Mike Oren.com

I appear to be slacking on updates to the other pages of my site (as in everything other than my bi-weekly to weekly posts). In particularly, my grad school pages, audio game (I still need to release the latest build to SourceForge...), and resume pages are all in dire need of updates. I also want to freshen up the general design of the page, but that's not going to happen for awhile. However, even the general site updates probably won't be rolled out until sometime at the end of next month, so please be patient for those updates.

In terms of what I've been up to lately, I've had classes start. I've found that I'm actually pretty into my statistics class--I'm taking it partially as a refresher and partially to learn some portions of statistics I never learned and need for writing research papers/my thesis. Speaking of papers, I am currently working on three papers with deadlines in mid-September--a CHI Notes for a methodology I worked on over the summer; a full CHI paper on my audio game; and an IEEE VR Sketch paper for the H3D project (now officially named Multi-modal Mesh Manipulation or M4). I have the first draft of the CHI Notes paper done, but the other two I need to work on a bit--the full CHI paper shouldn't be too bad as I have a lot of the background research and such for that. The M4 paper I'm slightly worried about for various reasons, but it's only a four page paper so I'm not too concerned about it.

As for other school related things, I found out that I was nominated and elected Treasurer of the HCI Student Group during my absence this summer, in addition to being one of the two senators to the Graduate and Professional Student Senate (GPSS), which (conveniently), has an amendment at the next meeting for increasing funding to conferences (and which I plan on proposing an amendment to so it increases funding for international conferences). I'm also helping to organize one (or more) teams for the CHI student design competition. I don't plan on participating in it myself, but I do plan on spearheading the process and making sure that things stay organized. I'd like to see more people at Iowa State going to CHI, and I figure this is a great way to do it.

My last bit of an update is that I'm considering buying an iPhone. The 4 GB one is $100 off refurbished, I already have AT&T (And my mom wants to renew our contract with them so she can get a new phone), and I've been looking for a pocket sized Internet device for about 2 years now (and a multi-touch one with good video playback gives me more stuff that I've been wanting for over a year).

I'm back in Iowa now, I moved back into my apartment Thursday night around 10:30 PM (well, I moved my clothes, laptop, and sheets in anyway). This morning (Friday) I went into the lab around 9:30 or so with some bagels to share and caught up with what's been going on over the summer and such. Anyway, I'm going to give an update on some of the things that went on since my last update and give a little bit of a summary of the summer.

My last five days of my internship were pretty fun--I had one day where myself and another intern stayed at the Googleplex until 11:30 at night working on our intern posters and finishing up some projects (and drinking some tea and eating some chocolate) and despite (maybe because) the fact that we were working late at night we ended up having a blast listening to music/talking while working. On my last Thursday night (after a massage), I went out to eat with a few interns and then half of us went back and played some Wii tennis, bowling, boxing, and Excite Truck. Wii boxing was hilarious--I hadn't really played it that much against other people, but it was a blast flailing our arms around trying to throw punches in the game. Friday I finished wrapping up my projects and other tasks, went to lunch with an Iowa State alum who had worked as a consultant on the C6 demo, and spent an hour drinking smoothies (my goal had been to drink as many smoothies as I could in an hour, but they were more filling than I thought so I ended up stopping at 2...), and I said my goodbyes to people and packed up my apartment.

My drive back was uneventful with the exception of the first day of the three day drive. Unlike my drive out to California, I decided to just drive until I got tired on my way back--figuring I'd stop somewhere in Utah or western Wyoming. I ended up deciding stopping before Salt Lake City was too early and stopping at Salt Lake City would cost more, so I kept on until Evanston, Wyoming but due to an oil and gas convention all the hotel rooms were taken--as were the rooms in Rock Springs, Wyoming (another 100 miles down the road--which I called ahead to). Faced with the options of backtracking, driving another 200 miles to the next major hotel town, or sleeping in my car--I ended up opting to sleep in my car.

I ended up back in the Chicago area Monday afternoon and made meat pierogi for dinner with my mom and grandma. Then Tuesday Danielle took me to the Chicago Botanical Gardens, then we went out for Italian, and then we had some ice cream and brought some back for my niece. Wednesday we made some breakfast (beneigt or however it's spelled--some donut-type thing from the New Orleans area--and some waffles). We also played some games with my niece and then Danielle and I went out to Olive Garden for a late lunch of soup, salad, and breadsticks before going to see Stardust. Thursday morning we cooked some eggs, said our goodbyes, and then then I packed my car and drove back to Iowa. It was a great, although short visit.

So here's my list of top 5 things I'm going to miss from the summer going into the school year:

• The friends I made over the summer, especially one friend who made the summer especially fun


• The free gourmet food


• The projects and the people I woked on them with--they were fun/challenging projects and the people whom I woked with were fun to work with


• Weather always in the 70's and almost always sunny (although I assume the weather will be changing as the seasons change)


• All of the attractions within an easy drive--state and national parks, theme parks, beaches, etc.

I am on my last five days of my internship at Google. It's sad--I've met some great people here, worked on some interesting projects, eaten some awesome food, and overall enjoyed working at Google/living in the Bay Area. My final weekend here I spent at Santa Cruz getting buried in the sand, building a sand castle, and then at night having a fire on the beach and roasting marshmallows (until we were kicked off the beach because it was closed). Then today (Sunday), I went to see a movie in San Jose, went to PF Changs, and then roasted marshmallows/made s'mores using oil burners. All-in-all a great time. Of course, my original plan was to get some work done/pack things up this weekend, but I think this was a better way to end my time here (and I can always stay up late on the weekdays to finish things up if need be, but I think it should be ok--I was mostly just trying to finish things up over the weekend so I could take the last week and just have fun).

In other news, I had my conversion interviews last week (my interviews from converting from an intern to a full-time employee after graduation). I wasn't sure what to expect going into the interviews and other than brushing up on the job ladder and thinking of some questions to ask the interviewers a few minutes before the actual interview, I went in it with very little prep work (in stark contrast to my phone interviews that landed me the internship). My first interview was very open ended/think on my feet style interview and that's the type of interview where prep work doesn't really matter anyway--it's also a type of interview I really enjoy because I find them challenging, yet relaxing (challenging because I have to think on my feet and there's only so much time, but relaxing because it's a very casual style of interviewing and despite the pressure, I feel it allows me to just speak freely since it's my own thoughts that are being asked for--not some canned response). The second interview I had was mostly about the projects I had worked on over the summer and was fairly nonchalant until the final few questions, which were more open ended and again the think on your feet style. But the final few questions in that second interview I found more challenging as they dealt with things I had little experience with (international research) and the question was phrased in a way where I felt my opinion was being asked for more than a research plan or something more work related and the opinion seemed more design oriented, which threw me slightly as well as I was expecting more research questions. My own, personal, opinion about international research though is that it should be moderated by an individual native to the culture so the participants can speak in their native tongue and so the moderator can pick up on cultural and language cues that a non-native researcher may be unaware of (e.g. if conducting a study in Russia for Russian web site, the moderator should be Russian and the participant should be communicating in Russian--if there's an interpreter, it should be in the observation room). Both interviews though were interesting and a lot of fun. Not quite sure when I'll find out if I'm getting an offer for full-time employment other than I know it will be some time after I finish my internship.

Along with that, I have been applying for other jobs because I'd like to not have to worry about finding a job during the last semester of my graduate studies and at the moment I don't know if Google will come through with an offer/whether or not the offer will be one that's acceptable to me given the high cost of living in the Bay Area. So we'll see how everything works out there.