There’s a cabinet at work that has some basic medications: Motrin (ibuprofen), Aleve (naproxen), and Valihist.
Valihist is an “Antihistamine-Stimulant for allergies, colds, [and] runny nose.”
The back of the package lists the the ingredients as: Acetaminophen 325mg, Caffeine 45mg, Phenylephrine Hydrochloride 5mg, and Chlorpheniramine Maleate 2mg.
How many medications contain caffeine? 45mg is about what you get the average can of soda1.
There’s a little note at the top of the package: This medication is made for occupational use, to keep people on the job, safely and productively. Yea, caffeine will do that for you.
On occasion, emails are sent out looking for lost items or reporting found items. I usually just delete them, but this one I felt like sharing; is it just me, or do these two read like some sort of weird magic trick?
Whoever borrowed the cart from [last know location of cart], would you kindly return it ASAP.
At last check, there were over 50 internship positions available, most of them in California, Missouri, and Washington State. There’s also about 50 full-time entry positions for college graduates, mostly located in California, Missouri, and Maryland, with at least three in Colorado at the moment.
If you know me and I know you1, feel free to contact me off-blog if you have questions.
I poked around and there are some really cool internships, so definitely apply if you’re even a little bit interested. One last note, you’ll need to be a US citizen for most of the positions…just something to be aware of.
A bullet point list of some of the things I learned at work:
Do not be in the same room when a 50000 volt, 200000 amp, 50 microsecond “lightning” strike goes off. It will vaporize anything in its path with a bright flash and a large boom.
“While at The Boeing Company you will not be able to avoid the wild goose chases that you are sent on by well-meaning co-workers.” — From “The Art of Being a Professional Boeing Employee”, Author Unknown1
Tasks in The Real World™ are not like homework: they often take longer, are not as well-defined, and not graded.
With regard to the previous item, I need to be better at planning long-term (i.e. > 1 week).
One of the interesting things about working at a company such as Boeing is how people treat you differently. Specifically how people you interface with on a non-recurring basis (i.e. not my coworkers) respond to me.
As soon as I call someone and say, “This is Andrew Ferguson from The Boeing Company,” I can hear their attitude change immediately. They are instantly interested.
On email, it’s very similar. I’ll be asking a vendor a simple question and they will respond with a resume of their involvement at Boeing1 in an effort to prove that, “Yes, we really do work with Boeing and we know how you guys work and we’ll do whatever it takes to keep your business.”
“You guys”…what does that mean any way?
This is a far cry from when I walk into a business, even today, and practically beg them to sell me something. I think a large part of this is because of my age. I’m a twenty-three years old and people don’t expect me to care serious about their product. It’s unfortunate, but true. The other part is to recognize that how you affiliate with something (a person or an corporate entity) can also affect how people treat you.
I haven’t gotten any comments back yet, but I wonder how shocked (if at all) people are when they finally meet me and I’m the youngest person in the room my two decades?
Perhaps the adage I should be keeping in mind is: “With great power comes great responsibility.”
I started work this past Friday. People have been asking why start on a Friday? The short answer is: because I want to. The longer answer is steeped in tradition.
The work week starts on a Friday and goes to the following Thursday. I have no idea why this is, it just is. Also, the first day of my internship, which I started over three years ago, was a Friday (due to training). Finally, it’s Friday, which means the next day is the weekend. What a perfect way to start the week…by ending it.
Anyway, I arrive at work, called my boss, and was on my way. Having done this three time previously, I’m a little bit of an expert at first days. Getting accounts activated, phones requested, training assigned, and the such. Typically it takes forever a few days to get it all setup, so I brought a book in case I had to wait for things to propagate.
As it turned out, I would not need my book. I was able to get my accounted activated in short order, and email was enabled by time lunch finished. In fact, it seems as there was a list of things for me to do that’ve been piling up since the beginning of the month. I had to quickly play catch up – remembering what the state of things were when I left and then figuring out what had changed since I’d been gone. So I had a pretty full day.
Working should be good though and I’m definitely excited to be back. I have a great job, at a great company, with people who are awesome.
When I got back to the car, I had a gazillion missed text messages. So I should probably make an administrative note here and say that I will not have my cellphone on me at work. Thus I will not be able to receive text messages. However, if you call me on either my cell phone or Google Voice number, it will ring through to my office and you can get a hold of me that way if you must.
After all of four days of searching, we found a place to live! I’ll be living with my good friend Jeff, who will be attending law school at the University of Washington in the fall. It’s in a nice section of Greenlake not far from where the work VanPool would pick me up. In fact, I think it’s the perfect location: walking distance to the VanPool and walking distance to Greenlake.
We put down our holding deposit and will get the official word on Wednesday.
In total, we looked at four places: one condo (as a rental), one house, and two apartments.
I had an epiphany the other night while falling asleep: I’m graduating. You might think that with only a few days of class left, this fact would be a little bit more pervasive in my thoughts; but it’s not.
I also confirmed my Return to Work (RTW) day with Boeing. I’ll be joining the Real World™ on August 14th at 7am. One of the things I’ve always like about Boeing is that the “work week” (i.e. the start of the pay week) is a Friday.
