Yey! I’m kind of excited right now about getting a full-time offer from Amazon after my internship this summer. It’s a really good offer, from a company that I would want to work for. I’ll still be looking around at other possible opportunities after I graduate, but this is a good start.
The weather has been really nice ever since I got here. I think the only not so good day was yesterday when there was a little bit of rain. There were a couple other times I heard people talk of rain, but I never saw it. It seems like its been between 70-80 during the day and maybe 55 during the night, but I’ve never actually measured. Just a guess.
I found some grocery stores! Woot! One is right next to my work. It’s called Uwajimaya. Although the store is mostly filled with Asian groceries, they do have some normal stuff too. They also have an asian food court in back which is pretty good. Speaking of asian food… that is pretty much the only thing to eat around my work. You have to walk quite a ways to get non-asian food. But, its still pretty good.
I finally got a desk and chair for my computer and a connection to the internet for real. Before, I had to steal wireless from the neighboors, and it only worked in the other bedroom. By the way, I still don’t have a roommate, and I don’t know if I’ll get one or not. Now that I think about it, I probably wouldn’t want one.
I’m working this summer at Amazon.com. We’re busy building Marks and Spencer‘s new website and ordering systems. Marks and Spencer is a large retailer in the UK with over 400 stores. Here’s an article, explaining it.
I work in a large room on the 10th floor with about 10 people. We have a good view of the baseball and football stadiums south of downtown Seattle. The people are cool. Some are extremely entertaining.
Yey! I’m in Seattle now, and I’ll be here for a few months while I do an internship with Amazon.com.
So far, the weather has been great. I took a bus into the city this morning, walked around for a bit and found Harried and Hungry for lunch.
I took the bus back up and decided to take the mile or so walk down to where I’ll be working. The way to work is all downhill… but of course that means its all uphill coming back. That’s one big difference with being out here… so many hills.
The corporate housing is being subsidized by Amazon, although I still have to pay for part of it. It’s really nice, but there is no internet yet. :( Right now, I’m out in the courtyard picking up wireless.
I haven’t gone to the grocery store yet. I’m kind of wondering how I’m going to travel to and from considering I don’t have a car. The bus is an option, but carrying groceries on it isn’t ideal. I might take a taxi and stomach the fare every once in a while. Maybe one of my friends here has a car… hmm…
It’s time to announce it to the world! I’ll be working for Amazon this summer in Seattle for about 12 weeks as a Software Development Engineer Intern starting May 8th. I’m really pumped!
I just wanted to take the opportunity to make use of the free wireless internet in the hotel here in Seattle (well… Redmond really) and blog a little. Warning: This entry will be more like a typical blog and less like the stuff I usually post here.
Tomorrow (Friday) I’ll be interviewing with Microsoft.
It was a fairly long (5 hr) flight. It took me most of the flight just to go through the specification of a school project. Then, I started coding up my linked list. Woot! I was thinking about finding the old one I made, but decided that it wouldn’t be that useful since this was in C and that C++. The function names were all different and there are a bunch of extra functions in this with function pointers and void pointers and such. Sweet. Playing with void pointers is fun!
When I got to the airport, I went to the baggage claim. If you’ve ever been there, maybe you’ve seen the cool rotating baggage. They looked like shish kabobs. It’s a pretty sweet display of art. I would have uploaded my photos right now, but I brought the wrong USB cable with me. Aren’t USB cables supposed to be universal? Isn’t that what the U stands for? Weird. I guess you’ll have to trust me until I can show you.
So, I picked up the keys to my rental car and found a silverish two door Monte Carlo sitting in the spot. Cool. As I was driving away from the airport, there were two highways listed on the sheet to follow. I was supposed to follow on for a very short time, then transfer to the other. Welp, I missed that. So, I looked at the map and thought “Hey, that’s cool, I’ll just drive through the middle of Seattle at night.” So I did. It wasn’t that much further of a drive either.
I got to the hotel no problem. Right now I’m drinking my free bottled water, and surfing on my free internet. Thanks Microsoft!
Thomson West was nice enough to fly me out to Eagan, Minnesota which is near Minneapolis to interview for a Software Engineering Internship. That was kinda cool. The day consisted of 6 interviews each lasting 45 minutes to an hour. It was long, but fun too. I got to learn a lot about the company and how everything fits together into serveral giant software projects including their main one Westlaw.
So, now, I’m waiting to hear back from them. I’m also looking forward to next weekend visiting Microsoft in Redmond, Washington which is near Seattle. I’m supposed to have a phone interview with Google this week too, but they didn’t reply to my email a few weeks ago. I just emailed them again.
So, I discovered this really awsome web site simply titled Wayfaring. It’s kinda similar to what we want to do with Blue Puddle. Basically, its a really easy way to create your own map. You can plot points and lines and associate titles, text, tags, and such to them. Here’s one I created of places I visit and routes I travel on a daily basis while at the University of Michigan. I call it my Daily Wanderings.
So, after several weeks of waiting, Merit was finally able to upload the webcast of the Google Maps presentation I gave at the Merit Joint Technical Staff Meeting on October 11th, 2005.
Just as a warning, the video is 45 minutes long and my not be the most simulating thing you’ve ever seen before. It is basically, an introduction to the Google Maps API on a very high level. I didn’t go into any code. It lays out what you can and can’t do with the Google Maps API, ho
I’m excited that we got funding next semester for a project called Blue Puddle thanks to GROCS. Here’s the vision:
“The Blue Puddle software takes advantage of the Internet’s distributed authorship capabilities to create maps that draw on users’ collective memory and subjective experience of a city. These maps foster the emergence of stories about the city that are richer than any single author could create. The virtual digital environment created by Blue Puddle will serve as a catalyst for engaging the real built environment.”
We have a team of four consisting of students from the schools of Art, Architecture, Information, and Engineering. This should be both interesting and exciting considering we are from a variety of backgounds and I am the only undergrad.
Some of the technologies we are considering using include PHP, MySQL, GIS, and the Google Maps API. Fortunately, I am pretty familiar with them and am excited to be able to use them.
UPDATE: I’m employed this summer… yey! Here’s the old post:
I’ve gotten several emails from people at Microsoft and Google asking me if I’m looking for work. No, they haven’t offered me a job yet, but have seen the blog and wanted to know if I had applied. I’d like to let you all know, that, yes, indeed I am looking for an internship. Summer 2006 is currently free, so that would be a good time for me to pick up an internship.
I’m interested in web services, service oriented architectures, object oriented design, social software, agile software development, developer friendly APIs, location based services, geographic information systems, machine learning, and open source software. There’s probably stuff I didn’t list, but that covers most of it.
You can check out my resume in various formats here.
On the flip side, I am also interested in starting my own business or teaming up with some people to start one or continue on an idea related to my interests. I have several posible ideas which could be very exciting to implement and see people use.
So, if you are a web software company, large or just getting started, contact me if you are interested in working with me.
If you are an individual looking for an exciting opportunity to make a difference on the web and have the technical expertise to make it happen, contact me. Let’s see what we can work out.
