Last Monday

Today was my last group meeting ever. Hoorah. I worked on a query and I worked on a script and I tested and I wrote e-mails and I sent E-mails and I received E-mails

The conducter that walked by looked like he was straight out of the old west. Skin, tall, slender body type, aged face, discolored beard, narrow glasses, longer hair.

Anyways, that was kind of it. Feels weird only having a few days left.

Today I went to Siam Rice, a Thai Restaurant. I got “Thai Spaghetti”. I asked for it spicy, and it wasn't spicy at all, so I was unhappy about that. It was a little undercooked, the green beans were too raw and so were the carrots. If there's anything that ruins a stir fry its undercooked vegatables. The flavor was pretty good and the service was really fast, I got my noodles and stuff within 5 minutes. I would have rather waited to have a fully cooked meal first, however.

And that was my day. I sent out an e-mail to my group saying I was gone on Wednesday, and gave them my contact info in case a they had a runaway script or a question on one of them.

Last Friday

Today was my last Friday at Performics this summer. I'm nearing the end.

I'm not going to give my “in retrospect” schpeil yet, but it has been a good time here at Performics.

Today was another intern's last day. Her name was Diane, and was part of the group that sat behind Sean, so right by me. We all went to Jamba Juice, then I went off to get another delicious spicy Gyro.

After that, well, that was that. I helped a guy figure out how to use my script (some scripts I just write for myself to do a task for someone) for future reference when I am gone.

Honestly, and I'm not trying to be boastful here, if it weren't for some of the scripts I developed, there would be times where people would be in a real predicament with loads of manual work to get the task done.

For instance, what I just worked on was fixing orders for CompUSA. Basically, things were changed, and orders needed to be updated. However, somewhere along the line, a specific order would be listed multiple times, once for each product that was in the order. If sent to our server, and there are multiple orders of the same order number submitted, they will just keep replacing themselves, and only the the latest one processed will exist on the server.

So, these orders needed to be “rolled up” into one line with all the pertinent data and with new order total amounts calculated. Doing this manually would be a huge chore, and getting the script request to engineering would have a long turnaround time. So, me being the script writer, it could be done quickly.

In combination with script writing, I've done custom query writing too – and this is all internally focused.

Maybe I could make a position for myself, “Internal Technical Assistant” or something. It's a thought.

Oh well, that was my day.

Super Intern Powers

This glorious day I had the same work to do...and another “tedious” task from the Search side of things.

This guy gave me a huge list of over 400 links in which I had to search in Connect commerce, and click about 4 times to change something, each click taking about 10-20 seconds. That would have been a lot of time, and he was like “get back to me tomorrow”

HAH!

He expected me, the Dantern, to do that? I searched and asked me group, got a script to do the job, and finished the list in about 20 minutes, then e-mailed the guy back with “(Name), All Done.”

He sent back a surprised but half happy response. To him, I had super intern powers allowing me to be capable to perform such a feat.

I had hoped I would actually learn something doing this job shadowing than doing repetitive, mindless (well, not today...) tasks. I'd rather do many other things than do a task that any person at a computer could do.

I went to Monk's Pub today to get a burger for lunch. It was good. I'm not sure if I had to be 21 to be in there or not, but I heard the had good burgers, and they did...and I didn't order any beer. So, I think I'm in the clear on that one.

The rest of the day I wrote a custom script to help out this guy who had a CompUSA account messed up on multiple levels (nothing he did, just other people's errors compounded on other people's errors made a mess).

Something new?

Well. Feedlab. Other script writing stuff. Coke rewards collecting. Lunch going. But...wait for it....waaaaiiiiit for it....something new! Oh boy!

Yes, I had e-mailed someone a while back about helping out (hopefully job shadowing) the Natural Search group.

Well, today, someone e-mailed me something to do. Well, I can't say that it was super exciting or something that made me learn anything, but, nevertheless, it was something new. I had an Excel file full of 300 MSN article URL's and titles, and had to write a keyword phrase for each one. That was it.

No shadowing, just typing.

I finished it pretty quickly, and e-mailed it off, and the guy seemed happy it was done.

I hope that isn't the only thing I'm doing for the Natural Search group, but I guess beggars can't be choosers.

Today I went to Taco Fresco and tried out all sorts of hot sauces on my chicken burrito. None of them were as spicy as I had hoped. Oh well.

Printer

Today I did nothing new. Same thing. Feed Lab, miscellaneous keywordqueue tasks, and miscellaneous testing. You've heard the drill before.

I even had the same lunch...Tuesday lunch. You've heard that drill before.

I even got a coke reward code. You've heard that drill before too.

What was different was that the new printer we have on my side of the building started making a loud, incredibly annoying, high pitched wailing/squealing noise whenever someone printed something. I think it was one of the rollers.

It would just be going “Weeeerrrrrreeeeerrrrrrrreeeeerrrreeee” resonating through the office and my skull. Today people seemed to be printing lots of paper, so as a result I had lots of noise. Goodie.

Well, that's all.

Time Travel

Today is a Monday. Therefore, all Mondays are fun. However, if your Monday is not fun, what day is it? Have you entered a subconscious vortex of the world as we know it? Do your brains explode? Do you get teleported to the year 1865?

Well, when I have an unfun Monday, I'll tell you.

And today...wasn't a fun Monday.

8/13/1865

G'day chaps. I aught to tell you about me day ther' today. At Ye Olde DoubleClicke Perfomics (It's where I work, Y'see), it be a Monday.

Today there on this Monday we had a meetin' of sorts. We all sat in chairs of black cow's skin and talked about stuff and the like.

After that, I was workin' on me 'puter on somethin' called uh Speed Lab. It's sort of a crippled program, see, and uses a high amount of me 'puter's CPU and memory! I jus' about challenged it to a sundown challenge I was so dem' der' frustrated with the darned thing.

While I wuz' a'messin with Speed Lab, I had a problem with a query, you see. A lad sent me one of them fancy electronic messages, y'see, and the report I generated for him wasn't quite about up to snuff.

After much time of depatin' and pleedin' with the database, I finally threatened the information I needed out of it. It wasn't pretty.

On this day fer' lunchtime, I walked many paces to Ye Olde Perry's for a Mad Moscow (half corned cow and half pastrami) sandwich. I just about died it was so good.

I jus' about better be goin' now.

Squishy Ball

Today was Friday. Not a moment too soon.

Today I did more with the huge MSN script report thing I was doing for this guy. I worked on that and Feed Lab ( I mean Speed Lab) for the majority of the morning. Once I got the script into a workable state, it was a very “click and wait” mode of working for both the query and Feed Lab.

For lunch I went to “Eat and Drink” again, reviewed earlier in my blog. It is the little Chinese hut caboose thing on the side of the road that fresh cooks your food on two full Wok's. I went to Wallgreen's to get some cash, but the ATM machine was broken, so I bought some 99 cent cashews to get cashback from the cashier. A coworker of mine tried the ATM machine too, when I left I caught up with him and asked if he got cash, and he said he couldn't either. We found out we were both going to Eat and Drink to get some Chinese food.

Inside he didn't have any cash, and the minimum order for a credit card was $10, so it was a good thing I was there because I just paid for him and me in cash, and he paid me back later.

I got the Kung Po Chicken. Yum, it was good.

After Lunch, it was just waiting for the huge script files to all transfer over (I had to redo it a few times) between servers and for Feedlab to be done.

Our clickserver went down in the afternoon, meaning any link that generates us money wasn't working. So, that was an exciting moment to see everyone scramble to get it fixed. It was soon fixed within the hour.

And, how did I not tell you guys about this earlier. A few days ago, I was at Greg's desk asking him about stuff, and I found that he had a couple still-in-packaging squishy balls with the DoubleClick branding on them. These are coveted items.

I said “Woah where did you get these!?” And he was like “Do ya want one?”

SWEEEEEEEEEETTTTT. I now had a coveted squishy ball. If you squeeze it tightly enough it bubbles out from the corners of your hand, turning from green to translucent showing the innards of the ball. It kinda looks like crumbled blue cheese is in there. Very weird consistency.

I heard rumors of balls popping and spraying all over the place, but I'll take that risk. It's just so fun and habitual to squeeze it, start typing, squeeze it again, then toss it up and down while I think of my next master plan in the perl or the query I'm writing.

Yippee!