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Ed.: the majority of this was written on the plane from San Diego to JFK, and then emailed to the QChat client dev list (plus a few extras)
Almost exactly three months ago, I boarded a plane from Burlington to San Diego, solo, entirely unsure of what lay ahead. I'd been to San Diego before — for a few hours — and I'd heard only good things about it from people who live in the area, but beyond that, nothing. I knew that I would be interning at Qualcomm, writing embedded software — that was about all I knew beforehand; I had yet to be introduced to QChat, and I certainly hadn't met anyone I would be working with.
My second day (the first was consumed with intern orientation activities, and discovering that I had to walk 2 miles to work and back every day) was filled with introductions to everyone, which, being as shy as I generally am, was expected to be as intimidating as could be. But as soon as they started, it was clear something was different here. From Ali, the first QChatter who I met, who toured me around and helped me get settled in, to Vikram, who I didn't meet until many weeks into my internship, as he was on vacation when I arrived, everyone was ridiculously friendly, approachable, and helpful.
I've worked with many teams of varying shapes, sizes, and purposes before (though less often in the real world), and the QChat client team is unquestionably the first to be this universally awesome. Throughout the whole summer, there was a complete lack of raised voices (except in laughter and jest), blame-laying (I think I was the worst offender there, because I wasn't totally used to the laid-back workflow yet), and argument — which made it extremely easy to quickly become comfortable with the group and the atmosphere and get to work.
I might have gotten too comfortable — after being here for three months, I felt so much like a part of the team that yesterday's departure was quite hard to bear. Unfortunately I didn't manage to find everyone (Shobha, Sachin, Sanket, and Vikram, at least, and Teja was still on vacation — so an extra goodbye and thank you to all of you) to say goodbye to, but if I'd hung around for much longer, there would have been a few tears, and we didn't need that.
I won't miss fighting with the ever so wonderful prototype handsets, nor cursing the engineer who thought that using the C escape character as their path separator was a good idea (or that you needed two characters to represent a newline — basically, I won't miss Windows), nor silly little things like timecards, but the list of things that I will miss is innumerable. The whole team, for starters — every single one of you. The spirit of QChat. The long walks in the San Diego sunshine into work every morning. The daily status meetings (you guys will think I'm crazy, but I was already missing these when they stopped halfway through — it was good to see everyone every day and get a handle on what was going on in the beginning of the day; I learned a lot about what we were doing just from listening to the chatter there, and I hope if you have another intern next summer, you'll do daily status at least for the first few weeks). I'll miss our little faraday cage, and the wonders of release days. So, so many things.
I think the moment it all really clicked for me was that one super long (4 AM) sanity day. I think it was my third or fourth release; hanging out with everyone just trying to finish up (through the USB hilarity that ensued that everyone who was there surely remembers); ordering Indian food (my first time!) and being introduced to that by the people who know it best (by the way, the countless anecdotes about home from everyone makes me feel almost obligated to visit India... someday!)
And then on the opposite end of that was Shilpa's goodbye lunch — the end of the team as I knew it for most of the summer, and the first realization that the summer really was coming to a close. It was certainly a bonding experience for me; a chance to hang out with a majority of the team and talk about anything but work. I think that was actually one of my favorite days of the summer, bittersweet though it was.
So... I don't know. Maybe I'll run in to some of you again; it seems incredibly unlikely that I'll run in to all of you again. If I end up back in San Diego, I'll be sure to look you guys up, and if any of you are ever in Albany, Burlington, or Boston, send me a note! You never know where I might be...
And who knows what might happen in May! I certainly don't...
Thanks for everything, and goodbye (for now), and good luck!
Tim
Front Left
Badge, apartment gate key, office key, apartment key, Firefly-class transport ship model.
Awesome headphones, which will be getting their own post shortly.
Front Right
My phone, without which I would be horribly lost.
Back Right
Amy made me this wallet... three years ago, I think (Amy, it might need repairs or replacement at some point!). I was going to fan out the contents, but basically the whole picture would have to be blurred out due to the various CC/ID numbers. It also contains transportation passes for three big cities (NYC, Boston, and San Diego), and a surprising number of gift cards (bookstores and iTS, mostly).
And a folded 8.5x11" map of Qualcomm San Diego, which has been there since the third day of work:
Now it's your turn! Mine wasn't very surprising at all...
Mom, Dad, and Amy came out to San Diego for the week of my 21st birthday (alternatively, to celebrate the 41st anniversary of Armstrong + Aldrin's moon landing); I took Friday off to hang out with them, but otherwise they were on their own until 5:00 or so.
This is mostly going to be pictures, with sparse commentary...
I went and picked them up at the airport (after getting there almost two hours before their flight, because they were delayed forever on the tarmac in Philadelphia due to horrible weather). We rode back up to La Jolla in their silly convertible Mustang (which was the worst car I've ever experienced in terms of purporting-to-but-failing-to-actually-fit four people).
One day in the middle of the week, the four of us hung out downstairs at my apartment complex, grilling chicken and kabobs. This was great fun! One of my favorite parts of their visit.
Now there's going to be a bunch of pictures of animals from the San Diego Zoo Wild Animal Park, because I love pictures of animals!
This is what happens if you accidentally send film through a whole bunch of x-ray machines at various airports. I'm actually surprised I was able to recover this much; looking at the negatives, I can't distinguish anything.
This is what happens if you buy film near the place you're going to be using it. Yay! Dik-diks!
Totally cute baby elephant...
Birds are my favorite to take pictures of, I think. I don't know why...
We visited the gliderport again, for a little while. This time, there were lots of gliders instead of mostly just hang-gliders.
On Saturday, we went downtown, and went on a two-hour cruise on the bay on this boat, the Adventure Hornblower.
The conference center, a day before we visited it. Comic-Con is going on in full-swing, but as you well know (and as I learned the hard way on the cruise), geeks cannot be exposed to sunlight for long, so you can't tell from the outside...
You can sort-of tell that there's a dolphin in the water.
We drove over to Coronado for dinner, to go to a little restaurant that I had passed by on my previous visit.
Dad, on the famous Coronado Beach, right in front of the Del.
Mom, walking into the waves.
Sunday morning! Dad, Amy, and I went to Comic-Con!
After waiting in many lines, we got to see everyone's favorite Nathan Fillion and a few cast and crew members from Castle (clearly not the reason most people were there). They did a nice panel about Castle; I should really watch the show some time! Note the Jayne hat in the bottom right. There were *tons* of those at the conference.
Felicia! Too intimidated by the adorableness in real life to say hello? Maybe! Is that creepy? No.
The trolley signs were replaced with Klingon, apparently by SDMTS themselves. Lacking Matt, this made them entirely unusable to us, so we walked out of range of the insanity (into the shadow of Petco Park, clearly the anti-Comic-Con) and had Mom come rescue us.
I've been wearing glasses since third grade — approximately twelve years. I get new glasses about once a year or so, to adjust to changes in my prescription and fix scratches and such in the lenses.
I don't remember when I last got a new pair — it's been a few months, at least. Since I got them, though, I've noticed a significant degradation in something — initially, something I wasn't able to place. Eventually I noticed what it was: colors were moving! Different colors shifted different amounts depending on what part of the glass they passed through. As with a camera, the centers are perfect, and the edges are the problem areas.
The primary case in which I noticed this for the first few months was when looking at syntax highlighted code: brightly-colored keywords would appear to shift relative to the baseline, some in different directions than others. I eventually mentioned this to Dad, who pointed out the principle of dispersion, and I noted that this was something that most of my lenses strived to reduce (for obvious reasons) through the use of low-dispersion glass (Nikon calls it "ED", and 3 of my 5 lenses have it).
I'm somewhat intrigued by the fact that Nikon makes eyeglass lenses, but I think that's taking brand loyalty (and probably price) a little too far...
Today I stumbled upon a remarkable example of this phenomenon: one of those neon "OPEN" signs at a store near my apartment. I was able to completely remove the red lettering from its containing blue box as shown below, just by looking through the top of my glasses instead of the center — not even something one would consider unreasonable or strange.
The dispersion in the image above is not exaggerated (though it's not to scale, the open sign was quite a bit smaller than in the picture; call it two fingers high at arm's length, or so) — I could repeatedly get the top of the box to clear the bottom of the type.
At this point, I'm quite convinced that this is completely unacceptable performance: it's extremely irritating, to say the very least. I'm fairly sure that something that happened during my last optometric appointment (or, at least, with my most recent pair of glasses) made this much worse, and I will be sure to bring this up next time I visit. (There's another whole rant to be had about how much I detest the fact that there are no truly objective measurements involved in eyeglass prescriptions, and how broken that is...)
Yeah... so... let me know if you wear glasses and have a similar issue, I'd be interested to hear from you! Find a neon open sign and do your own experiments!
Apparently I'm 21 now!
I have nothing to say to that. It's crazy.
Also, I'm glad I'm here, and not elsewhere:
The last day of this weekend involved very little other than the ending of an almost-fifteen-year-long tale (75% of my life!) — that of Woody, Buzz, and company. Toy Story came out just about a year after we moved to Vermont; the second, when I was on my way to middle school; the third and final, just before I start my last year of college. All along, I've been just a few (about three) years older than Andy (indeed — he's exactly Amy's age), growing up alongside his story. Nothing I can say can add to the tens of thousands of words already published about their many wonders, I can only thank Pixar for giving my generation our stories, something unique and special to hold onto and cherish as a part of our childhood for the rest of our lives, and also for bringing me to laughter and tears in public on many occasions. I can't wait to see what's next...
Does anybody remember when there used to be code on this blog?! What happened to that?? :)
Today was a bit more relaxed than yesterday — I spent a few hours picking out food for the week, shopping (my first time at Ralph's, following Mike's suggestion), and cooking. I made a pretty awesome broiled steak (there are grills downstairs, but that whole concept is way too scary for me!), some potatoes (butter and rosemary), and Nigella's white chocolate mint mousse (which I love dearly and have made quite a few times).
I've never tried to cook a fancy steak before, but I think it came out pretty well; less well-done than I usually prefer, but I was told that brown-insides and broiling don't go well (something about burning the edges), and I didn't mind, as it tasted great.
I also got some of reddit's favorite dipping sauce, sriracha, and dipped some of the less-seasoned potatoes in that. It was... pretty hot. Dad would probably enjoy it immensely; I'm going to try cooking with it tomorrow and see how that goes — it will either be a huge disaster (my vote) or wonderful (the opinion of many people on the internet whom I have no reason to trust but go along with anyway).
By the time I was cooking, I was resigned to a firework-less July 4th (probably my first!), mostly because of transportation issues. After I was finished eating, I decided that I'd take the bus over to the beach, and walk back if I had to...
When I got there, the La Jolla Cove fireworks were just starting. All, in all, an average fireworks show, comparable to Burlington's — exciting mostly for the rarity, but I would have been sad had I missed it! Unfortunately, I didn't get any decent pictures of the fireworks, as I was sans-tripod and not in a great spot anyway... they're always better in real life!
We were also treated to two other regional fireworks shows, running simultaneously with ours — one up on the hill just south of La Jolla Shores, and one over the ocean a bit northward. Being able to look around at different shows actually made today somewhat neat and unique, certainly more interesting than having a single set in the sky!
I managed to catch the last bus home, just after the show ended, yay! No four mile walk in the dark for me!
As always, there are a lot more pictures on Flickr, but below are the highlights from my trip on the 3rd.
This trip started based on a recommendation from some random La Jolla news site talking about things to do this weekend — their suggestion was to go to PrepKitchen on the 3rd, get a large quantity of takeout, and pack it in your picnic basket for the 4th. Since I'm not planning on having a picnic, I figured I would stop by and see what they had to offer instead. I had a wonderful turkey sandwich, and was quite pleased — I would highly recommend a trip, and will likely be returning in the future!
But the food itself wasn't the most interesting part of the beginning of today's trip — the area surrounding it was. For once, I felt somewhat "at home"... Downtown La Jolla seems to be the part of San Diego that I'd been missing; it felt more like the middle of Burlington or Cambridge than the rest of San Diego, with the random and varied restaurants and small shops and things. Eastern La Jolla (where I live) is very confusing, because it lacks reasonable (read: non-fast-food, non-mall-chains) food and other things. Other places I've been, like Kearny Mesa, or San Diego itself (the Marina and Balboa Park, at least) all felt... less welcoming. I was very happy, anyway!
After lunch, I wandered down towards the ocean, very quickly stumbling upon a whole bunch of seals! There were lots of people standing on the breakwater observing them, and there were signs warning that we shouldn't disturb the seals, as they need rest after swimming for long stretches. They would occasionally make those noises that seals make, but other than that weren't moving around very much — napping, indeed!
I walked south along the ocean for about a mile and a half, trying to stay off the sand and on the rocks or grass (I only have sneakers, at the moment!). I ran into a few squirrels... if you want to call them that. They're sort of bizarre, coming from the East Coast, but still easily identifiable (some of them were extremely fat, though...).
There were lots of tidal pools — I wish I'd had more glass with me (and better shoes) so I could have investigated some of the crabs and things up close... next time!
I got in a little bit of trouble taking this picture, and never quite got the shot I wanted. I had to drop down into the channel, and had some autofocus oddities (understandable, I suppose, with the moving water and the super-varying depth), and wasn't paying lots of attention, so I ended up with very wet and very sandy sneakers. Luckily, they dried before long, and I didn't really mind — though the water is quite cold!
I made a circle back around to Fay Ave., where I had already had lunch, and stopped at the Cold Stone Creamery, which I would recommend even more than PrepKitchen. However, if they offer you a bottle of water, take it; if they don't, get one! The ice cream is extremely rich, by design, and they fold all sorts of stuff into it (I watched them fold a brownie, some sort of chocolate chunks, and something minty into mine, it was pretty awesome...).
After the ice cream, I headed up the coast, towards my bus stop, passing by Scripps Park and a very crowded, tiny beach on the way, as well as a cave, and some kayakers! There was a contingent of very messy pelicans (and a variety of other birds, but mostly pelicans) watching over the swimmers, stopping occasionally only to stretch out their big beaks. Mike likes pelicans, so I sent him a nice picture of a few :)
All in all, today was a good day! I was planning on going to Coronado for their parade, but that would have required a 2+ hour bus ride at 7AM, and that just wasn't going to happen. I'm actually quite glad that it worked out the way it did, because I found a very happy area instead!
I accidentally ended up in the middle of OB's Street Fair today. I made the best of it by avoiding the crowd, heading out on the pier, and taking a picture of the festivities (this one *really* requires a click to make it bigger, though I am not responsible for browser crashes resulting from the loading of the 25+ megapixel image):
And a 1:1 crop:
I just found a backup of my bookmarks from a Linux install in 2004. Oh, how things have changed. To put things in perspective, I was 15, used Gentoo (and KDE!! instead of GNOME) and OS X (the latter for less than a year, at that point), and was working on remerge (link excluded for the health and benefit of readers)... pretty bizarre.
Thirteen out of the 32 links are dead in some way or another. 40% bit rot over the course of six years... not good!
KIO Namespace Reference (kio Library)
Gentoo Linux Documentation -- 2004.1 Information Guide
Options for Theme Engines
Chapter 3. How to make themes for KSplash
kde:
Gentoo Forums :: View topic - The Gentoo Framebuffer, Bootsplash & Grubsplash How-To
Network Theory Ltd - Making and Applying Patches - A short introduction to GNU diff and patch
Comparing and Merging Files
Mozilla CVS Modules
Bash Guide for Beginners
The Programmer's File Format Collection
Open Ideas
idea a day
Ncurses
Linux Network Programming, Part 1
Linux Socket Programming In C++ LG #74
Programming Linux sockets, Part 2
freedesktop.org
Logitech Quickcam QC-USB driver for Linux
Amazon.com: Books: C++ GUI Programming with Qt 3
Index of ftp://ftp.cs.unm.edu/pub/chris/quickcam
http://qce-ga.sourceforge.net/#Installation
Video for Linux resources
KIOSLAVES
Advanced Bash-Scripting Guide
NewOS Source Changes
mplayer - movie player for linux
The Termcap Library
MSN Messenger Protocol - Home Page
Qt Designer and KDevelop-3.0 for beginners
Qt Reference Documentation (Free Edition)
JavaScript Source: Free JavaScripts, Tutorials, Example Code, Reference, Resources, And Help
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