Summer Weekends

The biggest difference between summer weekends and school year weekends is during the summer, you actually have free time on the weekend, whereas school year weekends are the same as weekdays minus the classes (although it's debatable how many of us go to classes on the weekday anyway).

Anyway, a typical weekend for me includes grocery shopping, normal clothes shopping, eating delicious food, cooking for the rest of the week, and anytime leftover is spent chilling :)

Today was spent working out and then watching the Spain-France match with a friend and eating Chipotle. To all my Spain fans, two words: Xabi Alonso (:

Onto grocery shopping,
Brown CS girl

A typical weekday for yours truly!

So currently, I'm sitting at work, and doing absolutely nothing. Why? I don't know. But I will go insane if I sit here for 8 hours on freerice.com (which as a side public service announcement, please visit! They do good work) or learning about differential equations, so my lovely readers, you get not one, but two blog posts from me! And if you're lucky (or is it unlucky?), maybe more.

Now as your probably guessed from the title of this blogpost, this post will be about what my Mondays thru Fridays look like. While some may find it monotonous and mundane, I'm quite enjoying the neat little schedule I have going. Now if only this could translate over to the school year.

7:30 - This is when my first alarm goes off. I say first because while I attempt to wake up this early, I end up jumping out of bed only at 7:55 (or in today's case, at 8).

Between 7:30 - whenever-my-taxi-for-work-arrives-which-hopefully-is-no-later-than-8:30 - I get ready for work! Normally this just involves finding jeans and a clean t-shirt (I work at a tech startup, and tech companies are notorious for not having a dress code) and making lunch for myself. Yes, I cook. It's cheaper and to be honest, healthier and more delicious than eating Middle Eastern food or a sandwich every day (the only two restaurants walking distance from work). After making lunch, I've started making myself coffee in the morning, which I'm hoping doesn't turn me into one of those people that has a caffeine addiction (assuming, of course, that CMU hasn't done that to me already). Then, I wait. Until I get a call saying that my taxi has arrived. Now you might be wondering why on earth I take a taxi to work. The answer is twofold: one, the only bus that takes me to work is half a mile away from my house, and the only time that I can take the bus that would ensure that I make it to work on time is at 8:00, which means I would probably have to leave my house at 7:30 to make it on time (which considering that Pittsburgh transportation is very rarely on time, is a risk in and of itself), and second, it's around $10 for a taxi ride, which I figured is acceptable for me to spend every day, since most days, that is all that I spend.

Whenever-I-get-to-work to 5:00 - This is when I'm (supposedly) working. To be honest, out of the 8 hours that I'm at work, I solidly work for about 6.5 hours of them. The other 1.5 hours are spent either eating or taking a break from coding, which is surprisingly exhausting. I don't know how much I'm allowed to say about my work, so all I will say is that I spend 6.5 hours a day coding in PHP, Javascript, and/or HTML. And as much as I complain about coding, there is something extremely satisfying when your program works.

5:00 - I'M FREE. Those are the only thoughts in my mind as I run (erm "speed walk") out the door and attempt to make it to the bus stop on time. You see, after lunch, which is around 1, I lose all motivation to work. And once lost, motivation is very hard to regain. Anyway, I leave at 5 and make it to my bus stop around 5:05, which gives me approximately 10 minutes to wait for the bus. Hopefully it's only 10, although until I found this bus stop, the wait was anywhere from 10 minutes to an hour. And in the burning heat, waiting an hour for the bus is terrible.

6:00 - Generally the time I get home. The bus drops me off at Craig Street at around 5:30, and I lazily walk back to my house, often walking through Gates because I a) love Gates b) like being able to check-in on foursquare in gates (I'm only slightly obsessed with foursquare) c) occasionally my friend in 150 is in gates. Speaking of which, yesterday, she was sitting outside the assistant dean of CS's office, and after I got there, the three of us had a conversation about drinking and speeding. It was strange having this conversation with my assistant dean, since hearing your assistant dean curse in every other sentence is slightly unnerving, but he was super chill and quite frankly, "a bro". Unfortunately, he is going to CMU's Campus in Qatar. We'll miss you MJS!

6:30 - Time to gym! Yes, I now workout. I originally had a bet with someone as to who could be more toned by the end of the summer (although I believe the exact words of the bet were "who would look better at the end of summer"), but now, I workout for me! I want to look toned and look good by the end of these three months, so that's what I'm doing. Generally consists of elliptical for 35 minutes, then machines for another 30ish minutes. By the time it's over, I'm dead, but hey, hopefully it'll all pay off.

8:30 - DINNER TIME. Normally rice + something or pasta, although occasionally, I do go out to eat. I prefer to eat by myself though, because I one, hate eating with people because I'm super self-conscious about the way I eat and two, that way I can watch TV.

Midnight - The time I try to go to bed. By going to bed at midnight and waking up at 7:30, that gives me 7.5 hours of sleep, and yet I still manage to be exhausted when I roll out of bed. How I sustained multiple nights of only 4 hours of sleep during the school year, I can't remember.

And that's it! A typical day in the week of yours truly. There are occasionally some variations (like when I have to go grocery shopping or eat dinner at 6:30 with people) but this is my summer life (:

Pittsburgh Summer

After a ridiculous number of days of not blogging, I have decided to once again, start. And so without any further ado, let this long overdue blog post begin!

This is my fourth week of being in Pittsburgh, and I have to say, being in Pittsburgh over the summer is much nicer than being in Pittsburgh during the school year. Don't get me wrong, I love and terribly miss all my friends and the long hours spent in Gates, but during the school year, there's nothing else to do other than work, eat, and sleep (in that order of priority, mind you). During the summer, I have come to appreciate the beautiful place that Pittsburgh is. And while I don't love it yet, it's definitely grown on me.

How many times will I have to apologize for the lack of posting?

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 :) 

Back in Pittsburgh!

Ready to start packing and moving into my place for the summer.

And then work starts in 2 days! So excited!