What do you do for a living?

[Darth Konvel]

Do you work for Nvidia ????

I interviewed there before I came here.

Kai

I currently work for http://www.nvidia.com, designing computer graphics hardware.

I went to school to program, design, etc (BS in CIS), but now I do more administrative stuff, and I'm not ever sure if I want to work tech for the rest of my life. Ah well :shrug:

 

[Walker]

Do you work for Nvidia ????

I interviewed there before I came here.

Kai

Yeah, I work for nvidia. I've been with them since Oct 2001. I worked out of their headquarters in Santa Clara, CA for the first 4 years, got sick of the Silicon Valley/Bay Area Attitude (me first! gimme! gimme! don't you know how important I am!?), and requested to move to the RTP area and work out of the Durham office. Moving here is one of the best decisions I have ever made.

-walker

 

[Kaiser]

LupusUmbrus,

RTFT! for myself .

I thought about that after I posted the note. I admit that I never read through the full thread .

Kai

 

[Kaiser]

Yeah, I work for nvidia. I've been with them since Oct 2001. I worked out of their headquarters in Santa Clara, CA for the first 4 years, got sick of the Silicon Valley/Bay Area Attitude (me first! gimme! gimme! don't you know how important I am!?), and requested to move to the RTP area and work out of the Durham office. Moving here is one of the best decisions I have ever made.

You may have even interviewed me in May 2004.

From what I head about the schedule pressure at NVIDIA, I'm surprised that you were able to get to 1600 posts since you joined the board .

Kai

 

[Walker]

You may have even interviewed me in May 2004.

From what I head about the schedule pressure at NVIDIA, I'm surprised that you were able to get to 1600 posts since you joined the board .

Kai

If you interviewed in CA, I might possibly have interviewed you. I was doing about 2 or 3 interviews every week for about 15 months. I didn't move to NC until Aug 2005, so if you interviewed HERE (durham), it wasn't with me.

As for the nvidia schedules and my (previously) prolific posting... I moved to NC right after finishing up a major project, and I was slated to start a new major project as soon as that project was ready for hardware contributions to begin.

The interim between projects ended up lasting about 4 months (longest 'break' I have ever had... they usually are measured in days, if not hours.)

During that time I was doing odd jobs for various projects (some verif here, some timing work there, some ECOs over here, etc) and I signed up to be a post whore on this site and was brewing a batch every 1.5 weeks or so.

My new project kicked into full-gear around thanksgiving time, and I've been very busy with it since then. My posting and brewing has dropped off considerably in the last couple of months.

-walker

 

[Kaiser]

If you interviewed in CA, I might possibly have interviewed you. I was doing about 2 or 3 interviews every week for about 15 months. I didn't move to NC until Aug 2005, so if you interviewed HERE (durham), it wasn't with me.

No, I interviewed here.

My new project kicked into full-gear around thanksgiving time, and I've been very busy with it since then. My posting and brewing has dropped off considerably in the last couple of months.

I think I noticed this. When I joined (Oct 2005) almost every other post was by you. And then it got quiet.

Kai

 

[Baron von BeeGee]

I'm actually trying to get out of SW dev this year as I mentioned, probably something more technology planning oriented, but certainly more abstract than actual coding. The trick will be not becoming a project mgr which ain't my bag.

 

[user 574]

I'm actually trying to get out of SW dev this year as I mentioned, probably something more technology planning oriented, but certainly more abstract than actual coding. The trick will be not becoming a project mgr which ain't my bag.

Man, and I wish for the days of developing again. Instead of managing humans and projects. Grrraaaaaa!!!!!!

 

[El Pistolero]

Man, and I wish for the days of developing again. Instead of managing humans and projects. Grrraaaaaa!!!!!!

The only thing worse than writing software is not writing software.

 

[Baron von BeeGee]

I think imagining things that people could do with software without actually writing or being responsible for it could be quite all right.

 

[user 574]

I think imagining things that people could do with software without actually writing or being responsible for it could be quite all right.

My best would be to imagine the need, write it and make recurring cash out of the sale of your efforts for the short-term. Then, having someone like Gates or Symantec love it as well. They buy you out for millions and you kick back in your beachfront home with beer brewing goddesses assisting you in your hobby.

Vicously slapped back into reality so I can continue to write my report on why this field automation project is falling apart .

 

[mpetty]

Another IT brewer reporting in. I'm an IT manager at a small food distributor of about 60 employees in the middle of a turn around. Capital is so tight and there wasn't even a standalone IT department until October '05.

Fu** IT this crap isn't worth the 25 grand they pay me. Maybe if I made market price, but no, probably not even then. On the other hand, there's no dress code here (bunch of hippies).

...

Ok now that my little rant is over... I've been thinking I'm just going to throw up a website with a ton of content and make my money from Google Adsense then retire myself to Thailand and live in a Corona commercial for less than 300 USD/month while I make regular updates from a counterfeit Blackberry.

 

[subwyking]

im an airborne arabic linguist for the air force. just got done flying on a training sorty today. we had problems with the pressure pack on the jet. the internal pressure kept increasing randomly. (imagine how a ballon looks after you blow it up, deflate it, blow it up, deflate,.... after do it over and over again.) it feels like i just got beat with a bag of bricks. gonna miss all you guys when i go play in the sand box in a few months. but most of all the wife and kid...

 

[Baron von BeeGee]

Keef halach? (or something like that)

 

[subwyking]

we have an official method to typing arabic in roman characters. i believe what your trying to say is

KIF HALK QM

which means, "how are you?" or literally, "how is your condition?" to that i would say:

BOIR CMM _HKRAN

"Well, thank you."

O=ch (not ch as in "child", but ch as in a horrible sound )
_H=sh
QM=question mark
CMM=comma

 

[Baron von BeeGee]

Yeah, I'm not that advanced. Had some Arabs for officemates in grad school but drew the line when a Palestinian wanted to draw up a marriage contract to one of her friends if I would give up pork and alcohol (wtf ). "Her father owns a Subway and Brueggers Bagels, you would be wealthy! Please reconsider!"

I did learn how to write my name in Arabic which freaked my Mom pretty well.

 

[subwyking]

that was one of the first things i learned. all my friends and family wanted to know then how to write their name. i dont speak it much anymore, just a lot of listening and reading. its a shame. i really dont want my speaking skill to die.

 

[Baron von BeeGee]

Looks like there would be a lot of demand for speaking Arabic in the armed forces these days, but beats me!

 

[Beer Snob]

I'm pretty knowledgable on Hebrew. Oh and the "CH" sound can be made by ... lets see.... it's a gutteral sound kinda like clearing your throat... or... like when you are about to spit and make that gargle sound in the back of your throat (I know... sounds real gross, but if I can get a 7 year old to make the sound you guys should have noooo problem ). It is by far probably the hardest sound to make in the Hebrew/Arabic language. It is just not a sound that we Americans would say is polite so it has some emotional barriers ("I can't make that sound in front of you... ").

 

[Baron von BeeGee]

I've found there are a lot of sounds in a lot of languages that I can't make because I'm from the South (including sounds in English). At least that's my excuse and I'm sticking with it.

 

[Beer Snob]

My problem is that I'm for the most part Deaf. Making sounds you can't hear is like finding a pin in a haystack. I speechread a good part of what I understand as well... many things look exactly the same.

 

[Baron von BeeGee]

I've found I can understand a lot of Spanish speaking people except my mother in law.

 

[Beer Snob]

My wife is probably the easiest to understand.... if I'm getting the "Evil Eye"... I did not understand it

 

[DeRoux's Broux]

gonna miss all you guys when i go play in the sand box in a few months. but most of all the wife and kid...

Thank you, and God bless you and your family.

 

[subwyking]

thanks deroux! there are other sounds in arabic that dont exist in english. like the difference between "thing" and "that". the "th" has a distintly different sound in each word. arabic has a letter for each. its really a beautiful language. almost every bit of the language is derived from 3 letter root verbs. for instance the word QUL (the U is a hard "t" sound and the word is pronounced "katala") means to kill. a MQAUL (prounounced mukatil) means a person who kills. and QUAL (prounounced kitaal) means a killing or murder. so if you learn a lot of root verbs, and you learn "the forms", for a lack of a better term, that the 3 letter verbs can change into, you can pretty much derive the meaning of a word you have never heard, just by knowing its root. ok, maybe this explanation had no business being here.... sorry if ive bored you all!!!

 

[Dude]

thanks deroux! there are other sounds in arabic that dont exist in english. like the difference between "thing" and "that". the "th" has a distintly different sound in each word. arabic has a letter for each. its really a beautiful language. almost every bit of the language is derived from 3 letter root verbs. for instance the word QUL (the U is a hard "t" sound and the word is pronounced "katala") means to kill. a MQAUL (prounounced mukatil) means a person who kills. and QUAL (prounounced kitaal) means a killing or murder. so if you learn a lot of root verbs, and you learn "the forms", for a lack of a better term, that the 3 letter verbs can change into, you can pretty much derive the meaning of a word you have never heard, just by knowing its root. ok, maybe this explanation had no business being here.... sorry if ive bored you all!!!

I'm still trying to figure out how you got "katala" out of QUL.

 

[DeRoux's Broux]

no way! homebrewer 99 always gives me German lessons! (which don't seem to be helping me...)

 

[Walker]

a large part of the problem with sounds in foreign languages that do not exist in your native language is a neurolgical thing.

If I recall from the one of the books my wife made me read before our first child was born; a 1 year old baby is capable of making every sound heard in every language on earth. As time goes on, the child begins to be rewarded with positive feedback when it makes a sound that is 'recognizable' in the caregiver's native tounge. over time this evenutally leads to speech and a primary language. The sounds that you were capable of making at 1 year old yet had no place in your speaking are not repeated (no positive reinfocement associated with them) and are basically forgotton. You literally forget how to make the sound.

It gets worse as you get older, because the absense of these sounds in your day-to-day life actually allows the brain to lose neural connections that would have been used to 'process' those sounds. You literally forget how to even hear the sound!

-walker

 

[dancingbarefoot]

thanks deroux! there are other sounds in arabic that dont exist in english. like the difference between "thing" and "that". the "th" has a distintly different sound in each word.

English has both of those sounds, we just don't have separate ways of writing them. It's 'th' for both of them.

But yeah, all those pharyngeals? Yikes! I can't pronounce those without my gag reflex acting up.

The sounds that you were capable of making at 1 year old yet had no place in your speaking are not repeated (no positive reinfocement associated with them) and are basically forgotton. You literally forget how to make the sound.

You can re-learn them, but you're right - it's very difficult in most cases. That's why Japanese people tend to mess up R and L, actually. In Japanese, it's just one sound, R. So if they hear L, it goes into the R category for them. No amount of "It's LICE, not RICE!" will help, because they both sound the same to Japanese ears.

So I guess what I do for a living is obvious: linguist (grad student, actually, but that's my field).

 

[subwyking]

I'm still trying to figure out how you got "katala" out of QUL.

there are more letters in arabic than english, so in the SAT system (standard arabic transliteration) some roman characters take on sounds that dont really make sense to an english speaker. i.e.
_E=soft h
X=s from back of the throat
U=t from back of the throat
V=d from back of the throat
Y=th (as in that) from back of throat. yes there are 3 th sounds in arabic
O=the dreaded "ch" sound
C=soft th sound (thin)

and most vowels are not written. they are understood. there are little marks that go above or below the word that indicate voweling. but they honestly dont write them most of the time. as one of my teachers told me when i asked why not "only a child or an idiot would need them" im assuming i fell into the later catagory