Disclaimer: this is the story as I remember it. very likely to be incomplete and/or incorrect, but a story nonetheless. Leave comments for corrections. oh, and tell me when i should stop.

So, the summer was once again fast upon us. I don’t know if John knew what he wanted to do with me at that point since I wouldn’t be around for the summer. Eventually, i found myself working on Calendar. v.0.1 this time. It was done in madsearch and looked nothing like a calendar (oddly, during the previous year in the now defunct Software Engineering class, i actually built a calendaring web app in php using mysql). It was around then that Sue had promised me an honorary degree if i could get it done. ah, what could have been . . .

otherwise there were changes afoot. CCIT was growing fast and we were about to welcome our first official intern corps: kevin eng, tony chow, rob kao, johnny li, and lenny volchock. Unfortunately, i wouldn’t meet most of the new interns until i returned for spring semester.

I don’t really know how to relay this next part of the story. My time at Intel was incredibly insightful. I learned a lot about working outside of ccit and for corporate america. Perhaps the one huge take away i got from those six months was confidence. It’s one thing to be plucking away in a fish bowl that services thousands of people. It’s an entirely new ball game to be making products that will live for 5 years and be used by millions of people. To make products that people rely on to run their businesses, teach their children, play video games, calculate their taxes, etc. And, feeling like i could compete with the CMU guys, the U of I guys . . . it was just really good for me.

but for all the industry experience and there was something missing, and, if i had to put a name on it, i’d say it was irreverence. at intel, there was no singing and dancing. there was no jukebox blasting all day long. I had the intel culture police in my cube on a daily basis. “Stop standing on your chair.” “You can’t hang christmas lights in your cube.” “Where’s your badge? You can walk around here without a badge.” Actually, that last one there probably did it in for the future of me and intel. I went downstairs with a couple of co-workers to get a cup of coffee and these security guys stop us and ask me where’s my badge. I tell them i left it at my desk and then one of the security dudes turns to my co-worker and asks him, “What’s this guy’s name?” Mother fucker didn’t have the decency to ask me what my name was. Just assumed i was going to lie to him.
Anyway, during those six months, i was also moonlighting for CCIT. I developed the study abroad database (the second longest living app in CCIT history!) with my night hours. the interesting thing about that was the fact that my account was terminated right after i left. And I was kinda taken aback by that. two years of devotion to the JLG and in the first day of a temproary hiatus, my account got nixed. Where was the L-O-V-E? whatever. At the end of those six months, I got the STAB database up and a pre-silicon unit test validator done. yay.

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