And thus begins my summer

I set my alarm last night for 7:30. Boy, was that a pain… but I could barely contain my excitement when I woke up this morning.

After showing up at work at 8 am today (ouch), I got a quick tour of Google’s Boulder office. It’s actually bigger than I thought - it currently spans three different buildings! The Boulder office isn’t big enough to have their own cafe, so they have catered food. I had a morning breakfast of approximately five different kinds of fruit, and then I sat down to work through some tutorials.

However, the first thing I did was struggle with setting up Eclipse for an hour and a half. For some reason, despite the plugins being installed, Eclipse was refusing to recognize/install them. So, an hour and a half later, I finally had everything set up and could do some work.

Lunch was at picnic tables on the roof of the building, with a breathtaking view of the mountains - I’m going to bring my camera tomorrow and snap some photos. After lunch, I realized that my monitors were blocking a window that also had a beautiful view of the mountains, so I spent 10 minutes or so rearranging my desk. Now if I look one way I can see my work, and if I look the other I can see the mountains. I finished up the day with more tutorials and walked back home, excited to wake up tomorrow and do the exact same thing.

One thing I’m very excited for is to get off dorm food and start cooking for myself again. For lunch today, I went and bought a cheap, two-pound steak and a fresh-baked loaf of french bread. I gave the steak a dry rub of oregano and basil (also salt, pepper, and garlic, of course!) and this is the result.

It was delicious.

Orientation fin

I just finished my internship orientation in Mountain View, and boy was that ever an experience…

On Monday, I left Chicago at 10 am, had an hour delay, and then was on the plane for five hours. I landed in San Jose around 2 pm, and my first stop was Adamson’s French Dip. I definitely recommend anyone in the area to check it out, the only sandwich place I’ve been to that compares is Al’s Deli, back in Evanston.

Tuesday was the first day or orientation. I had to get up at 7 (ugh!) in order to get to Google by 8 am, and from that point on it was a deluge of information. I kept hoping it would stop, but it never did - needless to say, by the end of the day I felt pretty nervous.

Over the next three days, I was kept pretty busy. In between meeting people, doing some small projects, and attending orientation lectures I was wiped at the end of each day, but I feel a lot less nervous now.

I’m really excited to get to work tomorrow and dive right in!