On the Lake!!

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!!

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...

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!!!

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!