The Halfway Point

It's crazy to think that my summer here is about half over. I looked at my calendar today to actually sit down and count - this has been my 6th week here, and there are only another 6 weeks left until I go back to Boston. As part of that, there are only a few weekends left, some of which are already booked. My mom is coming to visit in a couple weeks, I'm planning on going to Vegas with roommates the weekend after, a friend is visiting one weekend, and I'll also be going up to visit him in Washington at some point as well. That only leaves a couple weekends open for me to get things done (and I don't mean work-related). This is definitely a glass half-empty deal because I find myself wanting it to go on even longer.

On Tuesday, Craig Newmark (the creator of Craigslist) came to speak to our company. There was a whole event with food and drinks, and we got there just in time to get decent seats. He spoke for about thirty minutes about how the website came to be, why he started it, and the things he's involved in now. He still works in customer service at Craigslist, but is soon moving on to other things. One of the most interesting things he talked about was the design of the website. As far as modern standards go, the website is incredibly rundown. It's a bunch of tables with text and links - nothing pretty or shiny. Craig mentioned that was done for a couple reasons: (1) he knows absolutely nothing about design, and (2) leaving out rich media content means fewer resources required by the servers, so it drastically improved performance of the site.

After his speech, Craig answered questions for another thirty minutes before the event ended. People stayed to hang out, eat, and drink, but the place was unbelievably packed so I pushed my way through to get some of the chocolate truffles and headed back. Overall it was alright, nothing spectacular or life-changing.

Craig of Craigslist (sorry for the poor picture)

There were lots of smaller things that happened this week, most of which didn't even involve work. When I was leaving my apartment one morning, there was a woman sitting on the steps to the sidewalk who I had seen earlier in the week at night when I was coming back from work. Seeing as this was the second time we've run into each other, she introduced herself and asked it I was one of the intern residents for the summer. I reciprocated, told her about my internship, and where I go to school. Although she is originally from Russia, she lived on Mass Avenue in Cambridge very near where my apartment at school is. It was one of those small world things, especially considering I expect most people from the area to be more familiar with Harvard and/or MIT over Tufts.

Thursday morning, I met a friend of my mom's at his office that just happened to be down the street from where i work. They had worked on a project together in Singapore right around the time when I received the offer to come work out here for the summer. He offered to give me a tour of his office, and so I finally took him up on that. They do some really cool work, including design and manufacturing of lots of different products. The coolest thing they do, though, is called human factors engineering. When designing a product, they get not only basic consumer opinions on things, but also resident "experts." For example, they were helping one company redesign some kitchen tools, including a potato peeler. Instead of just asking home cooks what they would like, they found a guy that peels potatoes for 10 hours a day because he probably knows more about the details of that process than anyone else on the planet. I got to see their workshop that had a bunch of 3D printers making some cool things, and there were employees on the street testing a motorized, front-wheel drive bicycle.

Another small coincidence happened at work as well. A full-time employee just started a couple weeks again, and he had interned here last summer as well. If nothing else, it's just good to know that interns are not only given the opportunity to come back, but that they take it. I found out he is originally from Livingston, NJ, not too far from where I grew up. He graduated a couple years before me, though, so it doesn't seem that we know anyone in common. Still another funny coincidence.

A cool music application, Spotify, was released in the US earlier this week. It's an interesting combination of things like Pandora and Grooveshark, things I already use. I managed to get an account, and have been using it. Basically you can select almost any song in their database and play it on your computer, mobile device, etc. There is a pretty wide selection, as they have deals with major music corporations. The only downside is that there is a 20 hour limit per month, similar to how Pandora has a 40 hours limit. You can also upload music files that you have so that they can be accessed in other places. There are also premium subscriptions that life the hour limit and give you some more things, but for now I'm gonna stick with the free account.

Probably one of the biggest things to happen for me this week was the release of the new blink-182 single, "Up All Night." This is easily one of my favorite bands of all-time, and this is the first new music they've released since their breakup in 2005. Their new album is supposed to come out at the end of September, and this was the first time anyone has heard their new music. I liked it, but I didn't love it. I'll reserve complete judgement until I hear the entire album in a few months.

And I can't end this post without talking about Harry Potter. Unfortunately, I didn't get to see it at midnight - we hadn't planned anything until all the tickets were already sold out. So we decided to go Friday night instead. After we had bought our tickets, the company organized an intern outing to the same theater and showing we already had tickets for, so we actually got reimbursed for them it helped a lot with rides there and back. To prepare, a bunch of us watched the previous movie on Thursday night to refresh us on what happened. The theater was pretty crowded, and there were plenty of people dressed up. We got there are just the right time so that we didn't wait in line for too long, and we got decent seats.

I thought the movie was pretty good. It seemed to wrap up the story well, but took more than a few liberties from what the book had. After the movie, everyone was discussing the differences. One of my friends actually hated the movie because there wasn't enough action, but that's not what this movie was supposed to be about. Watching it actually made me want to read the books again, although I'm far enough behind on the rest of my reading so I have no idea how long that would take.

And lastly. Carmageddon has not made its way here (at least not yet). Carmageddon has to do with the closing of highway 405, a major road in the LA area. It's so bad to the point where police are recommending people to just stay off the roads. Some airlines are offering something like $5 flights to alleviate traffic. I'm contemplating taking advantage of some of the incredibly cheap airfares, but no plans yet.