Messaging
Most recent messages are at the top
| Alex T. | |
| Fascinating... I'll keep this place in mind!
Miss, do you require/desire any particular features for the mouse and keyboard? | |
| Calvin | |
| You know where you should go? The Olympic Sculpture Park. I bet you'd like taking photos there, haha | |
| Anonymous | |
| i checked Waterloo (haha), and Toronto and both didn't have any results for a bird's eye view. :(
Maybe YOU should tell me if there are any interesting models ;) | |
| Alex T. | |
| I do like the bird's eye view feature that Live Search Maps has. It can be quite useful to see the sides of buildings and not just the plain grey roofs.
Are you interested in any models in particular, Miss? | |
| Anonymous | |
| and ooo, i like the "bird's eye" view of your building. | |
| Anonymous | |
| how exciting! :D (btw, I would love a wireless keyboard + mouse ;) )
and ooo, i caught that jab ;) | |
| Alex T. | |
| Day 4 & 5 - New Employee Orientation
Monday January 7, 2008 & Tuesday January 8, 2008 The first day of NEO (New Employee Orientation) can be described with the typical three P's of boredom: paperwork, policies, and presentations. They are unavoidable, but required. Our day started off with all the new employees waiting in line to check in, and it was a long line up at the many stations we had to go through: visa paperwork, security key card photo, signatures, personal info, etc, etc, etc. There were over 200 new employees starting that day. Only a handful of us were interns and the rest were full time employees. It was amazing to see how much the company is hiring. There were people from all over the world. Most of the interns were from Waterloo. Others came from Quebec, Boston, Australia, and Switzerland(?). The full-time employees came from more corners of the globe. The room filled at an amazing rate, but all the super breakfast and drinks kept us all going. The highlight of the day seemed to be lunch and the company visitor's center/company store visit. Lunch was a variety of awesome boxed-lunches. I chose the Asian Chicken Salad and it sure was the best packaged lunch I have ever had. Oh, Microsoft. Mmmm... After lunch, the interns were shuttled off to the Visitor's Center/Company Store. (Oh yea, the shuttle service is another crazy thing at Microsoft, which I shall discuss later. Back to the Visitor's Center/Company Store story for now...) The interns were all dropped off at the building and... emmm... what were we supposed to do?? We were just dropped off without instructions. No one at the place was expecting us, and the organizer's didn't instruct us to go anywhere. We were so lost. But since we were there, we might as well explore. The first stop was the Company Store on the second floor of the building. Microsoft-logo'ed everything was available for purchase, as well as discounted software, hardware and just about anything Microsoft. The Zunes are pretty cool. The UI looks pretty good. The software and mice were all stocked at very good prices. After a few rounds through the store, we headed back down to the first floor where the Museum is located. The Museum is a self-guided tour that is separated into three sections: the past, present and future of Microsoft. The past consisted of artifacts and displays of old products, photos memories. It was a great walk down memory lane. The present was a display of the current product line. Visitors could play with the Zunes, XBOX 360's, mobile devices, etc. The future was where the cool stuff was. Here, there were demos of hand/gesture-based UI's (like Microsoft Surface, but on a rear-projected translucent screen). I believe what we were experience is the TouchLight project from Andy Wilson. There are reasons why I'm highly interested in this stuff. So that was the really cool part of the day - we got to stretch our legs and experience neat-o stuff. I'll head back there one day and grab some photos of the place for you guys to see. It's pretty neat-o. When we thought it would be a good time to leave and head back to the main orientation building, there was no scheduled shuttle to bring us back... we just stood there and waited.. and waited... but no one came for us. Some of interns just decided to walk it back instead, while some of us hailed our own shuttle bus to ride our way back. To finish off the afternoon of NEO, we had more typical spiels about company policies, procedures and useful information. Day 2 of NEO was pretty much more of the wonderful presentations. We also picked up our key cards. My photo turned out decent and the intern key cards are indistinguishable (to an extent) to the full-timers'. It doesn't have "CONTINGENCY CO-OP" plastered all over it. *cough* @|V|[)... *cough* Lunch was a wonderful roast beef boxed-lunch sandwich. During a break, the presenters played the video spoof of Bill Gates' last day as an FTE (full-time employee) that was played at CES. Watching it with a room full of Microsoft employees generates a much different atmosphere. NEO finally ended at around 1:30 PM and it was time for everyone to meet their teams. Since there were so few interns this time around, the majority of us worked in different buildings. I work in Building 84 in North Campus. Saad, Angela and I all work in the 80's buildings so we walked together to the general area and then we disbanded. I met my manager and we walk around to meet the team. After that, I was given an overview of the project that I would be involved in and that was pretty much the day. I'm an SDET (Software Development Engineer in Test) intern in the Windows Experience, Graphics Infrastructure, Base Video team. From the project description and the open tasks on the list, I have a feeling that a good portion of my time will be spent "developing" and not just "testing". And that wraps it up for NEO. Later on in the day I'll provide an update on my first work week. Stay tuned for Day 6, 7 and 8 - more exciting adventures of a Microsoft Intern! =D How's everyone back home (and afar)? =) | |
| Alex T. | |
| I'll keep that in mind while I'm here... | |
| Raymond | |
| Let's not try to find out | |
| Alex T. | |
| Is that supposed to be... better or worse? | |
| Raymond | |
| Maybe...maybe not muahahaha
Volunteer police in the states are completely different, they actually have guns | |
| Katie | |
| Should I be scared that I live across the street from you? lol | |
| Katie | |
| Raymond, it's bad to kill people when you are a police...! | |
| Raymond | |
| Oh you are so dead Alex lol | |
| Alex T. | |
| Apparently somewhere near Seattle! =D
I'm in Redmond, Washington (east of Seattle) for my Microsoft internship. I'm staying in corporate housing right beside (east) of the Microsoft Campus. So if you look on a map and find the Microsoft campus, I live in the community immediately east of it. | |
| gloria / www.urbanebloc.com | |
| hey hey! where in the world are you right now d: | |
| Alex T. | |
| Day 3 - Seattle Chinatown International District
Sunday January 6th, 2008 Jacky and Mark joined Adrian and I on this trip to Seattle, more specifically, to Chinatown. Getting to Seattle involved driving west across a bridge which provided some nice views. 
Once we got off the highway and onto the local streets, we were absolutely astounded by the absolutely 150% insanely steep angles of the roads. Holy cow! it seemed like we were heading down long stretches of roads that were 45 degrees from the horizontal. Parking in this area really requires drivers to angle their wheels correctly to catch the curbs in case the car rolls down... everyone still remember which way to turn your wheels? 
One of the main reasons why we headed to Chinatown was so that we could buy rice. Sad, isn't it? Before finding food, we encountered some interesting things, such as the Seattle Public Utilities Automatic Public Toilet. At first, we thought it was an elevator in the middle of the sidewalk area, but upon closer inspection, yep, it was a toilet alright, according to the posted signs and instructions. We didn't try it out. Maybe next time? and I'll report the experience. 
Circling around, we found an Asian supermarket and we knew we were at the right place since it was the busiest building in the neighbourhood. Uwajimaya also has a store just down the street from our unit in Redmond so we hopefully don't have to travel all the way to Seattle for Chinese food. We did find our bag of precious Jasmine rice from Thailand, so it was a productive trip. Some over-priced veggies and fruits later, we were out of there. We then consulted the trusty GPS unit and located a shopping centre just north of Chinatown, so we headed in that direction. As it so happens, Pacific Place was smack in the middle of the Downtown Seattle Retail Core. Parking was non-existent so we headed back across the bridge towards Redmond. Jacky and Mark haven't been to Redmond Town Center yet, so we headed over there to make a more thorough walk around. During the trip to Redmond Town Center, we found an ABODA Corporate Housing van travelling along with us on the highway. We should have stopped it and demanded that our housing arrangement be fixed since their 24 hours emergency hotline was busy throughout the entire weekend. Who the heck operates an unavailable emergency hotline anyway? geeez... 
When we made it to the Redmond Town Center, we parked and discovered parking reserved for Volunteer Police. This one's for you, Raymond. 
That pretty much wraps up the things worth mentioning for Day 3. The rest of the photos are on the Picasa Web Album. | |
| Alex T. | |
| I can't wait for that day either! =D | |
| Calvin | |
| I can't wait for Day 49 or something: Visiting Calvin.
Hahaha | |
| Alex T. | |
| This one's not massively big. It still is a small city.
I highly highly doubt there's something like Pacific Mall here... | |
| Katie | |
| Find anything super like Pacific mall yet? | |
| Raymond | |
| Now that's interesting
next time take a picture inside the mall I wanna see how massively big these things are in the US | |
| Dan T. | |
| i want to visit the Lego store =D | |
| Alex T. | |
| It's getting late, so I'll finish typing up Day 3 - "Seattle Chinatown International District" tomorrow night as well as see if I can get a start on describing the start to the real reason I'm here: my Microsoft internship ;)
BTW, PDENG 55 - Integration content will be released starting next Monday January 14. Remember to check UW-ACE! | |
| Alex T. | |
| Day 2 - Exploring Redmond and Bellevue
Saturday January 5th, 2008 Adrian and I did some preliminary grocery shopping at the local Safeway. There were some pretty good deals there like two loafs of bread for $1.99 and two gallons of milk for $5.38. Oh grocery shopping - it's an adventure in itself, yet I enjoy looking at all the little signs and labels, reading flyers and finding good prices. Some items were cheap, others were massively expensive. Egg, turkey and cheese sandwiches were the end result for lunch. After lunch, we headed out to Redmond Town Center. Dan, even though you're thousands of miles away, were still thinking about you ;) 
During our quick walk around Redmond Town Center, we didn't see much. It was just a massive collection of plazas and shops. It wasn't an indoor mall that Adrian seems to like so much. Around the Redmond Town Center area was Target which was like Zellers, except it was astoundingly red everywhere. When we walked in, our eyes were bleeding from all the red signs, walls and displays. It also didn't help that Valentine's Day is around the corner... Unlike Zellers, but like Wal-Mart, Target also carried groceries. Great. In the same area as Target was Kohl's. We thought What the heck is Kohl's? We really couldn't tell from the outside, so we went in to take a peek. Ah. It was a Sears-like store that mainly sold clothing. Out we went. Across the street was a Fred Meyer. What the heck is Fred Meyer? I don't know, but it looks HUGE! As we entered to survey the store, we discovered that it was a grocery store. Wait, I also see beddings and toys. Wait, there's also an electronics section. Wait, there's also an upstairs that had clothing. So this is like a super Loblaws? Whatever it was, it was huge and had a little bit of everything, so it's good at... nothing? I did notice that some of the food items were cheaper here... there's the saver in me kicking in again... After that little adventure, we tried looking in Adrian's trusty GPS unit for shopping centres to visit, but from the names that came up, we decided that they sounded small and sketchy, so we went home instead. After careful research on the Internet, we found that Bellevue Square was actually quite the mall! So... off to Bellevue Square! Upon arrival, we found a huge shopping center with huge amounts of parking and huge amounts of people. Cool-io. 
It had the stores of STC, Fairview and Eaton Centre plus some that were... different. There was the completely pink Sanrio Gift Gate (home of Hello Kitty) and the ultra cool Lego Store which sold individual lego pieces (probably sold by weight?) 
That was pretty much the end of our day. Besides going back to Adrian's temporary place (messed up housing story), meeting Mark and waiting for Jacky to arrive, that's a wrap for Day 2! | |
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