The Big Update

So I'm now settled into my corporate housing apartment here in Redmond, rooming with Forrest and an acquaintance-becoming-friend, Shane. We don't have internet per se — I blog now via cantenna-stolen wireless. If I'd had more reliable wireless, I would have posted more detailed entries about the various goings-on of the drive up, settling in, and starting work as a Microsoft SDE intern. But I didn't, so instead I'll just give a brief overview of what's been happening.

Thursday, June 16, 2005

We stayed in two rooms at the Quality Inn of Eureka. Saw Batman Begins; while I don't think I've ever seen the entirety of any other Batman movies, I really liked this one. Interesting plant of the day: some unidentified, white, clumpy-flowered tree-shrub that grew decidedly horizontal.

Friday, June 17, 2005

Unexpectedly, all the hotels in our price range were full up in Newport. We ended up sharing a two-bed room at La Quinta Inn, just south of the Yaquina Bay bridge, a rather attractive bridge and one of the larger on the trip up highway 101. Interesting plant of the day: a red-berried tree that we looked up the name of and then promptly forgot.

Saturday, June 18, 2005

We arrived in Redmond to pick up our keys in the late afternoon. Shane had gone off with a local friend for the night, so we didn't see him at all. He had very nicely not taken the downstairs master bedroom, so I stole it before Forrest could. He would have done the same if he had scampered faster. ;) My master bedroom comes with a large bathroom (no tub, though) and a walk-in closet to complement the shelved closet in the bedroom proper. The total square footage is probably equivalent to Forrest's and Shane's upstairs bedrooms combined. Muahaha, I say. Interesting plant of the day: a purple and/or white flower, either lupin or foxglove (hard to tell when driving past at 60, eh).

Sunday, June 19, 2005

Errands' day. I left my cellphone charger at my parents' house, so I went to the Cingular store down the road to pick up a cigarette lighter charger for it. Stopped at Home Depot to get a lobelia plant to liven up my very white and empty bedroom. I also needed "business casual" (or so we were told) for the New Employee Orientation (wonder if it was called "NEO" before The Matrix?). I bought a pair of gray pants that I hand-hemmed to fit my shortness, and a button-down-the-front white shirt that I can wear to non-formal settings without feeling weird. Of course, during the orientation there was the guy in a T-shirt and flipflops, so business casual wasn't too strictly enforced.

Monday, June 20, 2005

This was our last free day before work started. Forrest and I went walking around the area to explore the nearby Marymoor park. We wandered through an industrial park before getting there, then hung out at a field meant for flying model airplanes (no one was there at the time). Interesting plant of the day: the Tall Oregon-grape, found along the road where we live.

Tuesday, June 21, 2005

We had brainwashing orientation for the first half of today, then I went to my office building for the second half. My team is a "top secret" incubation team starting on a new project, which is exciting but can't be discussed, on account of my NDA. I'm not certain Microsoft will actually be able to crash into the market that they want to with this product, but we shall see. I spent the rest of the day installing prerequisite programs on my work computer.

Wednesday, June 22, 2005

More installage. I missed the ASP.NET tech talk that a bunch of the other interns went to — I didn't get the email with its details until 5 minutes after the talk was over — but it's okay, 'cause that's what I'm working with in my team, so I'll learn how to use it anyhow.

Thursday, June 23, 2005

Finally everything got installed, more or less. I started poking around at the source code for our project, figuring out how stuff works. Late in the afternoon the interns had an ice cream social, which I went to for a little while. But I got antsy and convinced Forrest and Shane that we should go home. 'Course, we were in separate cars... I decided on the way back to go south along (the huge but not gigantamous) Lake Sammamish and ended up at the Barnes & Noble we had visited the previous night. I bought Into Thin Air, having finished A Walk in the Woods that I borrowed from Forrest. (I'd recommend both books, by the way.) We also watched The Forgotten, which I wouldn't recommend.

Friday, June 24, 2005

Today mostly consisted of learning more about the source code and tinkering up small test page. We left work, went home, and tried to come up with something better to do on a Friday night than play around on the Internet and watch movies, as we had been doing the past couple nights. For a while things looked pretty boringly grim, but then Forrest suggested we investigate wtf was up with the Redmond Island (see the funny yellow rectangle with a notch cut out of the bottom right, center of the map? that's what I'm talking about), aka the Redmond Watershed Preserve. Turns out it's a very pretty, foresty chunk of land. We got there after 9 o'clock, though, so we didn't stay very long. We ended up watching The Village after all, which turned out not to be as much of a horror movie as I thought it would be. I'd only marginally recommend this one.

Saturday, June 25, 2005

This would be today. Shane ran off with his local friend (Kevin, methinks his name was), so Forrest and I went back to the Preserve to hike around. We think we did about 5 miles of level hiking through some 100-year-old second-growth forest. We passed up taking the longer Siler's Mill Trail on the return half of the loop, which I later discovered is supposedly the most scenic of the trails. We'll probably head back there to check it out.

And this concludes my massive update for the night. Hopefully I'll keep y'all more up-to-date for the rest of the summer.

Categories: Redmond, hiking