Karim Vaes

“Character is like a tree and reputation, like its shadow. The shadow is what we think of it; the tree is the real thing.” Abraham Lincoln

Storytime!
I started blogging about eight months ago. Time has flown by, and I’ve learned a few things about writing and publishing. But the reason I started the blog, was to keep track of the things I solved and to publish those findings so that other may benefit from this wisdom. The saying “no need to invent the wheel twice comes into place here.

As the end of the year is closing towards us, and so are the deadlines for the cases we were giving during my courses. One of those tasks is to do the project management of a (dummy) project. This involves -a lot- of email conversions to get the (internally) distributed tasks aligned. These email threads often contain tasks and questions which need to be reviewed and replied to. The combination of several of causes it to be easily overseen or become to complicated.

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Need some cheering up, do the following commands on your ubuntu system:

• apt-get moo
• aptitude –help | grep Cow
• • aptitude moo
  • aptitude -v moo
  • aptitude -v -v moo
  • aptitude -v -v -v moo
  • aptitude -v -v -v -v moo
  • aptitude -v -v -v -v -v moo
  • aptitude -v -v -v -v -v -v moo

Source:
Linux moo

This post is meant as a follow-up to an earlier article with the subject “Why are manhole covers round?“. It’ll feature some additional “Microsoft Hiring Questions”. Here are my personal “favorites” :

Riddles

• • You’ve got someone working for you for seven days and a gold bar to pay them. The gold bar is segmented into seven connected pieces. You must give them a piece of gold at the end of every day. If you are only allowed to make two breaks in the gold bar, how do you pay your worker?
  • Answer
• • Imagine a disk spinning like a record player turn table. Half of the disk is black and the other is white. Assume you have an unlimited number of color sensors. How many sensors would you have to place around the disk to determine the direction the disk is spinning? Where would they be placed?
  • Answer (Discussion)
• • You have two jars, 50 red marbles and 50 blue marbles. A jar will be picked at random, and then a marble will be picked from the jar. Placing all of the marbles in the jars, how can you maximize the chances of a red marble being picked? What are the exact odds of getting a red marble using your scheme?
  • Answer
• • There is a room with a door (closed) and three light bulbs. Outside the room there are three switches, connected to the bulbs. You may manipulate the switches as you wish, but once you open the door you can’t change them. Identify each switch with its bulb. (note: For the Belgian & Dutch readers, this one was on “De Mol” a few years back.)
  • Answer

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Intro
A while ago I read an article about hiring questions . A small excerpt of this article aroused my curiosity:

I avoid asking “Microsoft” type questions. I was once interviewed for a job, and I got the litany of them from the hiring manager. For example, “Why are manhole covers round” type questions.

So WHY are they round?
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