Ugh, my nerves were all over the place. I ended up re-writing my cover letter prolly 6 or 8 times Saturday morning before finally heading up to Boston with my belly full of butterflies--and Smores Cereal:)
The setup for the whole event was pretty cool. They had very impressive LEGO models all over and filled the place with people wearing LEGO shirts. It was nearly impossible to tell who was from LEGO and who worked at the college hosting it.
So I show up and register and am told to go into this room where I can mingle with some of the other applicants and LEGO folk. They had two buckets of brick which they explained could be used if I needed to "warm up" for the building challenge which was about to take place. OMG, if only they knew that I had been up the whole night before building like a bandit, trying to prepare for anything they could throw at me...lol
I ended up swimming my hands through the pieces anyways. At first it was just for a soothing moment of Zen, but then it ended up turning into a full-blown building event once a little kid that someone had brought along started building with me. We had a blast. He had a modified foam beer can holder over one of his wrists which he said helped him build. It's always fun to see Budweiser helping to foster children's imaginations.
As we're building, one of the LEGO shirts comes over and joins us. Then this other girl in a LEGO shirt stands behind him and watches too. Then another applicant sits down at my table too and began to build. We all had some small talk and smiles and then another LEGO shirt comes out of the blue and asks me if I'm ready for my building challenge. Oh, ya betcha!
I get escorted with applicant #10 to another room. (They gave us all numbers during registration-I was #9. Damn, I wanted to meet #2 so badly!) There were two chairs at a table with two separate covered buckets each containing 2000 basic bricks.
"Don't worry about color--We're more interested in how you build and what you build rather than how well the colors match up" announced Pat who was in charge of the competition. He then says "The theme is sports. You have 45 minutes-Go!"
Sports?!?! Of all the frikken topics, I get SPORTS???
#10 immediately lights up and starts feverishly building away. Again, I start swimming my fingers through the bricks before me-but this time I'm swimming like I've just been shipwrecked with my fingers searching for a lifesaver of an idea to build.
I had to have wasted 5 minutes of my time just thinking. I looked down at the green base plate and immediately thought about building Fenway Park. I mean the baseball diamond was already there. All I'd need to do was build the walls around it. That was too easy, though and I knew it would be tough to make it interesting given the bricks I had to work with. So scratching my head and kinda sneaking out a smile and a laugh in the otherwise sterile room, I figured why not build a mascot. I have lots of yellow and black brick--I'll build a bumble-bee mascot.
Ok, ok, I know you're prolly thinking who the hell are the Bumble-Bees??? I have no idea either, but I figured it had to make sense somewhere in the country. Maybe it was an expansion team along the Mexican Boarder. I didn't care-it was going to work!:)
45 minutes later, Pat comes back in and starts talking to #10 about his creation:
"So, it looks like you made a baseball park-is that the green wall here at Fenway?" LOL...OMG, I thought that was too funny that he had actually built what I almost built. It was pretty decent, but again, the details were hard to make out and with the exception of the green monster the colors definitely worked against it. He asked a few questions and then invited the guy to head back to the mingling room where he was welcome to check out some more of the models before he could head home. He says "will be in touch soon." #10 leaves relieved.
Who could have guessed what the conclusions would have been?
Let's see- after using our new "Desk Wipes" product for just two days you too can rid your desk of 99.9% of those nasty microbes.
Hmmm.....
What an Incredible Simplification of what war is!!
on
The Drone War
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
Even for Katz this article is outrageous.
First off, airpower alone did not destroy the Taliban- it (greatly) supplimented the Afgan opposition's ground forces. Just because our tanks and infantry weren't in those mountains doesn't mean there weren't any there. Ground forces will ALWAYS be needed to sweep through and hold captured land.
But as for the larger discussion of the evolution of warfare:
Wars will not be fought off on some designated battlefield where each side sends its combatants (carbon or silcon based) while the generals stay at home. Wars are fought on somebody's homeland, usually for the purpose of taking that homeland for yourself.
Say we conducted this symbolic war in cyberspace or in meat-space with drones. Does this mean when we lose that I have to give up my house without a fight? Not gonna happen!!!
Why is this being launched from a submarine? Are there extra points for the higher degree of difficulty? Why make an experiment more complicated than it has to be?
"I know, lets launch it from a moving submerged vehicle"
Slashdot Mirror
Robots hate to be anthropomorphized ;)
So the interview with LEGO was Saturday...
:)
:)
Ugh, my nerves were all over the place. I ended up re-writing my cover letter prolly 6 or 8 times Saturday morning before finally heading up to Boston with my belly full of butterflies--and Smores Cereal
The setup for the whole event was pretty cool. They had very impressive LEGO models all over and filled the place with people wearing LEGO shirts. It was nearly impossible to tell who was from LEGO and who worked at the college hosting it.
So I show up and register and am told to go into this room where I can mingle with some of the other applicants and LEGO folk. They had two buckets of brick which they explained could be used if I needed to "warm up" for the building challenge which was about to take place. OMG, if only they knew that I had been up the whole night before building like a bandit, trying to prepare for anything they could throw at me...lol
I ended up swimming my hands through the pieces anyways. At first it was just for a soothing moment of Zen, but then it ended up turning into a full-blown building event once a little kid that someone had brought along started building with me. We had a blast. He had a modified foam beer can holder over one of his wrists which he said helped him build. It's always fun to see Budweiser helping to foster children's imaginations.
As we're building, one of the LEGO shirts comes over and joins us. Then this other girl in a LEGO shirt stands behind him and watches too. Then another applicant sits down at my table too and began to build. We all had some small talk and smiles and then another LEGO shirt comes out of the blue and asks me if I'm ready for my building challenge. Oh, ya betcha!
I get escorted with applicant #10 to another room. (They gave us all numbers during registration-I was #9. Damn, I wanted to meet #2 so badly!) There were two chairs at a table with two separate covered buckets each containing 2000 basic bricks.
"Don't worry about color--We're more interested in how you build and what you build rather than how well the colors match up" announced Pat who was in charge of the competition. He then says "The theme is sports. You have 45 minutes-Go!"
Sports?!?! Of all the frikken topics, I get SPORTS???
#10 immediately lights up and starts feverishly building away. Again, I start swimming my fingers through the bricks before me-but this time I'm swimming like I've just been shipwrecked with my fingers searching for a lifesaver of an idea to build.
I had to have wasted 5 minutes of my time just thinking. I looked down at the green base plate and immediately thought about building Fenway Park. I mean the baseball diamond was already there. All I'd need to do was build the walls around it. That was too easy, though and I knew it would be tough to make it interesting given the bricks I had to work with. So scratching my head and kinda sneaking out a smile and a laugh in the otherwise sterile room, I figured why not build a mascot. I have lots of yellow and black brick--I'll build a bumble-bee mascot.
Ok, ok, I know you're prolly thinking who the hell are the Bumble-Bees??? I have no idea either, but I figured it had to make sense somewhere in the country. Maybe it was an expansion team along the Mexican Boarder. I didn't care-it was going to work!
45 minutes later, Pat comes back in and starts talking to #10 about his creation:
"So, it looks like you made a baseball park-is that the green wall here at Fenway?" LOL...OMG, I thought that was too funny that he had actually built what I almost built. It was pretty decent, but again, the details were hard to make out and with the exception of the green monster the colors definitely worked against it. He asked a few questions and then invited the guy to head back to the mingling room where he was welcome to check out some more of the models before he could head home. He says "will be in touch soon." #10 leaves relieved.
Then Pat
Who could have guessed what the conclusions would have been?
Let's see- after using our new "Desk Wipes" product for just two days you too can rid your desk of 99.9% of those nasty microbes.
Hmmm.....
Even for Katz this article is outrageous.
First off, airpower alone did not destroy the Taliban- it (greatly) supplimented the Afgan opposition's ground forces. Just because our tanks and infantry weren't in those mountains doesn't mean there weren't any there. Ground forces will ALWAYS be needed to sweep through and hold captured land.
But as for the larger discussion of the evolution of warfare:
Wars will not be fought off on some designated battlefield where each side sends its combatants (carbon or silcon based) while the generals stay at home. Wars are fought on somebody's homeland, usually for the purpose of taking that homeland for yourself.
Say we conducted this symbolic war in cyberspace or in meat-space with drones. Does this mean when we lose that I have to give up my house without a fight? Not gonna happen!!!
Rob.
For those who don't like to click all day long- Here
Practically Networked
All kinds of good information and reviews on exactly what you're looking for.
Why is this being launched from a submarine? Are there extra points for the higher degree of difficulty? Why make an experiment more complicated than it has to be? "I know, lets launch it from a moving submerged vehicle"