ahhh.. very bad nite indeed

so, last night was tough.

you see when they were putting our house together the ceiling guy must have been drunk or something as the ceiling in almost every room in the house has some sort of visible defect. So, now a year down the line they've finally gotten around to fixing this problem, which made last night a complete disaster.

After stumbling home at around 10 I came into the house only to find a maze of plastic sheets draped all over the place and almost every room in the house inaccessible. Being very tired and hungry, I showered, ate and dropped onto one of the old couches in the basement, too lazy to create a suitable bed. I don't know what your experiences are with sleeping in unfinished basements but the random noises are not fun. There's the humidifier, dehumidifier and air conditioning all turning on and off at random times. I must have been awaken over a dozen times by these noises only to emerge in pain from in part sleeping on the crappy couch and from my slopitch escapades. My office chair and footrest are feeling very comfortable right now and it's gonna take some energy to prevent myself from dosing off throughout the day.

what else...

ohhh, I REALLY think I'm gonna start playing golf now... so if anyone else is a beginner and wants to learn, let me know. I stress the term beginner.

lastly, I found out the other day that I will need to make a 20 minute presentation to some executives at company x... uh oh... on a report I didn't write.. double uh oh..

it's not the presentation that scares me, it's the questions. And these aren't stupid mr. crazynano random questions that no one takes seriously, these are tough, intelligent, probing questions that test if you really know what you're talking about (which of course I don't).

ahh. whatever.. we'll see what happens.

bye for now

it's been awhile...

sorry mr. crazysmallcell I will follow up on my previous post..

so, activity day was.... interesting.

The day started off with each person being placed into a designated team. From here was a bunch of very basic team-building type games, one particularly odd one being "Fear Factor", which involved sticking your hand into a bunch of milk/oatmeal/dirt to pick out letters that eventually spelt out a number of company X products. It was not particularly challenging but almost sort of disturbing when I heard of some people actually voluntarily go bobbing for letters with their face. I can only hope that I was before these odd people otherwise I was likely sticking my hand into some of their nasty saliva as well. The main driving or motivational force behind it all was the promise of a "prize" for the top team. Although we were fairly certain this prize would be some meaningless company X paraphenalia (and it was) it was enough to push us along and get us into the whole spirit of things. The low point of the day likely being when my team failed to come up with a cheer and me needing to crack out some of my "bring it on" type moves. You know your team is in trouble when I am the one coming up with the ideas for a cheer.

Following these team building games came some decent bbq and then a "round table discussion between some company x leaders". The talk was interesting but there were some definite boring points and repitition. It's hard for me to take what a lot of these people say and apply it to what I'm doing now as it seems they were moving up in the company in a totally different time period. They entered the work force when their skills were a great commodity (ie. the abscence of millions of indian programmers willing to work for a tenth of what we get) and when company was growing very rapidly. I don't see how anyone can really enter at the bottom of company X and move up very far without being absoloutely extraordinary, ie. hardworking and being able to kiss some behind. After the round table discussion was a bunch of boring lectures followed by some good strawberry shortcake. It's funny what you end up remembering.....

After the end of activity day was our first slopitch game. And what a fiasco that was. This was during the period of my arm problems so I had to place myself into the areas where underhand throwing was an asset, which of course put me at the pitcher position. I don't remember a whole bunch but I do know we got destroyed. Hopefully the other teams are not as good otherwise it'll be a very long season.

.... on a totally different note... I am hoping that company x will come through on a nice linux desktop for me. I would like to rekindle some of that linux skill I worked so dearly to obtain last summer. Although I would curse good old tux (the linux penguin) a lot of the time, it was truly a love-hate relationship. There's nothing like a good terminal window....

it's kind of late and I'm tired so I'll have to end it there. I of course would like to post more but the postings would have to focus on company x and there isn't much I can write about without getting into supposed shady confidential areas. anyhoo, I'll try my best...
bye

as I wait for "Activity" Day..

So today is the much anticipated likely overexagerated "Activity" day at Company X. It's supposed to be a day of fun for the interns but I expect a good portion of it to be the same old BS I've been hearing for years about time management, team-building etc..

anyway, I didn't realize the whole thing starts at 10 so I'm up early waiting it out till then. I thought I'd take advantage and make one of my more less frequent posts. I did also capitalize on Day One of Dell's 10 Days of Savings with an 80gb iomega external hard drive for $89! which also comes with a $20USD rebate. This is an insane deal. I plan on taking the drive down to mmm-donuts place and filling it up as soon as I get it.

today is also supposed to be the first slopitch game at company X with mr. donowork and mr. iamnotthattall. But, unfortunately I'm still uncapacited with a screwed up arm. Its a serious pain getting through the day with limited use of my right arm. Eating is an adventure and putting on a t-shirt is a slow painful struggle. I do feel it getting better so hopefully I'll be ready for future slopitch games and some tennis with mr. iwontgiveyouthepassowrd.

and then there's work. It's moving along. I along with a fellow intern are gonna go downtown next week to check out a analyst briefing on wireless technology. Although I have no clue what company X does with wirless or "pervasive" technology, I look forward to some free food and scoping out some of the competition. My main goal is not to embarass company X by looking like a complete moron.

I guess that's all for now.

bye bye