Jorge Villalobos
Ideas, technology and the occasional rant

Tuesday, October 17, 2006

Update: 4 reasons it's good to be me

Well, other than the obvious ones, of course :P.
Things are great for me these days, so I thought it was time for an update. If I sound unbearably smug and arrogant then this post has accomplished its mission. It's just a really good time to be me.
Firstly, I participated for the second time in a TopCoder competition. This time it was just a local competition, with Syracuse competitors only. Oddly enough, despite a massive email announcement and multiple fliers posted around the CS buildings, it was a very small turnout. I expected more people I guess, although I can understand multiple reasons not to show up (no time, too geeky, WTF?, I'm not gonna win, etc...). In the end it was only 18 of us competing for 3 prizes, so the odds were excellent. Long story short, I won first place! The competition results were pretty lame in the end. Nobody was able to do more than the first problem, so my win was mostly due to a relatively fast submission and a successful challenge of another competitor's solution of the first problem. A lot of us submitted solutions for the second, but they turned out to be incorrect. It took me a while to realize what went wrong. As usual, a stupid little thing.
Moving on... I won an 2Gb iPod Nano. To be honest, I would never have bought an iPod. I don't need to listen to music while I walk or travel, with the exception of very long trips. In such cases I've always managed with my laptop. I was also kind of annoyed by the fact that everyone and their mothers have a freakin' iPod. But it's still a pretty cool piece of gear, and I've grown to love it. I don't think I would replace it if I lost it, but I would certainly miss it. Nothing like having 2Gb of heavy metal in your pocket just waiting for the right moment. Kreator is my current obsession.
Secondly, my new MacBook Pro is close to be in my hands, and I can't be more excited about it. I'm getting this amazing piece of hardware from my amazing company and I can't wait to have it. Amazing. Some of my friends have MacBooks and they are just too damn cool (the laptops, not my friends). I'm using Parallels to run Windows and Linux VMs on top of my pretty Mac OSX. I'm moving away from multi-boot because it's such a waste of time and disk space. I just need other OSs for occasional testing anyway. So yes, I'm turning into a total Mac fanboi. I should get turtle-necks and a beret, hehe. That guy from Mythbusters can pull it off, maybe I can too :P. But I'll never abandon Firefox, my bread and butter and favorite browser ever. Sorry, Safari. You're cool, though.
This leads to the third reason I'm the best person in the world, at least in my opinion. As of Firefox version 2, my name is featured in the main credits! This is due to all my work with the SFX+ group, and maybe for my other contributions as well. I'm so damn happy about this. My name is now listed along with dev stars such as Blake Ross, Benjamin Smedberg, Brendan Eich, Stephen Colbert... wait, what? OK, along with dev stars and All American Heroes. That's just how good I am.
And finally, I recently discovered Pandora, a very nice and very free Internet radio service that's helping me expand my musical horizons. If you don't see how that makes me a better person than you, then you completely missed the point and shouldn't be reading this.
There you have it. This is how my life has been these days. I'm happier than ever (well, almost) and things are just beginning. I will do a lot more to earn that Firefox credit. I kinda feel bad for all the people that have done so much more than me. I guess I took a shortcut, but I have to prove my name belongs here. One very cool contribution is about to see the light of day, so stay put. Maybe this blog will come back to life. Then again, maybe not.
I'm cool. Thanks.

Get Firefox 1.5!

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