Monday, October 19, 2009
"Talking"
¶ 11:14 PM The most obvious thing for today was the job interview. Yes, I had the job interview today at 5pm at some hotel.
I wanted to make sure I wasn't late so I went down to the area at 3:00. I mean I found the hotel at 3:00 or so. I finally found the right turn-in (it was a little tricky) then I just kind of drove around randomly for a little while. Finally I went to the closest starbucks for roughly 35 minutes until 4:30 or so and went back over. I got there right before 4:45. Made sure I had all the stuff I needed and went in.
I brought a couple copies of my resume, the one I'd been using, and also what I was calling my "extended edition" resume with ALL my jobs listed. I'm beginning to think I should just stick with the all jobs version instead of the resume instead of the abbreviated version that summed up everything in a page. After the interview I emailed the recruiter that extended version so he could pass it on the to the two interviewers.
Anyway I met the two interviewers in the lobby and we had a conversation. I went over my past jobs, explained how I created a PE environment on a thumb drive and some other things as well as how I created the how-to documents in Word and left them for the team even as I was leaving.
I think I did a lot of explaining, gave a lot of detail and hopefully came off as knowledgeable. Of course as I assumed the interviewers mentioned they had a lot of people to interview so I'm sure my competition is quite stiff. I don't know how likely it is that I'll actually get this position. I hope I at least make it to the "short list". Although if I don't get it after making it to the short lift I don't know what possible difference that could make.
The only other event of note for today was finally updating the O!Play device to the newest firmware, 1.11N. I wasn't sure if I should at first because I had installed some lpkgs and and the system may or may not have informed me that I was out of space.
It took me a while to finally realize what lkpgs were and how to use them. In hindsight it seems so obvious but it took until now to realize it for whatever reason.
All this experimenting with the O!Play made my want to look back into my other teeny-linux-based-device of yor, the Neuros OSD. I bought it about a year ago and had given up on it shortly there after because the videos I tried to play seemed to be kind of skipping frames and besides the interface is just ugly as anything and kind of glitchy. Also I thought it supported UPnP for some reason but apparently it does not.
Well I got it back out and hooked it up and to try it out once more. As it turns out at least on the linux end it's just as powerful if not more flexible then the O!Play. It has lots of features like the video input AND output, S-Video input, a serial input, network of course and a multi-card reader for varous SD cards and memory stick along with one USB port. If the thing had some kind of hi-def output it really would be superior to that of the O!Play (which only has two USB ports/1 eSATA port).
For whatever reason in this iteration the OSD seemed to work plenty perfectly with my DiVX videos on the media server. I didn't watch for very long but I didn't notice any hick-ups what-so-ever. Although it's been nearly a year if not a year and when I did an auto-check for new firmware it said no new firmware was available. Which is kind of depressing. I mean call me crazy but I was have though an open-sourced, hacker-targeted device with obvious glitches and issues would some how be recieving regular updates. Guess that's just me.
I did have this one crazy idea about converting the O!Play into a laptop. Now I'm thinking since I apparently care so little for the OSD maybe it would be a better test bed for this sort of thing. And having a built-in multi-card reader makes it that much more appealing for adding more storage. Of course I don't know how to add a new input device outside of the remote, nor do I have any "mad" soldering skills. So I don't know if this is at all likely.
I should probably mention the new O!play firmware. It's actually incredibly good. They actually added UPnP as a feature on the main menu.
I wanted to make sure I wasn't late so I went down to the area at 3:00. I mean I found the hotel at 3:00 or so. I finally found the right turn-in (it was a little tricky) then I just kind of drove around randomly for a little while. Finally I went to the closest starbucks for roughly 35 minutes until 4:30 or so and went back over. I got there right before 4:45. Made sure I had all the stuff I needed and went in.
I brought a couple copies of my resume, the one I'd been using, and also what I was calling my "extended edition" resume with ALL my jobs listed. I'm beginning to think I should just stick with the all jobs version instead of the resume instead of the abbreviated version that summed up everything in a page. After the interview I emailed the recruiter that extended version so he could pass it on the to the two interviewers.
Anyway I met the two interviewers in the lobby and we had a conversation. I went over my past jobs, explained how I created a PE environment on a thumb drive and some other things as well as how I created the how-to documents in Word and left them for the team even as I was leaving.
I think I did a lot of explaining, gave a lot of detail and hopefully came off as knowledgeable. Of course as I assumed the interviewers mentioned they had a lot of people to interview so I'm sure my competition is quite stiff. I don't know how likely it is that I'll actually get this position. I hope I at least make it to the "short list". Although if I don't get it after making it to the short lift I don't know what possible difference that could make.
The only other event of note for today was finally updating the O!Play device to the newest firmware, 1.11N. I wasn't sure if I should at first because I had installed some lpkgs and and the system may or may not have informed me that I was out of space.
It took me a while to finally realize what lkpgs were and how to use them. In hindsight it seems so obvious but it took until now to realize it for whatever reason.
All this experimenting with the O!Play made my want to look back into my other teeny-linux-based-device of yor, the Neuros OSD. I bought it about a year ago and had given up on it shortly there after because the videos I tried to play seemed to be kind of skipping frames and besides the interface is just ugly as anything and kind of glitchy. Also I thought it supported UPnP for some reason but apparently it does not.
Well I got it back out and hooked it up and to try it out once more. As it turns out at least on the linux end it's just as powerful if not more flexible then the O!Play. It has lots of features like the video input AND output, S-Video input, a serial input, network of course and a multi-card reader for varous SD cards and memory stick along with one USB port. If the thing had some kind of hi-def output it really would be superior to that of the O!Play (which only has two USB ports/1 eSATA port).
For whatever reason in this iteration the OSD seemed to work plenty perfectly with my DiVX videos on the media server. I didn't watch for very long but I didn't notice any hick-ups what-so-ever. Although it's been nearly a year if not a year and when I did an auto-check for new firmware it said no new firmware was available. Which is kind of depressing. I mean call me crazy but I was have though an open-sourced, hacker-targeted device with obvious glitches and issues would some how be recieving regular updates. Guess that's just me.
I did have this one crazy idea about converting the O!Play into a laptop. Now I'm thinking since I apparently care so little for the OSD maybe it would be a better test bed for this sort of thing. And having a built-in multi-card reader makes it that much more appealing for adding more storage. Of course I don't know how to add a new input device outside of the remote, nor do I have any "mad" soldering skills. So I don't know if this is at all likely.
I should probably mention the new O!play firmware. It's actually incredibly good. They actually added UPnP as a feature on the main menu.
