Sunday, February 27, 2005

New Logo

There was some question as to whether or not I could use my old logo, because it contained the copywritten Boeing logo. Luckily, my roommate is a graphic designer and a nice guy to boot. So, he came to my rescue. He asked for nothing in return... but I wouldn't allow that. So I bought him a box of popsicles. He whipped up this logo for me real quick, but he has loads of cool art he's done. He does lots of concert posters and stuff. Anyways... you can check out his work at his website.

Wednesday, February 23, 2005

Intern Class

Pending approval from my managers, I'll be one of the "teachers" at the Bellevue Intern Class. Since there are about 400 interns this summer, they've broken the intern class up into 3 sections: Seattle, Everett, and Bellevue.
One of my intern friends from last summer will also be "teaching" with me at the class (if you are familiar... its Jenn). And another U of Idaho kid will be at the Seattle class.

Thursday, February 17, 2005

The Two Sides...

There are 2 forces applied to the new hire: being new and being fresh.
"Low man on the totem pole" really has some meaning to me now. There hasn't really been any explicit manifestaions from my coworkers about this... but I'm pretty sure everyone is thinking it (or maybe I'm just paranoid). "He's the new kid, don't give him anything you don't want to be massacred." But, I think that also might have to do with DBAs being pretty careful. I'm not that experienced, and they've worked hard getting this database up and running... now they don't want anything bad to happen to it.
But, I'm also fresh out of college, and everyone thinks I'm really cool (far-fetched, I know, but nonetheless). Everyone wants to work with me, to see what I'm like or something. One of the nicest guys I've ever met (and it just so happens, that his stepson was an intern with me last year) brought me into a project where I won't actually be doing DBA work (in the Boeing-sense), I'll be doing Data Architecture.... or in normal-people-words: data modeling. Most of the people that I talk to in the halls ask me if I have enough work. And, I finally do. This is pretty cool.
On a side note, I've gotten several emails and comments from people saying that they're coming to intern or work at Boeing this summer, and they like reading this site because it gives them some firsthand knowledge of working at Boeing. Suckers... I don't really know anything... I make up most of the content here. So... if you're going to be an intern, you might just get to meet me in real life, because I might be a teacher for the "intern class." Basically all the interns from Seattle (or Everett) get together and hangout for 4 hours, and people who have interesting jobs come and tell us about their jobs. And sometimes you get to play Boeing Trivia. My team rocked everyone last year... we won by some ridiculous margin (A: Good at Trivia. Q: Who is Adam).
Everyone at Boeing is on some wacky internal clock, where "start time" is 7:30 or earlier, so I gotta get to bed. Adios Chitlins.

Saturday, February 12, 2005

The First Week (again)

I had WAY more fun at work than I expected. After my internship last summer, I was kind of "down" on being a DBA. But now that I have my own projects, its actually interesting. I work for some really cool groups: Noise Engineering Labs, Propulsion Labs, Airport Technology, and the application they use to have a customer configure their airplane. And, after they buy an airplane, they can get access to MyBoeingFleet[1]... which I will also be working on.
I think I'm also having fun because I'm learning a lot about databases. And lately, I've been interested in large amounts of data, information retrieval, and informatics. And I'm just starting work on writing a web crawler (something I've always wanted to do just for fun). After taking a class in Evolutionary Algorithms (EA), I became really interested in that, and in the last couple of weeks... I've started thinking about ways to apply EAs to a search engine. If I do anything cool, I'm sure I'll post the results here. For right now, I want to write the web crawler, because I like data (the stuff, not the character). As the old adage says: the more, merrier.

[1] Secure, password protected site for online maintenance, engineering, and flight operations data for airline customers. Also, list of service centers, spare parts search, and tracking of Website metrics.

Monday, February 07, 2005

The First Day (again)

So, today was my first day back at Boeing. It went much better than I expected, which was a pleasant suprise.
So, I turned up at the plant at about 8AM. I didn't have a badge, so I had to go get a new one first thing. There was some waiting around, but luckily Frontiers (the Boeing corporate magazine) had a pretty interesting article about Howard Hughes. They've updated the badges a little bit. My new badge has a smartcard chip on it. I don't know what it's for... but it looks pretty sweet. Another new addition to my badge was a the letter "N". Because of recent scandals they have to mark people that are new employees (been there less than 3 years) to show that there might be a possible conflict of interest if the person is part ofcontract negotiations.
Anyways, it takes a while for my new badge to get me access to the buildings... so I had to stalk around a little bit by the doors to get in, but I don't think anyone really noticed (I'm kind of a pro at stalking, but don't tell Weird Al Yankovic). And even if someone had noticed, I would have been ok because I now had a badge.
As soon as I got to my desk, I left to go to a performance review for one of my projects (one that I worked on as an intern)... for 2 hours. And then the morning was done. So I spent most of the rest of the day on the phone trying to get my computer sorted out. There was a slight problem... basically it hasn't been loaded properly, so I didn't really have access to anything. And just like that... the day was done. If every day I work goes by this quickly... I'll be a happy boy. I already have about a 50% workload after my first day. And as soon as one guy gets back from vacation, he's going to give me the other half of my work.
The only bad part about today was that I was EXTREMELY tired. I was so excited about today that I couldn't fall asleep last night. I didn't get to sleep until after 4AM, and I woke up at about 6:40AM. I'm going to blame the lack of humor in this post to my lack of sleep. Bye.

Saturday, February 05, 2005

Never Underestimate the Power of College Kids

I just talked to Dan. And in the true tradition of college, he and his new roomates threw a "Tsuami Relief Party". Because of the weather in Moscow they were expecting a somewhat muted attendence. They purchase 5 kegs based on the estimated attendence numbers. But University of Idaho students paid little attention to the weather, and in the interest of The Tsunami victims... they showed up in record numbers.
The report that I got was that about 300 people showed up, and approx. $900-$1000 was collected to send to a (as of now, undecided) relief organization. In the end the party consumed 10 kegs and an undiclosed amount of Jello Shots before calling it a night.
Well Done Guys.