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Archive for June, 2007
06.24.2007 | Another Week, Another Set of Adventures
Well, another week down here in California. This week’s adventures included moving into our apartment, the couch incident, settling in at work, and some more sightseeing.
The move-in to our apartment wasn’t as smooth as we would have liked it, but it certainly provided us with some stories for the grandkids. Although we had some major screw ups over the course of the week, I’ve really enjoyed them because they’re things I’m glad I learned now rather than later. Alex’s aunt was especially amusing because she turned our couch situation into a “teambuilding exercise” in her words. I felt like I was at some sort of RYLA Twilight Zone :). We’re doing pretty well now. We’ve managed to cook dinner for 3 nights in a row without any significant issues. Probably one of the best things about this setup is that I’m learning the many uses for dish soap, Italian dressing, and how to survive without a microwave (hello 1950!). Yeah, can you believe that!? We JUST realized that we don’t have a microwave in this place. Looks like we’ll have to find another use for our popcorn…
Work-wise, I think I’ve fallen in love with Yahoo! over the course of this week. Jerry Yang was named the new CEO, which is really cool. I got to go to the All-Hands meeting on Monday afternoon (the same day as the announcement) where Jerry, Terry (Semel, outgoing CEO) and Sue Decker (incoming President) spoke about the changes and their visions for the company, etc. It was a real *wow* moment. Cooper saved me a seat in the 4th row and the two of us just gaped in awe when Jerry was standing 4 rows from us. This guy (with David Filo) CREATED Yahoo! and there he was, no more than 6 feet from me. I was starstruck to say the least. I think he and David will be speaking at our Executive Speaker Series this Wednesday, which should be really awesome!
Our Executive Speaker this past week was Bradley Horowitz, who gets an A in my book simply for the fact that he’s the man responsible for bringing Flickr to Yahoo! Couple that with his amazing role at Yahoo! and all of the other cool things he’s done, and he’s definitely someone to look up to! He was a great choice to start off our Speaker Series and I’d love to be able to work in his Advanced Development team. It’s the perfect combination of tech, web, entrepreneurship, and innovation. It’s exactly what I love about Yahoo! and fits everything that I’d like my future career to involve. Hopefully I’ll be able to visit Brickhouse before I leave!
It’s the other random events that have made me realize how amazingly cool Yahoo! is and how fortunate I am to have this internship rather than the typical “Go collate this and bring me back a coffee and a bagel” internship. Yahoo! has such a laid back atmosphere - probably the definition of “work hard, play hard”. This week alone, I’ve had a meeting that consisted of going to see a movie, 
I played in a Foosball Tournament, and got to work from URLs all day Friday as they moved our stuff to a new building. Working from there and observing the everyday happenings of Yahoos was a great opportunity as it made me understand the incredible culture of this place. I also had the chance to hang out with some of the Sunnyvale interns as they stopped by my table to chat. I got to learn a lot about the different projects we’re all working on and just how much innovation is going on every day. It’s difficult to even comprehend!
Tomorrow, I start work from Great America, Yahoo!’s new building. Hopefully my stuff made it over there in one piece! I’m going to be in a cube closer to my team, so I should be able to get an even better understanding of the UED process. Not to mention, we get to redecorate our cubes ;).
Sightseeing/crazy experiences in San Francisco were put on hold this week as we settled in. We did get to explore 24th Street by our apartment, though. We also went to the Golden Gate Bridge yesterday, which was spectactular. As I had anticipated, it was definitely the “wow, I’m in San Francisco” moment I’d been waiting for. The only annoying part about the whole day, though, was that every time I looked at the bridge, the Full House theme song started to play in my head. The bridge is HUUUUGGGGEEEEE. We walked most of the way across, but got tired of taking the same photos and decided to double back somewere around the second pillar thing.
We had to take a bunch of different buses/street cars/etc. to get there and passed through a lot of ADORABLE neighborhoods. We got off somewhere around Lombard and Fillmore to transfer and decided to stop for lunch. Walking around there felt so much more like California than anywhere else we’ve been so far. Maybe it was the fact that was actually sunny for once, or maybe it was the view of the water from the top of yet another hill, whatever it was, I LOVED it and it absolutely sold me on coming back here to live after college. The shops are great too! We’re definitely going to have to set out a few days to go shopping and eat in the different neighborhoods.
Needless to say, I’m having a great time and I’m so glad I still have another 7 week ahead of me!
Hopefully I’ll get to blog more often now that things are starting to settle into somewhat of a routine. And Phil: I promise to blog about my project soon! Well, as much as I can say without getting into trouble 
Until next time…
06.20.2007 | Right Next Door
So I walked over to another intern’s cube to pick something up, and on my way over I look into a set of cubes. To my shock, sitting at the other end was Andy Baio, one of the co-founders of upcoming! Crazy. The other guys could be there too, but I didn’t want to stand and stare. Now if I could just run into Caterina Fake and Stewart Butterfield (Flickr) my life would be complete 
06.15.2007 | Greetings from Sunnyvale!
Hey there! Well, I’m in California. I’m alive. I started at Yahoo! on Monday. It’s going really well so far. Orientation took a day and 1/2…yay… :\ I’ve met a lot of really great people so far. Strangely, they’re not as “geek” as I expected. D and P et al take the cake on that one. My roommate is awesome (I have to say that, she found my blog! 
haha kidding). She reminds me a bit of Shannon. I’m at her aunt’s now. I was in a hotel until yesterday and now we’re here until we move into our apartment in San Francisco on Tuesday.
I’ve been going camera crazy since I got here. Lots and lots of pictures. Alex (roommate) calls me the human camera or walking camera…or something like that. I’ve taken hundreds, maybe even close to a thousand shots. Don’t worry, I didn’t put them ALL on Flickr. It’s been great though. I’ve been doing all sorts of things every day. Never a dull moment. A brief breakdown:
Saturday: arrive. Go to hotel. Explore Downtown Sunnyvale. Realize it stinks. Back to hotel. Sleep EARLY.
Sunday: Wake up EARLY. Met Cooper and a bunch of interns at the Caltrain station and went up to SF to go to the Great Gorilla Run and the Haight Street Fair. We ended up missing the Gorilla run because we didn’t want to get up that early, but we did get to go to the fair. It was really eccentric to say the least! I did go into a “paraphernalia” store. My mom was THRILLED to get that photo on her cell phone. Ate some great food and just took it all in. I also bought a tie dyed tshirt one of the few things on my list of things to buy in San Francisco. (I can’t really think of what the other things are…maybe that was the ONLY thing on the list!) So I was a happy camper. After that, we walked our way to the entrance of Golden Gate Park, but by that time Alex and her parents arrived in SF to pick me up to go check out the apt. We did that, got an early dinner in a GREAT hamburger place (I had a chicken sandwich…go figure), and then headed back. EXHAUSTING!
Monday was my first day of work. We had lots of orientation stuff. How to access things, how to get paid, what to do, what not to do: the usual. It was pretty fun though. The person doing our interview was REALLY animated. I loved her! If I were talented enough, I would make a cartoon of her and make bajillions of dollars. . That’s all we did really. An entire day of learning the ropes. AFTER work though, Alex’s uncle gave us tix to the SF Giants game. IT WAS AWESOME. We had great seats. We were on the jumbotron. Barry Bonds hit a home run. AND they won. AND I had a ballpark hotdog. It doesn’t get much better. We made it home at around 12:30AM after getting stranded in Downtown Sunnyvale and going into this 40+ year olds’ bar so they could call a cab for us. The entire day was just an adventure. There really is no other way to describe it.
Tuesday was another 1/2 day of orientation. I refer to it as Christmas though. It was IT orientation, so they brought us through how to connect to the networks, etc. blah blah blah. But then…the good part. We go in to get our laptops. I knew I was getting an Apple of some sort, but to my excitement, I got a brand new MacBook Pro. Pretty. Then I get to my cube and there’s a giant monitor waiting for me. Wonderful! Met my team browsed through what they’re working on. Basically just settled in. Wednesday was a lot of the same sans getting all sorts of new technology. I did, however, manage to snag a copy of CS3 and all sorts of other awesome progs. CS3 works like a charm on an Intel Mac. I can’t wait to get a copy for my personal laptop (anyone have a 99% off coupon?) ha!
Thursday (yesterday) Workwise, I had a lot of meetings. We had a UED (user experience design) meeting for some of the groups in Mission College and then we had UED all-hands meeting where all of the UED people (even those working in field offices) get together and show off what they’ve been up to. There’s some cool stuff coming out soon, let me tell you!
I moved out of the hotel and into Alex’s aunt’s guesthouse with Alex. We went up to SF to see our apartment, get our keys, and all that sort of stuff. After that we decided that we absolutely HAD to go to IN-N-OUT for dinner. Thanks to TomTom, we made it there in no time. What’s even better is that it it took us along the water. We weren’t expecting it at all and then all of a sudden we’re driving by the Fisherman’s Wharf! It was awesome. It was the first time I really felt like we were in San Francisco. We didn’t get to see the Golden Gate Bridge, which I think will be THE moment of “wow…I’m IN California”, but I’m sure that’s not too far in the future. Anyway - IN-N-OUT was amazing. I didn’t even mind the fact that I was eating a hamburger. We headed home after that.
That brings us to today…
Evidently Friday is “work from home” day in Silicon Valley. My manager and I were the only ones in the office! I did get to sit in on some Participatory Design tests which were pretty cool. The labs are so much cooler than the ones at Cornell! It’s really interesting to see what we learn in class about scripts and running user tests being used in real life. Should help when I take 440 (Advanced HCI) next semester! It was basically a pretty mellow day. We had our “intern welcome event” today from 3-5. Basically a party on the roof of the parking garage. It was HOT but cool. (that made no sense…but you get my point) Meetings and things are run pretty differently here. It’s all so informal! I love it!
Well…I think that’s it for now! If you’ve actually made it down this far, congrats! I hope it was worth your while! Keep following my Flickr stream, but I’ll try to blog more often so that they don’t end up being this long all the time! I’m planning on doing a “first impressions” sort of deal soon, so stay tuned for that one!
Until next time…
06.07.2007 | A Few (Random) Things
Just wanted to do a quick catch-up blog as this will probably be my last one before I head out to CA!
Things on the packing front aren’t going all that well. I’m a procrastinator. It’s how I work ;). I have to start today though! Right now I just have a suitcase lying open on my floor with nothing in it. For about a week now…
I got a Blackberry Curve. It’s awesome. I love it. Email. All. The. Time. My addiction levels have just skyrocketed. It took a while for it to sync up to the Mac, but once I got it working it hasn’t stopped. Now I just have to figure out how to twitter by email and I’ll be one happy camper. Oh, and Cingular (err…at&t) rollover minutes? How awesome is that? By the end of the year I’m going to have a couple of thousand accumulated. Oh oh! ANDDD 1500 text/picture messages? That’s 1450 MORE than I had at Verizon, AND I’m paying less per month. If you haven’t picked up on the fact that I’m in love with Cingular (err…at&t) right now, I am. Especially since it was “Friends and family” discount day yesterday and I got my phone for $150 OFF. Wonderful.
Ok…moving on…really…
Went up to Bayonne a week ago. I got to see a few more friends than I usually do. I really love going back there. I happened to run into my 3rd grade teacher - one of my FAVORITE teachers ever. There are only a handful of teachers that I can say really impacted my life, and she’s one of them. It really stinks though, because nearly all of my favorite teachers are on the verge of retirement. My junior year history teacher is retiring at the end of this year. That man is probably one of the best teachers in the district. I feel bad for future junior honors students. It’s also going to be strange next year because I won’t know any of the students as well I as I do this year’s seniors. Next year’s seniors would have been freshman my senior year, and besides the ones on volleyball, I wouldn’t have spent much time with them. Times change… lol
I think that’s about it. Just got in from a much needed pedicure (I’m not typically that high maintenance, but sometimes you have to indulge). Now time to pack!
Next blog will be from CA! I also plan a new theme soon. Something a little brighter for summer. I’m going to take some pics when I get to CA and use them in it, so stay tuned!
Until next time…