- 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??
Tuesday, June 30, 2009
Monday, June 29, 2009
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
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
Thursday, June 25, 2009
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?
- 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?
Sunday, June 21, 2009
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.
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.
Thursday, June 18, 2009
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.
Sunday, June 14, 2009
MOAR PICTURES
No updates for a while, so here are some pictures:
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 =( =(
 |
| 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 =( =(
Monday, June 8, 2009
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.
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!
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.
Sunday, June 7, 2009
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:
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:
Saturday, June 6, 2009
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
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
Friday, June 5, 2009
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.
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.
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