Today is a good day…

<WARNING>Computer terminology to follow</WARNING>

First of all… I’m 3 days ahead of my own personal projected schedule for the project my mentor has me on. Although, I learned on Friday that the 6 weeks included a bit more than I was originally told (which I assumed since there was no way he could think this project would take 6 weeks unless he thought I was a novice at programming). Just the same, he was pretty happy with the progress I had made and let me know a few of the features he was going to want me to work on. There was three general features he wanted me to add: a form edit feature in which he wanted to be able to update information to a database on the fly before it was approved (as opposed to as it was approved); an informational feature that allowed submitters to view what was already in the database so they didn’t have to be preempted by my data cleanliness checks; an asynchronous data association feature (basically if multiple users were approving data at the same time there is the possibility that they could overwrite each other’s data). I finished the first and second throughout the afternoon.

The third is why today is such a good day. My mentor and I argued for a bit about how exactly to do it. He said we could just use a thread pool for asynchronous data processing… I know you can control how many active processes there are in a thread pool but I still didn’t like the idea because there were situations that data could still become corrupt because there are 2 distinct functions that associate to the same data. Well… I came up with a fairly good idea to do thread queuing instead… Just a Queue data structure with containers for Threads and a control function that runs the threads in the queue as long as threads exist (the calling function kicks off the thread control which in turn exits if it is already running). I can’t test it on my actual site since I don’t have the database connections at home, but it works beautifully on a test site I made.

<END_GEEKINESS/>

Life has been boring and interesting in an odd way. I went out with some of the other interns the night before last… I work with a very wide array of people. I still don’t do much most nights. I keep thinking I might go into down town Raleigh and try to meet some people at a bar, but I haven’t been in the mood to drink at all which kind of kills my purpose. I’ve been talking to Theresa quite a bit which definitely helps with the loneliness and she flies down in 6 days (the anticipation of which is making me significantly more irritable). I’ve been waking up in the middle of the night looking for her for some reason which is as frightening as it is confusing so it will be nice to actually have her close for a few days (that is an understatement by the way).

I think thats enough broken thoughts strung together in one paragraph for now.

Lurking in the dark?

… or just avoiding eye contact?

I’m in a very poetic mood today… but I can’t think of anything to write…

My first week has gotten a lot better. I finally got to meet my mentor yesterday and we went over what my project would be for the first 8 weeks or so. According to him that will be 6 weeks of development and 2 weeks of Q&A testing. I’m not so sure on that target for 6 weeks. I’m not the most proficient at ASP.net programming and I’m still thinking this will take at worst 4 weeks to complete… If I think about it… There is 4 major modules that I have to complete each one with an entry and an approval form. I’ve already completed one of the worst entry forms (as far as I can tell) and I don’t think it will take me more than a day to finish the approval form… so basically 8 days for real development and I’ll tack a few extra on there for pretty code and code hardening… maybe a few more for requirement checking… so… 3 weeks if I manage to keep the pace I’m at now… I’m happy with the project though. Its an actual application that Cisco will use. It will have to go through a fairly major skinning process before it can be released as a 1.0 app, but that isn’t my job… I’m just creating the back end logic for it.

I’m a lot more lonely than I thought I would be… I’ve been able to talk to Theresa a lot, which helps to no end, but I can’t shake the feeling of isolation. I met some interns that also go to OSU, perhaps I can do something with them. I was also invited out to a bar tonight… don’t know if I’ll go, but it is definitely an option.

Day #2

… last one I promise…

I found out some interesting things today: First my manager doesn’t care what I wear. In his words, “We’re only interested in your brains so what ever makes you comfortable.” The only thing I really have to worry about is if I ever have to meet with customers, I should probably be at least business casual. Second, for every 2 weeks I work, I accrue 6 hours of paid time off that I can take in 8 hour increments… So, for my trip to Dallas… I’ll only have 4 days I don’t get paid for instead of 6… which is very nice. That also means that I can take a day or two off in September if anyone cares to come visit me (hint hint). Third, I can make my own hours. In general, I should be here when the core team is, but if I have to I can come in early to leave early… Basically I only report the number of hours I’m here on the honor system… its not monitored as long as I get my work done. Fourth, I can use my laptop for what ever I want for the 3 months I have it… it would appear even on the corporate network. Obviously I won’t abuse such a thing, but I think all of the above is very progressive for a company like Cisco.

This are is absolutely beautiful and the weather here is gorgeous… unfortunately it is a little warm for me to go running. I might have to find a way to work it into my morning schedule or do it late at night. I still haven’t explored much, but from what I’ve seen I don’t think I’ll have to go far to find something interesting.