What is this, Bring Your Hot Sixteen-year Old to Work Day?

ACTUAL CONVERSATION BY REAL MICROSOFT INTERNS:

D: "Hey, did you see that blond chick walk by?"
me: "I saw her, but I didn't get a good look."
D: "How old do you think she is?"
B: "DUDE, SHE HAS FUCKING BRACES ON. SHE'S PROBABLY SIXTEEN OR SOMETHING."
me + D: "..."
B: "Yeah, but she's pretty hot."

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Intern Day of Caring was pretty cool. We got the day off last Friday to do community service projects (so not really the day off). I worked on clearing English Ivy and building terraces (mine didn't look nearly that good). It's actually pretty cool, not only did Microsoft pay us to do community service, but they also paid EarthCorps (who we were working with) $17 dollars an hour per employee for every hour we worked. They also do donation-matching, one-to-one, up to $12,000 per year for full-time employees.

I did feel a little guilty about it, though. We probably only did like 3 hours of real, solid work. It was like:

8-11am - transportation time, orientation
11-12pm - work
12-1pm - lunch
1-3pm - work
3-4pm - transit time
4-7pm - celebration BBQ! with free beer!

All I could think about was how these fucking yuppies go do hard manual labor for a few hours so they could get a taste of how the other half lives, while checking their stocks on their iPhones (or Windows Mobile Devices) before going back to their cushy desk job. Seriously, people dressed waaaay too well to be working in the dirt; some guy had this v-neck sweater and aviators on and it's like, have you ever used your hands in your life?

But hey, free beer!

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Last Saturday was the Intern Puzzle Day. This was seriously fucking cool, I wish I could describe it better. Basically it's 8 hours straight in a conference room with 10-12 other people solving puzzles. There are many puzzles where you have to go outside/find things too. The solution to one puzzle was GOTOSPOCKINRECEPD, which meant "go to Spock in reception of Studio D" to get the next puzzle. (There's a Star Trek display in Studio D.) Another involved walking through one of the fountains with a ton of rubber ducks in it to find a duck with certain characteristics, which would lead to another, which would eventually give a final answer. One involved two teams playing against each other in Guitar Hero: World Tour -- the losers were given a puzzle to solve, while the winners were given the solution to said puzzle. (Of course, our team won HANDILY. I kept joking that my entire life has just been preparation for this puzzle day.) I'm going to try to post some of the puzzles later, they're all on the company intranet so I'd have to be at work to do it.

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I also had my first minor celebrity citing -- now I know why girls get all giddy when they meet celebrities. I'm at the place where I climb, when I notice a shirt that says "UNSC ODST" on the back.

me: Holy shit, that shirt says ODST on the back. This guy probably works for Bungie! I'd better follow him into the bathroom. "Hey, nice shirt."
him: "Oh thanks."
me: What the FUCK am I doing in this bathroom. I'd better make it look like I didn't follow him in. *goes to wash hands* "Do you work at Bungie?"
him: "Yeah, we got these shirts for Bungie Day."
me: Holy FUCK FUCK FUCK he was at Bungie Day! Quick, continue this conversation. "Oh cool. Yeah, I work at Microsoft."
him: "Oh cool, what do you do there?"
me: "I work in Windows, under documents and printing." Wow Justin, could you be any more lame? Yes, he works on one of the most popular game franchises of all time, and you work in...printing. "But uhh, I'm just an intern here."
him: "Oh, nice."
me: "Yeah, uhh...see you around." *leaves bathroom*

FAIL.

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Finally got my camera today. Of course the only place with good enough lighting to take pictures (my apartment is dim as fuck) was Denny's. I took my camera's photo virginity at Denny's. That's like the equivalent of losing your virginity in a public restroom.

San Juan Islands

This weekend marks my first real vacation. I've been on vacation before, but this time we planned it, we paid for it, etc. One step closer to real life... but it was pretty awesome.

...EXCEPT I FORGOT TO BRING MY CAMERA BECAUSE I'M A GRADE A DUMBASS

So you'll have to take my word for it that it was incredible. We ate delicious seafood; drove scooters across the island (the feeling it gives you is a mix of HOLY SHIT I'M GOING TO DIE and HOLY SHIT THIS IS AWESOME); took a 3 hour kayak tour and saw seals and a whale and Canada (in the far distance) and all sorts of birds; stopped by an alpaca farm (where I bought this sweet alpaca wool, indie-ugly beanie); sailed on a ferry and quietly sang "On a Boat" to myself; and collectively dealt with my roommate's snoring (Benson, if you're reading this, we love you!).

It was our time, not our parents', and it was strangely comfortable. Maybe a little too comfortable. I'm liking Seattle a little bit more than I'm comfortable with. Apparently when I was drunk on Thursday (which is what I did instead of going climbing), I talked about how I liked Seattle more than San Francisco. Am I equipped to make these kinds of decisions? I can't even decide on the design direction for my spec, much less my own life.

I guess you have to do what feels right... I think it's all you can really expect of yourself.

Unfortunately I'm at work right now, so it's not all fun and games. But then again if I'm on Gtalk/Facebook/Blogger during work, I suppose it can't be so bad.

Quick update pt. 2

- drinking Monday, practicing for...
- ROCK BAND NIGHT AT THE DUBLINER ON TUESDAY!
- drinking Wednesday for Drinks on the Links
- climbing Thursday
- San Juan Island trip Friday-Saturday
- Sunday??

Kayaking

So I actually ended up going kayaking this Sunday with a bunch of Cal interns. It was a fucking amazing day, and we kayaked through the UW Botanical Gardens (and I saw baby ducklings!). Then we got delicious tacos from this not-so-Mexican place right at the dock called Agua Verde, and dessert at this ice cream place (very Ici-like, for those from Berkeley), complete with waffle cones. Best part is that Microsoft paid for it all :D

Finally, I watched a laser show set to the music of Radiohead in Seattle. Pretty awesome day.

PS Pictures of last weekend will go up soon I swear

Quick updates

- drunk Monday, playing Rock Band with this awesome German guy
- climbing Tuesday
- Mariner's game Wednesday
- drunk Thursday, hitting up some bars with aforementioned German guy for his birthday
- drunk Friday, going with the Documents and Printing team to some bar at 2:30pm and then dinner in Seattle
- drunk Saturday, having some people over for beer pong and drunk Rock Band
- no plans for Sunday yet. Maybe I'll update this properly?

Lall of Text

I'm not really sure how I'm doing here. Unlike say, a developer position, where you can (sort of) objectively measure success by how many lines of code you've written, how many bugs you've fixed, etc., the program manager's role is a lot more nebulous. I'm working on planning and design right now, and much of that involves thinking and drawing. It's hard to just grind away on thinking; with coding I can make small milestones for myself (finish this for-loop, write this procedure call, implement this algorithm), but with thinking I'm not sure how to work harder.

So naturally I'm wrestling with wasting time. Here, they encourage interns to waste time -- we're supposed to spend time "networking" and doing intern events and shit -- but I still often feel guilty because of the aforementioned lack of deliverables. Many days I don't have much to show but a few ideas jotted down, even though I feel like I've been working (a lot of which involves reading specs, which doesn't often result in concrete output).

However, I do get more done later in the week. The amount of work I put in is inversely proportional to the amount of guilt I feel. So Mondays are pretty laid-back; you know, I'm sort of just gearing up, trying to plan out my week, schedule any meetings with people I need to talk to, figure out if I'm on track for my commitments, etc. Then when I come in Tuesday I realize I didn't do any work toward my project, so I work a little harder. This continues up until late in the work week, where I'm most productive because of my guilt.

Every Friday I have a one-on-one meeting with my manager. So here I am on Friday, feeling really guilty because I don't have much to show, worrying about seeming like a slacker and trying to have intelligent questions to show for the week's work. But my manager is amazing at making people feel amazing! Plus, he's British, so his accent makes everything he says roughly 20% more authoritative. He said I made a "profound" statement about our product's goal today, and he even drew a little diagram about it on a whiteboard and took a picture of it to remember it by. Then I walk out of his office feeling amazing, my guilt meter officially reset, and basically putt around until beer:30.

I also played soccer (if you could call my lack of ability "playing soccer") for the first time in YEARS on Friday after work. My friend Tamir convinced me to play ("Don't believe in yourself. Believe in me. Who believes in you") and even though I was playing with crazy European/African soccer players and was hopelessly outclassed, I had a great time. I have this weird sort of athletic streak going on, what with biking to/from work and indoor climbing and now soccer!

Friday was also host to a reasonably epic bar crawl in Belltown in Seattle. The last things I remember were: throwing a cone in the street, hammer throw style; knocking over a newspaper vending box; and throwing a fake cactus at my friend's neighbor's door. I felt like an ass remembering it the next morning, but goddamn it was hilarious at the time. +1 to belligerent frat boy skill.

Finally, my parents are in town this weekend, so we're doing all the usual touristy stuff. No pictures as of yet (I took them on my dad's camera), but hopefully sometime.

White people playing croquet

Redmond 6.18.2009

Also did some sweet indoor rock climbing today. I think I'm going to get a membership for the summer...anyone want to join me when I get back to Berkeley?

I need flash on my camera...

Seattle 6.17.2009

More Seattle. Went to meet up with Ahmed to go to Gameworks (yay!), drank some delicious chocolate stout with dinner.

MOAR PICTURES

No updates for a while, so here are some pictures:

Seattle 6.14.2009

Quick tidbits:

Friday - Went to the WORST party EVER. It was a stuffy house with a TON of dudes dancing with each other and almost no booze whatsoever. Never going to another party in Redmond again. I wish I had taken pictures of the fail because it was epic.

Saturday - GAMEWORKSZZZZ!!!~~~ DrumMania is so fucking fun now that I can actually play it reasonably well, and dinner and drinks at Belltown Bistro.

Sunday - Pictures above are from today. Lunch at Cafe Yarmarka, Left Bank Books Collective and Seattle Art Museum, and dinner and drinks at Umi.

FUCK I SPEND A LOT OF MONEY HERE =( =(

PICTUREZ

Are you supposed to do caption before picture? I dunno, that's what I'm going to do.

The first thing I noticed when I landed in Seattle was all this weird, white, fluffy stuff that looks sort of like cotton:


Arghhhh it's everywhere!


My bike:


An early version of my desk (it's much messier now):


From left to right: Justin's legs (he's wearing swim trunks because they went canoeing earlier in the day), Christina (my mentor), Adrian (my manager)


The glass bottle on the table is the Hefeweizen, and in the keg is the stout.


Something funny here. Probably.


Brian, the brewer of the beer, explaining the Ballmer Peak:


Juggling shenanigans:


Organ donor rates of European countries. The story goes something like this (continued after the picture):


In Europe, there are lots of counties with a very low organ donor rate (10-20%) and a very high organ donor rate (70-90%), but very few countries in between. Researchers had been trying to figure out what it was that made countries gravitate toward either very low or very high rates, analyzing culture and language and whatever else they could think of. It turns out that the low countries, in their organ donor form, say "Check this box if you'd like to donate your organs", whereas the high countries have forms that say "Check this box if you would not like to donate your organs."

That's about it for old news. Today after work there was intern game night, which was just a bunch of people playing Wii and Xbox games and eating pizza. It's scheduled for every Monday, and I heard an intern say "man this is the best internship ever." Although I don't have much basis for comparison, I'd have to say it's pretty good so far.

I don't understand how dirty hipster-types have enough money to be at bars. I think I spent like 80 dollars last night on alcohol.

But on the bright side, I got to attend Swedish Pancake Breakfast at the Swedish Cultural Center; the last one until September. I may go back for the other cool stuff: Swedish film nights, "Book Klub", and apparently some Estonian choir. Estonians can sing?

Just add old white people dancing to this picture, because that's what it was really like:

Beer:30

So on Fridays at around 4:30pm (informally known as "beer-thirty") one of the FTEs (full-time employees) on the DOX (Document Experience) team brings in home-brewed beer for us to enjoy. We had a 5-gallon keg of some sort of stout (very delicious, very Guinness-y), and he also brought in a liter of a Hefeweizen that was excellent.

Thus marks the second time I've been buzzed/drunk at work. Excellent.

The only way today could've been better is if I went canoeing with my office-mate, who is an intern in a related but different team under DOX. Basically she left at like 11am and got back at 4pm, and then she left. That was her entire workday.

(pictures will be up once I get a CF card reader, hopefully tomorrow -- it's really hard to describe everything without pictures)

Other things that happened today:
- sobered up, then drank some more at dinner
- saw Up in THREE DEE

On Microsoft intern events...

The first intern event was a social that promised free "food, trivia, drinks and fun!" which sounds like pretty typical "morale-boosting" bullshit. So when I got the email originally (about a week before the actual event), I pretty much shelved it.

That is, of course, until a fellow intern that started a week ago said at his first social there was free alcohol.

Seven beers later, it turns out that the social wasn't so bad.