Hopefully not too many more :( My sincerest apologies for the lack of posting, life has moved by at relativistic speeds since the last final.
I'll probably have another post dedicated to the shenanigans of Monday night/Tuesday morning, since these shenanigans made me sleep at 6:30 in the morning, and wake up at 8:30 for a taxi to the airport at 9:30.
I went home for three days, which was super relaxing, and Friday afternoon, the parentals, brother, and I drove up to CMU. My parents were helping me pack and move into my summer residence, and I wanted to have at least one day in Pittsburgh before my internship began on Monday. Packing was relatively painless, although I suspect that was because my parents were there to help me. I did, however, realize that I have accumulated quite a bit of junk over a year.
My internship started on Monday, and to be honest, Monday and Tuesday were extremely boring. There is another intern for the summer, a fifth-year ECE from CMU as well, and so Monday, we spent the first half of the day setting up our computers to code. Then, around noon, we went to lunch, where I tried (inadvertently) fish eggs for the first time. For the next four hours, we were told to "play around with the system", which, after an hour, becomes EXTREMELY boring. So I sat and facebooked with people for the majority of it (and got paid, so I see no down side :P)
The first half of Tuesday was the same, we learned about the website and a little about coding in PHP, a web-scripting language. It's very similar to java-script, and simple enough to learn. Lunch today (and for the rest of the days) will be on our own, so I went to one of the two places that is in walking range of the office. It's called Salem's and, seems to be a Middle Eastern / Pakistani restaurant. It has delicious food, although I inadvertently ordered shish kebab on a Tuesday (I am vegetarian on Tuesdays, also, I hate lamb). The way lunch at the office works is that, generally, people eat lunch and work at the same time. I did that all the time in college, so that was perfectly fine for me, although at that point, I didn't really have any work, so I was facebooking. However, at 3:30 yesterday, I was assigned my first task. I opened it, and was immediately intimidated. I spent the last hour and a half that I was at work attempting to decipher the specs that my "boss" gave me. I say "boss" because in a company of 7 people, there isn't really a boss. There's a CEO, and then there's everyone else.
Today, I got to work at 8:45. By 10:50, I had figured out the first task. YESYESYES I'm not incompetent. 10 points to Nikki. I got my second task around 11 am, which was more confusing than the first, but was similar enough that it only took me until about 2 pm to finish it. Which is why I now have time to write this epically long blog post. As I was leaving my boss's table (because we need to show him that our code actually works before we update the entire system) he said, "Wow you're working quicker than I expected." YESYESYES THANK YOU CARNEGIE MELLON FOR TURNING ME INTO A (semi) COMPETENT CODER. I'm really happy, as you can tell. And, I went to the gym and ran about 2.2 miles, and feel extremely good that I could do that since I'm extremely out of shape. OH, and I passed 251. I was 1% away from a B, which is upsetting, but I'm confident that I can handle whatever CMU throws at me. Hopefully :P
It's been a good summer so far :)
I'll probably have another post dedicated to the shenanigans of Monday night/Tuesday morning, since these shenanigans made me sleep at 6:30 in the morning, and wake up at 8:30 for a taxi to the airport at 9:30.
I went home for three days, which was super relaxing, and Friday afternoon, the parentals, brother, and I drove up to CMU. My parents were helping me pack and move into my summer residence, and I wanted to have at least one day in Pittsburgh before my internship began on Monday. Packing was relatively painless, although I suspect that was because my parents were there to help me. I did, however, realize that I have accumulated quite a bit of junk over a year.
My internship started on Monday, and to be honest, Monday and Tuesday were extremely boring. There is another intern for the summer, a fifth-year ECE from CMU as well, and so Monday, we spent the first half of the day setting up our computers to code. Then, around noon, we went to lunch, where I tried (inadvertently) fish eggs for the first time. For the next four hours, we were told to "play around with the system", which, after an hour, becomes EXTREMELY boring. So I sat and facebooked with people for the majority of it (and got paid, so I see no down side :P)
The first half of Tuesday was the same, we learned about the website and a little about coding in PHP, a web-scripting language. It's very similar to java-script, and simple enough to learn. Lunch today (and for the rest of the days) will be on our own, so I went to one of the two places that is in walking range of the office. It's called Salem's and, seems to be a Middle Eastern / Pakistani restaurant. It has delicious food, although I inadvertently ordered shish kebab on a Tuesday (I am vegetarian on Tuesdays, also, I hate lamb). The way lunch at the office works is that, generally, people eat lunch and work at the same time. I did that all the time in college, so that was perfectly fine for me, although at that point, I didn't really have any work, so I was facebooking. However, at 3:30 yesterday, I was assigned my first task. I opened it, and was immediately intimidated. I spent the last hour and a half that I was at work attempting to decipher the specs that my "boss" gave me. I say "boss" because in a company of 7 people, there isn't really a boss. There's a CEO, and then there's everyone else.
Today, I got to work at 8:45. By 10:50, I had figured out the first task. YESYESYES I'm not incompetent. 10 points to Nikki. I got my second task around 11 am, which was more confusing than the first, but was similar enough that it only took me until about 2 pm to finish it. Which is why I now have time to write this epically long blog post. As I was leaving my boss's table (because we need to show him that our code actually works before we update the entire system) he said, "Wow you're working quicker than I expected." YESYESYES THANK YOU CARNEGIE MELLON FOR TURNING ME INTO A (semi) COMPETENT CODER. I'm really happy, as you can tell. And, I went to the gym and ran about 2.2 miles, and feel extremely good that I could do that since I'm extremely out of shape. OH, and I passed 251. I was 1% away from a B, which is upsetting, but I'm confident that I can handle whatever CMU throws at me. Hopefully :P
It's been a good summer so far :)
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