Winter 2026 Wrapup¶
2026-05-05
Course reviews¶
Notable gains¶
- Made a "fursuit" head out of cardboard
- Made fursuit paws at the club workshop (horrible quality)
- Behringer UMC202HD from the dispo for $50
- Hypnotize (2005) by System of a Down on CD
- Union (1991) by Yes on CD (it was on sale)
- Transistor Radio (2005) by M. Ward on CD (also on sale, I bought it just because it had a pretty cover and a nice name)
- Summer internship at Treetown Tech
- E-bike to commute to internship
Notable experiences¶
- EECS 370 lead GSI
- ARRL February School Club Roundup, made my first CQ on HF
- MCFC (Motor City Furry Con)
- Escape room at the Northwood Community Center
- Made dumplings with friends
- Had hot pot with friends on my birthday
- Spent multiple evenings in the IOE building solving the public jigsaw puzzle
- Submitted a design to the ECE T-Shirt Contest
▲ Inspired by my 473 nickname, Freddy with a Multimeter
The design didn't win, so I repurposed it as my own sticker.
▲ An alternative design is on the shirt.
Alt text
Mosfet (black cat) holding multimeter and probe same way the orange cat did, but the shirt has a schematic of a DC buck converter, and the text reads:
BORN TO SWITCH
WORLD IS A BUCK
紋波 Lowpass Em All 47μF
I am flyback man
410,757,864,530 BLOWN INDUCTORS
MCFC 2026¶
For the first time, the Con was in Renaissance Center, downtown Detroit. In light of the subliminal insecurity due to lack of furry apparel felt on MCFC 2025, I made a fursuit head out of cardboard. It looks like this:
The ears, eyebrows, and snout are magnetically attached to the head. I put extra magnets for the ears and snout to snap to, and the eyebrows can rotate. However, the ears kept falling off on the con, so whenever I wasn't wearing it, I just carried the box around with the ears inside like a bucket.
I also upgraded to Sponsor tier for the lounge, but food was limited. There was a shitload of drinks though.
Our room was on the 56th floor, but 20 minutes wait for the elevator on Saturday night was crazy. I brought my RTL-SDR but couldn't hear anything other than broadcast FM or NOAA.
In other news, we took the People Mover on Sunday to a restaurant.
Asbestos¶
Asbestos has grown a lot.
▲ 2025-10-25, picking him up from Indiana
▲ 2026-05-01, 8 months old, with same plushie.
When I was setting up the 370 course website, Rix agreed to make Asbestos the course mascot. The staff had no objections, so this happened:
It was not until the end of semester that someone asked on Ed:
Of course, his response was:
Jinterview (Job interview)¶
Job search was among the most stressful things this semester. In January I sent my resume to Rix's company and a couple more, and I thought that was good. But he pressured me into applying for many more and berated me for being slow. Anyway, I ended up applying for 57, some local, some on campus even (ITS and CAEN), but most are far away. These include big names like AMD, and a startup that pays in shares, not cash. So far, most of them have already sent me rejection letters. Schneider was the fastest, rejecting me the next day; while one rejection letter from KLA arrived in only two days, the other took 114.
Rix works at Treetown, and I met his coworkers at parties and tech events. Ever since I sent them my resume, I nudged them multiple times until they said they were on it and invited me to an interview. I went on a Thursday, and I wore a suit because (1) there's no other occasion more suitable for a suit, and (2) I've heard of one success story of James Carl, our 473 lab manager, who wore a suit and got the job.
The interview took place in the "war room" with whiteboards and bean bags. They didn't ask me to reverse a linked list on a whiteboard; you can ask Chipotle's AI chatbot to do that. Anyway, the technical questions I got revolved very closely around what I learned in 473 and 571, so I managed to answer almost everything. I even guessed a question midway. The question began with three tasks with a high, medium, and low priority, and at that point I knew it was about priority inversion, because that was the only scenario where you'd need three priorities.
The most software-oriented question I got was how hashmaps work. Luckily it was one of the only concepts I remember from 281. The non-technical problems also made sense.
In the second round, they asked me if I had any questions, and I asked one interviewer if anyone told him that he looks like Linus Torvalds. He said no.
Anyway, on 2026-03-31 I got the job offer which was huge for me. This also means that, in hindsight, the 56 other job applications were all for nothing other than stressing me out for two weeks.
Furry club¶
In April I stepped down from the recruitment chair position of the furry club as we passed the torch to the new leadership, consisting entirely of freshmen and sophomores, most of whom I befriended at the Design Lab 1 in the Duderstadt, where the paw workshops took place. The paw workshops were a transformative event in club history as for the first time, North Campus was treated as a first citizen. I hung out with them, sometimes sharing club leadership trivia, to encourage them to run for officers, which they did, similar to how Rix endorsed me when I ran.
It turns out there was no need for elections because we had five candidates to fill in five positions, and no one vetoed them or protested, so up they go. This was the first time where all five officers have a GitHub account, so I added all of them to the website repo. Two of them had Namecheap so domain transfer was easy. So far, per popular request, they have changed the name and logo of the club, and I believe the club is in good paws.
Conclusion¶
This was a solid semester, academically better than last because neither my courses require me to be in person for projects, and my teammates don't ask me to work on weekends, so I have a manageable schedule. Being a lead GSI is an experience, and so is coordinating 16 graders. Job search was brutal. I'm glad I have friends and hobbies.
