I arrived in Texas on Thursday night. A few of us (MS employees) were in town for a Microsoft recruiting event at the University of Texas. The event was Friday afternoon and closed out a busy week of classes and career fairs for students. While I’m sure some of the students were tired from all the activity, the turn out was quite good and gauging from the students I talked to afterwards a number of them enjoyed the event. Highlights from the trip include:

• The recruiting event (I got to to talk to a lot of students, and it’s always interesting to answer their questions and remember what it was like when I was asking the questions)
• Walking around the UT-Austin campus. It’s enormous and quite different from my college campus
• The Salt Lick. What I was told is the best BBQ in Texas. That claim may be inflated, but it still stands as the biggest restaurant I’ve ever seen, with the biggest parking lot, and it’s the only restaurant I’ve ever been to that is BYOB and people regularly walk in with enormous coolers.
• I also was able to get in a run on Friday. I might be getting back into shape a bit because my muscles are not nearly as tired as I would have expected.

I’m pretty tired from the slight time shift. Even though it’s only two hours getting up earlier than I’m used to and inadvertently shifting my meal times starts to get to me.

It’ll be time to board the flight back towards Seattle shortly, and at this point I’ll be glad to get on the plane. I’m starting to get uncomfortable sitting on the floor (ready access to power outlet for the laptop…)

Monday it’s time to get back to work making software. Things are starting to get busy, but it will be to have lots of stuff going on around the office.

I came across the Wikipedia article on regression testing last night.  I found it a good little read, and it describes a lot of stuff I do at work.  It’s also great for hyperlinking to other interesting reads in typical wikipedia fashion.

This week is crunch time at work so I’m rather busy this week. I was at the office pretty late last night and likely will be tonight as well so no substantial posts loom on the immediate horizon. For now here is a picture of the Boston “B”, one more win tonight and they’ll sweep the series against the Mariners .

Working at any company is bound to have its ups and downs, and yes my experience at Microsoft tells me this company has both.  Every once in a while there will be a delay, or something won’t go as planned, but these things are bound to happen at any job and I can’t very well knock Microsoft for suffering the same pains any business does.  One of the ups, and something Microsoft does very well, is how the company takes care of its people, interns included.

There are employees at Microsoft that make it their full-time job to create a fun and exciting atmosphere for the interns working there, and they do an awesome job.  Yes, you can say that my experience is sugar-coated and that it’s simply a recruiting expense (which it is), but that aside it’s something they still do, even if they don’t “have to.”  If you want to take it one step further many of the individual groups and divisions within Microsoft have employees who volunteer their time in addition to their normal duties (designing, engineering, etc.) just to come up with fun ideas for the interns in their own group.

Tuesday was a great example of this.  At work I got an email in the afternoon that told me to stop by another office, there were “gifts” for me.  I wasn’t busy at the moment so I stopped by and picked up a box for myself and another intern I share my office with.  I got back to my office and inside the box found one of each of the following for each of us: a copy of Windows Vista Ultimate edition, a copy of Microsoft Office Ultimate edition, a Marmot Ithaca backpack (embroidered with a nice little Windows Interns 2008 logo), and an American Apparel sweatshirt (with another WIndows Interns logo).  If you break it down very simply, the “people in charge” just gave me some free product, but really they didn’t have to. I actually don’t even own a computer that can run the software at the moment (I need a new Intel Mac!), but we’ve all heard “it’s the thought that counts” and in this case it’s true.  You’re bound to get a bit overwhelmed at times working for a company that has tens of thousands of employees, but yesterday people took time to make some interns feel appreciated, that’s pretty cool.

So i start work for the summer in a bit over a month, and I can’t imagine anyone would have thought I, of all people, would be moving to Redmond.

I’ve already been branded a traitor by the entirety of my fellow Mac contingent. I guess we’ll just have to see how it all works out. I’ll have to admit, not really sure quite how I feel about this logo sprawled across my page.

ok so we’ve now recovered from the loss of our beloved SnapDragon server back in Boston and everything, is now being hosted on MIT webspace, so downtime should just not happen anymore. I didn’t manage to back up my old blog databases so this one is a fresh start, so you won’t be able to look back at the old stuff, just the fresh new stuff from this summer. I did manage to get ridersoccer.com backed up which made me happy cause that was all my own hand-coded work.

So i ended up taking off to Connecticut very last minute as I figured out housing at midnight on Sunday night when I was supposed to start that Monday morning. I started on Tuesday, and just today completed my 10th day in the office. To be quite honest, I really haven’t done anything yet, mostly because we need other stuff to get started first and that stuff has been delayed. It’s a pretty sweet setup though, I have a tv on my desk, have my own cubicle, and workstation, and I get to watch all the World Cup games all day long at work.

Hmmm I don’t remember everything that’s happened since I got here, but I can say the people I’m living with, Kevin and Nicci are really nice, and I get along with them well. The job has been really easygoing and the work environment is extremely relaxed. I’ve been working on running more and trying to be active when I can, though I need to continue increasing the amount of that stuff I get in.

I think I have a few goals for the summer or at least a general outline.
- Run as much as possible
- Hit the weights as much as I can
- play soccer, and work on my touch whenever possible
- work on RiderSoccer.com, get the statistics system done first, then complete as much as I can off the list of like 10 other ideas I have for the site. This has got to be done by August before they start playing. I’m just realizing how soon that is, I really need to work on this.

Most of the stuff focuses on training for soccer. I think that’s mostly because I’m not too concerned that i’ll have anything at work that will make me crazy to work on it at home, and I think i’ll be able to figure most stuff out. I was really concerned about being behind when I got there as far as my knowledge, but I’m getting more confident that I can figure out anything I need when I need to. Yay Course VI!

The schedule for the summer is something like this:
June 23rd – Sigma Chi Grand Council at Purdue
July 7th – Dave Matthews Band Concerts at Fenway, Back in Boston, sweet
July 9th – World Cup Final
Aug 3rd – Sigma Chi Balfour LTW at Ball State
Aug 18th – Last day at ESPN
Aug 19th – Move Back to Boston
Aug 21st – Start Soccer/Work Week

I had wanted to go home to visit for at least a week or so but it looks like I just won’t have time, since ESPN has me here working right up till when I have to move back for school.

Another addition, we managed to scrape tickets for Red Hot Chili Peppers on Oct. 2nd. That concert should be one of the best I’ve ever seen if it lives up to the hype. Get your socks!

The schedule for our season was released today, I’ll put up a link or something later.

I don’t have anything else to say right now, and I’m getting tired, and I’ve already stayed up way too late with having to get up for work in the morning.

[audio:predatoryWasp.mp3]
Sufjan Stevens – The Predatory Wasp of the Palisades Is Out to Get Us!