Ok, so the big test is over. I did well, so thankfully I won't need to retake it... which rocks. Now, it's on to the essays and getting my recommendations squared away. Glad to have this piece of the puzzle done.
I've decided not to publish my scores here. So, if you're curious, you can ask me personally, and I'll let you know. Something too self-aggrandizing or self-deprecating about printing the actual numbers. Moreover, I don't get the official results for 2 weeks.
In case you haven't seen this already, check out the LA Times article. The short story is that Yahoo has leased 256,000 sq. feet and aim to acccomodate up to 1000 people in the new campus.
In related news, in Burbank, Yahoo leased 300,000 sq. feet for Overture -
biz week article
So, that's 500,000 sq feet here in glorious southern california.
For perspective, I think the headquarters in Sunnyvale are 1,000,000 sq. feet (according to this old article i found from 2002 )
For those of you curious, I have *no* idea who will be moving here from Sunnyvale, or if everyone will be new. As far as I can tell, these decisions have not yet been made, and certainly have not been made public.
But, obviously, as a Yahoo already in LA, I'm pretty stoked.
Tomorrow is my big test day. As some of you loyal readers may know, I am taking the GMAT, and tomorrow is the day. 9:30 - 1:30 am. And, man, am I feeling stressed.
I've been studying for about a month and a half with a Kaplan book. May not be the greatest plan, but I feel like the test prep book has really helped. Of course, on my initial diagnostic GMAT test, I scored 600... and now after all my studying, my score varies from 660 to 570. I'm really hoping that tomorrow is more of a 660-kinda day.
Either way, I'm pretty sure I'll be quaffing many stiff drinks tomorrow. But for tonight, it's butterflies all the way.
Actually, it's kinda strange. I'm not one of those people who are terrific at standardized tests, but I've never been horrible at it either. I like to think that I'm smart, but, to be honest, I'm a bit frightened that 1.5 months of study has either improved my score by 10% or lowered my score by 5%. I'd actually feel better if it was just consistent... higher or lower, at least if it were consistent, I'd have a better idea of how I will do tomorrow.
If I do reasonably well, I plan to apply to UCLA's Fully Employed MBA (FEMBA). You can read about it at http://www.anderson.ucla.edu/x119.xml. (BTW, how cool are they? .xml is their file extension... I feel like a bit of a loser.) The program actually seems pretty cool. It's a lot of work, and if I am accepted, I'll definitely be spending less time doing things purely for pleasure... but I think it'll be worth it for me in the long run.
Anyways, I'm gonna go feel stressed out... I can't decide if I will report my score here or not. I think I'll just worry about the test for now tho.
Tonight was another round of upper body workout with the trainer. Not quite so bad this time... I could actually lift my hands over my head when i was done, so I'm pretty excited. Of course, my arms, chest, and shoulders ache badly, but it's managable.
New hardest exercise: prepare exercise ball, place knees on ball, parallel to the ground. (that is, *nothing* touches the ground) Pull in on the bellybutton, and straighten the back. Now, raise one arm out in front, and then to the side... while holding a dumbell.
Of course, the trainer did this, no problem. I couldn't even balance on the damned ball. I felt like an utter idiot. It kinda felt like waterskiing, but with no boat in front of me to pull me along. Needless to say, I couldn't stay up for more than 5 or 10 seconds. Guess i need to practice that one a lot.
Jeremy pointed out that my permalinks were messed up. So I leaned on my blog provider and he fixed the problem. (How much pull have I got, eh?) Turns out that MT doesn't complain/error if it can't create a file.. which is completely lame. Thanks Bill for fixing this so quickly.
Now back to our regularly scheduled program....
For several work related projects, I need to build a simple web interface. Of course, the HTML or PHP is really simple. But, for demos given to vice presidents, I can't just have a plain white page with text fields.
So, I'm in search for a couple of cool things: 1.) graphics, 2.) styles (stylesheets), 3.) icons.
Graphics for things like the banners. Stylesheets to make things look pretty, without lots of fuss. Icons for little things like "file", and "service", etc.
If you know of any, or any good collections of these things, feel free to let me know. Otherwise, I'll keep searching around the web for such collections.
Today I made my first foray into building perl extension modules. My god is it crazy. I really dislike pseudo languages like XS. It's just a giant pain in the ass. I can't believe that Perl, which makes so many things easier makes this integration so damned hard. (Yes, I know about Inline, and how cool it can be. But I need a simple wrapper around a C library function.)
But I've been growing tired of Perl anyways. It's nice, but I feel the need to stretch myself, and I want to do more Java and C++.
Some random things that are cool to take up room
I have no arm strength. I can barely raise my arms. I had to wash my hair by bending over, and rubbing my head in my hands because I couldn't raise my hands to my head.
Here's why:
One of my new year's resolutions is to either run a half/full marathon or a short triathlon. In an effort to actually *accomplish* either of those, Diana and I joined a gym, Spectrum Club. In addition, I signed up for 5 sessions with a personal trainer. Today was the upper body day. And it kicked my ass.
My trainer is a guy named Nick who is freakishly strong. He's a big believer in "core strength". It turns out that I have very little core strength. You can test out your own core strength by doing any "normal" exercise, but lift one foot off the floor. For example, simple lunges... big step forward, deep knee bend, then step forward, raising your opposite knee to be parallel to the ground. With that knee bend up, do a military press.... and of course, do it sloooooowwwwly.
It's unreal, but awesome.