I. Love. Work.

Disclaimer: I don't exactly mean that as a blanket statement. Often "work" is stressful (eg computer science classes) or rather boring (eg physics, Animal Behavior textbook sometimes). What I'm referring to here is my internship at Dow Jones. Now, just to bring us up to speed a bit here, what I've been doing so far is almost completely JavaScript programming. I've been writing (and expanding) scripts to create interactive user experiences, such as with HTML forms. This probably sounds deceptively simple. Make this box on the page disappear when the mouse moves outside it. Fill the form input fields with default messages ("Enter your password here") and make them go blank when the user goes to type something in that field. This actually still seems very basic (even to me when I think about it), but I always end up running into many problems: browser differences, lack of browser compatibility with W3C standards, Javascript/DOM quirks, browser bugs...yeah. All these issues tend to pile up and make things stretch on for h-o-u-r-s of debugging. Fun stuff! I've actually been compiling a list of reference websites, programmers' blog posts, and coding forum threads that have helped me figure these things out; maybe I should post it sometime so other people could reference it. Okay, now that I've talked about what I'm doing, I can say that I like it well enough. Debugging gets pretty frustrating, and my brain can get tired staring at the same code every day for hours...but I don't hate it. It's pretty cool when it works. I even get a taste of that programmer's momentary euphoria ("HOLY SHIT IT WORKS!") when I figure out some annoying bug. :)

But anyway, on to why I really love work: the people. As I think I mentioned before, during the time before I actually started working there, I was pretty petrified of Dow Jones. It's this huge international company, I thought, and I'm going to go work in a corporate environment in an office building on a big "campus". But now that I've been there awhile, I've learned what probably should've been obvious: the people that work there are really just people, too. Some are married, some play video games, some are from India (and have varying degrees of accents, haha), some love to play foosball, and...well okay, I don't know all that much about them. But the best part is, they (or at least the ones that aren't so quiet) like to joke around and have fun, so a few times every day I find myself laughing at something or other that's going on in my "rectangle"...

This past Thursday turned out to be quite the interesting day. I managed to make it to my desk by like 9:20am (not bad, not bad). A little while later Jeff (who sits on the other side of Matt, who is next to me) comments to me that it's too quiet without Sunita around. [Side note: Sunita and Jeff, and sometimes Matt, always seem to get something funny going...and get me laughing...haha.] Shortly after this, Steve calls across the rectangle to Jeff to ask if he's heard that Alex Rodriguez's wife has left him for Lenny Kravitz. We then find out that everyone else around knows who Lenny Kravitz is except Jeff. This leads to a small bunch of us gathering around Jeff's desk while he looks up Lenny Kravitz on YouTube. Steve and Jeff start debating the wife's decision and trying to figure out whether the girls go for jocks or rock stars more. I'm afraid to take sides, but I have to say I'd probably prefer a rock star (point for Steve)... I do say that baseball is not boring to me and I really do enjoy watching it (point for Jeff--even! haha). Then, I don't know how it happened but we got back to the topic (from the other day) of palm reading, and (please please forgive the likely misspelling of these names) Shilpa says she actually somewhat knows how to do it, and so a few of us are getting our palms read... When it's my turn she says that the lines in my hand aren't very deep (so it's harder to read) - and Sunita goes, "Well, maybe she just hasn't matured yet!" hahaha we all get a good laugh out of that, and Jeff tries to amend it by suggesting that I'm not developed! hahahaha I'm mildly embarrassed but mostly just laughing and enjoying it all... And somewhere in the midst of this, around 10:30, Matt shows up, sees us all crowded around Jeff's desk and goes "Hey guys...what's goin on?" and it's just great. Eventually "play time's over" Jeff says, and as we're sitting back down at our desks maybe 45 minutes after we left them, Jeff explains to Matt, "See, this is why we all come in early, it's not to work..." haha I love it.

So the rest of the morning goes by, and noon arrives, which is the time Jeff and some others usually start thinking about heading downstairs to lunch. They know that usually Matt (and I) go later on, around 1 or so, but Jeff says we can always come join them if we want... So at maybe 12:30 Matt says to me, "Come on, let's go eat with them" and we head downstairs to the cafeteria. The table ends up being as follows, assuming I remember correctly, starting from the corner to my right: Jeff, an Indian guy whose name I don't know, me, Tushar(?), Steve; on the other side, Paul, Yuriy, Matt, Brian, and Chandra (spelling again?). Jeff was surprised to see Matt and even more surprised to see me, and I said Matt brought me. I was pretty quiet during lunch, listening to the stories people were telling; Jeff mentioned that "Sunita managed to insult everybody this morning" and I said "even me!" and then we briefly relayed what had been said during the palm readings... So even though I only participated a little bit in the discussion (Jeff's "wow...wow..." at my being born in 1987 - so young! haha), it was still nice to be around everybody. :)

As lunch is ending and everyone's getting up to head back upstairs, I'm sorta thinking about how Matt and I usually walk around the campus outside during lunch hour, but assuming we don't have enough time for it and it might be a little weird if we left the rest of them on the way back. However Matt turned left when the rest of them turned right, and I was like "haha I feel sketchy" but I was glad we got to go outside and make one lap around the building and chat. (Okay, so we talked about high school gym/health class, but hey. It was still entertaining.)

After we came inside, I dutifully debugged for the next few hours...don't recall anything too funny from the afternoon...then left early since we were going to the Red Bank fireworks (but that can be another post maybe). Anyhow, overall, it was a good day. I'm so glad I like the people at work :)