The Geekiest Marriage Proposal Ever

After thinking for days and brainstorming with my friends about how to pop the question, I finally came up with an idea I was pleased with. It was something she would never see coming, it was very "our type of thing" and it was the biggest proof of love I could do: mess up my Mac for her.

I rearranged the keys of my Mac Book Pro (blacking out most of them) to write:

L O R E ,
   T  Q U I 3 R E Z
     C A S A R
           K 0 N M 1 G o ?

Which is spanish for "Lore, will you marry me?" -- with a few encodings to make up for missing keys.

Read the whole photo-story on this flickr album.

Armed robbery in plain sunlight

It's scary how insecure Monterrey (and Mexico, in general) is becoming.

Yesterday, my fiancee and me were walking from our car to a local print shop, when we noticed that the clerk was signaling us to hurry. We thought he was about to close or something (which seemed odd, since it was about 2:oo pm), but when we got there, he locked the door behind us and said "there's a robbery next door!"

It was then that we noticed that the shop was full of other scared looking customers, and a girl in the corner that was crying inconsolably, yelling "he put the gun to my face!". Seems like the thugs had just left, because about a minute later, another young woman came to the shop with her hands tied. We helped her free her hands, then she said that there was someone else tied back in her shop, so I offered to go with her (everyone else seemed to frightened to do anything).

I told my fiancee to wait there and I grabbed a cutter and went next door, where indeed there was a man on the floor, with his feet and hands tied behind his back. I asked him if he was alright, and he said he was, so I cut his bindings and went back to my fiancee, but then realized that the police had not arrived yet. Thus, I went outside (everyone was still panicked inside the print shop) and started to look for a police officer (the street was very busy, so I would see one eventually).

Sure enough, a few minutes later a police car casually passed by, but when he noticed that I was signaling him to stop, he u-turned and rolled his window down, so I yelled "there has just been a robbery here!" Now I had his attention. He turned on his turrets and started to ask for backup and in a few minutes there were no less than 5 police cars and officers all over the place, asking everyone the same questions and talking on their radios like they meant business.

After listening to everyone's stories, seems like the man I freed was the clerk in the shop and two thugs came in on a truck with guns, tied him up and started loading merchandise. Coincidentally, the shop owner (the young woman that would come to the print shop later) arrived at her business and started demanding answers as to why they were taking the merchandise, to which the robbers declared "the man inside told us". When she went inside, she found herself staring down the barrel of a gun, was tied and thrown in the back with her clerk tied there. The other girl (the one that was crying inside the print shop when we got there), went inside by mistake, looking for her sister (who was in the print shop next door), but the robbers tied her too in case she noticed the robbery and stole her purse while she was there.

In the end they left with the purses of both women, merchandise from the shop and the SUV the owner of the shop came in. The odd thing is that it was a marble stone store, so they loaded their truck with huge, heavy marble tables and figures. Seems to me that it would've been way easier to steal a BMW in a stop light. But that's just me.

I really hope things get better in my home country, because stories like this (and even worse ones) are only getting more and more common to hear.

Google search, meet Random Thoughts

Exactly a week after I submitted my blog to Google's index, it got crawled. This means that Random Thoughts is now part of every Google search, and entering the right query (like ornelas random thoughts or zen bound ornelas) will land you here.

Here are some examples of advanced queries, as suggested by the Google Webmaster Tools:

• site:randomthoughtsao.blogspot.com: Indexed pages
  
• link:randomthoughtsao.blogspot.com: Pages that link to this blog
• cache:randomthoughtsao.blogspot.com: Current cache
  
• info:randomthoughtsao.blogspot.com: Information Google has about this blog
  
• related:randomthoughtsao.blogspot.com: Pages that are similar
  

iPhone App Review: Zen Bound™

Every month or so, I get all excited about a new iPhone app and really get hooked on it. Remember I said that I tend to over express what I like? Well, here I'll do that with said iPhone Apps. This month: Zen Bound™.

Zen Bound™ is a pretty unique game. You could be tempted to say it is a Puzzle game, but it's not really about solving puzzles. It is more of a, well, Zen game. With beautiful graphics and innovative gameplay (which finally makes good use of the iPhone's capabilities), you twist and turn wooden figures to wrap (or better said, bound) them with a rope. As the rope touches the figure, it paints the area it is wrapping. The object of the game is to wrap the figures trying to cover as much area as possible before the rope runs out. Yet it is not about doing it quickly. The only metric is the percentage covered, so you can take your time, backtrack, and make tiny adjustments without any pressure.

Another great quality of this game it that it features an amazing soundtrack. The music blends beautifully with the whole mood of the game, and the creators are so proud of it, that they let their customers download all 11 tracks for free ("Secret Exit" link in the main menu of the game).

In short, Zen Bound™ is a great game with amazing attention to detail and quality, and one of the first to really make good use of the accelerometer and touch screen. It's not a simple port from another console. It was designed for the iPhone. In any other device or console, it simply wouldn't work.

• Graphics: Beautiful lighting effects and renders... 9/10
  
• Sound: Appropriate sound effects and amazing music... 10/10
  
• Gameplay: Incredible rope physics with intuitive controls... 9/10
• Originality: Unique concept born for the iPhone... 10/10
• Overall score: 95

Zen Bound™ site
iTunes store

Birth of a Noogler

Yesterday was my last day working as a Junior Software Developer at PROS.
And I learned that quitting your first job is literally easier said that done. Luckily, I was leaving for my dream job, so I stood firm whenever it got tough. And what is my dream job? Working as a Software Engineer in Test at Google. The funny thing is: I just recently found out it was my dream job. I've always wanted to work at Google, but it took me a year working somewhere else to realize what I really wanted to do once I got there. Perhaps I should start from the beginning...

It was a bright, sunny morning on June 9th, 1984 when... Maybe not that far back. Lets fast forward 22 years...

As I was coursing the 7nth semester of my Computer Science Bachelor (a year and a half before graduating), I decided to apply for a job at Appian, who visited my university to recruit young minds. After an exciting recruiting process (hey, it was my first), I accepted an offer as Technology Associate (whatever that means) starting right after I graduated: January 2008.

It was all good (and indeed, it felt awesome to have a job already more than a year prior to graduating), until a year later, a fateful day in September of 2007. A friend of mine who was also "hired" by Appian called me and let me in some grave news: Appian was doing a company-wide layoff and, of course, we were included. Sure enough, shortly after I received an email (and then a call) from them, confirming my dread:

Dear Arturo,

I regret to inform you that a significant reorganization at Appian has resulted in a number of positions being eliminated. As a result of this, Appian must withdraw its offer of employment to you made on September 26, 2006.

When the VP called me to apologize, I remember asking for the reason of this "reorganization" and he simply replied "We misjudged the growth of the market". As crushed as I was, this tragic event led to two very positive results: The first, and immediate, was that I was being compensated for the trouble; the second, a year later, was that this would land me in Google.

My Appian recruiter, in an attempt (and quite successful) to help us out, starting distributing our resumes with all her contacts. At the same time, I became very active in our university's employment fair, which luckily enough started a week after I was laid off. And thus began the most intense job hunt I'll probably ever do. I interviewed with more than 15 companies, in Monterrey and the U.S., and was thrilled to get a lot of positive response.

In the midst of it all, a recruiter from Google contacted me, inviting me to interview for the position of Software Engineer in Test. My resume had landed on the hands of an ex-Appian employee, who was working at Google at the time. I thought to myself "well, I'm not really that into testing, I'm more of the developer type, but what the hell... it's Google!". So I had the preliminary phone screen, in which I did very well. They contacted me shortly afterward to invite me to some on-site interviews, and that was quite the experience. I happened to go in a Google College Day, so I was interviewed along with dozens of other students, which made the whole interviewing process feel quite industrialized. After some introductory activities, each of us was led to a small room, where we were about to be plummeted with the most challenging interview questions you've ever experienced. A small table, two chairs and a whiteboard. Every 45 minutes or so, a new interviewer would come in with a laptop to frantically take notes while you would try not to look too dumb and solve the given problem at the same time. Their laptops always had that privacy protector thingy, so their screens appeared to be turned off.

The interviews were over and I headed back home with quite an uneasy feeling. I kept thinking: "What have I learned all these years of studying if I could barely answer some of their questions?" And sure enough, a few days later I got a call from my recruiter saying that they didn't find a suitable match for me. Thanks for your time, here is a watch and some peanuts.

I really wanted to work at Google, and I wasn't about to give up, but the intense beating I took during the interviews made me decide to get prepared for at least 3 years before trying that again. So I took the job at PROS and locked my desire to work for Google in my "Do not open until 2011" box.

Now, I don't know (or care) if you believe in the Law of Attraction, but I'm going to tell the story as it developed, and you make your own conclusions.

After almost a year of happily working for PROS (I really was happy, enough to turn down a bunch of invitations from other companies), last Christmas, my brother and his wife gave each of us in the family a piggy bank, in the air of saving some money for a family trip. The relevance to this story is that they decorated each pig with something unique about the person they were giving it to. In my pig, my brother wrote "Güera" (his nickname for me), with the font and colors of the Google logo:

I tend to be over expressive of the things that I really like (as everyone who knows me for more than 5 minutes finds out), so it was easy for him to see Google as something I like so much as to draw it on my pig.

Suddenly, the box where I had locked my desire to work at Google sprung open and loaded my RAM with those feelings again (I warned you I see the mind as a computer).

To rub it in, my sister then gave us each a nice-yet-blank card, for us to write our goals for 2009 and not loose sight of them. The first thing I thought of writing (after my wedding, of course, but that's for another post) was "I want to work at Google". Still, I left it blank.

Like a textbook Law of Attraction story, two weeks later I received the following email:

Hi Arturo!

I am a recruiter at Google and I would like to speak with you about your candidacy with us.

You had interviewed with us in the past , at which time we may not have had a suitable position. I'd like to speak with you about some new developments and a possible career opportunity with us. Please let me know if you are interested in speaking with me.

It would also be great if you could send me an updated resume.

Please call or email me back at your earliest convenience.

Have a great day!

And indeed, a great day it was. I got as excited as the first time they contacted me and was thrilled to have a second chance. I got out the card my sister had given me and wrote with big letters "This year, I want to work at Google".

This time, I wanted to Ace the interviews, so I got into some hardcore studying/practicing the three weeks leading up to the interviews. Another big difference this time around was that I had "customized" interviews. Before, they just got 4 Googlers that were available that day; but now, my recruiter hand picked three people that matched my interests and skills, so I had a much better chance of shinning.

On February 3rd, I was to be interviewed by phone. I felt like I couldn't do better in the first interview, in the second I stumbled a bit but pulled it off, and in the third I did good. So overall, I was very satisfied.

After a grueling waiting period, on February 26, I got a call from my recruiter with the good news: I was being offered the position of Software Engineer in Test at the Googleplex. Remember I said I just recently found out it was my dream job? It turns out that after working for a year, I've realized that what I'm most passionate about is Testing. I most enjoy my job when doing Test Driven Development or adding Unit Test coverage to legacy code. So, I fit the profile for this position much better today than I did the first time I was interviewed. When I asked one of the interviewers "What would be my responsabilities as a Software Engineer in Test?", I was thrilled to find out that everything he said, I loved, and I actually already did on my own at my current job!

And so, all these events lead to me quitting PROS and having the time to start my own blog, while I wait for the Visa documents to arrive in the mail. All because of a small company in Washington D.C. that decided to fire me before I began working with them. It's funny how life makes the most out of crappy situations.

It's "Andrés", not "Andreas"

I've always had trouble with my name. I was born "Arturo Andrés", and went by "Arturo" all my life (except, of course, when my mom middle named me when I did something bad) until I moved to Monterrey. I starting to meet a lot of new people there and when introduced I would say "Arturo Ornelas". The matching o's at the end of my first name and beginning of my last name made people say "sorry?" most of the time. To make matters worse, my last name is not common at all.

So, I evolved to saying "Arturo Andrés Ornelas", to include my middle name and hopefully solve the o's issue. But this was an issue of its own. People always asked afterward "so... how do people call you: Arturo or Andrés?".

This led me to simplify future introductions by saying "My name is Andrés Ornelas". There. It clearly distinguishes from my last name and people know to start calling me "Andrés". Some people seem to love to stick an "a" in my name and call me "Andreas", but that is easily corrected by saying "It's 'Andrés', as in 'undress'". Nobody forgets that. (And it would've been a great pick-up line back in the day, hehe)

Of course, this resulted in yet ANOTHER issue, but this one I can live with. My family, and everyone who met me before 2004, know me as "Arturo". But no biggie. They've learned to deal with it. For the really close and bright people, like my future wife, they can actually switch between "Arturo" and "Andrés" depending on the crowd.

Oh, wait... for my Wedding, will the priest call me "Arturo" or "Andrés"? Crap.

Update: The priest did call me "Andrés", which felt better. Still, several guests thought for a minute that they were at the wrong wedding XD

Welcome

According to The Long Tail, for any product or service, no matter how niche it may be, there is at least one person that is interested in it. Marketing always has tried to segment people into manageable groups, categorizing them with a set of common traits. But in reality, no two people are alike. We may share a few interests, but the complexity of individuality makes it practically impossible for people to be into the same set of things. Even the same person, at different times, has contrasting likes and dislikes!

What is my point, you might ask? My point is that, by picking random notes from my mind bowl (see blog description above), I intend to appeal and be of interest to at least one person out there, if even for a single entry in this blog. You may not find here a plethora of articles that you find interesting altogether, but maybe, along the way, you encounter something that might make you learn, reflect, or even change the way you think.

And if none of that happens, at least you will have a glimpse into my life which, I may be biased, but I find very interesting.

So sit back, relax, and enjoy: Random Thoughts, by Andres Ornelas