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Jun. 22nd, 2005 @ 09:59 am a smoke in the nose
I am well! Leo was right; a calm comes after the biggest storm. Yesterday's raging fever and unnumbing nostril pain was a side effect of my body saying, "fuck this, I'm not taking this anymore" and launching a full-scale kamikaze assault on the evil influenza army. I have a sore throat and my nostrils are still all banged up and irritated, but otherwise I am fine. Go T cells, it's your birthday, gon' party like it's your birthday.

Can't help but suspect God has had a part in this. I mean, I get sick on my first day of work and am miraculously cured two days later. Maybe it's because I've been reading Isaiah while I was sick (more on that later, if I remember).

So this is my first day on the job (I'm posting from work), and things are actually looking pretty good. They found me a really kickass job writing simple database access software for PDAs in Java. I'm a bit nervous because I know next to nothing about database programming and the Java is all J2ME-flavored (all CS150-151 taught me was J2SE), but the guy in charge of PDA programming says I can learn the APIs as I go along. There are a bunch of books on SQL and J2ME he will lend me so that I can peruse them on my own time. Right now I'm waiting for an email from him so I can get to work.

My co-workers are pretty laid back. There don't seem to be an awful lot of other interns in my department, so most of the younger people working in my department are college seniors or older. They are quite forgiving because they know that at my age and skill level I am horribly, horribly underqualified, and to my surprise I can understand most of their Chinese quite well.

They've lent me a laptop and a PDA for me to play with. The laptop, which I have named Sputnik, is the crashiest little machine I have ever had the pleasure of working with. Doing any of the following causes it to hang:

  • running more than two instances of Internet Explorer
  • checking the system specs in the Control Panel
  • changing the default language to "English"
  • plugging anything into the USB port
  • shutting down the computer
  • rebooting the computer
  • logging off
  • clicking too fast
  • ctrl-alt-delete
  • leaving it alone for two minutes

    Interestingly enough, the "on" button does exactly that--turn Sputnik on. It does not turn him off. Therefore, if Sputnik hangs, you must--as my coworker so aptly demonstrated--unplug him, remove his battery, and start him up again. Such is the way of the borrowed laptop.

    The PDA is a Dopod 700, a 400mHz cell phone/personal assistant that is ancient by Taiwanese standards and cutting edge by American. Runs Windows CE and the whole gamut of associated products (Pocket Word, Pocket Excel, Internet Explorer, the like). Has a little digital camera poking out the back, and is supposedly Bluetooth and 802.11b wireless enabled. I'm probably not allowed to take it out of the office, but who cares? I'm going to be writing software for this thing! Squee!

    Eep. The PDA guy still hasn't sent me any email. I hope there hasn't been some kind of misunderstanding.
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