Cheezborger

Today was a long day.

Sean got annoying today. He decided to read his e-mails and his e-mail responses to the entire office. He was in a very talkative mood.

I worked on the custom script I was working on for Mike, deciding how to combine multiple queries, save data from previous queries, etc.

At 11:15 Sean expressed the desire to go to lunch because he was hungry. I mentioned I was going to the original Billy Goat Tavern. It was a bit of a walk, and he said he didn't want to go. So, 5 minutes later, I got up and left.

I called my friend Dan (thankfully he doesn't have the same last name as I do) and we met up at the Billy Goat for lunch. We got there right before all the tourists got there, which was nice. All the other restaurants I go to serve hardcore lunch-going-businessmen clientèle. The original Billy Goat is in the middle of tourist town on Michigan Ave.

The food was great, though. I got a Triple Cheezborger...how it's spelled. Probably the best burger in the city.

Back to work. Sean exclaims in his bellowing voice “DUDE! Where WERE you?!?”.

“Uh...I went to lunch”

“Dude...I wanted to go!!!”

“You said you didn't”

“I can't believe you stood me up!”

He went on. And on. And on....and on about it. For about a half hour he had intermittent spasms of vocal tirades about me standing him up for lunch. Apparently even though the entire office could hear him, he had to bring it up again...and again every time one of his coworkers walked by. I got good at staring at my computer screen today. I didn't want myself to be responsible for annoying the office.

Anyways, I got a good amount of work done and had a nice big project (the script for mike with keywords) to do. Since it was a script that I thought up of doing, I kind of directed myself on it. I also had to run other queries and stuff throughout the day. Yippee.

Tired

Today was productive. I went out of my way to write a script for a situation I thought necessary. The guy I wrote it for was happy.

My boss started me on the documentation for writing Knowledge Base (KB) articles. So, to train to write for the KB, I was reading articles on the KB about the KB. Unfortunately, we hit a wall because I'm the first person in the GTS Performics group to start writing for the KB. So, once that gets going it should give me some nice responsible stuff to do. Right now, I have intermittent projects that often times get hung up on things and I have to wait for some step to be done to start again. Most of the time I have enough things to do to fill up a day, but other times I have to bug people to get stuff to do. So, that will be nice because I'll get something that I'll be responsible for.

So, in any case, we had hot dogs served up for lunch. Yummy.

I'm tired.

Wednesday

So, Wednesday. Things to do, things to do.

Yesterday I found a pretty significant bug in the Connect Commerce system. I won't say what it is, but I felt pretty accomplished finding it. It's not something someone would use in the way I was all that often, so that's why I probably found it. Kinda got that escalated today.

I went to salad spinners today. Kinda part of my “bla” day. It was gloomy and rainy on the walk to the train. Some of the movie trailers were missing, too. Hum, ho.

Yep.

Green Grass

Today I had lots of things to do. I sent out my infamous “Intern for Hire” e-mail and thus, work poured in.

Today, to aid company-company relations, I was one of 30 to eat lunch at the Google location in Chicago – only a few blocks away. Several groups were allowed to go over, and mine was today.

They had a very fun, bubbly atmosphere, and they actually had a chef to cook for their small office! The food was good, and free. Amazing.

What was even MORE amazing was that they had a BETTER coffee machine than us – it was an automatic Espresso machine. *envy*

They also had a HUGE selection of drinks, and a selection of free goodies like candy, individual popcorn bags, and energy bars. One of the drink refrigerators (there were 4) had “Naked Juice” in it. Probably the freshest juice available, they tell you what fruit goes into the little plastic bottle, as well as some added ingredients (natural, like plants and stuff) to boost the nutritional value of the drink.

I discovered this after eating, so I took two to go...out of Google. Stealing? No. Borrowing? Kind of.

I drank my “Red Machine” drink first, which was good. My “Green Machine” drink consisted of two apples, ½ of a kiwi, banana, pineapple, and something else. After drinking it, I realized that some of the booster ingredients were broccoli, spinach, blue-green algea, wheat grass, and barley grass. Apparently they were saving me the trouble of going outside and grazing like a cow.

Moo?

I bet my breath tasted funny after drinking that, it wasn't too bad though, just a little...grassy.

On the topic of Google, many of you may have noticed that I have Google Adwords ads on the sides of my site. I put them there by choice, to make a little bit of money (so far I've made a whopping $1.10). They display ads based on what I put in this blog. I've found ads about Hot dog stands, catering services, mexican rugs, mucus (guess which post that came from), and – honest to goodness – an ad for an “Are you Gay?” quiz. I didn't know my posts were dabbling on that fine line, but now I know...I guess.

So, in an attempt to give Adwords some randomness, craziness, and utmost confusion, I'm going to write about things that relate to absolutely nothing, not even themselves. Observe my off-the-wall imaginary Google-ads messing upper writing:

Green pants and Ham. Sam I Am? Green pants and Ham! Sean got his little squishy green ball stuck on the ceiling – Green balls and ham...I am? Have you seen sam? Or his ham? What about Fred. Is he Dead? What kind of casket did he have? Was it blue, polka-dotted, or purple? What were his last words? What was on his gravestone..tombstone? Green caskets and Ham...is Sam.

Butterflies! The colorful, wonderful, rainbow creatures of the earth. Caterpillars! The inch worms that aren't really an inch. Should I measure them? Maybe. Do I need a laser-guided ruler? Maybe. Lasers? Laser POINTERS? Laser MISSILES? Laser guns? Laser drawings? Bright Lasers! I know! Green Lasers and Ham! Point out the best parts of your ham with your new GREEN laser pointer! Or, you could point out Sam! Green lasers on Sam! Sam, say your name. “Sam I am!”

Trains, Plains and Automobiles. Lions, Tigers, and Bears, Oh My! I see London I see France...what color are your underpants? Green underpants and ham! Have you any Green underpants and Sam? Does Ham? Ham I Am?

MP3 players, Computers, and Cell Phones, Oh my! Conquering the universe, oh yes! Binary bits of programmable goodness drive their power. And with that p wer t ey ca do ce ain t..i..... D. ja s ?

My brain shut down. I cannot write abstractly anymore. I'm feeling really weird after that grass drink. Like, really weird. Grass is a slang term for marijuana, do you think they know the difference? I sure do...err...hope so. Bleh.

Office Neutrality

Today, I finished up the Perl script for my boss. Got it cranking out Excel files, and almost cranking out automatic e-mails with all the excel files attached. Whoopie. Thats the work I did today.

I went to Burrito Beach today for lunch. It was a pretty good burrito. I got there before the rush. It was a little smaller than a Chipotle burrito, with a little fresher taste, but different. I think I like Chipotle better. Was cheap too, only $5. I did enjoy the habenero hot sauce they had on the table. Yummy.

Sean was kind of depressed today. He didn't giggle, talk to himself, or bellow out elations of joy to the entire office at all today.

We did make an official “Neutral Garbage Can” zone between our desks. When I came on the job, he had the garbage can on his side, but after many large gestures, much heated debating, and lots of back-to-back bickering sessions, we decided that the Neutral Garbage Can idea was indeed a good solution. Both of us had to reach equally far to throw stuff into the garbage can. On top of this, the garbage can is in a neutral position to the walkway we are next to.

This way, our garbage can was available to one and to all – the most sharing, caring, and personal garbage can in the entire office. I was a proud parent. I even hung a little Post-it note chain consisting of three post it notes stuck on to each other in a downward fashion. “Neutral Garbage Can” was written on the top sticky note, and an array of arrows were drawn down the other two sticky notes, giving the garbage can an inviting, kind, and friendly aura about itself.

Now, no longer will people have to walk the extra 20 feet to find the next neutral garbage can. Now passers-by have the great luxury and delight of pleasuring themselves by saving 20 feet of consciously carrying their light, small, and yet extremely burdensome trash with them. Now people can seek the immediate relief and comfort of throwing away their garbage at our Neutral Garbage Can location.

Some people might call this bravery, heroism, going beyond the call of duty, or even an unnecessary charity to the world.

I just call it doing my job. The world can thank me later.

The Dark Knight

So, today, I did a lot of writing the script. Yea.

Sean had lots of trouble with his phone today. Let me act it out for you. Kinda.

*phone rings*

*Sean puts on the headset microphone*

“This is Sean”

*Sean fumbles with the phone, and takes the phone off the hook*

“This is Sean”

*Sean presses buttons on the microphone headset controls*

“This is Sean”

*Sean presses another button*

“This is Sean...Oh hi!....”

I laughed.

Then, for lunch, I went on an adventure. I went to find Mr. Beef, in hopes of getting a fantastic Italian Beef. It was North of the loop again, so more west, which incidentally was a more grungy “urban” area than the loop.

When I got there I ordered a “dry beef sweet and hot with juice” In non-Chicagoan language, that's an Italian Beef with dry bread ( not soaked in juice meat), sweet peppers, hot peppers, and a little juice on top.

I got it To Go, then walked around to find a “park,” deemed impossible from the lady I ran into yesterday. I walked west. Eventually, I found large groups of black people standing around, leaning on buildings, and all staring at me. It was then I decided that I was giong in the wrong direction, and after I rounded the corner I went back to the east.

It was then I ran into Moody Bible Institute, which did have a nice little park/eating area. HAH!

The beef sandwich was good, but not the best I've had. The beef flavor was excellent, however it didn't have the savory “kick” given by a combination of good culinary spices. Also, the sweet peppers just tasted like a green pepper, not marinated or anything, and the hot peppers weren't that hot. I enjoyed it nonetheless.

Also, one of my friends was working there, so I called him up and we met up for a few minutes. He showed me where he worked, and I even got a doughnut out of the deal! Yummy.

The rest of the day I was doing some little Keyword Queue tasks, more script stuff, and then I had no less than 24 credit cards to apply to for Citi bank. That was fun. The more fun part is that only some of them were tracking properly, and I had to try to figure out why they weren't. Ugh.

In the midst of Citi testing, Sean was like, “Dan.”

“Huh?”

“Wanna get a Slurpie?”

“Mmmkay”

So, we did. Hooray.

I don't know if any of you know this, but they are filming Batman: The Dark Knight in Chicago, and it's a huge deal. If you don't know, it's the sequel to the film “Batman Begins.”

On the way back from work to the train, there is a parking lot with all of the trailers for anyone in the movie. There are also kinda temporary ones parked near the curb on the street. I looked for the names of famous people on the street trailers, but couldn't see anyone. Don't feel like trespassing in the parking lot.

There are also lights all over the sidewalks that are pointed at buildings. They aren't “on” but there are dudes in yellow shirts that say “security” on them. I guess they are the keepers of the lights.

Anyways, there are a bunch of pink signs taped on to poles letting the crew, extras and actors know where to go. They read things like “SET, LUNCH, BREAKFAST, RESTROOMS, EXTRAS HOLDING AREA”

Sean and I passed the Signs pointing to the building that said “Set” I said I wanted to check it out. When you went in the building, it was just an elevator room, so I decided to get my Slurpie first.

I got my Slurpie, and on the way back I said bye to Sean (who was too chicken to go explore the set of a movie) and I went into the elevator. I had passed this little building so many times, and I was really curious, and I wasn't going to be a sissy and wimp out on something that would be neat to see. What are they going to do to me, tell me to leave?

In the elevator there was this huge sign “effective today, you need your crew ID's to get on the set” Yada Yada Yada. The “SET” was taped over the 6^th floor and 7^th floor buttons. To be honest, I was a little chicken at first, so I built up my courage by pressing floors 4, 5 instead. When 4 opened, I realized it was just a parking garage because I could see cars. So, I got off on the 5^th floor and explored.

The parking garage spiraled around and around like normal parking garages. In the center, however, there was a tightly spinning ramp for a quick way down from the top level. So, at about the 5^th floor, that inner area was open to the sky.

As I was walking up, I saw a yellow-shirted security dude in the inner section. I hid behind a car and waited for him to pass, then continued walking where the 6^th floor just started. I saw a some equipment that looked like a reel. This piece of equipment was right by the ledge overlooking the inner area of the parking garage, with a strong looking cable going to what looked to be the top floor of the parking garage.

After I walked forward, another security dude was looking in a car, then saw me and came up to me and called me Sir. He directed me to the stairwell and told me to go away.

Stairwell eh? Why didn't I think of this before! I just walked up to the 6^th level, then the 7^th level. I looked out of the top floor window, and on the roof of the parking garage there was all this equipment. I snapped a few pictures on my cell phone to prove my existence there.

Out from the window I could see the entrance of the swirly inner ramp on the top floor, and the men were building some ramp thing near buy it. I couldn't get a good look because their was equipment all over and I was peering through a small, dirty window, but I still got to see the set. There was a yellow-shirted security dude walking around, I think he almost saw me, but I was too stealthy-like for him.

I went down to the 4^th floor and started walking down, then saw another stairway. I decided to go up that one.

When I got to the 6^th floor, saw a huge theater light with the tripod on the stairs. There was what looked like a projector screen. The projector screen was positioned against the wall in such a way that the lamp's light bounced off it and illuminated the whole area. If you were looking outside into the stairwell, you would see the that the stairwell was illuminated, but you couldn't see the projector screen. I squeaked past the tripod and all the thick cords and peered out the 7^th floor window, which was really dirty, so I couldn't see much. There was some guy's coffee just sitting there so I was nervous someone would come, so I wasn't there for long.

I did look out the window in the stairwell though to see outside. I noticed that from the perspective of the stairwell, all the buildings surrounding this building had lights positioned around them on the ground. I guess they want to light up all the buildings to make it look neat, so this must be a pretty big scene.

It was really fun to see that though. Just remember, if you see a rooftop scene in on the top of a parking garage and there is an illuminated stairwell, your friend Dan was in that stairwell at some point in time!

That was my day. It was memorable.

I need to get a yellow shirt.

I have a drinking problem.

So, today. So much happened. Not really at work, but so much happened.

So, to start the morning off was an all-hands meeting. This mean that everyone in the company packs themselves into rooms to all huddle around a solitary conference speaker and projector to watch the CEO go through stuff. After the meeting is over, it is akin to “opening a can of sardines” Everyone was out of there in a second flat.

After that, it was time for lunch. It was a long meeting. So, I didn't have any cash, and had less than $20 in my bank account so I couldn't go to the ATM. I have a good amount of money in my savings account, and I was expecting a paycheck from work to come in to my checking account, so yea.

I just wanted to get cash back on my credit card at Walgreens, so I just grabbed the first cheap thing I saw in sight and got it. It happened to be a Pop Rocks fruit roll up. I went and checked it out at the register, and discovered I couldn't get cash back from my credit card. Oh well. I stuffed it in my pocket and went on.

I decided to walk and find a good place to eat. I ended up walking north, towards the tourist part of the city. The place with the huge McDonalds, Hard Rock Cafe, Rainforest Cafe, Harry Caray's, etc etc. All too expensive. Everything down there was at least $13-$15 for a good meal. For lunch, no less.

So, I stumbled across Sam's Grille, and got an Italian beef to go.

Then, I tried to find a place to sit down and eat. Apparently, in that part of the city, no one is concerned with sitting down. There are no places to sit. No benches, no nice little planter boxes, no nothing. I didn't feel like impaling my buttocks on the 3-foot-tall black fences that went around almost every imaginable planter box and tree, so I pressed on in search of a suitable bench to rest my legs and have a good little lunch.

No such luck. I a decided to start asking people where a “park” was, and the first lady laughed when I asked her, so I stopped asking people after the first person. What an adventure.

I ended up sitting down and eating in the huge McDonalds. As soon as I bit into my Italian Beef, I discovered that it was...

...filled with maggots.

No, just kidding. I found it to be filled with medeocracy. It wasn't good, and it wasn't awful. It tasted like Italian Beef, but on the other hand it also tasted like some mystery meat which had been reheated in the microwave for way too long.

Ho-Hum. I thought the fries would save the day, but they were a soggy, kinda chewy lump of fried potatoes. Blech. Oh well, live and learn. Only get Italian Beef at a place where the line is out the door.

This area didn't really feel like the cozy downtown area I worked in, it felt like an open, less organic, more contrived part of the city to lure people in. As I was pondering this thought to myself while sitting there in McDonalds, I saw a tour bus reading “See the city” on the side and it was filled with people. When it unloaded, it was like a mass exitus of a really bad amature paparazzi class. Teens were awkwardly angling their cell phones at buildings in hopes of an actual recognizable image being captured on their cell phone, grown adults were spinning around while pointing at stuff, and grandmas were rapidly spinning the clicking wheels on their disposable cameras in a mad fury against time. It was like the city of Chicago itself was going to drop off the planet at any second, never to be seen by mankind ever again. Folks, the buildings aren't moving...and if they are it's gotta be pretty dang windy in the Windy City. Take your time...man.

When I got back to work, I worked on a new script my boss gave me, and started going more advanced Keyword Queue management. Yay.

Also in the afternoon, they were doing construction, so the whole floor resonated with the buzz of a jackhammer. After the first blast of vibration and noise, a guy stood up and said, “Hey, did anyone hear that?”

So, I was talking with my boss and leaning against his cubicle, and as I walked away I felt the urge to feel my back pocket...and lo and behold...THE POP ROCKS FRUIT ROLLUP! Glorious! So, I rushed back to my desk, opened it, rolled open the fruit rollup, poured the pop rocks on the fruit rollup, rolled the fruit rollup back up (say that 10 times fast) and ate it. It was awesome. Kinda like a pop rocks burrito, except it was all candy. And, it fizzled and popped in my mouth. So, that was pretty much my mini happy moment of the day.

Yea, and I have a drinking problem. So, I'm in a dazed mood and drinking my Sprite Zero. Well, I didn't drink it quite yet. When I attempted to drink it, I spilled all over myself. What happens is, I tilt the can before it gets to my mouth. I mean, what normal person keeps the can perfectly level UNTIL it gets to their mouth, then tips it? It's like torture for a split second, you gotta wait until you are “allowed” to tip it.

Well...actually, normal people do that when the pop can is full. I'm not normal so I don't. I guess since I was engaging in a dead-on blank staring contest with my monitor (also accompanied by a dazed and confused mindset), I forgot to use my brain power to realize that the can was indeed full. So, I tipped the can before it reached my lips, pouring Sprite Zero everywhere. At least it didn't get my socks wet. I am still wondering how you can forget to use your brain since your brain does the forgetting, but whatever.

Sean (side note: does anyone read that in their brain as “Seen” instead of Shawn? I do...) saw me as I was wiping the mess up with my hands, and I said “It's just water with chemicals...not gonna hurt anything.” He replied, “That's what we all are...just water and chemicals.”

Yup, I have a drinking problem. I spill a lot. I guess I should go to Spiller's Anonymous.

The Dantern

I am affectionately called the “Dantern” by a friend of Sean's. He works on the same team as him so he comes and visits sometimes.

Oh yea, yesterday I took the CRM training course. Customer Relationship Management it's called. The system seemed kind of a nuisance, and the lady didn't know what she was talking about, kept bumbling through the system and was constantly writing down things that “she didn't know” to ask someone else. She was filling in for someone else, so I guess that was OK. I still learned about the system, in it's infantile beta stages anyways.

Anyways, I finished the script for my boss today. Perl is really nice because if there are scripts out there that do what you like, you can open them up and look at the source code to see how they did it. That was helpful to connect to databases. Hurray.

Basically the Perl script ran a series of queries that grabbed stuff from the database, and output it into a format that into files the way that they were needed with header file data, things properly tabulated, etc.

I think I may have to put in some FTP functionality, so that would be nice.

I had soup and a sandwich from a bakery. Both were good, but nothing to write home about. The sandwich was really hard to eat because if I ate a normal bite and pulled away with the sandwich, all the veggies would get pulled out. I would have to bite and keep on grinding/chewing until the veggies were separated from the sandwich. So, that was annoying.

The soup was very fresh, and had lots of spices in it, but I think it banked on being fresh than adding some holding power to it. The flavor got a little old after a while.

Pomegranate

Today I started the day with some pomegranate juice. Mmmm. After reading around on their website, I found that it had more antioxidants than red wine! Impressive.

So, today was the last day I had to do any OrderUpdates. It was officially being outsourced. Hooray!

Today I worked on writing a script for my boss. It was doing some things I hadn't done before, so that was good, I was learning.

Today was “two slice Tuesday.” And by now I've gotten up to the point where I'm violating that rule threefold. When I came and sat down one younger guy was like, “Woah, intern...really loadin' up there!” That I did. That I did...

And, that was kinda it. I did some tasks for people did, lots of site testing and dealing with the keyword queue. Yea, that was kind of it. Sean laughed a lot today.

Monday

So I've officially been working here for a month. Yipidee doo da day.

I caved and went to Perry's again today. The sandwich was amazing, so it was worth it.

Today I kinda just did stuff. Yea. I'm writing a script for my boss tomorrow, that's exciting. Things to do. All I really did today was do Order Updates. Tedious work that needs to be outsourced.

Okay, it's Monday. Don't feel like writing much. So, there.

Graffiti

I missed the train today. So, I was a little late. I took the train with all the train noobies on it. I think I was the only one with a monthly pass. Pfft. Amatures.

Oh well, I strolled in and no one really noticed. One of my coworkers who gives me lots of stuff to do was gone (from wednesday) and today was half day friday so at 12 everyone was gone except one newer coworker and my boss. So, I didn't have a whole lot to do.

For lunch I ate the other half of my deep dish pizza. I think the microwave sucked all the flavor out of it, but hey, it was pizza.

I did have a 1 on 1 meeting with my boss and we went over what I was doing and stuff. This was his first week back after being gone a week, so he was a little crunched so he couldn't really give me a lot of work to do. I didn't complain :-).

He did go over what I would be doing...I'd have plenty to do. Documentation updates, and I'd take some training classes where he said to have those things on my resume was “golden”. I believe it was CSM. Client something Management. Of course, something wasn't in the name, and I'm not even sure if the acronym was CSM, but I'm taking a training session on it. He also is getting us in on the DoublelClick Client Summit, with a keynote speaker who wrote Freakanomics.

Today I did some Order Updates, which is horrendously tedious, but sometimes I can get very creative with my messages. Basically, people submit orders that need to be updated, and since we are some of the few that have backend database access, we run them. One of my messages read something to the effect of, “I'm happy to report that all of your orders have successfully made friends with our database. Congratulations!”

Soon enough, the day was over. When I was walking out, for some reason the motion detector didn't detect me, and the door wouldn't unlock. So I was sitting there shaking this glass door, then pressed the red “Panic” button next to the door which unlocks them. Hah! I escaped. You can't keep me in here over the weekend! No siree! Not happnin'! Not a chance! No way Jose! Don't bet your beans on it Sally! Say it again Sam! Don't even think aaaabaaaat it! Can't keep a wild animal caged! The Drazbanian Devil will not be withheld by a simple inch thick glass door with metal handles and a red panic button to unlock it! I'm going to escape! You better believe it! And I'm excited about escaping! I really am!

Hey! Look at the cool graffiti drawings on the side of the freight train cars...they are almost like works of art. All colorful with intricate cool designs. Hmm. Maybe the lower class of gangs are receding into the stone age of drawing things on the wall. Poor Human Race.

It's Friday...and...Meesa goiiin hoooome!

Booger

Today was the same old. So I'll spare you the grief and not say much about it.

I did go to Giordano's pizza, however. It was good. I've never had Giordano's Chicago-style Deep Dish before, but, I still liked it. Maybe not as much as Pizzeria Uno/Due, but it still was quality Chicago pie.

If you want a story, I'll tell you a story. When I got out of the train in the morning I sniffled my nose especially hard and choked on a rock-hard booger. There's your story. Let your imagination wander.

Did I make a loud guttural choking noise? Did people around me gasp and gaze in awe? Did I have a heart attack? Am I still choking on it now? Who knows.

Fashion Jeans for Me

Today was boring.

I did some search SQL stuff.

I did some testing for websites.

I did some keyword queue clearing for our Paid Search synchronization with Google, Yahoo, and MSN's API.

And that's what I did.

For lunch, I went to BomBon, a Mexican restaurant that doesn't serve burritos. They serve mexican sandwiches. Essentially, burrito filling in between mexican bread. They were called some four letter word beginning with 'T'. I forget the name. All I know is, it wasn't worth the money. It tried to be “fancy” but in the end, wasn't worth it. I mean, it was good, but nothing spectacular, nothing out of the ordinary.

One sort of interesting thing happened. I did a test for DJ Premium, a clothing line. The Program Manger for this client didn't really know what she was doing, because she wanted me to test an order just because the website didn't get any affiliate sales for two days. So, away I went with testing. It was hard for me to find something cheap to buy, jeans averaged at plus $100 prices, some reading $475. If you want to pay $475 for a single pair of jeans, something is wrong with you.

Anyways, I placed a test order. The dummy credit card number (4111111111111111) wouldn't work, but one of our company credit cards for testing orders (3928371952193749) worked. You thought you would get lucky and I would be dumb enough to type out a credit card, didn't you. Well, today isn't your lucky day.

Within an hour I got a confirmation e-mail that the order SHIPPED. Of course, the name is Test Tester, but it shipped in under an hour which was impressive turnaround time. I told the Program Manager to cancel the order as soon as I placed the order, but obviously it couldn't get canceled that fast.

After I told the PM that the order had actually shipped, she said she tried e-mailing her company contact and then told me to call the company to cancel. Why do I have to call?!? She's the contact for the client. Whatever. So, I called, the voice message machine told me in a friendly message that I was “first in line” to talk to a representative, but obviously no one was there because I was stuck listening to bad rap music with dubbed out swear words for 15 minutes. Then I hung up. Then I called the company again, found out the order had indeed left the building (like Elvis) and we would have to send it back. Our administrative guys immediately reject packages that are listed with the name “Test Tester” anyways, but it's just an annoying process to go through, especially because all of this was unnecessary.

Whatever. I guess I might have a chance to try on some designer jeans. O boy

Caffeine buzz

This morning I decided to try out Ronny's Steak (and something or another for the rest of the name) House for the 4.99 breakfast special. Steak, eggs, hash browns, and texas toast. What a deal. The hash browns were more like seasoned potatoes, after a while the seasoning on them got a little overwhelming, but the steak was tasty and the eggs were good. I've never had good steak for breakfast before, and now I had.

I went to one U of P class where the presenter wasn't the best in the world, and I already knew the material. So, it was a test of my patience.

Again, I had little assignments from people. One lady was leaving for the afternoon, so I took over a repetitive job for her. It helped a little bit for me to grasp what these data files I was editing did – they really just were direct inputs into the backend of our servers and other client's servers.

I did some testing for ralphlauren.com, one of our clients, too.

I wrote some more Perl for a new script that did something similar to what I had done before. So, that really wasn't a challenge. Just brushed up on technique. Yesterday, a guy from development talked with me and lent me a Perl book to look at. I haven't had time to look at it yet, but I will soon.

“Two slice Tuesday” was good as usual. It starts to taste the same and the eating time seems to not last as long, but it's always good.

That pretty much occupied my entire day. I put off writing another SQL query e-mail, mostly because I had more “time sensitive” things to complete.

I got the results of my Quixtar script and how it helped. My coworker (half boss, I guess) told me that it was “#*#(@ awesome.” He said it really helped and this was the first monthly report they had 0 errors when sending reports to this huge client. That was pretty cool to know that my scripts really are getting use.

And, that was my day.

Funny, even though my boss is here I really don't need to “go” to him for work. People just kind of meander over to me or send me e-mails, and I know what to do. I guess I'm getting the hang of this whole workplace thing.

While I walked out, I stopped by the Starbucks in the building to pick up an iced latte. Yum. Usually places are pretty empty around dinner time, and starbucks was no exception. While I was waiting to get my coffee, the guy behind the counter pointed to an iced caramel latte on the serving counter and said “You want it? It's free. I made an extra” So, with two drinks in hand, I embarked on my commute to the train station. Now I'm fighting off a very large caffeine buzz.

It feels like I'm half floating and things are bouncing around in my head in a gravityless groove.

I also have to pee.

Badly.

And the train is bouncing.

And I have to walk home after I get off the train.

And the train station is closed after I get off the train.

Too bad I don't give post-trainride updates, it probably would involve some grand, fit-for-a-movie adventure that would involve me dodging bullets, dodging trains, dodging cars, and dodging kids throwing dodgeballs at me while I sprinted home.

“Dan the Dodging Dodgeman who drives a Dodge Dodger that Dodges Potholes: In theaters now!”

This is the post that never ends...it just goes on and on my friends...some people...started reading it not knowing what it was, and then they kept on reading it just because...this is the post that...

Mmm...caffeine

Popcorn!

Today my Quixtar script finally got used. It officially processed data that was relayed to a real company. Yay.

I spent the morning in a GTS meeting, then worked the rest of the morning on some little tasks people sent me.

For lunch, I went to Salad Spinners. It was really quite good. I had a mexican salad with chicken, rice, corn, tortilla chips, and other good things in it. It wasn't really really good, but it was great for a salad.

After lunch, I went for a walk towards the lake and found some neat nooks and crannies of the city that I'll keep in my memory for safe keeping.

After I got back from work, Sean, the guy who's desk was right across from mine mentioned he was going to Garret Popcorn to get...popcorn. So, I went with him. I got a mixed bag of caramel popcorn and cheese popcorn. Boy, it was good. My stomach didn't feel the best after I ate it, but boy, it was good.

The rest of the afternoon I just worked on some PHP programming for another website. I had little things to do that people gave me, but otherwise I made good progress on the PHP project.

Tomorrow is Italian day!

Time to sink in

I guess it took my e-mail a full day to sink in.

I had all sorts of things to do. People were e-mailing me from departments I hadn't heard of, and started showing up to my desk like I was their best friend.

I had lots of database stuff to do. One query grabbed data from the far reaches of the database, it was pretty huge. I like to call that a “beefy” SQL query. What's for dinner? BEEFY SQL QUERY!!! Mmm...

There was some really repetitive manual parsing job I had to do to a data file. In SQL or plain text, it was freeking annoying. After about 5 minutes I decided it was a waste of time, then spent an hour or so writing an Perl script to fix that sucker up. It did, and I was happy.

For lunch I had so much to do I just ordered out for a Pockets Calzone. I broke the golden rule of going out to lunch, but technically I really didn't go out. So shoot me.

The rest of the day I did testing, more working with a couple beefy SQL stuff, and did the tasks that were given to me, so it was a pretty productive day.

Ironically, since I had so much to do I have the least to write about. So that's it.

Oh, I've determined the city smells like one of three things: a giant fart, nicotine mixed with fresh exhaust, or rotten chocolate.

Today is was a rotten chocolate day. I first discovered this lovely smell when I visited my friend at moody, which is a ways north of the loop, but still in “downtown” There is a chocolate factory near there, so it smells like really rotten chocolate, mixed with a sick chemical smell.

Today, the wind blew just right to bring huffs and puffs of the Stench of the North to the Loop, where it entered my nostrils, fired off some neurons in my brain, and reminded me of all the memories associated with that awful smell.

Hooray.

Getting Double Paid

With my supervisor gone and officially nothing to do, I sent out an e-mail to my coworkers: “Intern for Hire: If you need any help with anything, let me know.” No takers for the entire morning. So, I conducted myself by doing some website work for one of my clients. Getting paid by both my website client (for doing work for them) and getting paid by Doubleclick (for sitting there and doing work for my website client at the same time) it was a double whammy. Good for me.

Lunch came, and I went to Goodwin's. Their motto is “eat healthy, live long” or something like that. The line was really long, even being there 15 minutes before lunch hour started. I eventually got a Key West wrap, which had chipotle mayo, mesquite chicken, provolone cheese, and pineapple. I had it to go and walked to an ice plaza with a huge fountain in it to eat.

Basically, think of a huge concrete slab 50 feet square and about 3 feet tall. There were gets of water coming out of the middle of the slab, and water was slowly falling and clinging to the sides of the huge slab. It was a warm day, so I sat on the steps leading down to the fountain in the shade. It was windy,too. It was a balancing act trying to balance my flimsy tray and keep my napkins and brown bag from flying away. This sunken plaza was like a wind tunnel, pretty amazing. The water was flying off the fountain and spraying me gently. That was a nice feeling.

Wow, all this time and I haven't talked about how good the food was? Well, it was good. I liked the combo that I got and glad I tried something different. It's funny, sometimes when I try something different I wish I went with the safe choice, and sometimes when I go with a safe choice I wish I had tried something different. Well, I was glad I tried something different, but still wanted to try a safe choice :-).

I had a few testing things to do later in the day, but that was about it.

Oh, a couple days earlier when I was walking to the train in the morning, I was walking about 20 feet behind this lady. All of the sudden, she starts leaning forward and completely wipes out on perfectly flat sidewalk. She even rolled around a little bit on her backpack. She was a normal looking woman, business slacks and everything, but it was really weird to see someone fall like that. Anyways, time to read the Onion.

Chase

Today was kind of a blah day. No meetings, no real “purpose” of the day.

I did get a little done in the morning of some importance. I finished up my Perl script, experimented with some directory and file things in there, and fixed some overall bugs. I did do a few things that were given to me, like running link reports and such.

Lunch came soon enough. I went to a place called “Pockets.” They specialize in pockets and calzones. Calzones had a 15-20 minute wait time, so I passed on those. I got a pocket. Basically, it's a mini half loaf half pita bread thing cut in half (straight out of the oven) and they put this salad filler in. I had a southwest with chicken. It was pretty good, but kind of just tasted like a o mixed salad and bread. I'll need try the Calzones, they seemed to be especially tasty because they are baked to order.

After I came back from lunch there were some annoying people from Chase in the lunch room. I just wanted to get a coke, and this lady was following me around saying “Hi i'm from Chase...yada yada” I reply with a “I'm already with Chase” She says “but you don't have these rewards things!” Ugh. I looked at the sheet they advertised in their e-mail, none of it applied to me. Besides, I'm with another online savings company that gets 5 times the amount of interest their savings account yields. I didn't need any more Chase people.

However, one good thing came out of this. Shawn, my deskmate, commented that they left behind frisbees when I asked if the people were still in the Kitchen. I went and grabbed one of the two that were left. It had “Chase” written across the front of it. I broke out my sharpie marker and wrote “CUT to the” above the logo and “YOUR DREAMS” below it.

So, the frisbee looked like this:

Cut

to the

CHASE |+|

YOUR

DREAMS

I was proud. Since I'm on the hallway and my “wall” I hang things from is the outside of a cubical, lots of people see my frisbee now, which is strategically hung on a thumb tack.

The rest of the day I did a few little tasks, and ended up leaving an hour early because I had nothing to do and everyone else was either busy or in meetings.

Freddy

I'm starting to wake up later, and later, and later. I'm also getting good at taking a shower and getting dressed faster, and faster, and faster. So, I guess you could say I'm evolving and developing my superhuman abilities.

Today was the day I finally kind of dove into things. At 9:00 AM I had a meeting with Brian, and three other guys. This was a meeting about one of our biggest publishers that we get half a million a month from. They have some pretty specific needs and wants for their clients, so we have to conform to what they want or we lose them. On top of this, they cater to two of our biggest advertisers, Barnes and Noble, and Circuit City. So, it's a triple whammy if we lose them. Basically, they have data that they need sent to them in XML format a certain way. Files can't have more than 1000 orders in them, they have to have a unique ID, they have to have a tally of certain things, etc etc. I didn't grasp entirely what was going on, but what I did grasp is that we were a little unhappy about the matter (and engineering, which was probably not going to make the deadline of June 10^th). Choice words were said about certain aspects of the program, so it was pretty apparent that this was important.

My job boiled down to taking a very large XML file and making it into several other XML files, all the while maintaining the header and footers, and editing the headers and footers a little bit to conform to some requirements. It would be best if I did it automatically, so I decided to write a script instead of doing mindless work.

On top of that, other people were giving me small jobs to do so I pretty much stayed on my toes the entire day.

For lunch, we had the usual Go Roma Italian food catered to us. I think I'm getting better at balancing and strategically placing items of food on my plate to maximize its edible capacity. So good.

So, to break up my work day and Perl script writing with an elevator ride in the State of Illinois Building. That was fun. Even though my ride was completely uninterrupted, I think they slowed down the elevator, so that hampered my fun and entertainment of the experience.

On the way back,, I grabbed some Coffee from the Starbuck's connected to our office building. I had an Orange Mocha. It was quite good.

By the end of the day, my script was working, so I was happy. I finally fixed a bug right at 4:58, so I shot off an e-mail to my coworkers that work on the files the script was for, and I was off. Time to go home!

An idea has been floating around in my head for a while: to make a website for a homeless person.

There's this one homeless drummer that plays on the north side of the Madison St. bridge every afternoon for the commuters ending their work day. He's out there every day, rain or shine.

I'm thinking of going to him early in the afternoon, if it isn't so busy, and ask him what his name is and how long he's been drumming. I might make a website called “www.freddyplaysdrums.com”. I would then make him some durable waterproof poster saying “Support Freddy! Visit www.freddyplaysdrums.com!” On the website, I would give a little background on “Freddy” and post vidoes and pictures of him with the sign to prove he's a real, breathing, person. I would make a donation link to raise money in getting him a new drum set.

Right now, Freddy plays on a snare drum balanced on a milk crate, he sits on a PVC bucket, plays on a PVC bucket, and his cymbal is balanced on a drum stick which is stuck in a milk crate. If this thing caught on, maybe I could eventually fund to give him food gift cards or something like that. It's an entertaining possibility that would be pretty cool if the site got famous. Anyways, yea.

Database For Me!

So, today I finally got database access after e-mailing a few people, so that was good. My boss is gone for the week, so I have to report to others. Brian walked me through working with a lot of the database, so I just played around with it for the majority of the morning.

I even printed out an official database diagram for quick reference. It was printed over 6 pages, so I trimmed them and taped them together. I now inducted myself into a true database/GTS support nerd. Woo hoo.

So, today...lunch. Oh boy. So, I found my new best friend: yelp.com. It's a review site for pretty much anything, but it is equipped with a map feature, so I use it to find restaurants in the area. There was already a restaurant I knew about that I was going to go to: Perry's. It was next to Taza, the Mediterranean restaurant I went to on Friday. I learned from some of the reviews that I missed the specialty of Taza: Falafel..I think that is what it was called, something similar. Anyways, I couldn't go to Taza again unless I tried some place new, so I had to go to Perry's.

Perry's is a sandwich shop. I thought I had tried all kinds of sandwich shops. Boy, I was wrong. Sandwiches are usually comprised of three main categories: sub sandwiches (Subway, Quiznos, etc.), specialty bakery/deli sandwiches (Panera bread, Corner bakery, etc.), and hot sandwiches (Plenty of restaurants).

Perry's was none of these. Perry's was it's own breed of sandwich.

I go in, notice the blatant "No cell phone" signs, and walk in. I gather myself in the environment, look around, and deem this to be a no-nonsense-be-ready-to-order-when-you-come-up sort of place. So, I took a paper menu and stood to the side (no big menu is in the place). They had all sorts of tasty combinations. The food was a little pricey, with just about everything over $7. They had a "triple decker" section and regular sandwich section. A sandwich with ham, peanut butter, bacon, mayo, and lettuce caught my eye as something good to try, but I settled on a turkey salad, bacon, coleslaw, and Russian sauce sandwich. When I ordered, I was asked if I wanted white, wheat, or rye. I chose rye.

They piled the bacon on, piled the turkey salad on, and piled the coleslaw on. Before he compressed the sandwich between two slices of normal rye bread, it was over 6 inches tall. I can only imagine how huge the triple decker sandwiches were. When I bit into the sandwich, it was amazing. This is probably the most unique sandwich place ever, and they seem to carry a reputation. I came before lunch hour because I noticed this place was always packed with people. After I finished the first half of my sandwich (it was cut in two) I was ready to get up because it was that filling. I had another half left.

In the middle of my 2^nd half, the music was interrupted with a screeching alarm. Remember the no cell phone rule? They have a system that detects cell phone usage. Everyone looked around the place to find the noobie who was using his cell phone. Everyone stared at him and he had the most deer-in-headlights look ever. It was great. After I finished with Perry's, I decided I would go get some Falafel at Taza. Basically, they are glorified hush puppies if you've ever had one. Except, they are a deep fried mixture of veggies and spices. After waiting in line, I just said I wanted one Falafel - $0.40 The man gave me two, and shooed me away and said, "You order yet? Free sample, don't worry about it. Go! Don't worry about it." So I got to try Falafel for free, that was a great gesture of kindness by the owner.

So, it was back to work. I had a couple meetings after lunch, which were somewhat informative. The rest of the time I worked on some miscellaneous stuff, but I have yet to get knee deep in the database stuff. Hopefully that happens soon.

A Free Coke

Today I had a shiny new June train pass. Yay.

So, this morning I didn't accomplish much, just went to a U of P meeting on the Remedy ticketing system.

I milled about until lunch. I ate at a pretty good Mediterranean place (supposed to be healthy) and I walked around the City (I have a system of walking so I go on a new street every day).

After lunch I attended another U of P meeting on Search Marketing, which overlapped some other things I was taught, but that's OK.

After that, I was supposed to have database access. I did, kindof, but I had some problem with my account, and my Remedy account wasn't set up properly. My boss wasn't very happy with the tech people, because I essentially had nothing to do. That's what I did during the afternoon – nothing. I was just waiting until 4:00 when Brian would brief Majid (a co worker) and me on working with the database on the backend.

The database was based on db2, which I've never used before. Apparently they are moving over to Oracle by October.

Another exciting thing is that I got my key card – a temporary one. I asked what was up and Jon (the lead Facilities guy) didn't know, so I asked if I could just have a guest pass, so I have one. And it opens the door. Hooray.

That was pretty much it for today. Oh, another story, it involves Flavia packets, which actually happened yesterday. So, I like the French Vanilla flavor the best. When Shaun, the guy right across from my desk...his desk is against my desk, had a visitor, the visitor saw my "stash" of French Vanilla packets. "So you're the one that's hoarding them!" he said.

Yea, it's true. When the main dispenser is out, I make trips to other places in the office (12^th floor too) where there are Flavia packets in other dispensers. I grab a few and put them between my monitor and the cubical wall next to me for later use.

Being the nice guy that I am, I threw him one today when I found a jackpot of them upstairs (I grabbed 4). These covert operations will continue until I'm sure I've scoured every available resource of Flavia packet dispensers.

Yea.

On my way out I grabbed a Coke, then took a piece of gum from reception and started chewing it, then decided I didn't want a coke before, so I gave it to a homeless guy near the train station. I think I might start doing that from now on. I mean, it's not money, but at least I'm sure they are going to consume it and be somewhat of a highlight of their day.