Jan

05

Top 10 Viewed Posts in 2008

Personal

I just read the Top Viewed Posts of 2008 from blogto.com and thought it was fun to log that information so I can compare in the future. You may notice that my top 10 is slightly different as it refers to the “Viewed Posts in 2008” not “of 2008”. I say that because some of the most viewed posts in 2008 were actually posted in 2006, but anyways. Interestingly enough, one of the most viewed post here is a comment on an article that was also published on blogto.com regarding the big fire that happened on Queen Street not too far from our condo. I pretty much knew the result as I’ve been following the traffic of the site pretty closely, but some of the results actually did surprise me (I included the percentage of the pageviews for the whole year as well). I was actually surprise to see some of my more recent posts in the top 10.

  1. My Second Interview With Accenture (30%)
  2. My First Interview For Accenture (12%)
  3. Phone Interview With Nuance (3%)
  4. Tour de Bloc 2008: Ottawa, Ontario (3%)
  5. Interviewing at Microsoft: My Adventure to Redomond (2.5%)
  6. Preparing for an Interview Presentation (1.5%)
  7. Tour de Bloc 2008: Barrie, Ontario (1.5%)
  8. Robert Ballard, Kemosynthesis and Extreme Enviromnents (1.0%)
  9. A Six Alarm Fire Near Queen and Bathurst (0.6%)
  10. Grep Through Gzip Files vs Tarball Files (0.6%)
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Apr

09

On the Paradox of Choice

Personal

Today, I went out to Grand & Toys to get some office supplies. While there, I remembered that I could use a new pen, and so I go at the front of the store where they keep their pen display. To my dismay, I see that Grand & Toys offers about 60 different types of pens. One of every type, shape, and color! At first, you (and I) would think that so much choice was great for me. That I would now be liberated by the amount of pens to choose from. That I could finally pick up the best possible pen for myself!

In fact, I was completely paralyzed and ended up leaving without buying any pen.

It’s not the first time I am faced with this sort of situation (happened a while back with paper…), but a week or two ago, I watched the following talk, embedded from www.ted.com, which made me realized exactly what I was feeling. I was confronted with what Barry Schwartz called “the paradox of choice”.

According to psychologist Barry Schwartz, this paralysis is a consequence of too much choice, which he discusses thoroughly in his book Why more is Less. In this talk, Schwartz goes on to explain other problems caused by the wealth of choice in our western society, namely, anticipated regret, opportunity cost, escalation of expectations, and self blame.

In just about 20 minutes, Barry Schwartz goes from explaining what some think is the biggest culprit (I do) for the rising depression and suicide rates in our society to giving away the secret to living a happy life. Well worth the 20:22 minutes! I hope you enjoy it as much as I did:

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Nov

17

The mind of a Dutchman

Personal

John sent us this really funny joke this weekend. I feel like i’ve heard it before, but it’s just too good not to share. Enjoy:

A Dutchman walks into a bank in Toronto and asks for the loan officer. He tells the loan officer that he is going to Holland on business for two weeks and needs to borrow $5,000. The bank officer tells him that the bank will need some form of security for the loan, so the Dutchman hands over the keys to a new Ferrari parked on the street in front of the bank. He produces the title and everything checks out. The loan officer agrees to accept the car as collateral for the loan. The bank’s president and its officers all enjoy a good laugh at the Dutchman for using a $250,000 Ferrari as collateral against a $5,000 loan. An employee of the bank then drives the Ferrari into the bank’s underground garage and parks it there. Two weeks later, the Dutchman returns, repays the $5,000 and the interest, which comes to $15.41. The loan officer says, “Sir, we are very happy to have had your business, and this transaction has worked out very nicely, but we are a little puzzled. While you were away, we checked you out and found that you are a multi millionaire. What puzzles us is, why would you bother to borrow $5,000? The Dutchman replies: “Where else in Toronto can I park my car for two weeks for only $15.41 and expect it to be there when I return?

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Oct

23

My Second Interview with Accenture

Interview

I didn’t want to say much about this second interview here. However, seeing as my first post on the subject seems to have helped a couple of people out there, I thought I should share a little something for the second round interviews also.

My second interview was with a different person from Accenture, Montreal. He was really nice, but we skipped the chatting from the first interview and dove right into the subject matter: Behaviour, Behaviour, Behaviour. So I will only give you one piece of advice for this second interview: Prepare at least 5 projects from which you remember a large amount of details (because, yes, they will dig really deep!), and be ready to answer a couple of questions using those projects. I also suggest visiting quintcareers.com’s sample behavioural questions to get an idea of the kind of questions you will be asked. You should be able to find all of the information you need in order to do well in behavioral interviews on that website. You should also visit the section on Second Interview Do’s and Don’ts from the same website.

Just to give you an idea of the kind of questions they may ask you. I was asked to “talk about a time you had to talk about the difficulties you were facing in a project”. They asked me a lot of questions about the said project, what was it, why was it difficult, but they also asked me to explain in detail how I was feeling when I was talking to my employer. Needless to say, it was very difficult to remember.

Oh and one last thing. Don’t ever lie about a project. It’s way better to be honest. I told them at one point that I didn’t remember this project in that much detail. They said “no problem, we’ll change question”. After all, they are not there to torture you, they are only there to find out more about you. If you lie, then all they’ll find out about you is that you are a liar… and that would definitively rule out a third round interview! Having said that, I would recommend studying your past five projects you’ve done and try to remember as much details as possible.

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Oct

19

Phone Interview with Nuance

Interview / Personal

The phone interview is officially scheduled for Tuesday October 24th at 20h00. I can’t wait because I have many questions in mind already.

Nuance Communications, Inc Things are advancing fast on my job search so far in October. Since I learned from my friend Jean-Philipe, through our common friend Sylvain, that Nuance Communications is looking for a person with a Mathematical and Programming background to fill in a position as a Speech Scientist, I have been super excited about this opportunity. First, I did some research on the subject and talked with Jean-Philipe about the position. I also read a little bit about the company and the science behind Speech Recognition. I had no idea it was such an interesting field of Mathematical applications. Anyways. Then I sent my Resume and nice little cover letter (which was appreciated by the recruiter apparently!).

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