I just saw the new Indiana Jones!

Yea. That's what I would say if I was working at the Waterloo or Missassauga RIM offices. All RIM employees there were invited to a special screening of the movie. What does Ottawa get? A new building that we should have been in a month ago? A Cafeteria?.

Well the new target move date is August... I personally think August 2009 is when it's really doing to happen. Because we haven't moved yet, they converted most of the meeting rooms here into office space. The lounges/cafeterias were also filled with desks and chairs for new interns to sit. This is Ghey. Fortunately I was moved into one of the meeting rooms (shared with 3 other people) and facing a big window and I don't have to be disturbed by people wanting to get a drink from the vending machine.

QA Server Down

Our QA server has been down since we tried to restart it and it didn't boot back up. It took 5 hours and counting for someone to go find it and switch it back on...

Also the vending machine's out of Cokes... sons of bitches

BB Post

Got my BB this morning. Posting on it as we speak. The work environment is ok I guess. Though they only gave me a 17" LCD to work on which is way less than what I'm used to. Things around here move slower than what I got used to at a small company in the past, I have been waiting for a copy of MS Business Intelligence Studio for almost one day now and I won't expect it to get done today.

BTW To do a factory reset on a BlackBerry, enter your password wrong 10 times

Offer Package

Package got here via FedEx.


Now if I can figure out how to use this FedEx slip...

RIM Internship

My RIM(read "Blackberry") offer package supposedly was shipped today. Supposedly because it only took them a day to prepare it after I emailed them asking about it 2 weeks after the verbal offer. I'll be there(Kanata) for 8 months starting in January. It'll give me some good experiences in working in a more structured environment compared to what I do right now which is pure chaos. I'll try to document it as we go!

Free Blackberry you say? RIM gives a Blackberry to every emplyee. It'll be the first one I ever touch and I'll look forward to... critique it. I don't see why people have to call them Blackberries. Is "smart phone" not good enough for it? I don't see what the big deal is about Blackberries, just as I don't see the big deal with IPods(haven't touched one ever). I tried to use Blackberry Enterprise Server(BES) at work and it was not fun. 10 years ago, when Starcraft came out, 2 people with the same CD-Key couldn't log on Battle.net at the same time. RIM could have learned something from that. When 2 BES with the same ID come online at the same time, RIM will lock out the ID and you have to call your wireless provider to unlock them. Retarded. It seems that no one there has ever played Starcraft.

And what the hell is with Microsoft not making Office Live Small Business available in Canada?! I know Canada is 10 years behind in e-commerce but come on!

Google Associate Product Manager Intern Interviews

Last month I was interviewing for an internship at Google as an APM. Here's how it went and some questions they asked(No I didn't sign any NDA.)

The recruiter asked me for my availability for the first phone interview the week after I applied. It was surprisingly quick!

The first interview was the type of interview you'd get at most companies. "Tell me a bit about your self", "How was working at ______". Some of the better questions were "What's a good product and how would you improve it and "How many _______ do you think there are in ________", one of those estimation questions as to be expected by a tech company. The entire interview was about 35 minutes.

In the same week, I got a request for a second interview.

The second interview was a lot more interesting. I was asked some product strategy questions and logic questions: "How would you compare the quality of 3 different yellow pages type of business listings", "What are some ways that you can compress code". And the question I was prepared to answer all along "Critique a Google product".

Now began the bad part. After getting a response for the first interview after only 3-4 days, I expected the same kind of response time for the second interview. Was I wrong... 2 weeks went by, 3 weeks, I sent 3-4 emails to the recruiter and no answers.

The interviews were very easy and straight forward... nothing really technical. If you aren't dumb you should do well in the interviews. But it doesn't guarantee an internship. :)