tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-83167412008-06-13T13:21:01.593-05:00Mike Orenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00613391845005047738noreply@blogger.comBlogger48125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8316741.post-81749374567533311292008-05-03T12:38:00.005-05:002008-06-13T13:21:01.627-05:00

Since my last post, I decided to stay on for my PhD (changing projects and advisers though--focusing on collaborative user interfaces and picking up a co-major in Sociology), wrote and revised my thesis, successfully defended it, went on a cruise, went to Universal Studios Florida and Disney World, and was accepted to the Season of Usability SIP-Communicator project (I'll discuss this in a later

Mike Orenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00613391845005047738noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8316741.post-60756647710146416732008-02-10T22:20:00.001-06:002008-03-16T22:59:04.388-05:00

I had to renew my hosting contract this month, which means MikeOren.com is another year older (I forget if it's 3 or 4 years old...) To celebrate, I am taking some time out to write another post *throws confetti*. Perhaps my time would be better spent updating the other pages of the site (almost all of which require updating--although I did upload a new PDF of my resume; the HTML version is still

Mike Orenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00613391845005047738noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8316741.post-26912838087414730962008-02-05T08:25:00.000-06:002008-02-05T08:45:52.291-06:00

I managed to get a first draft of chapters 1-3 of my thesis out to my program of study (POS) committee this weekend--meeting my deadline for the most part (I had given myself an end of January deadline for chapter 1, but that was delayed by 3 days as I focused on editing a journal paper). Sunday i did attend a Super Bowl party to see the last minute upset victory by the New York Giants (I think

Mike Orenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00613391845005047738noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8316741.post-26280869800198109002008-01-20T22:16:00.000-06:002008-01-20T23:54:04.739-06:00

On Friday my alarm clock decided to break. It's a basic enough battery operated alarm clock that I got for free over six years ago, so it wasn't major shock when I discovered it was no longer working properly. Of course it was a surprise when it was showing the time (about an hour earlier than it actually was, and that I was running late), but the fact that it was broken was no surprise. And when

Mike Orenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00613391845005047738noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8316741.post-25249642461955886672008-01-07T14:49:00.000-06:002008-01-07T15:19:48.793-06:00

Yeah, so I kind of dropped the ball on keeping everything updated. It was a busy end of the semester, what with research and class projects and interviews. I maintained my 4.0 GPA, but I'm still in the process of finding a job (having trouble finding something that really fits my interests, and I've been honest with companies when the position they are interviewing me for is not one I'm

Mike Orenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00613391845005047738noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8316741.post-40896360088301879992007-11-03T09:32:00.000-05:002007-11-03T10:33:05.575-05:00

Fairly uneventful week for the most part, although I have finally scheduled the first meeting of my program of study (POS) committee--that'll be taking place the Wed. before Thanksgiving break. My research group also conducted a virtual pumpkin carving contest on Halloween (I'll try to remember to post pics or a video later) in order to showcase (and test) our multi-modal mesh manipulation system

Mike Orenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00613391845005047738noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8316741.post-12059682656385230652007-10-27T17:14:00.001-05:002007-10-29T00:12:27.700-05:00

So I think it's been over 2 months since my last update. My longest hiatus from an update yet. After finishing my conference paper submissions (two to CHI '08--a methodology paper I co-authored with some of the people I worked with at Google, and a paper detailing the findings of my audio game studies), I went into interview mode and have had at least one interview per week for about 6 weeks now.

Mike Orenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00613391845005047738noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8316741.post-4606140042158845332007-08-24T20:08:00.000-05:002007-08-24T21:59:06.872-05:00

I appear to be slacking on updates to the other pages of my site (as in everything other than my bi-weekly to weekly posts). In particularly, my grad school pages, audio game (I still need to release the latest build to SourceForge...), and resume pages are all in dire need of updates. I also want to freshen up the general design of the page, but that's not going to happen for awhile. However,

Mike Orenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00613391845005047738noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8316741.post-40269028321939240072007-08-17T21:53:00.000-05:002007-08-18T00:43:14.761-05:00

I'm back in Iowa now, I moved back into my apartment Thursday night around 10:30 PM (well, I moved my clothes, laptop, and sheets in anyway). This morning (Friday) I went into the lab around 9:30 or so with some bagels to share and caught up with what's been going on over the summer and such. Anyway, I'm going to give an update on some of the things that went on since my last update and give a

Mike Orenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00613391845005047738noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8316741.post-91258319960962758792007-08-06T01:43:00.000-05:002007-08-06T02:59:49.205-05:00

I am on my last five days of my internship at Google. It's sad--I've met some great people here, worked on some interesting projects, eaten some awesome food, and overall enjoyed working at Google/living in the Bay Area. My final weekend here I spent at Santa Cruz getting buried in the sand, building a sand castle, and then at night having a fire on the beach and roasting marshmallows (until we

Mike Orenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00613391845005047738noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8316741.post-20187384953566348332007-07-22T23:14:00.000-05:002007-07-24T01:39:21.904-05:00

Since my last update, I had a fairly busy week running studies and analyzing data and such and what not. Plus, with just a few short weeks to go before my internship ends, I've started getting briefed on the state of the haptic research project I'm working on over there. Plus, I've started formulating some places for a couple of CHI papers (one for my audio game, and a CHI Notes for a research

Mike Orenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00613391845005047738noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8316741.post-62693068911369676702007-07-19T23:32:00.000-05:002007-07-20T01:16:09.838-05:00

Danielle flew out on Monday morning. We ended up getting things more or less patched up by Friday night, so things have returned to normalcy on that front, and in some ways better because it shows we can overcome these little life hurdles and such. The first weekend she visited we ended up going on a dinner/dance cruise around the San Francisco Bay and that was pretty fun, but it was a little bit

Mike Orenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00613391845005047738noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8316741.post-91967137016621546452007-07-04T21:55:00.000-05:002007-07-04T23:15:51.879-05:00

I wasn't feeling the whole firework thing today (I've kind of grown bored of them, although I still like them when they're set to music, but I didn't feel like searching for one in the area that does that). So I decided to stay in tonight and get a post in (as it's been awhile). Since my last update, I beat Super Paper Mario--it was a fun game, but the ending was kind of disappointing (the final

Mike Orenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00613391845005047738noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8316741.post-14133883496555130612007-06-24T22:36:00.000-05:002007-06-24T23:51:49.316-05:00

Bridge to Terabithia is one of the saddest movies I've seen in awhile, even with the softened ending (the sad part comes several minutes before the end, and there's no allusion to Jess having throat cancer). But that's fitting since it's one of the saddest stories I've ever read, so sad that even though I don't think I've read the book since elementary school, I remembered exactly how Leslie died

Mike Orenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00613391845005047738noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8316741.post-7905944062687454602007-06-10T13:43:00.000-05:002007-06-10T22:43:02.313-05:00

I'm hopefully going to be returning to weekly (or at least bi-weekly) posts again and this post is an attempt to return my postings to their regular scheduled intervals. There is no news to report this week, since as I've stated I am not going to be writing about work. The only events that occurred since my last post was the fact that Danielle and I have now both come to the conclusion that our

Mike Orenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00613391845005047738noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8316741.post-35895076402381355862007-06-05T22:45:00.000-05:002007-06-05T23:32:57.013-05:00

So it's been quite a bit since my last update (roughly 4 weeks or more). Since then, lots of things have happened... The day before I moved out of my apartment in Iowa for the summer, I found a subleaser (hurray!) so that meant I am losing less money than I was fearing I would lose from my apartment. The next big event after that was my drive out to California, which was uneventful and (sadly) a

Mike Orenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00613391845005047738noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8316741.post-51553961546245118682007-05-11T10:00:00.000-05:002007-05-11T10:01:35.353-05:00

It's been awhile since my last update, mostly because I've been extremely busy with the end of the semester, conferences, and preparing for my summer internship. Unfortunately, my body seems to be rebelling against all of that as Monday night I managed to catch a fever and while that's gone now, I still have a cold (that was pretty bad at one point, but now it's calmed down) that has me fairly

Mike Orenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00613391845005047738noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8316741.post-65047991777957350712007-04-13T16:57:00.000-05:002007-04-13T18:10:47.280-05:00

I was supposed to show my apartment to somebody at four today and now it's five and they haven't shown up, nor have I heard from them (I called, but they didn't answer). So, once again, I wasted time cleaning organizing my apartment to show it to somebody and then ended up not showing it to them. C'est la vie. With that rant out of the way, I'll begin my updates.First I'll give a quick run down

Mike Orenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00613391845005047738noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8316741.post-73958064540975276832007-04-06T14:02:00.000-05:002007-04-06T15:04:38.940-05:00

Before I get into the week's update, feel free to check out these photos of my nieces (the youngest of which was born on 26 March: Nieces 3/31/07 10:42 PMSince my last update I gave an introduction of my audio game project to the students at the Iowa Braille and Sight Saving School--they seemed pretty excited about it, which is encouraging, so hopefully they'll have their parents sign the

Mike Orenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00613391845005047738noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8316741.post-68182429369727099702007-03-29T09:18:00.000-05:002007-03-29T14:32:02.347-05:00

I've come to the sad, but late, conclusion that my web site has become a blog. When I bought my domain and started this web site, it was meant more as a place to keep my weekly calendar and provide the latest news about my life to my family and friends--plus providing a place to have my resume online to be found by prospective employers. However as time has passed, i have noticed that the

Mike Orenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00613391845005047738noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8316741.post-44798821574718947552007-03-25T20:57:00.000-05:002007-03-25T23:18:26.264-05:00

My sister is having her baby induced on Monday, so I'll have another niece within the next 24 hours or so. I'll be seeing her next weekend, so maybe I'll add some pictures to my photo gallery. Before I head back for the weekend though, I'll be going to the Iowa Braille and Sight Saving School to recruit subjects for my usability study by giving them an overview of the project and handing out the

Mike Orenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00613391845005047738noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8316741.post-26966328041383880652007-03-21T16:54:00.000-05:002007-03-21T16:55:29.116-05:00

I just received an e-mail last night informing me that Google has selected me to be an intern on Google's user experience research team! Needless to say, I'm elated about this opportunity and celebrations will commence after I get the official offer letter in 1-2 weeks. Just thought I'd share the great news!And on a now irrelevant note, I had my last interview with IBM yesterday morning. I think

Mike Orenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00613391845005047738noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8316741.post-23005528776222357552007-03-16T12:13:00.000-05:002007-03-16T13:25:33.349-05:00

As many of you know, I had my second phone interview with Google on Wednesday for the user experience research internship. I think it went well, but you never know for sure until you hear back from them. This was the final interview though--they don't fly intern candidates out for on site interviews so I'll be finding out within two weeks if I have the internship or not. The interview style was

Mike Orenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00613391845005047738noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8316741.post-84709520761439497112007-03-04T18:28:00.000-06:002007-03-04T20:41:17.875-06:00

Over the past week, my group and I have been working on finalizing our proposal for our computational perception class. We will be connecting up to eight Wii remotes to a computer running GlovePie to handle the communication between the Wii remotes and the computer. The program will have a jam session component, where you can do a free for all session to create music--with different remote

Mike Orenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00613391845005047738noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8316741.post-36945203676787804142007-02-23T19:06:00.000-06:002007-02-23T21:09:59.774-06:00

First off, I just thought my readers might be interested in knowing that I found out yesterday that I was invited to do a 2nd phone interview with Google for the user experience internship, so I guess my first interview went alright. The second interview isn't until March 14th (during Iowa State's spring break), so I have plenty of time to stress out about it so hopefully by the time of the

Mike Orenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00613391845005047738noreply@blogger.com