MPD

Today was an interesting day at work. Matt and I spent some time talking to Rob in the morning – bringing him up to date on our progress, etc. Apparently, he had a meeting at 1:00 to discuss the possible requirements for the Q1 news program. After our talk, though, Rob decided that it would probably be best just to have Matt and me there.

The meeting turned out to be a conference call with a guy in Eagan, which is really strange. I don’t particularly like conference calls, since I like being able to draw diagrams and see the people with whom I am talking. I actually left feeling like the meeting went very poorly, especially for me, since I didn’t know what to say; everyone had completely different ideas about the project and I didn’t know what everyone was trying to get out of the conference. Matt seemed to do ok, though, and afterward he typed up a document clearly explaining our position and opinions and sent it to everyone who was at the discussion. I think that I could learn from his example in this case, because taking the initiative to write this document has really cemented our ideas as the company’s vision for the project.

That was about it for the exciting part of work. The rest of the day, Matt and I worked on implementing adding tf-idf to our vector space catagorizer. Sadly, after we spent all that effort on it, tf-idf actually ended up hurting our performance, so we’ve decided not to use it. At least we’ve learned that much.

Finally, after work, I was really excited to visit with Nicola again. She is back in town visiting her family this week because her uncle is also here from the Phillipines. She and I met down at Santana Row at about 6:20. There was a live Salsa/Meringue band playing from 6-9, which is why we thought it would be fun to meet there. She and I ate dinner at Pasta Pomodoro – not too expensive and really good food, so it was a great deal. After dinner (about 8:00), we met up with a friend of hers from high school back by the band.

I enjoyed meeting Nicola’s friend; I feel that I understand better where Nicola comes from, plus I just like hanging out with new, fun people in general. We listened and talked for an hour, when the band was done for the night, then we went to a French pastry shop and ate dessert outside while talking for another hour and a half. Our conversation covered everything from religion (Nicola and her friend went to a Roman Catholic, all-girl high school) to bananas (apparently there’s a guy at UC San Diego that has never eaten one in his life). This was a great change of pace from constantly thinking about work.

Moreover, the weather was absolutely perfect at about 10:00; The air had cooled down to 75 or so, and the sky was very clear. I really enjoy that type of atmosphere; it just makes me feel happy and relaxed. All in all, I had a great night, and I hope Nicola and her friend did, too.

All summer, I’ve been on an MIT email list for interns in the bay area this summer. Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to do anything with them, because the first few weekends were moving in, the next four I had visitors, and then I was out of town for a while last week. Thankfully, though, I had my first event to go to a bay area intern event yesterday.

After the British Open, I headed down to San Jose State to pick up some people and take them up to Dolores Park for the San Francisco Symphony concert. We were planning on having a picnic lunch while escaping the
heat here in San Jose (at one point this weekend, my car thermometer read 117). San Francisco, as usual, was nice and chilly – only 96 in the park.

Linda and her parents brought most of the food, which we ate while all trying to huddle underneath one small tree for shade. Linda, Dmitry, Helen, and Roshni sat on a blanket. Aston and Aaron sat on the cooler. I was lucky enough to be sitting in a folding chair that I had in my trunk.

After we had been there for about an hour and a half, the concert started. They played a Tchiakovsky Piano Concerto, the Candide overture and suite by Bernstein, the 1812 Overture, and one other piece of which I can’t remember the name. I’ve heard the 1812 Overture too many times, so my favorite had to be the piano concerto.

After the concert, we drove back to San Jose, grabbed dinner at a nearby taqueria, then went to Redwood City to go gokart racing. I hadn’t ever been gokart racing with gokarts that powerful before, so it was kind of fun. Sadly, my knees were a little too long, so they kept hitting the sides of the car and getting in the way of my steering. I ended up only doing ten laps before calling it quits. While there, we also played bumperboats. Not as fun as you might imagine, since they were very slow…

By the time I arrived back at the apartment last night, it was nearly 1:00. Needless to say, I was exhausted at work all day; I think Matt was probably laughing at me because I was so out of it.

I had a good time in Minnesota this week. It was really nice of Thomson (and Ken) to fly us out there to meet all the new MIT interns and learn about opportunities from the VPs and managers.

Tuesday morning, Matt and I caught our plane at the San Jose airport. It was good that the airport is so much closer than San Francisco, but we still estimated that it would only take us half as long to get there as it actually did. Well, we arrived at the airport entrance exactly on time, but we had no idea that the long-term parking would be another 10-15 minute drive down a seemingly never-ending driveway. Plus, after we parked, we needed to catch the bus back, which was just as long.

Anyway, we made it there with plenty of time, so we were ok. We had a 1.5 hour flight to Pheonix, an hour layover, and a 3.5 hour flight to Minneapolis, so we arrived at the hotel at 6:00 Central Time. This was the exact time that Todd was supposed to pick us up for dinner, so we were a little late.

On Tuesday, we had dinner at the Bonfire Grill with Todd, Neil (VP of Content), Michelle (another intern from last year who is working in DC this summer), and Rachel (F/ASIP Coordinator from MIT). I had walleye and steak.

Afterwards, Todd took us back to the hotel where we tried to get to sleep so that we would be able to get up in the morning. Getting up at 7:00 is like 5:00 here, so it was tough. Michelle had to call me at 7:40 so I could get out of bed.

Once we got to Thomson on Wednesday, my day was packed. The three of us first met with Bill, an intern who is considering an internship at another Thomson location next summer. Bill is going into his sophomore year at MIT, and he’s originally from the Twin Cities area.

Next, I met with the VP of CRM/eCommerce, Elizabeth. She and I talked about what I’m working on this summer and how it’s possible to move between areas in Thomson and to keep getting exciting, challenging projects. She herself has worked at many companies, but has spent more time at Thomson West than anywhere else because it’s constantly engaging.

After Elizabeth, I met with Cary, VP of Applications Technology. We talked a lot about the tech industry in general and he told me about how Thomson recognizes people who excel and work hard, which is how he became the youngest VP in Thomson history. Another thing I thought was interesting about Cary is that even though he hasn’t written code for the company in almost ten years, he still does little projects in his spare time to keep abreast of new developments and just because he enjoys it so much.

Cary’s office is right next to where I worked last summer, so I took a few minutes to visit some of my previous coworkers. They said that my code is still there and has been a foundation for more work, which makes me feel good. They also told me about a reorganization that’s going on right now, so some of the team leads and managers that I worked under last summer now have slightly different jobs.

Next was lunch with Michelle and Matt, and I had the chance to catch up with Kevin, one of the guys that I went running with during lunch last year. He says he hasn’t kept it up as much, but Brian and Kurt are still going strong.

In the afternoon, Matt and I had a meeting with the VP of FindLaw that we set up. He was really friendly, and I appreciated that he made time for us in his schedule at the last minute. We were able to ask him about what he would like to see from our project and what the benefit to the company would be. This was a very enlightening half hour.

Finally, I met with Ken. We talked about Silicon Valley for a while – he lived here, so he had all sorts of suggestions of things that I should check out before I go back to school. There were a lot, so I don’t know if I’ll get to all of them, but I’m going to try. Also, this is the meeting in which we talked more specifically about possibly working for Thomson next year, but since I haven’t made up my mind yet, I don’t think I can write about it on this blog. I will say that I’m definitely considering it, since they’ve shown that they’re willing to work hard to help me find a job that I can be really excited about.

Finally, I went back to Todd’s office and met Sam, another intern at Thomson this year. Todd, Sam, Bill and I talked about a lot of stuff, from photography (Todd and Sam are really into it and have taken some beautiful photos) to DDR and AJAX. We also picked up our tickets for Valley Fair from Todd before Matt finished his meeting with Ken.

Bill drove Matt and I back to our hotel to get ready for the amusement park, then all four of us – Bill, Sam, Matt, and I – hopped in Bill’s car and took off. We ended up getting a little lost on the way, but that was alright, since it was sprinkling and we all had a good time talking with each other. By the time we found our way there, it had stopped raining, but absolutely no one was left in the park. So, as it turned out, we could go on any ride we wanted without ever waiting in line. We did everything in the park at least once, and many of them two or three times. I’ve never felt sick after an amusement park before, but I was feeling a little queasy on the ride home after so many rides in quick succession. It was a great night.

Thursday morning, we met with Rachel again to tell her about how our summers were going and our impressions of Thomson as a place for MIT students to intern. This meeting went well, and I hope she got a lot out of it. After that, I talked to a friend of mine who started full time last summer and worked with me a lot while I was interning there. Joe has been there a year now, so I wanted to see how everything was going. He’s been working hard and doing really well, so I think that’s a good sign that Thomson recognizes that drive even in first year employees. Also, outside of work, he bought a house, so we talked about his experiences with home ownership for a while as well.

Thursday afternoon, Thomson took all the MIT interns and many of the managers to see a Twins game from their box. I’m not such a big baseball fan, so I spent most of it talking to people. I met Taja, Jose, and Jordan (the other three MIT interns that weren’t at Valley Fair), and I spent some more time talking to Elizabeth and other older people. I enjoyed myself (and I enjoyed the food…).

Finally, Ken drove us back to his country club for one last dinner in Minnesota. Just like last year, the food and service were wonderful. The conversation, too, was really interesting, and I was impressed at how well I could follow what people were saying around the whole table. Sometimes with ten people, the table ends up splitting into multiple sections that each can only follow their own conversation.

We flew back to San Jose on Friday and discovered that it was Hot. Of course, the first thing Matt and I did was run out to the pool for a swim. This was the first time I had gone swimming in my pool (I’ve been swimming this summer, just not in the pool here), and it felt really nice. Next we went out for dinner at a Thai restaurant. The calamari was the best I’ve ever had; it was so tender that it almost tasted like lightly fried white fish instead of calamari. For dinner, I decided to go with the traditional Pad Thai, since I haven’t had it for a while. It was good, but I think now that I’ve had my fill, I’ll get something with peanut sauce next time.

After dinner, Matt and I were both pretty tired, so we just came back to the apartment. He went right to sleep (to get up early this morning for the British Open, of course), and I worked on the computer for a little while. I uploaded a few more photos and added some features to my summer map, so check it out if you wish.