Tuesday, January 12, 2010
"Interview"
Today I did very little to speak of except for that phone interview I had mentioned previously. There were two of them asking the questions actually. The one guy just asked me a few things from my resume which I expanded on well I think and then he asked some fairly basic (well I would call them basic anyway) questions about PC hardware. Like out of AGP/PCI/PCIe which came first and stuff and a similar one about memory and I think the difference between SATA and PATA. Oh and there was a question about how to troubleshoot a PC that is beeping and has no video.
I did of course nail all these questions quite easily. I mean these were like count to ten or recite your SSN number type of easy questions. Beyond easy. Super easy.
There was also a question about sleep mode versus hibernate that I think I got but didn't sound all that confident on. As well as a memory question which I also got but also did not sound confident on.
Then my quite possibly worst question of the interview for me was about about some vendor-specific hardware (the chips that have now replaced the north and south bridge). I never knew too much about that whole thing with the north and south bridge and the whatever. I just build the things I don't know or care all that much about the different bridges. Obviously I should care.
So I don't know if my apparent lack of north/south bridge knowledge cost me my next step in the interview process which would be an in-person interview but I will find out some time tomorrow apparently.
I have purposefully not mentioned the name of the company I interivewed with directly although if you were paying attention I did kind of give it away.
The only other thing I'll talk about is the latest sensation movie I saw yesterday: Avatar. I went to the local city where there's an IMAX, a real IMAX, to see it. Unfortunately the seating chart confused me and I ended up in the front row for the whole thing. My neck may or may not be recovering even now. I have no idea why they have those front two rows, the closeness completely ruins the whole movie and it's kind of pointless to try and watch a movie that way. So there's the 36 dollars for ya.
Anyway I'll try and review despite this. The plot which I guess is kind of beside the point in this case, is kind of simple. If you've seen pocahantus or Dances with Wolves or Last Samurai or any other movie/plot of that kind you've already seen this movie. For that matter a little movie from the 90s called fern gully probably has some similarities as well.
I will say for a movie that lasts more than 2 1/2 hours it did seem to go by really quick. I always liked James Cameron's movies for their pacing if nothing else. Sit down at any point of any of his movies and it's rediculously easy to sit through to the end.
I also liked that the movie didn't seem to go out of its way to flash the 3D-ness at your and show the effect unnecesarily. It's simply a movie with an extra plane. So when you're looking at a scene with a bunch of people sitting in a room and the camera pans across the back of the room show the back of everyone's heads the people at the back seem closer to you then the guy at the front doing the speaking. It's simply a perspective thing that literally and figuratively adds an extra dimension to the movie.
The plot, as I mentioned earlier, not exactly original. A marine on earth uses a genetically created alien body to integrate with the natives of a distant planet called Pandora in an effort to negotiate some kind of treaty or re-location conditions or what-have-you but oh look unpredictably he becomes attached to the native culture and ends up fighting against his own people.
My biggest complaint would be that it's a little one-sided politically. The military/evil corporate overlords are 100% eveil 100% of the time without exception. No depth, no grey area, nothing. The natives are are the 100% innocent and in the right side of the story. Doesn't seem to be a bad side to them. They're just occupying their special tree, they were minding their business and now some aliens (e.g. the humans) come along and want to destroy their tree in order to extract some precious mineral. The mineral was literally called unobtanium. Really.
Would have been nice to have multiple sides to the story. What motivated the main antagonist the way he was? What made him so apparently evil? Could the humans actions have been justified on some level? No way to know because again at the risk of making a pun the corporate/military side was rather two dimensional in their goals and motivations. No character growth or anything. They may as well have been pictures hanging on a wall the good guys talked to as if they were alive.
One idea I did have, and how I could be the only one I have no idea, is to work the end of this story into a rough adaption of Old Man's War for a sequel. I mean if they wanted to have a completely different perspective of the Avatar universe and either have very little further reference to Pandora or no reference at all and explore the rest of this Avatar universe from the perspective of say the main antagonist's body as he finds himself in a new green body and busted down to the level of a private. Or they could have have him wake up some place else at the beginning of avatar 2, revealing he was actually in a human body avatar that whole time. What a twist!
So take what you will from this psuedo-review of the movie. The 3D effects were definately something to behold. And since this may be one of those one-in-thirty-year type experiences like the first Star Wars or The Matrix (the first one) you may regret seeing it in the theaters in 3D. Although why anyone would bother seeing this in 2D I haven't the slightest idea.
The only other thing I'll mention for today is that I have started to receive tracking numbers for the parts of my new PC. It is scheduled to arrive tomorrow (Wednesday) sometime. Although there's multiple tracking numbers but all the packages refer to weighing 18 pounds. So either there are multiple packages but they are all associated with the same weight for some reason or I'm receiving multiple 18 pound packages. Which I don't think makes that much sense. Whatever then. I am excited to be receiving my parts and am looking forward to it. In fact I'll probably spend a large portion of tomorrow at the place where I sent the parts. At my mom's house since the stupid package delivery companies won't deliver to the condo. Unless I'm I guess. Which I probably would be. But if I wasn't then it would be a pain to get. So I send it to a house address.
¶ 9:14 PM 
