Oh code.

Today at work I was digging through another issue thread (this one maybe?) for a Drupal module and realized: code is great cuz it does all kinds of things for us, way faster than we can manually, and usually hides all the details so that things just work magically on the surface.  But the funny part is, people write code.  We are still smarter than programs, so we have to conceptualize the logic, and then hand over the execution of the process.  We screw up sometimes, or don't think of things, and then one error could end up creating all sorts of odds-and-ends issues that have no apparent relation to it, at first...

But I still love figuring out how to make code do what I want.

"work" log - july 8 (why most of today was good)

The weather was soooo beautiful this morning. I got to enjoy it for about 1.5 minutes while walking from the parking spot to the building at work. Take 5 (the cafe at work) always makes a few blends of Starbucks coffee, and this morning included one of my favorites - Cafe Estima. I really have to remember to bring in my mug warmer so I can make it stay warm for hours and hours.

Topics at lunch: cats hunting birds(??) and rabbits (Steve thinks rabbits are cute), squirrels, the new Transformers movie (Jackie and Yuriy liked it a lot and Steve refuses to watch it), and the comparison of heavy metal vocals to Cookie Monster.

Walking in the hall after lunch, Yuriy told me that my hair looked good. I was like "psh this is me being lazy, putting it up and not bothering to blow it dry..." but I did (after a few attempts) manage to braid my bangs (as they are getting longer) and pin them back, which I liked. I really did appreciate and was happy that he said that to me.

In foosball, the other Yuriy and I did respectably against his friend and...I forget who... I think the friend (wish I knew his name) and I may have beaten Yuriy and Shilpa? Then Srini and I made two crazy attempts to beat Yuriy and Shilpa. I'm always laughing and then my eyes start tearing because they do that easily and then I have to clear them out so I can even see to play. I never knew I could love foosball this much. Foosball quote (I believe after Shilpa scored a nice goal): Yuriy says, "You're ready for the playoffs!"; then she hits it backwards towards her own goal and says "Not really!" :)

In the afternoon, Chris came over with Jason and a couple other people. He'd just come from showing my work up on a projector in a meeting and found out no one else knew who I was, so he brought them over for introductions. (err I don't remember any of their names...) Chris recounted how recently Martin(??) had emailed him kind of randomly and asked, "Where's our intern..?" since we had moved from one area to another, across the building. Chris responded that I was down in Row T, and Martin said, "Oh...I thought we forgot her." hahaha. Then I was saying how I'm far away from everyone and don't even know who's in our group or not, so I was walked down to Row J (where Chris and Jason are) and introduced to a few more people who I may or may not remember. Then the company softball league came up, and I said how I'd tried to find out information about joining the team to which we, GTS interns, were directed. I wanted to be on the department team, not play against them, and Chris poked fun at me for my wsj.com friends (since he knows I play foosball with them) - I said "hey I have loyalties here too!" and we laughed. Jason is on a different team though, and kind of just recruited me on the spot. We walked over to the team captain's cube and he'll add me to the email list...

Not long after this little adventure, Martin ((I think)) happened to find me, down in row T. He started up this whole 10-minute chat about finding what you like to do in life (with other things thrown in), and I think I held up a nice little talk.

Towards the end of the day, I ran into an odd problem - I discovered that in the process of working on a page, I had broken an important function of the code. The thing is, I could not figure out how it had originally worked. The method that seemed to be used made no sense. Things like that reel me in, and though a bit frustrating, I want to figure it out and fix it. But that could take hours. At 6:15 or something Yuriy came down and, as he said, we had a real-life little music exchange - I played a few songs on my ipod for him.

A little earlier I had asked Jason if the softball games are held out on that field wayyy in the corner of the property, by where those department picnics were held last year (I want to do that again...). (The conversation, by the way, is courtesy of Microsoft Office Communicator - a business chat program to install which I had to go through a whole online request/approval system haha. It has actually turned out to be helpful so far.) I said I might come by to watch a bit, and he said not to laugh... :) Yuriy, being the good friend that he is, led me driving around to the parking lot that's actually near the field. The weather was still gorgeous by the way, as was the "lake" on the property. I should've attempted a picture even if it was only phone-quality. Anyway, I watched the last few innings of the game. A couple of young guys seemed really into it (interns? dunno) and a few people had cleats and there were some great hits. Watching the game made middle school softball come back to me a little - cheering for people, pitching, calling out the infield play as the next batter comes up. It's been many (in a relative, 21-year-old sense) years since I have really tried to do anything with softball, and I said to Jason afterwards that I felt like I should practice before showing up for next week's game. He told me don't worry, just come and play. I am looking forward to it.

Jason thanked me for coming to spectate. That topped off the evening nicely... aside of forgetting to actually start the car and trying to go somewhere in drive or reverse, I was in a good mood that I didn't totally understand for most of the drive.

geek-out moment :D

i'm up at 4:42am and for once it's not just because of facebook or other things (seriously i don't even know what i'm doing when i stay up late on the computer...). for my linux class the first thing we have to do is get access to linux somehow, either eniac or install on our own computers. well it'd be even more awesome if i could repartition my hard drive and actually install linux, but i think i'll save that for later. (i did actually spend a bunch of hours one time researching this possibility but was a bit nervous about actually doing such things to my hard drive.) so instead i'm using virtualbox to run a virtual machine on my laptop and install ubuntu on it. so basically i dl'd ubuntu as an iso image and mounted it into the virtual machine's cd-rom drive, then "installed" linux to a virtual hard drive on my machine (the "host" machine..gotta have my terminology down :P ). while it was installing i even did some online banking, downloaded music (REO Speedwagon... John mentioned some lyrics to me and I listened to one song on playlist.com and decided to download some and check it out), and started renewing my ruckus licenses. woot for multitasking!

after it finished installing, i mounted the iso for the "guest additions" thing from virtual box (which adds a bunch of ease-of-use features, like increased virtual box screen resolution and options for "capturing" the mouse on the guest vs. the host) and ran my first ever linux installation via commands in the terminal!!! i wish i'd taken a screenshot, however.... i did save it as a text file (gedit is the text editor) ANDDD since i have the guest additions installed, i can now copy and paste to and from the guest and host!! so here it is!!

To run a command as administrator (user "root"), use "sudo ".
See "man sudo_root" for details.

tory@tory-vmlinux:~$ ls
Desktop  Documents  Examples  Music  Pictures  Public  Templates  Videos
tory@tory-vmlinux:~$ cd ..
tory@tory-vmlinux:/home$ cd ..
tory@tory-vmlinux:/$ ls
bin   cdrom  etc   initrd      lib         media  opt   root  srv  tmp  var
boot  dev    home  initrd.img  lost+found  mnt    proc  sbin  sys  usr  vmlinuz
tory@tory-vmlinux:/$ cdrom
bash: cdrom: command not found
tory@tory-vmlinux:/$ cd cdrom
tory@tory-vmlinux:/cdrom$ sudo sh ./VBoxLinuxAdditions-x86.run
[sudo] password for tory:
Verifying archive integrity... All good.
Uncompressing VirtualBox 2.0.2 Guest Additions for Linux installation............
.................................................................................
.................................................................................
...........
VirtualBox 2.0.2 Guest Additions installation
Building the VirtualBox Guest Additions kernel module...
Building the shared folder support kernel module...
Installing the VirtualBox Guest Additions...

Successfully installed the VirtualBox Guest Additions.
You must restart your guest system in order to complete the installation.
tory@tory-vmlinux:/cdrom$

...THIS IS SO COOL!!!

Double Take

--> first and second takes on my classes this semester.

Note: This is an exercise in speed blogging, to be performed as practice in writing something of value but without taking forever. We'll see if this works.

Ok so here are my impressions of my classes from the first and second sessions of each (except for the 399, since it's a half credit and only meets Mondays). Btw these are in order of occurrence of the first session of each class.

CIS 460: Computer Graphics
[first class] Well we all gathered in Wu & Chen (aka Levine 101) where I took CIS 110, haha... There were a bunch of grad students, which was minorly intimidating for a sec, but made sense after I remembered it's cross-listed as CIS 560 and probably they're CGGT (Computer Graphics and Game Technology) students. Grace and I instated the "DMD Undergraduate Row" - I can't remember exactly but I know Ted, John, Carlin, Brynn, Nirav, and Ryan (a sophomore who was in 277 with us) are all in the class. The class began with Nirav asking if the slides could be printed in black and white and Dr. Badler explaining how the trio of himself, PowerPoint, and the printer do not get along. Then Dr. Badler introduced the field of computer graphics by describing a number of its applications. The class felt really comfortable and familiar, obviously because it's the class which 277 was specifically designed to precede (and taught by the same professor). As it's my only class on Wednesdays, I had a pretty good first day of class! :P
[second class] This turned out to be hilarious for a good 20 minutes or so when PowerPoint was being strange and YouTube was just not cooperating for Dr. Badler, and then neither was the DVD at first - and all he wanted to do was show a couple of videos! At one point, for the DVD, we had video but no sound, and then we had sound but no video! I was crying laughing...which I felt kinda bad about... The rest of lecture was pretty chill; I followed along in my $25 coursepack of the lecture slide printouts, just purchased from the SEAS copy center. We're definitely gonna be reviewing some material from 277, but for sure that can't hurt! (And it'll probably move fast.) So my outlook is lectures will be cool... Homeworks? Not sure how intense they'll be, yet. Definitely expecting to be coding a lotttt. We don't have lab, which is a little nervewracking, because clearly they won't be going over OpenGL and C++ stuff with us anymore. (We are supposed to remember it all from 277. lol..) We do, however, have Skiz as a TA, so that should be awesome. :D Maybe I will go to some office hours for once...

FNAR 234: Web Design
[first class] First off, the instructor seems good - he's cool but he knows his stuff. He comes from the design side, which I like, because I think that's the side I need more instruction/work on. (Also, he and the TA are friends and make a good pair. Kinda like Jeff and Sunita...hahaha.) From a code standpoint, I'll be relearning some html, and probably some css, though I definitely know there's a LOT I can still learn re: css. More importantly I hope I learn design and usability, which if the book he asked us to get and the first/ongoing project are any indication, it should be a focus. We are doing the html/css in Dreamweaver, so that should be interesting, and I might feel a little cheap not coding it all straight by hand. Also he keeps calling html and css "programming languages", which to me doesn't seem quite right, because I've always thought that programming languages DO something, whereas straight html and css don't perform any kind of actions on their own. Still...a good first impression, and I'm hoping not too stressful. Also Grace is in the class so that's cool.
[second class] We went over web terminology, complete with examples. So, yay I learned what some things mean! I don't care if it's elementary, because that might be where I am with some of this stuff. Then he demoed how to set up a blog and then we basically had an hour to start the blogging assignment. :) If not previously evident, I'll mention now that I like the TA, Erin, as well.

CIS 262: Automata, Computability, and Complexity
Ok this course deserves a precursor. Ever since at least the end of last year, when I really tried reading the course title during registration, I was pretty petrified of this class. The fact that Evan used to say he hated it while he took it (along with a few glances at his notebook) only added to this sentiment...
[first class] On the bright side Dan will be suffering through this class alongside me, as well as Grace, Jay, Carlin, John, and..? Anyway at the beginning of class Dan informed me that "automata" is pronounced with the emphasis on the second syllable; hence I'd been saying it wrong every time I listed my classes for someone and explained that I was scared of this one. Oh well. We are in Berger Auditorium in the Skirkanich basement, which is chilly and Dan and I both have no service. (This bothers Dan more than it does me.) The professor has something of an accent though not too horrible, I just have to listen a little harder. We spent like 10 minutes on syllabus stuff and then launched immediately into notes. Thus far I've followed what's going on, but I don't think I can trust that as an indicator that the rest of the class won't get plenty harder...
[second class] Well actually we have a "recitation" for this class - only one section of it, so basically it's an hour long and taught by the professor rather than a TA. It's my only class in DRL this semester - I was so close to not being there at all! At least A8 is a nicer room, despite its prior association as my Math 114 room haha. Anyway, we started going over proofs by induction, which is not a topic I enjoy but nonetheless familiar from 260.
[third class] This was the second lecture. It was pretty much more of the same, and luckily I am still understanding like 95-100% of the notes. People are already falling asleep in that class though, haha. It's probably gonna be a long semester. I miss Benjamin C. Pierce (260 prof) cuz...he was more engaging and pretty much all-around awesome.

CIS 330: Design Principles of Info Systems
(I basically translate this course title into "Databases".)
[first class] Well Dan and I get to walk from 262 and chill in this class too, so that's cool... Class began with the course webpage mysteriously being inaccessible, and other oddities. But once we got into the lecture, I'm glad it's starting pretty much from the bottom-up level of databases. I'm not exactly sure how the course is going to progress, either content-wise (she kept emphasizing that we're not gonna come out of it as Oracle programmer whizzes) or difficulty-and-effort-wise (we may not have even learned enough to do the first homework yet).
[second class] This time we all introduced ourselves and holy crap, Chin, our 121 TA who managed our final project, is in the class!! Nirav and I were laughing haha... (Am I really up to par enough to be in the same class as Chin??) At least I found that most people had only a bit of database experience so I should be okay. We continued through the lecture and it all seems reasonable so far. I'm really hoping I learn a lot through this class. I'm so eager to collect knowledge and ability in something really different from everything I know so far.

Music 150: Introduction to Global Music
Talk about a change from computer science...
[first class] Well, the class is almost entirely music majors - maybe one person who's not (as she wasn't even there at the second lecture), and then me, an attempting minor. So that's a little intimidating, because they have a lot of background knowledge to draw on and they know how to write and speak about music. Well the professor is very into it all, integrating both organized writing and stream of consciousness writing with listening to the music and especially exposing ourselves to music with which we're uncomfortable. There is to be lots of discussion and class interaction, etc. So I was pretty scared the first day, since I thought this was gonna be like jazz history where I listened to lectures and caught up on textbook reading, wrote one simple paper at the end and a couple of jazz performance reviews...yeah. Not this class. It's gonna be pretty intense, and I'll have to dredge up writing skills I haven't touched since freshman first semester. So much for an easy class...
[second class] We shared our "exotic" music selections and I found that I could participate in this collaborative discussion without sounding like a total idiot. I probably accomplished that though when I did not have much of a way to explain why my Praful song was "exotic". Oh well, hopefully that moment can be forgotten. For some reason I felt slightly less scared of the impending syllabus (though probably not because she kept saying we would be nervous but it would turn out okay) - with the major exception of this partner-project thing, which I'll worry about until I see how the partner issue pans out (ugh). I'll also have to see how well I can get myself going with these writing assignments.

CIS 399: Special Topics: Linux/Unix in the 21st Century
[first and only class so far] Jean Griffin, who teaches 110, is listed as the instructor for this, so I guess maybe "officially" Zachary Goldberg is a TA, but as of the first day, he appears to be essentially teaching the course. I mean, his name is on the slides so I assume he made them. He's a good speaker - already more naturally engaging (or I thought so anyway) than Ryan, who taught our Python course. (Don't worry, I like Ryan in his own way.) The funny part is he's in my grade (so Dan told me, and once we got to class, I recognized him, and I think he was even in 260 with us haha), but that's ok cuz supposedly he knows this stuff really well, and I don't think that's an exaggeration. He's starting with the very basics of Linux, which is awesome because that's what I need! I'm really excited for this class, cuz like databases, I'm gonna learn something that I know almost nothing about beforehand...except Linux is just kinda cooler than databases from the start. :P Also I noticed I am one of like three total girls in the class; all the rest is guys. Oh well haha.


The semester is gonna be crazy, I bet. 262 alone could drown me in painful work. I am hoping databases and Linux won't be bad, and hopefully interesting!! Web design should be good too, maybe my only semi-respite from the rest. I can see 460 being really intense, because if 277 was really intense and it was just the "intro" to this class, then we all must be really in for it. And music, well, it'll be its own kind of crazy, I'm afraid. I really did think I was pretty much done with writing. I guess it's a good skill to prune every once in awhile, at least (hahaha). Very different from last semester and even last year - no psych, music is back, digging 260-type of thinking out for 262, and totally ground-level new subjects. At the very least, it will be interesting. Here we goooo! (This good mood I've been in recently must be in part because I have done almost no work yet...possibly due to the fact I am lacking some key textbooks... I will need to beginning devoting time and energy to work-mode soon.)


Results: speed blogging? Kind of failed. Partly by distraction of thinking of Jeff and Sunita, which led to emailing Jeff, and also by a bit of chatting with Carlin. I'll try harder in the future.

To do list for life

Things I want to do sometime in my life, in whatever order I come up with them. To be appended to whenever I think of more. :) ...recommendations welcome too.

• go jetskiing
• learn php
• kiss in the rain
• go somewhere tropical
• learn to play guitar
• go skinnydipping
• go to a west coast beach (compare to east coast)
• ride on the back of a motorcycle
• code a facebook app
• learn to play piano
• go skydiving (assuming I don't die or something)
• attend a Hed Kandi party
• compose something [good]... maybe for clarinet, maybe for concert band
• create artwork, some digital and some not, that I am happy with
• (from Cindy:) attend a college party (so far, I "sort of" have...)
• stop being so shy/be more outgoing
• do something "crazy" enough to be worthy of telling Matt about. (what should it be??)
• have a long phone conversation sometime in the middle of the night
  

Ok so it's a work in progress.

All in a day's work.

*

7:00am - Wake up. Obviously wish I could go back to sleep for like 5 more hours.

7:00-7:10am - Lie in bed trying to rest for a little extra time without falling asleep (cuz I don't think I have any more alarms set to rescue me if I did that).

7:15am - Realize Mom has just turned on the water for a shower so I can't start mine.

7:15-7:25am - Eat cereal, turn on computer, start it running a backup cuz I'm obsessive like that.

7:25-7:35am - Return to bedroom and begin debating what to wear.

7:35-7:55am - Shower.

7:55-8:05am - Finish debating what to wear, and get dressed. Put hair in clip and hope it dries okay, put on earrings and shoes.

8:05-8:20am - Eat rest of breakfast (fruit), brush teeth, etc/get ready to go.

8:20-9:10am - Drive to work. Notice van's gas tank is only 1/4 full, decide not to be ridiculous and maybe I'll stop and fill it on the way home. Listen to clips of ridiculous country versions of popular songs...since when was Elvis Duran (sp?) on Q102? Wasn't he always on Z100? Classify cars I see on the road: ugly or not (haha).

9:20am - Sit down at my desk at work.

9:20-9:30am - Write/respond to emails re: intern stuff.

9:30-10:40am - Begin getting cold and possibly thinking about Matt's sweatshirt. Would it be weird if I borrowed it when he wasn't even there yet?
Fix issue of scrollbars appearing in Firefox when a link was focused by moving overflow:auto to the form instead of an enclosing div, and thus still beating the FF invisible cursor bug!
Begin playing around with positioning to see if I can get relatively good agreement of appearance between IE/FF.
Get distracted when I hear Jeff, Chandra**, and Sunita start talking about Thunderbird vs. Yahoo vs. Outlook vs. whatever other email options there are; chime in that Thunderbird is a standalone application.
Chat with the three of them about email, texting ("Why don't you just call? I don't get it" says Jeff, just like my parents, and of course I can't come up with a convincing explanation...haha), rotary phones ("You had one? No way!" - Jeff again), area codes (yes, you really do have to dial it now; that's been in place for years!)...
Listen to the Jeff/Steve movie debate.

11:15am - Turn back to my work, wonder if Matt's even coming in today, assume that since it's past the latest arrival time I knew of (10:30 or so), assume he isn't showing up.

11:30am - Hear Matt talking, saying he has come in for the training at 1pm... Decide that since that means I can't go to lunch with him anyway, I'll go from 1:30-2 and make up for some of that time I spent talking with the others.

11:30am-1:30pm - Fix up some of the positioning stuff and another minor unexpected behavior that popped up. Painstakingly decide that maybe I'm done with this stuff and wonder if I should bother Matt to tell him (and ask if I should do any more on the positioning); decide not to, and begin looking into the html source of the next thing Matt had told me to work on.

12:57pm - Matt leaves for his training and I'm pretty much alone in the rectangle.

1:30-1:55pm - Eat lunch; read some articles in WSJ; continue being cold in the cafeteria.

1:55-2:05pm - Go outside because I'm really looking forward to warming up in the sun. Sit down in the courtyard and begin reading the WSJ page I stole (it's the Technology page and has both Alcatel-Lucent and DreamWorks on it!); get visited by curious little worm-like bugs crawling up my legs and attempt to flick them all off.

2:05-5:10pm - Return to my desk. Start getting cold right away and really want Matt's sweatshirt; consider emailing him (hoping he gets it on his iPhone and could respond); decide this is a little pathetic and don't do it.
Matt shows up for a second; feel too awkward and I don't ask for his sweatshirt after all.
Continue setting up this new thing I'm working on. Look over some of Matt's code and admire its structure as usual. Decide to rework a section of my code for like the 3rd time.

4:40pm - Receive email from Matt that I'm probably going to have to "talk" at this pizza lunch thing on Thursday. Wonder if he means I'll have to give some kind of presentation, or if he's telling me not to be shy, haha.

5:10-5:20pm - "Register" for intern lunch thing tomorrow. Input my hours for the past week online.

5:20pm - Before leaving, ask Matt about the email; he says I might just have to say a little something about what I'm doing as an intern. Laugh and tell him it would've been legit if he'd been referring to me being shy :P

5:25pm - Step outside and relax into the warmth as I walk through the parking lot, a little walk which always brings back a hint of a crazy little memory...

--
*all times are approximate.
**I really hope I'm spelling his name right.

98% Pointless little post about why i love java so much

K so I'm just starting to look through the Java swing api cuz of something I want to work on, and what do I find in the JFrame docs, but... :

public JFrame()
    throws HeadlessException

....hahahaha "headless exception"...like what, the JFrame's missing its head? Ok I'm sure it's a totally reasonable name and all but I just love it. Not quite as much as the dirty rectangles method I found once...I'll have to find that one again sometime...but still. :P

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 :)

My summer internship (the beginning)

Last summer, my job was through the Monmouth County Summer Employment Program; I worked for the Public Relations (and Member Services) departments for the county-wide library system. It was not a bad job by any means, and the PR people were very friendly and nice to me (which was great). However, for this summer, I wanted a job more related to the kinds of things I've learned so far in my major, Digital Media Design. (And maybe I'd even get to actually use some of them! haha.) So as the months of the spring semester went on, I watched people around me going to career fairs, updating their resumes, and getting internships. I'd thought a bit about where to start looking for jobs, but I didn't even write my resume until spring break. (It definitely took at least a solid day to condense my experience into one organized and pretty page.) I still applied to the county summer program (requesting something computer/design-related on the app), and googled around to look for anything interesting that'd be local (and I don't live in a city, or near one of any acknowledgeable size, so it's not so easy...). One night I really started panicking that I hadn't found something good, and stayed up really late rather frantically searching PennLink (Penn's Career Services job listing thing) but to pretty much no avail.

So what happened? Well, my mom turned out to save the day. Thanks to Google, she found an IT internship being offered by Dow Jones, and near enough to home, too. (They have locations in Princeton and South Brunswick.) The internship description was rather vague. It listed probably 30 technologies (programming languages, database stuff, and other words of which I don't really know the meaning :P) and said if you were familiar with any one or more of them, that would be enough. I was glad, because most of the job postings I'd found or seen had requirements that I just didn't fulfill, and it was getting discouraging. (How do people learn all this stuff anyway? I don't think there's enough time to teach us most of it in college...) I think Java and C++ and even Microsoft Access (lol) were on the list, so I figured I might as well go for it. I didn't really expect I'd be successful; I mean, "this is Dow Jones, how can I be good enough for that?!" I thought.

So I wrote a cover letter and completed the application online just after spring break, then waited for awhile... And suddenly I started being contacted (!!). An "Application Architect" from the Wall Street Journal first emailed me, then called my house the next day (my mom passed on the message to me). I called him back that same day and he interviewed me on the phone. I wasn't too hopeful though, because he asked me some things about Java and other stuff, and I don't think I gave a solid answer for any of them... Soon after that, I received another totally unrelated call, and had another phone interview, with people representing three different departments. And then there was a third call, with yet another group of people. I kept trying to get a good explanation from all these people about what they really did in their departments, but to be honest, I didn't understand most of what they were telling me haha. Thus, when I thought about it (and conferred with my parents; my dad tried to give me some clue about the terminology with which these people were explaining their jobs), it seemed that the first person I'd talked to would be the best match. The Wall Street Journal Online sounded good to me, and maybe I'd get to do some programming... So when another guy who works with the first one emailed to offer me the position, I decided to accept it.

Fast forward through more emails, a few more phone calls, the end of the school year, and a number of forms and info packets, and I was almost set up to be a Dow Jones employee. I had a couple weeks or so between getting home from Penn and the start of my job (the Tuesday right after Memorial Day), during which I enjoyed sleeping in, reading, shopping... and I worried that I wouldn't be good enough for the job. Seriously, I didn't know why he accepted me when I thought I'd done pretty badly on the phone interview. I kept telling my family and friends I was petrified, and of course they all said I'd be fine and not to worry so much. (Worrying is something I do too much in general, probably.)

One thing about this Dow Jones internship is that the complex ("campus", I think they actually call it) is in Princeton/Monmouth Junction. My parents of course think the value of this opportunity overshadows the hour-long commute, and I guess I didn't really know what to think of it. My dad helped map out a more back-roads route which would hopefully avoid the worst traffic, and on the Thursday before I was going to start, I got up early to practice driving there. We took Dad's truck and made it without a hitch (well, perhaps aside of being late :P); after making sure I knew how to get to the parking lot and entrance I'd been directed to use on my first day, we turned around and headed home.

A few days later, my first day arrived. I left my house around 7:45am...and shortly thereafter, realized I'd forgotten my purse at home. And obviously couldn't call home to tell anybody, because my phone was at home in it. So there was basically nothing to do except continue driving, else I'd be late. With the help of Google Maps printouts and two sets of written directions (mine and my dad's), I arrived at the Dow Jones entrance guard booth at 8:51am. (I know this because the guard labeled my one-day parking pass with the time.) I had survived the first trial of the day (driving there), but was still so nervous that the guard had to ask me to repeat my reason for being there because I wasn't loud enough...

I walked inside and told the guy at the reception office window that I was starting my internship. As he was looking me up and trying to call Matt (the guy who had interviewed me) and then trying to call Frank (the other guy who had emailed me) since Matt wasn't answering, and whatever else, he asked for my driver's license, and I was like "umm... I kind of.. forgot it..." (hahaha). Luckily he just asked me to spell my name and then gave me a visitor's badge. Then I headed over to HR, where I had another minorly embarrassing moment: the receptionist asked who my contact person was in HR, and without really thinking I mentioned Matt, then Frank... she was like, "Do you have your letter?" I finally realized she meant the guy whose name was on my official job offer letter. Oh well. Said guy came and filled out my I9 (luckily I had my passport with me despite not having my purse, so I didn't look illegal or anything). He took me back to the check-in window and got me a real Dow Jones employee badge (which, yes, I think is kind of cool, haha. It's retractable and I can scan it to unlock the building doors!) I went back to HR, where I called home to discover that my parents had realized my forgotten purse, Mom had called Matt to tell him, and Dad was already on his way to deliver it (oh brother).

Finally, Frank came to fetch me from the HR office and took me upstairs where I was introduced to several people whose names I don't remember anymore lol. Matt still wasn't there, so someone showed me where the cafeteria is, and then we headed back towards where I'd entered (Building 5, by the way--though Building 1 and 5 are connected) and picked up my purse from Dad. Somewhere amidst hallway touring with somebody, we ran into Matt, finally. I discovered he is young after all, as I'd guessed from the phone conversation. (It feels weird to call him "young" when I'm years younger than everyone else there, haha, but it's all relative.)

So Matt and I walked around and talked, trying to figure out what I should work on for the summer. I told him I was up for anything, since I didn't know what to expect. Eventually he decided on something for me, and left me with the instructions to go through Javascript tutorials online. This sounded good to me, because after all, Javascript was one thing on my mental list of things I wanted to learn, so I dug in...

Lunch posed a bit of confusion for me. For some reason I could not understand, I'd been placed at a desk within what I now call a "rectangle" (defined by these cubicle wall things) containing nine desks total, but most of these were empty, and Matt wasn't even in the same large room as me, let alone my rectangle. So I walked over to another rectangle in another large room where I thought I remembered his desk was, but didn't see him there. However, several people in that rectangle looked up at me and one guy asked if I was looking for Matt. I said I thought I should tell him I was going to lunch, and the guy kinda laughed and said I didn't have to tell anyone I was going to lunch, then showed me where the cafeteria was for like my third time that day. At least they are friendly :) .

As the afternoon went on, I kept reading about Javascript (and some HTML, because I was only vaguely familiar with most of it), and as 5pm approached, I started wondering if I should go talk to Matt at all. Luckily he came to see how I was doing, and then briefly showed me a little more about what I should be looking up and what kind of code I'd be working with. He asked if I was good to go, and I said "Well.. can you tell me how to get out of here?" He laughed and walked me back to Building 5. I followed Dad's reverse directions, and managed to get home. And my first day had gone pretty well, I figured. :)

~~~

The next days included a variety of challenges and experiences. I eagerly worked on the Javascript tasks Matt gave me, looked up tons of little quirks, found out that Firefox usually does what I want and Internet Explorer doesn't (hahaha), and tried out extra things just to see if I could do them. Matt sometimes took me to a conference room and drew diagrams on the whiteboard to try to explain larger structures and concepts to me, and I usually was (sorta) able to understand. I found the cafeteria garbage cans and the nearest bathrooms, and read Tuesdays with Morrie during lunch, sitting in the comfy cafeteria lit by the sun coming through skylights. I found out that my "group" or whatever was in the process of moving into the rectangle, and gradually people populated most of the remaining empty desks. Matt is now next to me (though the desks are pretty wide, so he's probably at least 6 feet away), and next to him is Jeff. The next side has a "doorway" into the rectangle, but they've kinda blocked it with the whiteboard, haha. The next side (opposite mine) has Steve, Dean(?), and another guy whose name I don't know. The fourth side is moved away to make doorways, and two women whose names I also don't know sit there. I've come to recognize some other people who stop by the rectangle and/or apparently sit in nearby rectangles, but I mostly don't know names, especially the Indian ones. I think everyone I've talked to has been friendly, which is really great. Our rectangle is not without its silliness, either. This includes various goofing around, such as taking tables from the center of the rectangle and claiming them as extra desks, then placing stuff there and joking about opening a bazaar... throwing around a compactible (what?? Firefox spell-checking tells me that's not a word? oh well) Commerce Bank frisbee... joking about "Sue's balls" - these were golf balls, hahaha, but I guess guys will always be guys :P ... Steve getting Facebook... "I'm too sexy for my code" (because those center tables look like a runway LOL)... Oh man, there's more but I can't remember all of it. At least I'm learning that just because Dow Jones is a big intimidating-sounding company doesn't mean there aren't real normal people inside who like to have a good time :).

And speaking of that, one day, Jeff came over to me and asked if I played foosball, haha... I told him not really in awhile. I used to play really hardcore with Greg, back in the day, with that little table that caved down towards one end and the plastic players moved around and all...such good times though. So we went over to the "game room" or whatever and I requested to play defense (3 goalies? what? I guess that's the standard and ours was just old or something), but I am definitely out of practice, and my left hand is better for snapping the players, so I wasn't doing so well with the defenders (right hand). Jeff and I lost the first match to Steve and Dean(?), but then Steve left and someone else took his place, and Jeff and I switched positions so I played offense, and we won :).

...aaand that was a bit more than I planned, so I didn't get to the past few days, which were the original subject for this post.. but hey, it's all good.