I got into a VanPool today. This is good because A) I don’t want to ride an hour each way on the bus; and B) I don’t want to pay $120/month in gas to drive in. The VanPool meets at the Greenlake Park and Ride and leaves promptly at 6:35am (6:34am rolls around and the doors shut. All eyes are on the clock. 6:35am and the we take off pronto). It costs $55/month, but Boeing has a shared ride subsidy that effectively cuts that in half. So I end up paying about $30/month.

Here’s my typical schedule:

5:30am - Wakeup
5:40am - Get out of bed/Take shower
6:10am - get out of shower/get dressed
6:25am - Leave for Greenlake P&R
6:35am - Leave Greenlake P&R
7:05am - Arrive KSC
12ish - Lunch

3:40pm - Leave office to meet VanPool
3:50pm - Leave KSC
4:25pm - Arrive Greenlake P&R

Repeat.

Today was more Java programing. Just about halfway there. Intense though. Had two meetings today and my role is starting to develop. Looks like I’m going to be working on developing a software application from scratch which will be pretty cool. There isn’t a internally assigned name yet, but I’m going to reference it as Deicer for the time being (although it has nothing to do with de-icing). Requirements still aren’t set yet, but that will be taken care of tomorrow with my first conference call.

Note: This wasn’t posted until 6/1/2006. I needed to review it and didn’t have time until now.

Technorati Tags: boeing internship, boeing intern, boeing, intern, internship, vanpool, metro vanpool, rideshare

Monday was Memorial Day and I had the day off, which was kind of interesting because at Mines, we don’t get any days off. A three day weekend before my first real day was pretty cool. I was going to take the bus, but I decided to drive in because I really didn’t want to bother with parking in Downtown Seattle. I was able to get down to KSC rather quickly, about twenty minutes…a far cry from the hour or so it was going to take via bus. I spent most of the day meeting people, getting door access, and then learning Java.

Java? Yea. I’ve done C++, PHP, mySQL, and a handful of other languages, but I never got around to learning Java. So D. gave me a thick “Introduction to Java” book. I was able to get through 13 of the 54 chapters today and my goal is to get through the entire thing by the end of the week:

(4 Days) x (8 Hours/day) = 32 hours

versus

(16 weeks) x (3 days/week) x (50 minutes/day) = 40 hours (but take out some time because the third day of class is usually for labs, thus little or no new instruction is given).

In short, I’m taking an entire semester of Java and compressing it into 4 days. My brain is going to be fried this weekend.

Note: This wasn’t posted until 6/1/2006. I needed to review it and didn’t have time until now.

Technorati Tags: boeing internship, boeing intern, boeing, intern, internship, java

Narrating Boeing training videos! Long story short, I used to listen to Mr. Collier when he hosted the 9pm-1am slot on KIRO 710 back “in the day”.

Note: This wasn’t posted until 6/1/2006. I needed to review it and didn’t have time until now.

Technorati Tags: Drake Collier, kiro 710, kiro, 710, boeing

The Onions, SAAS’s awesometastic vocal group is singing again tonight at the Arts Center. If you’re an alumni, you can get your ticket for the low low price of $4, which is actually pretty good considering adult tickets are $10 a pop. Like I said, it’s tonight at the Arts Center, 7pm. I’ll be there, I saw Paige Pauli yesterday and she said she’d be there. Anyone else going?

While I can’t (and by “can’t”, I mean that I won’t…not that someone told me not to) tell you what I do, I think it would be fun and even beneficial to share some appropriate office antics.

As I said before, I was all done with orientation and union stuff just after 12. I headed down to the Kent Space Center and promptly began looking for my building (I’ll call it building 18, even though that’s not it. All building at KSC are prefixed with 18). I can’t find the entrance that I wanted to get in, but I found the one next to it. So I go in and drive around and finally find building 18.

I park and walk up to the glass doors and I’m looking for a place to wand my card over so I can get in. I don’t find one, so I just start pulling on the doors (from right to left). The third door is open, so I walk in and the fire officer (think building security, but for fires instead) is there. I explain to him that I’m an intern, I’m just starting today, and I really have no idea where I am. Could he help me?

We start walking through doors, walking down hallways, looking at signs. Holy crap is this confusing. We walk in circles within building 18, trying to find my office. We eventually find it and I meet D, who I’m checking in with today because M is out of vacation. The first thing D shows me is where I am, where the entrances/exits are, and how to get from point A to point B. We spend some time walking around and D shows me where the office supplies are introduces me to some other people, both in my group and in my division.

We get to my desk. It’s a Dell, with not one but two screens. Widescreens at that: 1280×1024. Awesome.

My first order of business: Install Firefox (if I can). I search the Boeing Intranet for Firefox. Looks like everything should be kosher. Awesome.

Technorati Tags: boeing, firefox, kent space center, intern

The movie was good.

The last scene was excellent.

The scene after the credits is jaw dropping.

That’s right, you NEED to watch ALL the credits, then watch the last scene. Just about everyone at the Cinerama waited and then went “OOoooooo!”

Technorati Tags: xmen, xmen 3, the last stand, movie

Boeing Orientation is long, 4.5 hours long. Close to the end, I was practically sitting on my hands. But just like they said, it let out at 12pm sharp. There was a quick meeting with the SPEEA rep (Yea, I’m part of a union now) and then I headed down to the Kent Space Center to report for duty.

And that’s all I can really tell you. While I don’t have a Top Secret/Secret/Confidential classification, everyone I work with does and I honestly wouldn’t be surprised if I had a Confidential classification by the end of my internship. In any event, just about all the material I work with is labeled “Boeing Proprietary” which is pretty much just like having a Confidential clearance, but it’s not overseen by the government. So I can’t take anything home and I can take my cell phone in to work because it has a camera on it and the hallway has giant posters that say “No Classified Discussions” and all foreign persons must have an escort and remember those posters from World World II and such that said things like “Loose Lips Sink Ships”. So that’s that.

Boeing also covers continuing education which is cool, and they cover things that aren’t even related to your job. So I’m going to try and get my pilots licences this summer. All paid for by Boeing. Sa-weet.