totm aug 2023 What funny/interesting thing happened in your life today?

[Ultimate Steve]

7 minutes ago, cubinator said:

I have found those job-posting sites unhelpful on their own, they are all full of automated junk. But they do help me become aware of companies that look interesting, where I can then periodically look up that company and see if they have anything open that's actually relevant and looks real.

The site I use takes me directly to the company's site to apply there. It's not like one click apply on linkedin or indeed or whatever (I do not trust that with a ten foot pole). Unless there's something fishy with tracking going on in the background I think I'm safe.

I've gotten 3 interview (offer)s so far. One was with Astranis, I don't check my email for one day and I come back to two emails: "Hey we'd like to interview you" and "Hey we don't want to interview you any more." Since then I've kinda grown sus of Astranis, they're posting way too many jobs for such a small company and most of them are internships and associate programs.

I did have a phone interview with SpaceX but I was expecting a basic behavioral interview and instead I got thrown into a gauntlet of technical questions that perfectly hit the gaps in my armor. That was a disaster. But now I know what to expect from them if I ever get another shot.

A few weeks ago I finished the fourth and final round of Blue Origin interviews. I think it went pretty well. Haven't heard anything back yet. Fingers crossed.

[Zozaf Kerman]

2 hours ago, Ultimate Steve said:

I did have a phone interview with SpaceX but I was expecting a basic behavioral interview and instead I got thrown into a gauntlet of technical questions that perfectly hit the gaps in my armor. That was a disaster. But now I know what to expect from them if I ever get another shot

Can you clarify a little more, I’d like to apply to spacex for an internship in a few years and I’m curious as to what they’d ask.

[Ultimate Steve]

23 minutes ago, Zozaf Kerman said:

Can you clarify a little more, I’d like to apply to spacex for an internship in a few years and I’m curious as to what they’d ask.

From what I understand, it is bad form to disclose the exact questions, but google is your friend if you want to understand the general flow of the interview process or find some examples.

I think I can safely say that there were a few specific questions about the fundamentals of a few different engineering disciplines related to the job, and one or two open ended "How would you go about solving this problem" questions.

Annoyingly, they chose to test me on Python vocabulary of all things. I have used those things, I've done a few major Python projects, but off the top of my head, I have no clue what each thing is called.

Safe to say I brushed up very thoroughly on everything I messed up on right after that train wreck.

No clue how much different it is for internships.

[cubinator]

6 hours ago, Ultimate Steve said:

The site I use takes me directly to the company's site to apply there. It's not like one click apply on linkedin or indeed or whatever (I do not trust that with a ten foot pole). Unless there's something fishy with tracking going on in the background I think I'm safe.

I've gotten 3 interview (offer)s so far. One was with Astranis, I don't check my email for one day and I come back to two emails: "Hey we'd like to interview you" and "Hey we don't want to interview you any more." Since then I've kinda grown sus of Astranis, they're posting way too many jobs for such a small company and most of them are internships and associate programs.

I did have a phone interview with SpaceX but I was expecting a basic behavioral interview and instead I got thrown into a gauntlet of technical questions that perfectly hit the gaps in my armor. That was a disaster. But now I know what to expect from them if I ever get another shot.

SpaceX does seem pretty responsive generally. My first interview with them was tough too. I've gathered quite an extensive collection of questions I've been asked by them and others, though.

3 hours ago, Zozaf Kerman said:

Can you clarify a little more, I’d like to apply to spacex for an internship in a few years and I’m curious as to what they’d ask.

Lots of fundamental questions about things like cantilever beams (stress, strain, etc.), fluid flow in a pipe or pressurized tank (pressure, velocity, etc.), and scenario questions that call on those physics concepts and engineering (what would you do if you were testing X system, how would you design something to perform Y function, etc.) Best advice I can give is pay attention in your various physics classes and spend some of your free time building stuff.

7 hours ago, Ultimate Steve said:

A few weeks ago I finished the fourth and final round of Blue Origin interviews. I think it went pretty well. Haven't heard anything back yet. Fingers crossed.

Best of luck! I was so stressed out about waiting for an interview result a while back that I designed a whole submarine drone to distract myself. Also, if it's been a few weeks it's probably time to bug them for an update...

Just always remember that it's not your fault you haven't gotten a job yet, it's a broken system and it's not your burden to fix it. There are millions of us. If you weren't ready then they wouldn't have given you a rocket scientist degree. Companies are wasting their time not hiring you.

[Ultimate Steve]

15 minutes ago, cubinator said:

Best of luck! I was so stressed out about waiting for an interview result a while back that I designed a whole submarine drone to distract myself. Also, if it's been a few weeks it's probably time to bug them for an update...

Just always remember that it's not your fault you haven't gotten a job yet, it's a broken system and it's not your burden to fix it. There are millions of us. If you weren't ready then they wouldn't have given you a rocket scientist degree. Companies are wasting their time not hiring you.

Thank you for that. Today's been a little rough and I really needed that.

[cubinator]

2 hours ago, Ultimate Steve said:

Thank you for that. Today's been a little rough and I really needed that.

You are welcome!

[Nuke]

so i had the lead screw out again and was longing for a measuring device. so i grabbed a 1/8 drill bit and held the back end up to the thread. the diameter of the bit exactly matched the thread pitch. i figured id go down the whole index and find the best fit, but i guess i can eyeball an eighth just fine. so if 7 bits gets me 1/8 then 10 bits gets me an inch. since the whole actuator is somewhere between 18-24 inches, i should be able to fit the whole range a 6.10 fixed point format. its also accurate down to 1/512. that said i dont think the tolerances are there for all that resolution to be useful.

on the current front i got it down to 2 amps unloaded. turns out there was gunk in the seal at the end that i cleaned off and replaced with machine oil. now i can start to play with closed loop control. figure out how long it takes to spin up and down the motor. ideally i want it to land on an arbitrary tick without passing it. need to take measurements of the maximum frequency the encoder spews out and see if an 8 bit microcontroller is sufficient to keep up with the data and still run the pid loop. its going to have to handle a lot of interrupts.

Edited September 22 by Nuke

[AstroWolfie]

I started reading 2001:  A Space Odyssey.

[RKunze]

1 hour ago, AstroWolfie said:

I started reading 2001:  A Space Odyssey.

If you mean the Novel by Arthur C. Clarke, make sure to also watch the movie. One of the best SF films ever (Clarke actually worked on both the novel and the movie script in parallel).

And if you like classical SF, I can highly recommend The Fountains of Paradise, also by Clarke.

[AstroWolfie]

I’m also considering picking up a few 40k books. Anyone got any good ones for players of space wolves?

[Ultimate Steve]

9 minutes ago, AstroWolfie said:

I’m also considering picking up a few 40k books. Anyone got any good ones for players of space wolves?

I severely misinterpreted that as you wanting to buy $40,000, presumably antique, books.

[DDE]

Yesterday I decided to put a poor rip of the Lord of the Rings DVDs as a background. A few mentions in one day reminded me of its existence.

It did not stay background for long...

Edited September 25 by DDE

[Kimera Industries]

I finished a collage/painting that's my take on Earthrise, with my high school art class level skills, of course. Next on the agenda is another collage/painting inspired by Saturn, from Holst's The Planets. 

[Superfluous J]

While watching some of my old KSP videos, I noticed that "Trascript" button on YouTube that I've never hit before. So I hit it and the result sounds like some crazy train-of-thought poetry.

[Vanamonde]

Transcript button? What? Where? 

[Superfluous J]

3 hours ago, Vanamonde said:

Transcript button? What? Where? 

Under the video where the description is, and you have to click "...more" but nobody does.

[magnemoe]

On 9/21/2024 at 8:24 PM, Ultimate Steve said:

From what I understand, it is bad form to disclose the exact questions, but google is your friend if you want to understand the general flow of the interview process or find some examples.

I think I can safely say that there were a few specific questions about the fundamentals of a few different engineering disciplines related to the job, and one or two open ended "How would you go about solving this problem" questions.

Annoyingly, they chose to test me on Python vocabulary of all things. I have used those things, I've done a few major Python projects, but off the top of my head, I have no clue what each thing is called.

Safe to say I brushed up very thoroughly on everything I messed up on right after that train wreck.

No clue how much different it is for internships.

Why is it bad form to  disclose the exact questions? 
Had an teacher at university  who used the same 7 questions on exams , just using random 3 of them. Field was electromagnetism shielding and antennas. A bit relevant as in the 1990's computers tend to run at 100 MHz or the FM sweet spot so have fun with radios next to the pc.
But the 7 questions got well known and the teacher more important things to do, might even be related to stealth so he could not talk about it. 
Anyway poor guy died who was an obvious tragedy for him and his relatives 
But they got an new teacher with now questions and most failed. 

[Ultimate Steve]

5 minutes ago, magnemoe said:

Why is it bad form to  disclose the exact questions? 

1. I'm not actually sure, it is something I've been told and never really questioned. Maybe it has something to do with not wanting people to know the questions beforehand, but there's a lot of questions and a lot of public questions, so if that's the idea, 1. they're fighting a losing battle and 2. if someone memorizes everything that could possibly come up, they probably deserve the job

2. I'm embarassed at how I got some of the simple ones wrong and don't want to say which ones 

tbf that was my first ever actual interview and I went very deer in the headlights. I've handled the recent ones a little better.

[Zozaf Kerman]

8 hours ago, Ultimate Steve said:

2. I'm embarassed at how I got some of the simple ones wrong and don't want to say which ones 

 

You don’t gotta say which ones you got right or wrong, just the questions lol

[SunlitZelkova]

I had my matriculation ceremony for university today. It’s actually the day after here, but I count late nights and early mornings as one single unit.

I’ve realized I suck at Japanese so to temper my expectations about interacting with people I’ve been focusing on reviewing Russian skills*. Just to maintain hand writing and try and pry open opportunities to use it more in daily life, I’ve begun writing as many notes as possible. Even if I don’t have time to look up translations or case uses. Just to practice hand writing.

So I reminded myself about today by writing серемони матрикулации on a sticky note lol.

*Brilliant plan right? What are the odds I’m gonna run into a Russian speaking person in Hiroshima of all places and be tempted to speak more than I can understand?

On that note… I saw a meme several weeks ago about “English in my head, English when I speak” with a finely drawn and poorly drawn horse, respectively, and I kinda wonder if that goes all ways.

This school is very cosmopolitan, in just a couple days I’ve spoken with persons from Nigeria, Botswana, India, Bangladesh, Myanmar, Czech Republic, Argentina, and of course Japan.

And I can barely understand what anyone is saying.

As I’m trying to write this it’s kinda making sense. Sure, the school required a passing TOEFL score to enter if your native tongue wasn’t English. But how good are speaking tests anyways? When I took end of term exams during Russian courses I pronounced «ый» in adjectives like «ий» so many times, yet the teacher/professor never noticed. Granted it was over Zoom due to her fear of a long COVID recurrence, so it might have been impossible to hear.

Another thing is that everyone is speaking so quiet. I thought all the kids these days blasted their headphones. Yet I seem to be the only one saying “huh?” and “what’s that?” while cupping my ear and leaning in.

That’s my little slice of life I had to share at the corner bakery cafe that is the KSP forum lounge. Cheers.

[magnemoe]

14 hours ago, Ultimate Steve said:

1. I'm not actually sure, it is something I've been told and never really questioned. Maybe it has something to do with not wanting people to know the questions beforehand, but there's a lot of questions and a lot of public questions, so if that's the idea, 1. they're fighting a losing battle and 2. if someone memorizes everything that could possibly come up, they probably deserve the job

2. I'm embarassed at how I got some of the simple ones wrong and don't want to say which ones 

tbf that was my first ever actual interview and I went very deer in the headlights. I've handled the recent ones a little better.

Yes, I get that the teachers do not want the trend of questions to be know.  Like the teacher who only used 7 different questions but at our university student organisations collected exams questions and then published them well before next exam, This is that to focus on, Like history class who is general history but don't question anything before 1930 or programming who was all about databases and not front end. 

[LHACK4142]

Last year, I'd often make egregious mistakes in orchestra like missing notes by half-tones, even full tones.  When this happened, I often pondered just airbowing and not playing at all, since my net contribution to the orchestra was plausibly negative.

Today, during my orchestra rehearsal, I realized that I've hardly made such embarrassing mistakes this year,  and that my contribution is positive since I've been much more dedicatedly practicing.

I'm glad I'm improving.

Edited September 30 by LHACK4142
add shtuff

[SunlitZelkova]

The motto of my university is to be a “22nd century university.”

I had immense difficulty holding back laughter as I discovered the school portal looks like it’s from the 1990s despite the school having been founded in 2021.

Even my community college’s portal back in the US looked like it was up to late 2010s standards.

There’s a lot of novel things here, but I can’t help but believe there is some truth to the adage “Japan has been living in the 2000s since the 1980s.”

Joke’s on people who use that as an insult though, I love me some retrofuturism in real life.

[DDE]

45 minutes ago, SunlitZelkova said:

I had immense difficulty holding back laughter as I discovered the school portal looks like it’s from the 1990s despite the school having been founded in 2021.

Sometimes these older portals were a lot easier to understand and navigate...

[cubinator]

I found out this week that I live 1 hour away from a meteor crater. Of course I'm making plans to visit it.