Missed the mid-year birthday post, oh wells. Let's recap last year's resolutions!
Start volunteering / donating. Made a donation at the end of the year to Khan Academy. Now looking to start volunteering at places in SF. It's important to remember to give back. I've always been of the mindset that you have to help yourself before you can truly help others, more for optimization. I'm pretty lucky at the age of 25 to be fairly stable financially and decided it's time. I don't want to be a person that keeps saying "I need to do better before giving back" because that time will never come. Failure!!!! Surprised at this one. This should have been easy. Other than giving some food to the homeless this wasn't accomplished at all =(. Not even about not being well off enough to give back, this is too lazy to give back.... I even remember looking up volunteering services, I could have even volunteered for events at work that did non profit work.
I did donate ad dollars to cancer association to bring more attention to their cause. It's still not the same as being their in person.
Do a stand up comedy show. This got pushed back for far too long, finally did it at Redwood City Underground last week. Woot! Even got some laughs =D
Haven't done stand up again. Laziness to blame.
Deciding to move to a larger city. This one was pretty easy since my rent is up at the end of this month anyways. Signed the lease today, moving to SF, which I wasn't particulary happy about. Been in cities before (Boston/NYC), don't really take advantage of what it has to offer (don't drink so bars aren't a plus). But there should be lots to do and it's an easy way to force myself to be more active.
Biggest mistake of the year. Commute totaled 3-4 hrs a day. Didn't do much in the city as I thought.
Six-pack, yea... vain, was so close several times, darn you school and actual jobs!! California now, no hibernation weight and work/life balance is pretty good. This year!!! Come on!!
Failure!!! Started actually exercising mid-year. Still 175lbs, but big difference in strength. 0 pull ups -> 5 rep max, bicep curls from 1 rep max of 30lb -> 50lb.
Getting rid of car. Sending this back east next week. Was never one of those kids that needed a car when they turned legal driving age. Just a liability, and several accidents later...(worst asian ever!!...or most typcial asian ever!! you decide).
Great decision here. Life without a car totally doable.
Build a mobile/web application. Putting this one off for way too long. This is more skill building than anything else. Job doesn't require it, but learning in itself is good, can't let that bootcamp money go to waste.
Failure. Kinda saw this one coming. Motivation not there anymore for this one. Knowing myself, if there's not a need for it, it ain't happening.
Dating, cause relationships are a thing.
Burned out on dating in the beginning of my move. Went from 1 a week to ~1 month after the first 2 months.
2016 Resolutions:
6 pack..still want those abs. Getting a personal trainer now. Goal is to keep muscle gain and lose the fat. Hoping for abs around 160-165lb. When I was close to having them before I was at 155lb (lanky asian).
Write a novel. Working on it, mix of Gulliver's Travel + Gattica + Brave New World. Nanowrimo failed.
Move back Penninsula/Southbay by end of Feb. Looking at you Palo Alto!!!
Career, I'm so mixed on this. Have been for the last 1-2 years now. Life goals and accomplishments. Meaning of life stuff.
Become a Let's Player. VR is coming and I want to be apart of that!
Didn't want to write this until I crushed some goals already.
Start volunteering / donating. Made a donation at the end of the year to Khan Academy. Now looking to start volunteering at places in SF. It's important to remember to give back. I've always been of the mindset that you have to help yourself before you can truly help others, more for optimization. I'm pretty lucky at the age of 25 to be fairly stable financially and decided it's time. I don't want to be a person that keeps saying "I need to do better before giving back" because that time will never come.
Do a stand up comedy show. This got pushed back for far too long, finally did it at Redwood City Underground last week. Woot! Even got some laughs =D
Deciding to move to a larger city. This one was pretty easy since my rent is up at the end of this month anyways. Signed the lease today, moving to SF, which I wasn't particulary happy about. Been in cities before (Boston/NYC), don't really take advantage of what it has to offer (don't drink so bars aren't a plus). But there should be lots to do and it's an easy way to force myself to be more active.
Six-pack, yea... vain, was so close several times, darn you school and actual jobs!! California now, no hibernation weight and work/life balance is pretty good. This year!!! Come on!!
Getting rid of car. Sending this back east next week. Was never one of those kids that needed a car when they turned legal driving age. Just a liability, and several accidents later...(worst asian ever!!...or most typcial asian ever!! you decide).
Build a mobile/web application. Putting this one off for way too long. This is more skill building than anything else. Job doesn't require it, but learning in itself is good, can't let that bootcamp money go to waste.
Finished probabilities and most of stats on Khan Academy last month. The working out and sleeping goal...work in progress (i.e. failed!).
Half way through July already. It's been a pretty good month at work, made some hires, might be working on new roles in the coming weeks. Tomorrow, I'm gonna be 6 months into my contract at FB, so halfway through my 1 year, kinda nervous on what the future holds in this department. Guessing most people don't realize this outside of the recruitment industry, but it's mostly just contracts and agencies. Not a very stable career, but few are these days.
I said before that my brain needs to feel like it's going to explode every once in a while, it's how I know learning is taking place, that my brain is pushed to its edges. Feeling a bit burnt doing this every month though so I'm gonna do something more creative.
Always wanted to try stand up comedy. So July goal is gonna be coming up with a 5-15 min bit that I can do at a club. Should be fun until dry mouth hits from stage fright haha....hehe...
Overall experience with the Surface Pro 3 has been mediocre. I was leaning towards keeping it since it was lightweight, full Windows OS, could handle a VM with 8gb, touch screen, and could learn to draw on it with the stylus included. BUT, the battery either completely died or something is wrong with the software detecting it so back to the store it goes (Please don't make me pay restocking fees!!).
Below is my experience with the Surface Pro 3.
NOTE: I orginally had that the below was a review of the product, but as chton on Hacker News pointed out it really was just listing the flaws. The Surface 2 in 1 tablet/pc is something I've really wanted for a while now, but I think the execution on the software side fell short. While the battery should be replaceable under warranty I just don't have the confidence to keep the device, especially at a total price tag of $1,400+ (keyboard price included). The Machine
Date Bought: June 22, 2014
Model: 256GB i5
Retail Cost: $1,299 + tax (in California so there's plenty of that)
The Surface Pro 3 had a quality build, it felt like a premium product.
Usage
Web Browsing
Trying Drawing Apps
Watching/Streaming Videos
Playing Asphalt 8 (Sad I know. I easily get addicted to games and play for a few hours a day until deleting it.)
The most intensive things here would probably be streaming videos and video gaming.
NOTE: This was the first time I saw it in recovery mode. This was my 2nd try on demonstrating the battery issue and was probably the cause of the recovery mode screen.
The Surface had a problem recognizing battery after its first week. Wasn't really much of problem as it would display the percentage of charge after restarting. Today, the thing completely died. It won't work without being plugged in anymore.
Keyboard
So this thing costs $129... I read that it was a mechanical keyboard so I got a bit excited since I heard those were fantastic for typing. Wrong, other than the nice felt backing the keyboard felt really cheap. Bad experience with this keyboard.
Its really thin so there's not much key travel and the track pad was not responsive for the most part (I heard it was actually quite an improvement over older models). The mouse would skip and on certain apps it would stop registering the clicks and I had to resort to using the touch screen to close windows and tap search bars so at least I could type with the keyboard.
Once something on the keyboard forced the Narration Help setting on. Something must've jammed with the 'L" key as it went alway when I hit it. This is a crazy situation where it kept rejecting my sign in password since some keys weren't registering.
After starting up after a night it would have limited wifi access until it restarted.
Pen Sensitivity
The pen is a cool feature / add on for the product. It was a pretty big bonus for me as I always wanted to get a Cintiq or something similar.
Out of the box, sensitivity for the pen was pretty bad for most apps. I had to press extremely hard to get the bold lines. Actually writing with it was too light (super light gray). Things got a lot better after downloading the Wintab drivers. After the download it felt pretty good and the pressure was similar to actually writing with a pen.
UI (User Interface) / Software
First, you probably have to change browsers if you're using Chrome. Windows 8 Chrome is pretty bad and DPI apparently isn't good in Chrome so at the screen ratio and resolution of the Surface will make it extremely obvious. The main problem is text on web pages. Very distorted especially when comparing to other browsers. Would recommended switching to FireFox or IE (yea...I just recommended IE, gives myself chills).
The UI is confusing. Activating menus by sliding from the top of the screen, initiating triple split screens, figuring out what Metro apps are running by sliding from the left side of the screen and hovering back to the left (other wise it switches from current app)..., apps that similary followed this design, and apps that when resized you lose options!! Yea you can't get certain options on apps without it being full sized, there was no way I could tell how to get them back, these are things like creating new pages, choosing paint color, or drawing mediums. The insanity of it all!!!
I had no clue where the files were being saved to either for most of the apps. Things like the voice recording (it came with 2 or 3 voice recording apps and one of them asked where to save it, thank goodness) and drawings I couldn't find on the desktop when searching so I guess they're just within the apps themselves?
I did end up getting used to Metro (Modern UI?). Read an article that said it was designed this way because most people pinned apps to the task bar and MS decided to redo it this way instead of the regular desktop. Overall, still used the regular desktop more, but Metro isn't as bad as I thought it once was.
Had my birthday last month, 25 now... The number of changes in the past year has been crazy. I finally made it out of the north east to sunny California. The future looks pretty bright *knocks on wood*.
May Goals: I made it through some math portions on Khan Academy and started on probabilities. The lessons takes a lot longer to get through now, probabilities, they're tricky haha.
June Goals: Given my current rate of self learning, I expect to finish probabilities and statistics portion by end of this month. I'm also working out again. Fitness goal is to work out 3 times a week and get at least 8 hrs of sleep (I have a feeling the sleep goal is gonna be harder to hit).
Sharing a write up I
did previously. Many people know about in-house recruiters that are directly
employed by a company. This post will cover a lesser-known recruitment type,
RPO. RPOs have similar functions to a standard
recruitment agency, but there are major differences between the two. Major differences between an RPO and a standard
recruitment agency:
Representing the Account
Responsibilities and Access to ATS (Applicant
Tracking System)
Payment Structure
Representing the Account
An RPO is similar to a recruitment agency, but
the employees there have the privilege of representing themselves as the
account they work on to candidates. Example provided below.
Recruiter working for a regular recruitment
agency hiring for a position at Amazon.com:
“Hi. My name is David from XYZ agency and I have
a position that you may be interested in.”
Recruiter working at an RPO on the Amazon.com
account:
“Hi. My name is David. I'm working with Amazon's (or any other big name) recruitment team and I have a position that you may be interested in.”
The difference is small between the
introductions, but it makes a large difference to the candidate especially if
it is from a well known company. In the recruitment business it can mean either
the start of a conversation, or being promptly cut off with a dial tone.
Responsibilities and Access to ATS (Applicant
Tracking System)
RPOs work to promote their account. This ranges
from creating news letters, candidate pipelines, and job postings. In addition
to this we have full access to the client's ATS. An ATS is the system that
resumes and contact information funnel into once candidates have applied to a
position. Having access to a client's ATS is one of the reasons why RPOs can
disclose specific job postings and companies versus agency recruiters who do
not disclose this information.
Payment Structure
Agencies and RPOs both receive payment on
positions they fill. A major fear of an agency recruiter is a candidate finding
the company's job posting and applying directly. In this way the agency does
not get paid unless they presented the candidate's information to the hiring
manager before the candidate applied themselves. RPOs on the other hand freely
disclose how to apply directly, in fact applying directly is a part of the
process of getting hired.
RPOs charge a flat rate for the position that is
being filled, it doesn't matter if the candidate found the position by
themselves, an internal employee referred them, or even if the hiring manager
referred the candidate (yes, this one is quite the easy hire). The amount
charged per position depends on the seniority of the position, but it is
usually several times less than the 20%-30% of a first year salary that recruitment
agencies usually charge.
I hope this broad explanation of an RPO and how
they are different from recruitment agencies has helped those that are
interested in the subject.
I really slacked off during my middle school / high school days. Prime example of a procrastinator. Failed AP Calc, passed Calc and Stats in college, and never took another math class again. I really did enjoy stats, much more practical in day to day life.
There are gaping holes in my math abilities. I usually did well enough to pass, but that's horrible since this left me with a swiss cheese foundation. Probably didn't retain 90%+ of what I "learned" in school. I think the biggest problem is that there was no connection to how applicable this is to the "real world", most likely why I liked stats, I saw that it was useful in determining bias with data that we're constantly bombarded with.
May Goal
Utilizing Khan Academy I plan to get through Algebra II, maybe even Probability and Statistics, by the end of May. Courses I'm going to skip include Geometry and Trig since I consider them vastly difference than what I think is relavent for Machine Learning, unless I'm going to concentrate on Computer Vision. I have to consider whether or not to do Calculus, this will largely depend on what the Prob/Stats course will cover.
