Hello everyone!  Hopefully you’re all having a lovely, relaxing summer.  Mine’s been pretty busy.

Work is going well, though doing four ten-hour days per week is pretty rough.  Most people do an ordinary 40-hour work week with five eight-hour days, but I thought it would be more valuable to have that extra day to do stuff to prepare for the China/Japan trip.  The extra day is handy, but sometimes it’s hard to get through ten hours a day sitting in a cubicle and staring at a computer screen.

We’ve been able to do a lot of cool stuff for the interns (putting out a newsletter, organizing a picnic, etc.) so it’s been pretty cool overall.  My role as intern liaison (a sort of semi-formal leadership position) has been keeping me pretty busy with planning events and other projects.  My actual work involves testing some projects that I developed during the school year that run audits of database servers to make sure they’re in accordance with some legal requirements.  It’s not the most fascinating work, but the team is really supportive and I know that what I’m doing makes a difference to the business.

As far as preparing for the China/Japan trip, things are coming along quite nicely.  I made up a packing list already, though I’m nowhere close to being ready to pack stuff up.  I just kept going about my daily life and saying to myself, “Oh, don’t forget that you need to bring nail clippers on the trip,” and so on, so I just started writing it down.  All my paperwork and stuff is up to date so far, though I still need to pick up the textbooks for the trip. 

I’ve been kind of trying to learn Mandarin with the help of a friend who went on the trip last year.  It’s a really fun language to speak, but it’s hard to get the sounds right, let alone the tones.  Hopefully I can learn to speak it at least a tiny bit before we leave.  I’ve had more exposure to Japanese so I’m not as worried about that one, plus we go to China first so it’s more pressing that I learn Mandarin now.

We also get some time off for vacations in both places and so I’ve been trying to decide where to go.  I’m pretty sure that I want to go to Xi’an for the week vacation we have in China.  Xi’an is the city with the terra cotta soldiers, though there’s a lot more to see there as well.  For shorter trips I’ve also been looking at Tai’an (a city at the base of one of the holy mountains), Qingdao (the birthplace of Tsingtao beer and a former German territory), and Tianjin (which is a city close to Beijing that travel guides recommend because it’s often ignored by tourists, so you can see “real” Chinese culture).  As for Japan, I’m not quite so sure.  I’d like to go to Tokyo, but travel is much more expensive there than in China and it’s quite a trip to go there from Kyoto.  I will probably take a trip to Hiroshima, but aside from that I don’t know yet.

If there are any major developments in the trip planning or anything, I’ll be sure to post about it.  In the meantime, enjoy the summer sun for me… I’m stuck looking out at it through the window at work!

Whew! Finally, this term is over and I am free for the summer! Well, mostly.

Grades haven’t come out yet but I think that things went fairly well. I’m not pleased with how some of my finals went, but I was so burned out by the end that I think I did the best I could at the time. This was a really rough term and I’m frankly glad that it’s over, though there were a lot of good moments too.

Now, for the summer! I’ll be working full-time to help me save up for my China/Japan trip. We’re supposed to rotate positions within our IT department every six months with our intern program, but I’ll be keeping mine through the end of summer. They figured it wouldn’t be worth it for me to take a new job for three months and leave. I’m excited about that, because the group that I’m in right now (Database Administration) is full of really fun and supportive people and I really like the work that I’m doing. I’m especially happy because being able to devote all of my attention to my work projects is going to make them go a lot faster. I’ve basically been doing the same two projects for the last six months, which is OK considering how little time I’ve been able to spend on them, but now I’ll actually be able to finish them off and move on to bigger and better things.

My schedule is set up so that I have Mondays off and work extra long days on the other four. I need that time to do administrative stuff to prepare for China/Japan (move my bank account to a new bank, check on some stuff with my mom’s insurance, make sure all my IDs are up to date, etc.). It’s still several months away, but the summer always does go by really quickly and there’s a lot left to do.

Well, congratulations to everyone who graduated this year… and happy summer!

It’s that time again, people. You can tell that Christmas is coming because…

… We put the Christmas Tree up at my mom’s house this weekend. This year it’s in wintry colors, but for some reason Mom wanted to stick with the whimsical red tree topper:

… I’m starting to go “OH NO I STILL HAVE HALF MY SHOPPING TO DO.” I’m a bit of a procrastinator.

… The numbers on my credit card statement and bank statement are looking dangerously similar. To clarify: I am a huge proponent of college kids using credit cards to build good credit as long as you can pay off the full balance every month. I am usually really good about that, and for some reason my credit card company is very nice to me even though I have never paid them a dime in finance charges (or any charges, for that matter). I’m actually a bit worried because I think this Christmas season will be the first time I will have to carry a balance on the card. ANYWAY, back to the festivity:

… EVERYTHING COMES IN PEPPERMINT and I am happy about that. Yeah.

OK, OK, enough of that. In other news, we did get the information about our next rotations at work that I had been hoping for. As of the first of January, I will be working as a Database Administrator (DBA). I’m very happy with that, mostly because it isn’t one of the normal rotation options but I requested it specifically and they actually gave it to me. I know a little bit about database theory, but I was never really formally taught anything, so I’m curious as to what exactly the “administration” entails. As an added bonus, if I like it and make it a career, DBAs are among the best paid careers in IT.

There’s a lot to look forward to in addition to the new job. Starting this weekend I actually have plans for things to do besides random Christmas shopping and errands, so stay tuned for a more interesting life from yours truly. After next week I will be on break for real, because the office pretty much closes down between Christmas and New Year’s. I’m also excited for Winter Term, since I think I will have a particularly interesting set of classes. Not to mention that I have a few friends who have been studying abroad this last Fall Term and through break and I’ll be happy to have them back. So, hooray… lots of exciting stuff coming up! Don’t freeze out there in the meantime.

This weekend’s Christmas Walk was a lot of fun, even though it was hindered a little bit by inclement weather. We’ve barely had any snow or anything all season, but the one evening that we decide to spend a while outside, it’s pretty miserable. It snowed in the morning, but as the day went on it warmed up, so we ended up with freezing rain turning the snow into ice, not to mention a constant chilly drizzle.

Aside from that, though, it was quite lovely. Most of the businesses in the downtown area were open and gave out snacks and hot drinks to people passing through. There were trolleys running and a few horse-drawn carriages as well. After we walked through town, my family and I had dinner at a Mexican restaurant in town called Casa Margarita, which is a perennial favorite. On the way in, I snapped this picture of the city hall and a passing trolley (in the intersection):

Very festive!  La Grange isn’t anywhere near as big or busy as Chicago, but it has its own quaint charm.

Beyond that, it’s just more work for now.  My internship at International Truck and Engine goes year-round, so I keep working there even though the term is over.  We change jobs within the IT department every six months, and we’re due to switch at the beginning of January.  I’m really anxious to find out what my next position is going to be, but for now I’m working in Enterprise Architecture, which is a really fascinating branch of IT.

When people think “IT” and “Computer Science” they usually think about programming and tech support, but there’s a lot more to it, especially in a business environment.  Enterprise Architecture is more about studying and directing what technologies are worth pursuing for the whole business, so it’s much more cerebral than technical.  It still requires a very strong technical background, but generally it also requires many years of experience, so I’m not really qualified to be considered an architect.  That’s probably better for everyone, because I certainly don’t want to be the one making millions of dollars’ worth of investment recommendations at this early point in my professional career!  Instead, I do some technical work to support the rest of the team, such as doing research, drawing process models, and building simple applications to help them do their jobs.  It’s just as rewarding, since I can apply and develop the skills I already have while learning a lot about what they do.

This particular internship rotation has been excellent experience.  In our classes we learn the foundations of computer science, and Enterprise Architecture is a really unique way to apply what we’ve learned.  I wouldn’t mind working as an architect someday, but I have a lot more left to experience before I commit to anything.  Anyway, hopefully by next week they will announce the new rotations and I’ll know what I’m in for next.