Just a Blog in the Bucket

You might imagine that being in California while my wife and daughter stay in Utah holds the prospect of an expensive summer of phone calls—I share the same fear as well. Fortunately, computers come to the rescue once again. Nothing like using a medium you already pay for (the Internet) to avoid paying for other services. The first hurdle is, while instant messaging is an okay fallback, it kinda sucks compared to real-time audio. Never fear, other options are available.

I've found that for two Mac users, iChat performs quite well for audio. The developers have gone to a lot of effort to make it smart and robust. On the version I'm using with Tiger (Mac OS 10.4) the output from the speakers is filtered against the microphone, effectively avoiding feedback and echoing. Other apps haven't done nearly as well in my experience.

Sadly, the computer my wife has to use for work is a Dell, so iChat is a no-go. For situations such as this, Skype is a great option that has worked reasonably well for me—check it out if you haven't tried it yet. There are even options for obtaining a callable phone number and providing voicemail capabilities. I've experienced some issues of grainy audio, but on the whole it's a pretty decent setup. However, I'd be open to any other free, cross-platform solutions.

Having any kind of audio chat setup beats paying for calling cards all summer, and even though we still call back and forth sometimes, it sure helps reduce costs. Of course, things will be even nicer once my new MacBook Pro with a built-in iSight video camera arrives… I can hardly wait!

Remember back to your first day at a new job? Now, imagine it's a company you've loved since you were 6 years old. (Yes, for me that's 20 years ago.) Specifically, imagine that you arrive at the lobby of 1 Infinite Loop at 8 am, fresh-faced and wide-eyed for New Employee Orientation. Wow. That's a fun feeling.

I have to say, the atmosphere is totally low-key and casual, and it's very easy to feel comfortable, even when you're brand new. We all got some Apple swag and a whole packet of papers to fill out. It was fun to meet other new employees—including 5 other interns that came before the exodus begins next Monday—especially when you find that they're working on iPod, iPhone, multi-touch, hardware prototyping, and the like. You start to feel like everyone is doing something über-cool and top secret, which they probably are.

Contrary to popular belief, there wasn't any Kool-Aid, although I did have pastries and orange juice. (For those that may not know, I'm referring to "drinking the Kool-Aid".) Sure, we're all obviously fans of Apple or we wouldn't be working here, but hey, I love it here already. If you must insist about the "Kool-Aid", I say it tastes good. I've loved Apple through good times and bad, and any such denigration really isn't anything novel. If anything, I fit right in at Apple, which is a great feeling.

To me, the most interesting part of the orientation was Robin from Apple Corporate Security. She basically comes down to put the fear of God into new people. It's interesting to see the extremes Apple security has to go to in protecting all forms of company property. People will dumpster dive for information, fake badges, tailgate behind employees through doors, even steal laptops in broad daylight if they can. There are secure trash bins throughout Apple to prevent careless leaks, all secured with padlocks. Security sure is serious business at a company that prominently occupies a pedestal of innovation.

Anyway, John (my friend and manager) picked me up and we headed over to Caffé Macs for lunch. The rest of the day was spent in meeting people, getting my temporary laptop set up, and being on the receiving end of a major brain dump concerning my summer project. Off to a running start.

One last interesting tidbit is the scheme used for Apple badges. All of them are white with a photo at the bottom, your first name in the middle, and a colored Apple logo at the top which varies from badge to badge. It turns out that they use the 5 fruity iMac colors: Strawberry, Orange, Lime, Blueberry, and Grape. However, the color you get is determined in a way that any Computer Science nerd can appreciate: take your employee number and mod it by 5, giving you a number from 0 to 4, which determines the color of your Apple. This also gives security another way to check that a badge is legit. Slick.

It's always strange to wake up in a new bed, even more so when you're alone and not used to it. I'm sure Shayla was feeling the same way this morning. Although it's easier to get a solid night's sleep when there's not a 1-year old in the next room, I really do miss the action. My daughter is a little firecracker, and she sure makes me laugh. No doubt this will be a long summer, but things could be worse. After all, I'm about to begin an internship with a great company and gain some valuable experience. Gotta keep moving forward and looking on the positive side of things.

Spencer took myself and Jim (another roommate, more on him in a minute) with him to church at the Stanford 1st Ward, which is composed of singles in the area surrounding Stanford University. Everyone was nice, but it was fairly awkward just being there—it's just a strange environment after all these years. After all, I've been married for 3 years and I have a daughter. I did run into Scott Robertson, a friend from BYU who will be working at HP down here. Imagine his chagrin when he was informed that at 24 he was too young to be in that ward, and needed to attend the younger ward. I must say, whomever came up with making one ward 26 and up probably had their head on straight; at least that minimizes the age gap and avoid scaring away younger girls…

So, aside from being totally excited for work tomorrow, I really want to set a routine of working regularly on a thesis proposal for my Master's degree. If I want to be done in April of 2008 or thereabouts, I pretty much have to have a proposal ready to defend when I come back in the fall. That's going to take a lot of work, but I do have the advantage of being without both a car and a TV, two major detractors from being effective. Putting in the work now when I have a relative abundance of free time makes lots of sense, even though it's hard to get things rolling. I guess I didn't leave academia behind completely as I would have hoped!

My plan is to see how things play out during my first week of work, then plan accordingly. With any luck, I'll have the self-control to kick myself out of bed early, limit hours at work, and spend time on things that matter, rather than frittering away time on computer games—I purposefully didn't bring games with me, and I don't plan on caving in to buy any. At any rate, it should prove to be easier now than when I was younger and less mature. (Those that have associated with me recently may be scared to think of a time when I was less mature. Trust me, you probably don't want to know.) Here's hoping the experiment turns out to be a success.

Today was the big day, leaving Utah for sunny California—alone. Bittersweet, but such is life. I planned my travel to maximize convenience and flexibility once I got to San Jose, leaving me enough time to buy some food and get situated in my new place. Unfortunately, leaving plenty of time in the afternoon becomes a "rob Peter to pay Paul" situation—I had to wake up at 4:30 to catch a 5:30 shuttle, all for an 8:45 flight.

It was a good thing I left so far in advance, though, since my hair gel bottle holds a lot more than 4 ounces, which caused me to circle around right after security to check my other bag. And don't imagine they let me back through without another thorough screening, either. After all, I'm just the type that is liable to pick up a bomb during that 5 minutes. Anyway, by 7:30, I'd already put my shoes, belt, and watch on 3 times. Ah, the love I have for the TSA…

Happily, the flight went without a hitch, and I soon found myself in the tiny San Jose airport, grabbed my luggage, located a shuttle, and 30 minutes and $40 later I was at my new home in Menlo Park. I was actually pleasantly surprised at what $575 a month can get you in Silicon Valley, at least if you look closely and get lucky. The apartment has 3 bedrooms, and there are 3 of us, so it works out nicely, and the neighborhood is nice and somewhat quaint. I think I'll like it here.

As it turns out, the outgoing roomie (Spencer Nielsen, getting married on Saturday the 5th) was celebrating his birthday. Like any quick thinker, he had lined up a trip to a buffet that's free on your birthday. Our victim was Todai, a decent restaurant with one catch for an Arizonan/Texan/Utahn like me: it's a Japanese Sushi & Seafood buffet. Right. I am proud to admit that I ventured out a little and tried some sushi, albeit no raw fish. I even tried eel and calamari, but I ended up eating mostly teriyaki chicken and tempura shrimp. The verdict is… Hey, have I mentioned how much I love Mexican food?

To avoid further intrusion on Spencer's birthday, I headed off to buy groceries with our roommate Joey, an extremely nice guy whose family is from Taiwan. He also has a Porsche Boxster, which was a slight change of pace from a Honda Civic. All I have to say is that it was a good thing there were only 2 of us, because anyone else would have been out of luck, even if they wanted to ride in the trunk. Hence, my reaffirmation that I will never own a sports car—I already knew that monetarily, and now I know that physically—as they are not built for anyone over 6 feet in mind. I suppose I'm on my own if I should choose to have a mid-life crisis!

After I had a chance to ponder this epiphany, we hit up a Chinese supermarket that is inexplicably named "99 Market Ranch", one of the few English phrases to be found on the premises. It was full of new and interesting smells, and had very narrow aisles full of people jabbering in Chinese, making as much sense to me as the packages on the shelves. I felt strangely out of place, perhaps partly because I'm about 6'3" tall. Just as Joey commented that it must be strange to be the tallest guy there, a tall Asian teenager walked by, which somewhat starled me although he didn't quite break 6 feet. I had to laugh and remember many similar experiences I had in Brazil about 4 years ago. We also hit up a Mexican market closer to home, which felt a lot more normal, at least to me. With enough food to survive for the week, I headed home to get some rest and get settled in. Busy day, but somehow I get the feeling that things will get even busier come Monday…

I feel like I should begin with a little bit of explanation—or perhaps even justification—of why I'm creating my own blog to join the blogosphere. After all, a bad blog can be worse than no blog at all. So, here goes…

I'm doing a summer internship at Apple in Cupertino, CA from 4/30 through 8/17. I'm extremely hyped for the awesome opportunity, yet there is a poignant downside: my wife and daughter are staying in Utah for the duration. The biggest reason is that Shayla works as a Hall Advisor for BYU Housing, which is a live-in position that provides rent, food, and insurance—a nice gig if you can get it. Picking up and leaving for a few months, only to have to search out new housing right when everyone comes back to Provo in August, is not an appealing prospect. Also, it would greatly increase our expenses for this summer, which translates into less income we actually get to hold onto for the future. Hmmm, not so great. All things considered, this option made the most sense, despite the tradeoffs.

Essentially, this blog is a way to keep people up-to-date while I'm gone, seeing as I'll be in California all summer, and away from friends, family, and academia (at least that's a welcome break!). I'm notoriously bad at being informative about what I'm doing, and I figure this is a good way for people to keep track of what the heck I'm up to. This is especially true for my wife, since she misses having me around all the time. (I suspect that's partially because I do dishes and take out the garbage...)

Admittedly, there is also a somewhat selfish reason: I'd really like to practice my writing regularly. I never thought I'd say it, but I actually enjoy writing when I get down to it. I've found that the trick is to write about what I care about, which explains why I detested English essays in high school! However, I'll counter that with some altruistic intentions: to write about some topics that other people will also care about. Eventually, I plan to write entries in many different veins, and hopefully they will be of use to someone somewhere. Since that's impossible to measure, I can't make that a metric of my success, so I'll at least strive for readability and proper grammar and spelling. (No need to thank me, it's the least I can do.)

Finally, I suppose I should mention something about the title. It's intended as a play off the phrase "a drop in the bucket", a reference to being just a small contribution, essentially unnoticeable. Hopefully, this will add up to something substantial over time, hence the reference to drowning, which is certainly a risk when you accumulate enough drops of water. Don't take me literally on that one, though—I refuse to let my blog be held responsible!

So, without any ribbon to cut, flag to drop, or champagne bottle to smash, all I can say is this: Let the blogging begin, and let the good times roll.