Jessica mentioned Boyz II Men earlier and I was reminded of how I used to listen to their music back in elementary school whenever I stayed the night at a particular friend’s house. Actually, that friend was named Jessica, but not the same Jessica as my current Jessica. Though they’re each blonde, hm. Anyway, so this other Jessica loved them and she insisted on playing their music as we went to sleep at night. I have a tough time falling asleep with music playing or a television on or any background noise, really, so it always annoyed me. I didn’t even particularly like it at the time, but listening to track snippets on Amazon is taking me back, and I think I’ll get some of them. Holy beans, Water Runs Dry is like a zap straight to my memory: I remember this one song in particular from my old friend Jessica’s house.

Once again, iTunes hardly puts up a fight: it wants $9.99 for Legacy - The Greatest Hits, while Amazon MP3 wants $7.99. Plus, iTunes has DRM and Amazon MP3 does not, and Amazon MP3 is of a higher quality. Pff, honestly, Apple.

I had a good interview today with another department at Lexmark. My current manager contacted me last week, telling me another manager had seen my resume and was interested in talking to me, so I met with that manager then. He set up another meeting for today, and first I met with two of his developers for an hour. They talked with me about the kind of technologies I’ve worked with, what kind of work I like to do, etc. It was very easy going and I liked the two guys; they were your typical friendly geeks, making Ghostbusters references and joking around. They’ve worked with Ruby on Rails in some of their projects, so that excited me, and they’re also very Linux and Mac-friendly.

After that meeting, I went and met with the manager for another hour. He asked me about the best project I’ve ever worked on and what I learned from it, the worst project I’ve ever worked on and what I learned from it, how I would have done that terrible project better, and one more question: how would I go about finding out how many gas stations there are in the continental US? I said I’d first check to see if someone else has already done this work, because there’s bound to be a record somewhere. Maybe states keep track of that stuff, like as a travel guide reporting the locations of gas stations, or maybe I’d check with Shell, Marathon, etc. and see how many they have. He asked then “well what if I wanted the answer in ten minutes?”, to which I responded “how accurate does it have to be?”, which seemed to be key to him. He said he asks this question of all his interview candidates, just to see how they approach the problem, and of the hundreds of times he’s asked it, he said maybe five have thought to ask about the accuracy necessary for the answer. Huzzah! I said that if accuracy wasn’t too important and he had a ten-minute deadline, I could just pull some figure from out of thin air. Otherwise, maybe figure out how many gas stations there are in a small area and how many people are there, then multiply that to have a rough guess for the entire US. He said some people act almost offended that he’d even ask that question in an interview, while others start drawing on his marker board, talking about propagations and whatnot. I honestly didn’t think it was a hard question. Just look for where you could find the answer ready-made, or find a decent-enough way of guessing at the answer.

On a worse note, I looked ridiculous at my interview(s) today because I’ve got a fever blister that’s both painful and unsightly, plus after Saturday’s sunny UK game, I’m sunburnt and, uh, peelin’ like a villain? Yeah, that’s a good phrase… I look like the mummy or—Ashlee, avert your eyes—a zombie, losing bits of my face. The funniest part of the sunburn is that I only got it on the left side of my body, from where I was sitting in the stands. I was able to guess Monday in class which people had gone to the game from their similar burns and sunglasses marks.

I went with the girls to a wedding boutique tonight to get my bridesmaid dress for Ashlee’s wedding. We went through several (like ten) dresses trying to find one that looked good on me and didn’t make my bottom half look completely huge. Since it is completely huge, that’s kind of a trick to do. I found one that was gorgeous and Ashlee told me it made me look like a 40’s movie star, which was great to hear, but the butt was so tight while the top was so loose (like four inches or more gapping) that the clerk said they’d pretty much have to remake the bodice part with alterations, and she didn’t recommend it. Ashlee’s letting us all pick whatever style of dress we want, so long as we get the same color, and the particular brand we were going with (to get the same color) didn’t have any two-piece outfits, which would have been useful. I didn’t like any of the chiffon dresses because they’re so light and clingy, which doesn’t work well on me at all. A clerk finally found one that I liked a good bit, and the girls all approved, so I went with it. I just checked the brand’s site but I can’t find the one I had. Um, it was strapless, a heavier satin fabric, deep wine red (though for the wedding, it will be in a light tangerine color), tea length, and had some panels or something going on down at the bottom, which was kind of A-line, so that it wasn’t one big wide swath of fabric. I’m really not good at describing dresses, but suffice to say it was pretty and I looked all right in it. I’m going to get heels with a strap that goes ’round my leg, and I’m excited about that. The dress ended up costing $130-something, which isn’t too bad for a bridesmaid dress.