#hashmap labs

Goodbye San Francisco.  You were wonderful and amazing and I hope to see you again soon.

This morning before my flight I met with another company. I was exhausted but speaking with one of the founders was very energizing. I really liked the guy. He knew his stuff, he had a great attitude, and really brought the idea they were implementing to life. I could easily see working for them. I'd learn a lot and hopefully I'd be able to contribute a lot too.

The flight was good. I didn't die. That's usually the bar I hold flights to. Thankfully every flight I've ever been on so far has surpassed that bar.

Today went a lot like yesterday. I spoke with a couple of companies from the 500 Startups accelerator (current and alumni) that are looking for a software engineer and discussed the possibility of my joining their team.

Overall I've been very impressed with the quality of companies that are either going through or have emerged from the 500 Startups program.  Of those I've talked to, there are certainly a lot of differences between them, but there seems to be a common thread of determination and passion.

One of the alumni companies I chatted with today would be especially great to work with. They have an amazing product, great partnerships, and an awesome team. I could learn a lot working with them and I believe I could contribute a lot as well.

I spent the evening the same way I spent last night.  I worked on Trifecta with Ran.  We made a lot of little changes.  The images are updated.  The mute button and the pause button are a tad bigger.  The background and the timer blink when you're almost out of time.  And so on.  

Today I met with the founder of one of the companies in the current batch of 500 Startups. We had lunch, talked about his company, where it was going, what was needed, and so forth. It's an awesome idea and I think he's the right guy to bring it to market. Whether or not there's a place for me at the table is still to be determined. At this point, it's still a possibility though. If I were offered the position, which wouldn't happen until I first successfully went through a technical interview, and if I then accepted the position, which wouldn't happen until first talked to my wife, I would need to tighten the belt for about 6 months until after their demo day when the next round could be raised. I would be getting a pay check, but it would be small.

Today I had my first technical interview.  I was asked to solve a problem while the interviewer shared my screen remotely.  Prior to today, the closest I'd come to a technical interview was being asked a couple technical questions by Apple.  

I won't go into details about the problem I was asked to solve other than to say that it wasn't hard and that I was asked to use test driven development.  Despite the simplicity of the problem, I was amazed at some of the simple things that didn't come to me right away.  I was definitely nervous and it showed.  A problem that would normally take me 15 minutes took closer to an hour.  Still, I did well enough that they want to continue the conversation on Tuesday.  Of that I am quite happy.

Lately I've frequently been asked what I'm passionate about.  I don't know what a 'proper answer' would be to give in an interview setting.  I inevitably end up sharing only part of the complete answer and not as eloquently as I'd like.  This is partly because I haven't given this question a lot of thought recently and partly because a good deal of the answer has nothing to do with software engineering.  It deserves some thought though, and I've given it that, and after doing so here is my complete answer.  I'd still probably only share a part of this with potential employers unless they showed a great deal of interest.

I'm passionate about learning, about growing as a software engineer and as an individual. I love learning new technologies and I love reading.  A lot.  I'm passionate about programming.  I think clean code is sexy, elegant, poetic.  I'm passionate about startups and about business in general.  I love tossing around ideas of how to disrupt existing players as well as discussing strategies on how to most effectively gain early adopters.  And I love marketing.  Baked In and Unleash the Permission Marketing were two of the first books that helped to change my perception of what marketing could and should be.

I'm passionate about helping people make meaningful connections with one another.  That can manifest itself in many forms, directly or indirectly.  I'm passionate about education.  The entire education field needs to be disrupted.  And there are plenty of exciting companies ready to take on that challenge. 

I used to be passionate about running.  I'd like to rekindle that flame.  I am, however, still passionate about tennis and racquetball.

I'm passionate about board games and board game design.  The best board games are those that challenge you socially as well as mentally.

And finally, I'm passionate about being a good husband, a good brother, a good son, and a good friend. Most of all, I'm passionate about being a good dad.  I'm not one yet.  That is, I'm not even a father yet.  My son is due in November.  I've not met him but I love him all the same.  I have an amazing father and my son deserves one too.  It's overwhelming at times thinking of the responsibility that I'm about to take on but it's also damn motivating.  My son's counting on me.  He doesn't realize it yet, but he is.  I don't ever want to disappoint him.  I certainly don't want to start before he's born.  

Today I woke to the sound of someone shouting over my brother's building's PA system.  Apparently someone decided today would be a good day to test the building's emergency systems which, as far as I can tell, consist primarily of someone shouting over the PA system.  

"A fire has been spotted!  Please evacuate the building! Do not use the elevators!"  

The shouting was a good excuse to get an early start on the day.  The recording was set to loop every few minutes and was still going off when I left to go work somewhere - anywhere - other than my brother's apartment.  I took the elevator.

I found my way to Specialty's coffee shop to grab some breakfast and start working.  I began by touching up the scoring system on Trifecta and refactoring out 1 of 2 very similar methods that are used for displaying bonus messages.  The scoring now takes into affect how many different colored blocks there are on the board.  It's much harder to create combos when there are more colors so it only makes sense that you be rewarded more points and more time when you find those combos on the harder levels.

The rest of my afternoon was spent reading about and toying with iOS 6's new Game Kit features.  Two new features in particular could be relevant to what I'm trying to achieve.  The first is a new challenge feature that allows any player to issue a challenge to a friend whereas the friend, should he accept the challenge, is tasked with trying to beat the initial friend's score or achievement.  If he successfully does so the initial friend is notified.  This could be an interesting feature to include but is not exactly what I am hoping to do.  The other new feature I was looking at is a turn by turn match feature wherein you can now transmit data from a player whose turn it is without passing control to the next player.  Before you always had to pass all the data at once, which is less than ideal if your game involves a multi-step turn.  I think this feature might be useful for the way I envision implementing Trifecta's challenge a friend feature.  

This evening I went to a 1 on 1 speed dating style interview meetup.  It was very reminiscent of the day I graduated App Academy.  There were 14 companies and about 25 developers.  Two big name companies were present, Amazon and Living Social, along with a number of small to mid size startups.  Each company got 5 minutes with each developer.  Unlike last time, only twice did I "demo" an app.  Typically the first half of each 5 minute interview was spent getting to know the company and the second half was spent giving the company a chance to get to know me.  Also unlike last time, I felt comfortable and relaxed throughout.  Last time there was an intensity to the event.  It felt like an all or nothing moment, the culmination of 9+ weeks of incredible effort with everything on the line.  I had to make it count.  That was silly, of course.  It was important to make a good first impression but that's all a 5-10 minute interview can typically be.  

Out of the 14 companies a few of them seemed genuinely interested while a few were simply not the right fit for me.  They either required someone that already knew how to program for Android as well as iOS or they required multiple years of iOS experience.  Tomorrow I'll follow through with those that seemed the most interested as well as any others that are trying to accomplish something I'm passionate about.

Today I spent my time coding, sending emails to companies, and brushing up on Ruby.

The first thing I did was complete a couple of programming exercises that Dimagi has available for applicants to show off their capabilities.  I've yet to email them to Dimagi though.  I think I'll write up a few rspec tests for each first and then email them out tomorrow.  

I spent the evening with Ran at the Creamery working on Trifecta.  We added combo bonuses! Combo bonuses are awarded whenever you clear 7 or more blocks at once.  For your efforts, you are awarded with bonus time.  This, of course, is a feature for the timed version of Trifecta.  We don't have bonuses for the unlimited version (yet).  We used CAKeyFrameAnimation to have the bonus text grow larger and then shrink away.   The text also changes opacity (brighter and then dims to nothing) while scrolling upwards on the game board.  It looks pretty good but Ran is going to spend a little more time styling it to make it look great.  I'll spend my time coming up with a better algorithm for the bonuses and for scoring in general.  Right now it's too easy to score big on the small level and too hard to do so on the xl level.  And I want to make sure that it's not too easy to stay alive forever with the new timed bonuses.