Mariah's Blog

Busy Busy Busy

2009-03-31T21:00:00.000-07:00

So I know I haven?t posted in forever, but I have an excuse? I've flown out of state 6 times since October, while balancing school, work, and trying to have a college social life. Not that I?m complaining though, all my trips have been great and I feel very lucky to have been able to travel so much. The first trip was to Georgia to see my boyfriend for the first time since he got out of basic training. It was really great, especially after spending the last 2 months only getting to write letters to each other. It was actually kind of cool though, I felt like I was back in the old days before computers and phones, when letters were the main means of communication. The next trip was right before Christmas. I made it up to Steamboat Springs, Colorado, to again visit my boyfriend who was home on leave. (Dating a boy in the military is definitely what I blame for all the traveling haha) After that, I took my first trip to New York City to meet up with my summer besties, Alli and Nadia. It was the first trip I ever planned and paid for myself, so I felt very grown up haha. It was sooo amazing to see the girls, and we had such a good time walking through time square and Greenwich Village, getting to see the Christmas tree and ice skating rink at Rockefeller center, going shopping on 5th Avenue (Tiffanys and the apple store were my faves), and, the best part of the trip, getting to see the Radio City Rockettes. It snowed one of the days we were there, which was actually kind of cool to walk through downtown New York while it was snowing. We took the train into the city everyday, which was another new experience in itself. The girls are doing great as well. Alli is going back to Microsoft this summer, and Nadia has just moved out to California for a Co-op at Cisco. You can read about her experiences at her blog here:

I made another trip out to Georgia for my boyfriend?s graduation from officer school and Military ball(YAY for pretty dresses), and recently to St. Louis Missouri to visit him again. St. Louis was great, and I got to visit the Arch downtown, the St. Louis Zoo, and a very interesting part of the town called the loop, which reminded me of a larger version of ?the Drag? here in Austin. I?m home for awhile now, but am planning my next trip to see my boyfriend at the end of May. Busy busy busy.

During all this traveling, I also turned 21. It was a great Birthday. It is tradition that I get breakfast in bed every year. My mom told me this year that I wasn?t going to get it because I was getting too old. Well my dad decided that I still needed it, so I got my breakfast in bed!! I was soo happy, I?m not sure I?ll ever be able to get over that tradition. It was so nice. Then my Mom took me to La Cantera Mall, and surprised me by walking into Tiffanys, and telling me to pick out what I wanted! I couldn?t believe it, and had wanted a bracelet from there, so I got my first Tiffany?s. We went to a restaurant and got Mimosas and Bellinis after that, I didn?t even get ID?d, probably because I was with my mom. But she made sure to ask him to check it. We had a spa day after that, and then my dad and mom and I went to sushi for dinner. It was a great birthday, and I?m now enjoying being able to go to 6th street on the weekends.

Waiting for the train into the city

In front of the apple store!

And that was my Sandwich from a New York Deli. It was HUGE!

It was sooo beautiful

Lots of snow!

We saw Moose walking through peoples yard in Steamboat Springs

My 21st Birthday Breakfast in bed!

Military Ball

OCS Graduation:

The Arch in St. Louis

We saw this Orangoutang in the Zoo. It came up to us and put that blanket on its head, then started playing peek-a-boo

Back to School!

2008-09-09T14:06:00.000-07:00

I know its been awhile, so Ill update everyone on what I've been up to since I got back from Washington. The first few weeks back were so nice, getting to spend time with my family and friends I hadn't seen all summer. It was so nice just getting to relax and do nothing during the days, and to lay out by the pool which I had missed. But before I knew it, it was time to move back up to Austin. It took us two trips up this year to move all my stuff. Since I'm in my first apartment ever, I had to bring lots of furniture and a bed. My room turned out soo cute. I have been collecting things to decorate it with since freshman year! It was so exciting to finally put it all together. My dad built all my furniture and hung my pictures, and my mom made my bed (its tradition, its her favorite part). I love my roommates and am having lots of fun with all my UT friends. But of course, i'm already sooo busy with classes. This year I'm taking differential equations, which is a math class, another CS class which focuses on theory of many topics including cryptography, security and encoding, and regular expressions, all which I'm very excited about. The class actually seems like one of my easier classes this semester. I'm also taking a Geology class, and an electrical engineering class. The EE class is basically taking over my life already. Its a self paced class, meaning that I teach myself the material from reading our textbook, and as soon as i'm done with a chapter, I take a test on it before moving to the next. Each test has to be passed with 100% correctness which is the rough part. You are expected to complete 2 chapters a week, so reading, taking notes, studying the material, and passing a test on it. Its kind of the dreaded class in the CS major, and everyone knows that the semester you take the class, you will always be stressed out and pretty much have no life outside of it. So I'm already feeling the strains of dreaded EE, but I knew it was coming. This is the first semester I really do almost nothing but study. Good thing I had the Microsoft internship to motivate me, so I keep pushing through instead of getting lazy and giving up. Besides school, I'm looking into some interesting clubs to join. I went to a meeting last night for the Sailing club. They go out every Saturday and sail on Lake Travis. Its so beautiful out there and I love being on the water, so the club seemed like a great idea. 2 of my friends are planning on joining as well so Ill keep you updated on how it goes. We plan to try it this Saturday for the first time. And, of course fall semester means FOOTBALL SEASON!!! I went to the first game (and survived the heat and constant standing) and was so excited to see our Longhorns do so well. The second game was another blowout, and I had fun watching it at a restaurant surrounded by UT fans. This weekends game should be fun, since its the first team that might give us a little run for our money. Hope ya'll are watching the games! Well thats about all for now! Should have some more exciting things coming up!

My journey comes to an end...

2008-08-07T19:22:00.000-07:00

So i'm back in Texas, and the heat is killing me. I never thought that, being a born and raised Texan, I would ever loose my immunity to the 100 degree weather, but I am definitely having to readjust. I'm also readjusting to life not at Microsoft, and that is the hardest part. I already miss my friends so much, and I had to cry a little on Monday when I wasn't going to work. But if I look at the positive, who can say they love their work that much! I feel so privileged not only to have had the experience of a lifetime, but to have been able to prove to myself that this is my passion, and what I truly want to do with the rest of my life. I've come home so inspired to learn more, and work harder. As hard as it was to leave, I look back with only amazing memories and lessons and now have the rare opportunity to do nothing with my time but learn, learn, learn. I just have to remember that if I work hard enough, that summer can be extended to full time.

Its been nice being home though. My parents and grandma picked me up from the airport, and my mom had a Welcome Home banner and balloons for me at the house. My dad had made a great dinner and we had some family friends over. I've definitely been a little bored during the days, but have had lots of time to rest and unpack, and am even starting some reading for a class I will be taking this semester. And of course I will get to spend lots of time with my Granny! I'm finally getting used to the idea of being home, and actually got excited (for about a minute this morning) to go back to school.

I will just back track a little on my last few days at Microsoft. The second to last day, we did presentations for all the Explorers. Everyones project was really great! I was very impressed with all of us, how much work we all managed to get done in one summer, and how professional everyones projects turned out. Our project was probably the most unique. We were one of the only groups to have a project that was so focused on user experience and a "coolness factor" for users. Most of the projects were more technical, and more aimed and admins, where as ours was aimed at college students and had way more UI. After presentations, we went kayaking. It was our LAST explorer event!!! We had a good time though. We split into groups, and I was in the second. While the first group went on the lake, the other half of us went with our recruiter down to Alki beach. We walked around and played in the water. She showed us her favorite condo (Alki is lined with amazing condos) and we even went in and took a tour of the model rooms. It was GORGEOUS! We decided she needed to buy it so all the explorers could go live with her next summer. It had floor to ceiling windows, and a beautiful roof view of the beach. We finally got to get on the lake, my roommates and I got a triple seat boat. It was a pretty interesting experience, I had never been kayaking before. But being on the water with the Seattle skyline in the background was so gorgeous. We only stayed out for a little while because the first group had been on the water for awhile, and we needed to get back. (Thank goodness my arms were killing me). The next day, our last day, we had a goodbye lunch with our team. It was so sad to be seeing everyone for the last time, but so nice for everyone to come to say goodbye. We also had a presentation to our VP. He seemed to like or project, so that was pretty exciting. We cleaned out our desks, and took some final pictures, cried a little, then went home to finish packing. We met all the explorers and our recruiter later at ihop for a final goodbye dinner. Then we went to an explorers place and had a pinata party. It was pretty funny but was nice to hang out with everyone one last time. We said goodbyes, then had some of our friends over to hang out at our apartment. We all just finished packing and sat around the table and talked. It was a pretty low key night. We tried to stay up all night, but I finally went to bed around 3:30. It was sooo sad to say goodbye to my roommates (we did our goodbyes before we went to sleep), but I did make plane tickets to go to NEW YORK to visit my roommates!!! So I have a countdown going until I get to see them again, I'm sooo excited!

All the explorers before we went kayaking

My roomies and I!

Kayaking for the first time!

Beautiful skyline

My last day at work

The last party with the explorers

Pinata party

Well, thats about it. Thanks to everyone who kept up with my blog, its been a great summer and I have loved being able to share my experiences. I will keep writing, but way less frequently. Only when cool things happen at school.

On the Lake!!

2008-07-24T23:26:00.000-07:00

After work today, our PM manager took us out on Lake Sammamish. It was so much fun and I got to wakeboard for the first time ever. The lake was beautiful, surrounded by trees, gorgeous houses, and a great view of Mt. Rainier. I decided I HAVE to have a boat when I move here for real haha!!

Exchange Explorers!!

My roomie!

Getting ready to wakeboard for the first time ever!!!

The water was sooo cold at first

I finally made it up!

The Sunset on the lake was BEAUTIFUL!!

Microsoft SPOILS Me!!

2008-07-22T19:53:00.000-07:00

All the UT interns at our Texas Picnic

At the office late at night

Devs....taking a nap at the office after a long night at work

The winners of the Guitar Hero Contest....Exchange employees take the comp. very seriously

Exchange Explorers

Our police escort lining up

Traffic stopped on the highway

The bridge close down

At the intern party

Ben Folds, one of the performers of the night

@ the Microsoft company picnic

w/ Mt. Si in the background

This was one of the tractors full of drinks

Motorcross

These are two of my fellow interns

Microsoft store with Mt. Si in the background

Explorers at the picnic

Mt. Rainier

Barefoot in the snow!

WITH STEVE BALLMER!!!!!

So this weekend was full of fun Microsoft Activities. It was much needed after a hard week of working late nights (until 4 AM one night). Friday was great because we finally checked in our code, thus ending development hell for the time being (until the bugs start coming in of course). We only worked half a day and then went to a really nice park for the Exchange Summer Picnic. There was burgers and hotdogs, lots of games and rides for kids, a Guitar Hero concert/contest (yes super nerdy...again), and a dodgeball tournament. My teammate and my admins formed a team call "You got Servered"...haha get it we work on exchange SERVER. Anyways, they ended up winning! It was so funny to watch all these people that I work with everyday, including my bosses boss, playing dodgeball. It was lots of fun, but we left early to get back to Microsoft in time to catch the busses that would take us to the zoo for the intern party. There were 21 busses, and since Microsoft basically just does whatever it wants, they shut down entire 4 lane highways, all the side streets, and the entire bridge to get into Seattle just for us. We had a police escort the entire way. Traffic was crazy! We were so shocked that Microsoft did that. We got to the zoo, and they gave us fold out chairs that said microsoft on them and blankets (cuz it actually gets cold at night here haha), and we set up our stuff by the stage. There was lots of good food, 4 freezers kept stocked with Ice cream, a candy bar and a beer garden which I couldnt go into. There was a band and a solo artist, both were very good. It was lots of fun, and at the end of the night they gave us Zunes (which is like Microsofts version of the iPod.) The next day, we were up pretty early to make it to the Microsoft Company picnic. It was at the gorgeous park right at the base of Mt. Si. The scenery was so Beautiful, and the picnic was more like a carnival that just a company picnic. There were 3 bands playing throughout the park, tons of rides and games, guest performances including motorcross, and TONS of free food. It was amazing, there were so many different food stations with everything from hamburgers to curry chicken, bbq ribs, grilles salmon, salads, stir fry, and fresh fruit. Then the drinks were huge tractors just filled with sodas, and when one would run out they would just drive another one in. There were soooo many people too, and the picnic goes on Saturday and Sunday for 2 weekends. After all this it was really obvious that Microsoft is an Empire. They have so much money as a company its unbelievable ( and they use it to treat their employees so great!) The next day, we had a hike on Mt. Rainier planned. I almost didnt go because I woke up 15 minutes before the busses were scheduled to leave. But I got ready really fast (and thankfully I work for Microsoft where nothing starts on time) so I made it. But because I was rushing, a few minutes after the bus pulled out, I realized I had left my tennis shoes in my car and was still wearing flip flops. So that kinda sucked. I slept for most of the drive there, and when I woke up the scenery was amazing. All of a sudden that small mountain we see from the city was HUGE! So we go to climb the mountain, and I'm thinking that ya my feet will probably hurt like crazy at the end of the day, but I should be able to do it nonetheless. Its a well traveled path, it should be pretty easy. NOPE! It was ALL snow!!! Definitely a weird experience trying to hike in flip flops, and yes I got made fun of pretty badly. It was hard enough for people in tennis shoes to not fall, much less me. So about 1o minutes up the mountain, my feet are frozen and my leather shoes are soaked. Luckily one of my friends was nice enough to stay with me so we just found a rock and hung out up on the mountain for awhile. I attempted to make a snowman, and we just sat and enjoyed the scenery. Then we climbed down, which went much faster granted I was on my butt a lot of the way haha. We played in the snow at the bottom and ate lunch and the others were back down soon. Even without getting to climb the whole way, it was so beautiful out there and I was really happy to have gotten to take the trip. Everyone was so sore and tired from falling anyways, maybe I got the better deal. So the weekend was packed but it was great. Today, tuesday, was the annual product fair. They set up booths for all the new products and technologies for everyone to learn about. They reserve the morning of the first day just for interns, and have a special keynote from Steve Ballmer, the CEO. It was sooo awesome, and he is sooo funny. I was a little stalkerish after the talk and I went and got a picture with him. It was a group pic but it was still really cool and I was super excited. A work update, we are now in the testing stage and are hoping to get lots of bugs worked out, and start working on our presentation. I can't believe our product that was nothing when we came is almost ship quality!!! But work has been good, and i'm just enjoying my last 2 weeks with my friends and all the amazing people at work!

Puzzle Day and more...

2008-07-12T20:13:00.001-07:00

My puzzle day team!

Trying to stay organized

These were all the cupcakes!

Working hard...

We got pieces of this rocket when we solved certain puzzles, to win first place you had to launch it first. We didnt win...

See how seriously the Microsoft employees take puzzle day. This guy actually wrote one of our puzzles.

So last Saturday was puzzle day. Its an intern event, kind of like a scavenger hunt except we have to solve puzzles all day around campus. Its taken very seriously here at Microsoft and even the employees get dressed up to fit the theme. This years theme was Microsoft Interngalactic Summit, so all the puzzles had to do with space stuff (yes star wars and star trek like crazy...super nerdy I know). My team was named Entropy, and we reserved conference rooms in our work buildings to do the puzzles. The puzzles are all pretty complex, and we were starting slow until I finally went to our smartest teammates apartment to wake him up and drag him to puzzle day. The puzzles were all pretty cool and written by Microsoft employees too! One puzzle was a stack of pictures with captions at the bottom. Except each pictures caption was really a caption for another pic in the stack. So you had to match each picture with its correct caption which created a chain of linked pics. Each caption had one red letter so when you look only the red letters on each pictures it spelled out, look under your table. When you look under the table there is a LED invisible ink detector. Each of the pics had letters written on them in invisible ink (which we knew about before hand and had already tried microwaving the pics and using a lighter to burn them a little thinking heat would make the ink show...wrong). Then the invisible letters finally spelled out the answer. Another puzzle clue was a tray of hostess cupcakes. One of our teammates went to get them, but had forgotten his badge at home so couldnt get into the building to get them. Insead, he snuck through an open back kitchen door before anyone else had gotten their tray and took one, while hiding 4 others. On his way back he started eating them (he didnt realize they were a clue and just thought it was free food). So when he got back and everyone started eating them, we realize some of them were missing the cake part underneath the frosting. About half of the cupcakes were totally cakeless. We then realized it must have been a clue. Luckily, since there were still 4 trays hidden, he went back to the kitchen and got them and we ended up with 5 trays of cupcakes. Turns out, the cupcakes without the cake translated to 0's and the cake ones were 1's. It was 4 binary strings which translated to the word SPAY. Random! It was a pretty fun day though. Anyways, we ended up coming in 21st out of 35 teams which we were excited about since we were the youngest team. Plus, we beat the MIT team and the other explorer team!

Sunday was lots of fun. We woke up early and went to brunch at Saltys on Alki. Their Sunday brunch is world famous, even though I think the food at the brunch at la Mansion in San Antonio might be a little better. The view here was amazing though. We sat overlooking the water with a gorgeous view of Seattle on the other side. From there we went downtown and shopped for awhile. Spent way too much money...but it was all necessary I promise (I didnt have any gold heels and I needed some haha) Then we went to Pike Place market, probably for the last time (AAAHHHH!) and I got lots of fruit. Then we came home and slept for a little while. Its so nice because at 8 'o clock when I wake up from a nap, its still light out to go do something. So I called a friend and we went down to my favorite park and just sat by the water until the sun had set. We watched a movie at the apartment and I got to bed pretty early. It was a great weekend, and one of the last ones Ill get to enjoy around Seattle. Microsoft has tons of stuff planned for this upcoming weekend, and the following weekend, my last here, we were planning a trip to Canada.

And then back to work. its Wednesday now, and the past 2 days I havent left work until about 10 pm. We have to have all our code in by end of the day Thursday, so its super crunch time. Not only do our features have to been done, but we have to have all the teammates parts integrated, unit testing done on each feature, all errors handled, documentation, ect... Last night was pretty fun though. We were working and one of our friends shows up at the office, which is pretty cool because he is super smart and helped us out a lot. Then 2 of our other friends show up, but instead of help they more just talk. It totally turned in the building 34 social hour. So an hour later we are back to work, and getting a bit slap happy. Its weird to be the only people in the building, we can be as loud as we want haha. But we made decent progress even with the interruptions, and still have two full days to finish everything. Wish us luck!!!

2008-07-11T17:18:00.000-07:00

The sunset at Gasworks park before the fireworks started

The park was packed. They really celebrate the 4th up here

Hiking:

I was so excited to see SNOW!!

At Pike Place Market. They throw the fish, my mom got this great show of the guy catching one!

A great view of Seattle

Today we had off work for "intern day of caring". All the interns were bussed to different places around Seattle to do volunteer work. My group was taken to a place called food line, which is a group that collects food from grocery stores and food drives, and distributes it to the shelters around Seattle. We spent the day going through food that had been donated in food drives, making sure it was still okay to be distributed, and organizing it into boxes. It was fun getting to spend time outside of work with all my friends, and helping out the Seattle community. It did get tiring however, we made another trip to the beach last night for another bonfire and didn't make it home in time to get more than 4 hours of sleep. I'm actually in bed about to take a nap haha. But we had a great time last night; its one of my favorite things to do here...tons of stars were out and I think Saturn?? Anyways, after we got done volunteering they had a party for us outside on the soccer fields. There was food and music, and we got to listen to Lisa Brummel speak. She is the VP of Human Resources, and is huge at Microsoft. She is right below Bill (or now Steve) in rank. She spoke about her career, and about who Microsoft is and what it can do for us. She reminded us that, no matter whether we come back to work here or not, interning here is a rare, once in a lifetime experience, and that we really have to take advantage. They put so much into who they recruit, and the culture they want Microsoft to have, and its unlike any other company. Its amazing to me to see the amount of talent this company hosts. She has been with the company for almost 20 years, and has really seen its development. She told us that Microsoft is a business phenomenon, and a company that has truly changed the world and will continue to do so, and that even being here for just a summer, we have been part of that history. It was really great to hear her speak, and it just reminds me again, how appreciative I am to have been given this experience, and to have met and learned from some of the most amazing people.

To back track a little, I had an amazing fourth of July weekend because my parents came to visit me!! We had lots of fun, even though the days they were here were the only days it had rained in weeks. Oh well, they finally had a clear day to see the mountains the day they left. But their visit was a blast. We spent time hiking (and actually got to see snow) and in downtown Seattle eating the best clam chowder ever on the shoreline and buying amazing fruits, veggies, flowers, pasta, and seafood at Pikes Place market. The best night was when my parents made dinner at my apartment. Everything was so fresh and we had lots of fun just relaxing and talking. It was so fun to show them around my office, and tell them about what I do and where I go everyday. The trip was awesome overall, though there were a few transportation issues. We saw the most amazing fireworks show at Gasworks park, but spent 2 hours after trying to get home through traffic and getting lost. Then, the last day here, we spent a gorgeous morning walking on Alki beach before realizing our car had been towed. We ordered chinese in the hotel that night, we were so tired from walking up and down the beach a million times! Its okay to look back on now but at the time it kind of sucked. We did meet some cool hangglider people who helped us though.

A work update. We have officially completed a working gadget incorporating all of our priority one features. We had a demo for all of our managers, and of course they critiqued it like crazy, but were also very proud. A quote from Randy Pauch that I really appreciate, "When you are screwing up and nobody says anything to you anymore, that means they've given up on you. You may not want to hear it but your critics are the ones telling you they still love you and care about you, and want to make you better." So they gave us input, and told us to take it with a grain of salt because in the end, this is our project and we have made the decisions we have very carefully, and for a reason. And though our critics have more experience, our opinions are just as valid and may sometimes even be more logical. We spend all day thinking and working with this gadget; its our baby at this point. Every single one of us care so much about making it the best it can be, we even considered trying to stay an extra week without pay to rewrite some of the code so that it isn't dependent on an API we are using. Don't worry mom, i'm sure that won't happen, but it just shows how much we dedicate ourselves to this project. It was so fun though, piecing together each persons code and seeing the complete gadget. I honestly thought "did we really make that?, how did we do it?" It was so fun, and i'm so proud of my team, and am so thankful to my managers. Everyone has been so amazing and I will cherish what i'm learning from them, both career and life lessons, forever. My biggest personal dilemma right now is trying to decide if I want to mock interview as a program manager, or a developer engineer. For me its almost a balancing game of what I want versus what I'm good at. I think I could easily handle the program manager role. I have the motivation and skills to manage people as well as the technical knowlege and logical thinking skills needed to design and plan for a project. But i'm not sure how interested in that position I am. I'm so surprised that I have really enjoyed the development role, and while I know that I could sit down with any project and do whatever it takes to get it done, I get nervous that I may not have the natural talent to impress interviewers. And I know that being scared is never a reason not to go for something, so I am leaning more towards developer, but its something I have to think about and decide.

But other than that, things have just been busy busy busy at work and outside of work I'm just trying to spend lots of time with my friends and doing things I will not have when I get back to Texas (reading a good book outside in the grass under a beautiful tree by the waterfront with 73 degree temp as the sun is setting...Jealous?? lol) But only three weeks until i'm home. I'm trying not to think about it, even though I am excited to see all ya'll! We still have some fun events planned, and tons more work to do on our gadget, implementing priority 2 features and working on release and shipping. I'll keep ya'll updated!

2008-07-02T23:15:00.000-07:00

We went glassblowing last friday as an explorer event. It was pretty cool to see how it works, but the studio got so hot. We all made ornaments, and got to choose which color we wanted to make. This week has been really good. Its a short week for the fourth of July! I get out early tomorrow to go pick my parents up from the airtport. I'm so excited to see them, I just hope the weather is good. It started raining today. Work has been busy though. Because its a short week, we have stayed late for the past 2 days. We have gotten deep into the coding, however, so i'm having lots of fun. I've been working on two features. One is just an internal feature that will encrypt passwords to store them, and the other is the actual text box on the gadget. It will control which kind of characters to accept and will count down how many characters are left. We have been staying up late every night and hanging out with friends since everyone is either going home for the weekend or having family up here. Monday night was lots of fun. We went to my favorite park in Bellevue thats right on the water. It was closed and pitch black so we walked down the trails to the waterfront using our cell phones for light. We spread out blankets and built a fire in the sand. We roasted marshmallows and made s'mores, it was so nice. It was a clear night so we got to see lots of stars, and even some satellites and a shooting star. We plan on going back again soon.

This was our Glass Blowing Explorer event:

At the beach in Bellevue:

The boys building the fire

This was our campfire at the beach

2008-06-30T08:42:00.000-07:00

At Alki Beach for the Day

We had a fire on the beach, and roasted marshmallows

The sunset was so BEAUTIFUL:

OMG!!!!

2008-06-25T19:06:00.000-07:00

Right after we got our code working!! We were sooo excited!

Today was the best day at work! For the past few days we have been trying to tackle the problem of how exactly we were going to send a text message from our gadget to someone's phone. It seemed like such a complex problem, and probably would have been if we hadn't discovered what we figured out today. The way we were approaching the problem was by implementing an API that would send an email message through something called exchange web services. The problem was, we didn't always have the URL to get to this EWS(exchange web services) server. Also, the way we would send info was through calls called SOAP calls that act as an envelope in sending a letter. They package the information being sent and contain the information on who is receiving it. We created these soap calls by auto-generating a proxy, which turned out to be these long pages of code that were so hard to work with. So, after talking with many people, we were put in contact with a PM who works with the Exchange Web Services. Turns out, he created an API (that won't be released until the newest version of exchange and is therefore not documented yet) that sends information. It gets the URL through auto-discovery all without using a proxy. We were FREAKING OUT when he told us this. We had been talking with devs trying to figure out how all this was going to work, and in a few hours were introduced to the perfect API that does exactly what we need, and can now send texts from our program containing maybe 20 lines of code. It was sooooo amazing!!!! There is still a lot of work, because I now have to change up my feature a little to be able to store the credentials the user with log on with in a secure way so the gadget doesnt actually have to stay connected to the server constantly, and still not make the user sign in multiple times. Also, we have a lot of testing to do, plenty of priority 2 features to implement if we want, and tons of UI (user interface...the way the gadget looks) work to do. But we finally made it down probably one of the biggest hills put in front of us, and hopefully it will be relatively smooth sailing from here. Our managers jokes that now we figured this out, we need to start another gadget. But so after a pretty stressful week of staring at code and wondering what the heck we were going to do, we made intense progress, and now have tons of breathing room. YAY!!!

Microsoft Models!!

2008-06-22T22:36:00.000-07:00

The girls and I decided we needed cute pics by the Microsoft Signs!

(we went sight seeing after our photo shoot and gots lots of crazy looks and comments for all wearing green dresses)

Pictures!!!

2008-06-21T20:01:00.000-07:00

The Waterfall from above...before we started hiking to the bottom

Just getting to the bottom of the hill

Climbing down to the waterfall

This is our recruiter, Racquel....She's awesome!!

The Explorer interns!!

The Explorer GIRLS!!!

I just thought this picture was really cool...you can see all the water in the air.

It felt like it was raining, the waterfall was so strong.

This is me and another Exchange Explorer, Akansha

The Exchange Explorers with our recruiter, Racquel

Roommates!!!

At the Mariners Baseball game

We got a shoutout on the megatron

2008-06-19T23:01:00.000-07:00

This week has been super productive. Since Monday, we decided to completely change our gadget. The connectivity gadget was getting so complicated in the sense that we didn’t know how to make it accurate enough to be useful, and also to make it exciting enough for people to actually use it. We decided to create an SMS gadget that will work directly with exchange. We figured that since the new product we are working on called exchange labs will target more college students initially, this would be a perfect gadget. Plus, we contacted the SMS messaging team located in china and they sent us a reply with a link to the class they used to implement SMS messaging in the online email access client that exchange has, as well as links to sites giving tips on how to implement the SDK which we downloaded for using an ID to log onto the server. So today we finally got a server specifically for developing our gadget, as well as access to the entire source code library for exchange! It took almost two hours to download all the files to my machine. Its just crazy that all the super confidential Exchange source code is on my machine. So anyways, for the next few days it will just be a lot of researching technologies. Its like we got over one hill, and are now sitting at the bottom of a brand new, even bigger hill. We have to learn a whole new set of skills and technologies in order to complete the next part of the project. We are however, making progress.

So for the cooking, I am getting better. We cooked a full meal for the first time the other night. We have some friends that make fun of how often we make frozen pizzas when they come over, so we decided to prove that we can actually cook. We made my moms lasagna, green beans, salad, garlic bread, and cheesecake…and it was really good!!! They were so impressed, and we had lots of fun.

Making Lasagna

Our pretty table!

We had ducks come to our back porch.

This was our group on the beach at sunset

At the bar-b-Que. after the beach

Work Update

2008-06-15T23:07:00.000-07:00

So back to work tomorrow. Last week got pretty stressful, I'm still learning what a huge process it is to create an application. We are finally moving to the development stage, so far its been all planning. We kept coming up with ideas, then figuring out how difficult they were, or deciding they weren't useful enough. It was so hard to find something that people would use, and that would benefit the company, but that we could finish in 8 weeks we have. We started with an idea for a gadget that would tell the users if they were able to send and receive email. This idea was useful to the company in that it would lower support calls by letting a user know if they had connectivity problems, and therefore save money, but it became an issue of how exactly do you test whether someone can send and receive email. There are innumerable paths for a email to get to someone's mailbox, so actually checking that an email you sent out was received is impossible. We could check that the connection between a users personal mailbox and the hub that actually transports the email was in tact, but wouldn't guarantee the user was able to receive email because a connection could be out elsewhere. There were also issues of what email service someone is using. Exchange works with on premise servers, and off premise servers (the server is actually on Microsoft campus) as well as other clients like Imap accounts, and Smart phones . So this idea is proving to be very difficult, and though we haven't canceled it out, we are trying to implement a new idea. We have, however, begun programming a dummy gadget. We split the project into features, and I (along with one other girl) will own the log-in feature. We will be responsible for creating a log in page that will take a ID, find the credentials that correspond with that ID (located on the server), verify the credentials and then display the information the gadget uses from the server. I'm really excited about it. We have already made progress and its so cool to figure something new out and see it actually work. This week will be mostly coding and we hope to have that feature completed by the end of the week! I'm so glad we finally have something to show for our work. We are still deciding on the other 2 features, so we will have to work on that this week as well.

The weekend was good. We went to the beach with a bunch of friends on Saturday evening. We had planned to have a bonfire on the beach but all the fire pits were taken so we just hung out for awhile then went to a friends and bar-b-qued. a lot of the interns were they, so it was lots of fun. Today one of my roommates and our friend went to a few waterfront parks, then went walking around a small town called kirkland. Then we went over to a friends and bar-b-qued again. It was such nice weather, so it was good to spend some time outdoors.

Just Pics!

2008-06-11T07:52:00.001-07:00

Our Limos!!

This was the house from sleepless in Seattle

Where the Mariners Play

Where the Seahawks Play

This is the first beach we went to on Sunday

This is a really cool panoramic my roommate took. Click on it you can see it bigger.

Kung Fu Panda!!!

2008-06-07T14:47:00.000-07:00

Today was great! We slept in then met with 21 of the 24 Explorer interns and went down to Seattle to see Kung Fu panda. We got there around 3, for the 5 o'clock movie, which was already sold out. We decided to go to the 7 o'clock, which gave us 4 hours to waste. We walked around the children's science museum that is attached to the imax where we were seeing the movie, and it was sooo much fun! From there we walked outside through the Seattle city park which is at the base of the space needle. It had a band playing outside, a nice park, rides and food stands, and a really cool fountain that you could play in. We took the monorail to a different part of Seattle where we went to two different malls. We just walked around and talked, didn't really do much shopping but all made plans to go back on pay day for the really nice spa we saw, all the cool restaurants, and the shopping. We all made it back to the movie on time and together. It was the most organized trip I've ever been on with 21 people driving down together, walking all around 2 different parts of Seattle, and getting back to the movie on time. Kung Fu Panda was sooo cute, and we already have plans to go back to see Wall-E. It was so nice to get to meet other interns today. This was the first time I had hung out with so many of them at one time and I really got to know some cool people, even a guy from USC...who I did remind about their loss to the longhorns 2 years ago! Tonight we are being lazy and just watching a movie and getting sleep. Tomorrow I think we are going to try and go to Bellevue and maybe find a nice waterfront!

Going to see Kung Fu Panda!!!

At the children's science museum in Seattle

A really cool fountain in a park in Seattle

Most of the Explorer Interns!

We Matched!!

These are gifts our admins surprised us with to remind us about our Seattle tour on Monday.

This was the first gadget I made...EVER!!

2008-06-05T22:49:00.001-07:00

So this week was pretty stressful. We are finally starting to do actual work and I'm realizing how hard it is to do software development, even on a small scale like the project i'm involved with. Our biggest challenge so far, is coming up with a gadget that will actually be useful, and that is feasible in our 8-week time limit. We had to first pick who we wanted to target, either the tenant admins who buy the server product and deal with more details, or the end user who only cares about usability features. We tried to do a mix, and have come up with an idea for a gadget that takes a users credentials when logging on to windows, and shows the storage space for that users mailbox, as well as the status of the server. It will also show details like when the user last logged on and where for security purposes. This is still in the works, however, but i'm REALLY hoping these features will stick this time (we have been through sooo many ideas) and that the PM's can draw up specs (drawings which write/draw out all the details of the product) so that I can begin work on the development specs (how we will approach this from a development standpoint, and what technologies we will use) and then begin writing code. Its a much more complex process that I had ever thought and I cant imagine writing something as huge as the entire Exchange server product that has millions of lines of code. But today was better, I didnt just have to sit in front of the computer and learn different languages. We started today by going to a keynote given by Steve Ballmer, Microsofts CEO. It was just a general talk about where Microsoft is as a company and what their goals are in the future. It was just cool to have seen him in person, we were all pretty excited. Also, we had a fire drill the other day and one of the other interns saw Bill Gates evacuating. We were keeping an eye out for him but he must have gone out a back exit because the girl that saw him was in the building behind us. So close! The day went by really quickly because we had so many meetings, but towards the end of the day I got to job shadow a PM (project manager). The role of PM is what I think I would be best at and what I think I would enjoy more. I have chosen to be developer, however, because I am most scared of it and want to get experience while i'm in an internship with so many resources and a team to help me out. Also, most out of college hires are developers because there are so many positions, so I think it is really important to be strong in this area. The PM that I shadowed, however, had a pretty cool job. He basically was sent every bug that the product had, and his job was to decide if it was worth fixing, and if so deign the way to change the system to fix it. There are other PM's who's job is to deign products from scrach. Both are pretty cool. I will be shadowing more PM's, developers, and testers in the next few weeks, so i'm excited. Its a nice way to break up a work day and get to spend time with different people that do such different things within the same team. My manager is also trying to get us a job shadow with someone from the XBox team!! Keep your fingers crossed for me! Also today, we all sat down individually with our manager to put together a list of personal goals. It really made me feel better, because lately I had been getting nervous about how productive we had been so far, and about how well we were working as a team. He put me to ease, though, and told me that he had noticed how worried we had all seemed about making progress faster but that the first few weeks were always slow in any project and to calm down. He also talked about how you have to get used to the job you are in. I am a developer, but still try to be so active in the duties of PM because I care so much about their decisions. I have to learn to trust them and just do my own job. It is really taking a lot to get used to how to work in a company, rather than in a school setting, and I feel so lucky to be getting this experience so young. So today was good, but i'm soooo happy tomorrow is friday. This working full time thing wares me out. And sorry I'm not writing as often, most of the things I do all day are really technical and I would bore everyone by trying to explain them. Hopefully I'll get to do more exciting things over the weekend!!

My first tears of frustration

2008-06-02T00:01:00.000-07:00

Today was a pretty lazy day. I woke up early and my roommates and I ate breakfast together (while on our computers, its becoming a morning ritual), then went to the gym that Microsoft gives us membership to. Its called ProSport and its the biggest gym in North America. They said that it started out as a small gym but when Microsoft showed up right down the street, they had to continue to expand to accommodate all the Micro employees. It wasn't that impressive from the outside, but was very nice on the inside. It had a full restaurant and coffee shop, as well as 3 cardio centers, some of which have dimmed lighting. I thought that was kinda weird. We had fun, and went in the pool and hot tub. When we came home we made lunch and I did much better on my meal! My roommate (the one in my group at work) and I decided to start doing some research about our project. Since we have to create a Windows Vista Gadget, we opened up an existing gadget, looked at its source code, and noticed what kind of files create that gadget. Turns out its made from 4 files, a simple HTML file, an XML file (both are mark up languages which basically means they only deal with basic text) a javascript file which tells the two markup language files how to behave, and a CSS file which tells the markup language how to look. Its pretty simple process and we were very excited to understand this, and also that hopefully actually creating the gadget won't be so hard. The hard part will be connecting the gadget to the Exchange server, which is when we will use C# (an actual programming language not just a markup language or scripting language like the previous). So we went out to eat with some friends, then came home with a movie from blockbuster, and while our friends watched the movie, my roommate and I worked on creating a simple gadget with the process we had learned. She got some help from one of my friends who was here, while I struggled by myself ( He gave me some pointers but i'm determined to understand it for myself and not just have someone show me). She finally got her gadget to work, and I was still struggling. They all watched the movie, and I went to my bedroom, and just got more and more frustrated trying to get this stupid thing to work!!! So thats where the tears came! I'm sure there will be many more to come; i've accepted that its just part of being a CS student, but on this project my first ones were tonight. Well I did finally get my gadget to work, at about midnight! What a pain. And it was all just a few grammatical bugs. Anyways, nothing else to interesting today. Back to work tomorrow!!

Its Friday!

2008-05-30T20:21:00.000-07:00

This is the Exchange Party (that is our cafeteria)

Exchange Explorers!

Friday was another great day at work. It was a lot more of getting organized and understanding the network at Microsoft, and all the tools we will need to use. We finally got our laptops set up, after lots of difficulty, so now we can start working from home as well! We got to go to our first CEP (Customer Experience, which is the branch of exchange I work within) Exchange team meeting, which included the head project manager, lots of full times, and my personal manager. It was totally scary. We walked in and were scared to sit down because there weren't enough chairs, but the PM who conducted the meeting made us sit and some of the full times stand! He introduced us around the room, and told the team about the project we will be working on. The entire meeting was over my head, and was actually really intimidating. A lot of the things they talked about were internal issues like a program for catching and dealing with bugs properly, so I wouldn't understand how to use them unless I was used to the way Microsoft has its employees stay organized, but listening to the developers talk about creating that particular application, was sooo scary! Someday I'M going to have to do that!!! But the PM said he was very proud of us for staying awake throughout the meeting, so I guess we succeeded in acting like we knew what was going on. I've begun to realize, though, how much Microsoft does that I never even knew about. All their server products, and business applications. I've always loved apple, but you honestly can't even compare the two companies. There are things that Microsoft does, that apple just doesn't, and doesn't need to. They are two completely different companies, both totally amazing! Its really neat, though, to have this stereotype that I've always had towards Microsoft disappear. I've always respected them as a company, but still made fun of the design and functionality of lots of their products. Its not until working there that I really see how many awesome things Microsoft does, and the new technologies that they contribute to. They are way more than just the company that makes Windows and Word, they really do so much! Around 4, my manager came and got us and took us to the cafeteria where they were having their monthly "MAPI beers" which is a party for the entire exchange team. It was pretty fun...and kinda nerdy haha. They had a DJ, and catering, and someone that did caricatures . We met a few people that worked on our floor, and socialized with the older exchange interns. My internship is only for freshman and sophomores, and there are only 4 of us in Exchange. They call us the Pod haha! Then there are other interns that are juniors and seniors, and each of them works individually on a project, rather that in a group like ours. After the party, my group went back upstairs to work. Our manager was kind of surprised, I dont think he expected us to all be so excited, and asking so many questions. We stayed until about 7, and were the only people left. On a friday, even the full times, leave early. But we are still so excited to be there we all basically want to sleep in the office. We borrowed lots of books from our manager, and will spend some time during the weekend studying. Friday night, we had some other explorer interns over to our apartment and had lots of fun. This morning (Saturday) my roommates and I went to downtown Seattle to Pikes place market, which is like a huge farmers market. They have tons of vegetable and fruit stands, a few flower stands with the most gorgeous bouquets for 10-2o dollars. They had a pasta stand with all sorts of dried pastas like chocolate, mixed fruit, and normal ones like lemon garlic and basil pesto. Lots of gift shops and restaurants as well. We stopped at the cutest bakery with the line out the door and got a Cinnamon roll with apple it it. The smell of the bakery was AMAZING...I thought of you granny!! We had lunch at this little sandwich shop that had very different things. My sandwich was ham with artichoke hearts and cheese on the best bread. We did a little shopping in the stores all around downtown, not just pike place market but it was a little rainy and COLD ( its may wheres the 100 degree weather i'm used to) so we took the bus back home, and will save the space needle and more seattle sightseeing for another day. I napped for awhile then woke up to make dinner. My roommates and I all have about the same degree of "living on our own" experience, and haven't succeeded in making ourselves a decent meal yet. Tonight, my roommate bought cookie dough and made a batch of cookies, burnt them, made the rest of the dough and burnt them again. So, sadly we didnt eat a single cookie out of that roll of dough. At the same time, my mac and cheese turned out soo watery, and my microwave chicken was hard as a rock. I dont know how we can be so good with computers but are having a hard time feeding ourselves. We all joined a Microsoft intern group called free food, so maybe we will get so emails on where we can take advantage of Microsoft catering! My roommate and I started studying a little bit tonight, mostly ended up on facebook, but had to laugh because at one point, between the two of us, we had 5 laptops open and running on her bed, as well as a few C# and Visual studio books. Thats what we do on a Saturday night....we are CS students, and we love what we do!

Trying to feed ourselves....the frozen pizzas were 10 for $10!!

ROOMIES....In front of Pikes Place Market

These are all the Gorgeous flowers!

This is the ORIGINAL Starbucks!! Its sooo small!

We had to have a pic of what we were doing on a Sat. Night.

These computers are between one of my roommates and I!

I WORK AT MICROSOFT!!

2008-05-29T19:05:00.000-07:00

I'm a Microsoft Employee!!! YAY!!!

So today was almost just as exciting as yesterday. This morning, we woke up and had no costume for the "Super Hero gone wrong" themed scavenger hunt that was planned for the explorer inters, so my roommates and I dressed in all black and RAN through target in our heels 2o min before we had to be at work getting batman masks and capes. When we walked in though all the interns started taking pictures so I guess the costumes were a hit! We went on our scavenger hunt and my team came in second. We went to work after that and got our laptops and an awesome computer bag filled with office supplies and gift cards to starbucks, cheesecake factory (which my group is using this weekend), and to the microsoft cafeterias. Our laptops are thinkpads where the monitor can twist around and turn into a flat touch pad. Its pretty cool. I'm getting much better with windows. Today we organized our emails which are flooded with cool confidential stuff! We also installed Visual Studio which is the application we will be programming in. Tomorrow I will begin to format my laptop and get connected to the system and microsofts intranet. We are also going to start brainstorming ideas for our project as well as start learning c# which is the language we will be programming in. We get to attend an Exchange meeting that the entire Exchange department gets to attend, so I'll be in the same meeting room with all the big corporate guys!!! YAY!! I'm excited because the past few days have been a lot of getting set up and learning the rules and benefits and has just been crazy, overwhelming with info. Tomorrow I hope will be an actual day to start working. Its weird to walk around the building look into other peoples offices and actually see them coding, just like I would be in school. I'm getting a little nervous because I am the oldest in my group, and think I am supposed to be the leader in coding. They organized us into groups so that our skills complimented each other, and I think I am supposed to help the other in coding, which is something I have never been too confident in. Its nice though because everyone is so motivated, so we all intend on getting books and learning things together and helping each other out. Its so hard to believe that in 2 months I will have created an application that millions of people will be using every day! Its just so nice being around so many people that are so excited to be working at microsoft, and that are so excited for us interns to be there and are so willing to help.

We also got to hear about more fun events that are coming up. One is a product fair with Steve Balmer, the CEO of microsoft, so thats pretty cool and maybe I can even meet him!! In the next few weeks, all the exchange interns are going to go to downtown Seattle and tour on a Duck bus, which is a bus for tourists that drives around and also floats on the water. It should be really fun, and to get there we are getting picked up in Hummer limos!! I'm soo excited! We also have a glass-blowing day planned, and we are getting a day off work at some point where all the interns will go out and instead of working, will participate in a philanthropy event! So there is lots of cool stuff coming! We also learned that another part of our summer will be job shadowing, so I will actually get to work around and learn from lots of real microsoft employes. Things just keep getting better, and i'm not sure if I ever want to leave!! The summer is going to go by WAY to fast, I already know!

This was my scavenger hunt team!

We were batman gone female!

Orientation

2008-05-28T20:20:00.000-07:00

Here are all the Explorer interns!!

So today was AMAZING!!! We got to Microsoft early and had to fill out a bunch of paper work and listen to a bunch of boring legal info. They did tell us lots of exciting stuff, and had previous interns give us advice on how to do well. They told us all about the activities that we will be doing over the summer like an intern trip to Mt. Rainier and Kayaking on Lake Washington. After that, we got to meet with our Manager who will be helping us with our project. He took us to our office where my group of 4 people will be working. Sitting on our desks were tons of boxes for our new computer!!! It was better than Christmas. We got to set up our own computers, which are pretty nice machines with dual flat screens and a 4 GB memory. Our makes all the full time employees jealous because we have lots of windows and a beautiful view, but its big enough to fit the 4 of us which is why we have it. Tomorrow we get our laptops, phones and goody bag full of t-shirts and other Microsoft stuff!! AND...I work in the same building as BILL GATES!!! He is two floors above me. My group-mates and I decided we had to come in early one morning and wait by the elevator for him to get to work haha. (We aren't aloud on the 5th floor where his office is) I was really sad to learn that every year Bill Gates holds a Bar-B-Que at his house for all the interns, but since he is retiring in June, this will be the first year he won't be having it. But besides just all the cool stuff, we learned a lot about what project we will be working on. I am in the Microsoft Business Department working on the Exchange team, which is Microsoft's Corporate Mail Server. There are 3 positions in Microsoft, the Design area which is called the Program Manager, the Developers who actually write code, and the department that tests it. Through my internship, we will get to work in all areas which is really exciting. My exact project will be to create a gadget for Microsoft Vista that will allow easy access to the Exchange Server. We basically have entire freedom to design and create it however we want, and our goal is to start it from scratch and deliver it by the end of the summer. So i'm really excited to start working. Today was sooo much fun and I'm so excited for tomorrow. We are going on a Scavenger hunt and have to dress up!!

These were our what our desks looked like when we walked into our office.

This is my group, the Exchange Team

Unpacking!!

This is the view from my desk

This is the building I work in. Bill Gates' office is on the 5th floor!!

First Day

2008-05-27T19:10:00.000-07:00

Today I got to spend some time just driving around and exploring the Seattle area. I didn't actually go into Seattle because I heard traffic and parking was really bad and I was scared to go by myself. Instead I drove through downtown Redmond which was really cute, and they even have an outdoor mall!! YAY! Then I drove to Bellevue which is a town just a few minutes south of Redmond. They have an amazing downtown with another outdoor mall, a cool looking art museum, and lots of huge buildings. As I drove more on the outskirts I found the most amazing park. It was right on the water of Lake Washington and had the tallest trees, and lots of green fields with the softest, thickest grass I've ever seen. I walked around barefoot for awhile. There were lots of rocks and picnic tables to sit on and read, or do some programming haha! So the day was a success, I didnt get lost once, and I managed to find a Grocery store and get stocked up on food. Now i'm relaxing and watching the spurs game!! I cant wait for orientation tomorrow!

Hello Washington!!

2008-05-27T13:12:00.000-07:00

Here are some pictures from the plane, and of my apartment and Washington that I took on my first day. So far everything has been great! My roommates are awesome, and Washington is BEAUTIFUL!!

My Mom and I on the way to the airport!

Flying in to Seattle

This is my Apartment