions on a personal level. I see what's wrong, and things that can be improved. I see what looks beautiful, and what doesn't. I rewrite like a mad-man, lost in the fathoms of my mind, drawn from the physical world. I wake up though, feeling tired, my code finished, clean, beautiful. I then usually proceed to pass out at 4:00, my computer left to recharge under the silhouette of the moon. 

I have realized, yes, this type of coding is beneficial. You think of new ways to optimize your code that you hadn't thought of before. You see the intricacies of the connections of your algorithms and data structures and really get to create something beautiful. It is dangerous for the body to keep doing this. This technique is powerful when these coding sessions are sparse throughout your projects. People who say that computer scientists are crazy for coding like this don't understand the metaphysical properties of code, of your legacy, your pride, written into a machine. They don't understand how it is to be so close to it, and to truly understand it. 

This is why I am coding, now as we speak, till four in the morning. My heart is wary, my hands are tired, but I am starting to really understand my code. Tomorrow, I will raise know head high knowing I did well. I am a proud coder :)

Opportunity Job Fair

I made this! :D

So I'm one of the Marketing Chairs for OJF. I helped with spreading the good word of OJF and getting people to come. It was an amazing fun chair to hold as I got to create flyers, keep the Facebook updated, and excite people about the largest job fair at Stanford. It was hard work, but I think worth it as I got to network with many company reps before the fair even started.

There are little things I do before I go to the fair as well though. I found these little hints to be helpful for people looking for a job or internship.

Make a list of the companies you want to talk to before.

This little hint made sure I wasn't confused when I arrived at OJF. I knew who I was going to talk to, what the company did, and little facts about them I thought I would need to know. I didn't wander around confused. I didn't act dazed when I arrived at company's booths. I knew what I wanted.

Apply online a week before the fair to any you can

Many companies I wanted to apply to had applications online. Filling this out gave me a opportunity in obtaining an interview while they were here at fair. This also impressed and threw off recruiters when they told me to apply online and I already had. They would talk to me longer then and really get to know me. 

Print a specific resume per company

doesn't that look so nice for them :)

This impressed companies beyond anything. Handing in a normal resume looks cool, but handing in one with the company name in the objective line looks amazing. Many recruiters circled that I had done that and would open to me even more.

Know who you are

I knew who I was and what I was strong in before I talked to companies. I would talk to them about who I was, what I liked to do and what I was looking for in the summer. I made sure to highlight my team skills and how important it was for me to collaborate. 

The last thing to remember is to remain spunky and talkative. You own this, you got this, you're an awesome person.

These little things will garner you an awesome upper hand for any job fair.

Life at Cisco

I know I blogged a little about what I did last summer, but I didn't elaborate. I was a Cisco Choice Intern working at Cisco HQ in San Jose. I worked in the STBU or Secure Technology Business Unit group underneath my awesome and very helpful boss Ajay Garg. My mentor who helped me a lot and was a great awesome person was Kanika Thapar. My team was very helpful during my time at Cisco.

It worked a little like this

During the internship, I worked on Cisco ASA, a enterprise firewall system fixing the infamous time_t bug. It was an intense, quick paced project as I had to crawl through a million lines of code and fix erros, plus add new functions to be able to handle this now larger data type. During one part of the internship, I had to teach myself atomic operations and threads. I added new functionality to atomic compare and exchange a 128 bit piece of data. I did this in a matter of 3 days. When I work on something, I give it 110%. 

Legendary Internship this Summer

I have a simple goal this summer. Building software applications in New York City for the summer. I want to intern for a company, startup or non-profit in New York and create a stunning new application for them. I want to be really integrated in my team and be just as important to the company, as the company is important to me. This is part of my legendary internship tour to really grasp what I will be doing when I graduate.

My code is running on this 100 grand bad boy

Last summer I interned at Cisco Systems in the Secure Technology Business Unit. I helped fix the time_t bug on Cisco ASA, an enterprise firewall system. I worked primarily in C, except for a three day period where I had to teach myself atomic operations and create some 128 bit atomic operations in assembly. I worked quickly and finished my project in nine weeks, impressing my manager and mentor.