Party in Tacoma

Another week has gone by and I am still alive. It was touch and go for a little bit, but I survived. SharePoint server has consistently dominated me. I still don’t have it up and running. I am just about ready to give up. Hopefully I can finish solving it this week. Luckily I have been finished with my commitments since week 5, so technically I don’t have to finish anything else to have a successful internship, but that wouldn’t be any fun J

Work is really exciting overall. It is about the only thing that could compete with graduate school for my interest. I am glad that decision is still about two years away. I just wish there was some way I could do both. I will just have to excel this year and next year at my internships and pray that I do so well they can’t resist giving me such an offer. It is very unlikely, but there is an outside chance I can convince them to do it.

This weekend we had the Washington YSA conference. It has been just a blast. I have enjoyed this time greatly. On Friday there was a bunch of games and then we saw some YSA produced shorts. It was a lot of fun. Kirby and Corben (LDS movie people) came and played for us as well. It was good fun.

On Saturday we had some good time listening to several talks, as well as doing a little West Coast Swing dancing. I really enjoyed myself. In the evening we did some boating and ate a really good fish and chips restaurant.

Lastly, an event which I just got back from, we went and listen to Lavelle Edwards speak. It was a nice fireside. He talked about the importance of really knowing ourselves. I just wished he had talked a little more about football ;) Oh well.

I hope all of you are having a blast this summer just like me!

New Office!

Well MS Move did a good job moving me to my new office. I must say I love having my own office. It is really nice and spacious. I will take pictures this next week and then show them to everyone. I really like it though. I have two white boards all to my self, I think this must be what heaven is like :)

The week was also really productive. I am finally caught back up to where I was after I started rewriting my code. It was an interesting process but it is done. Now I am stuck at trying to install new software. Installing software is really a pain in the butt.

Other than a new office this week has been pretty standard. I had my mid-point evaluation, but that was all good, so, nothing much to report in that area. This weekend I did go to a BYU intern event. We all went to the arcade. I guess I am starting to grow up, because the arcade wasn't that interesting to me :( Oh, the good old days of being eight, how I miss them. Hopefully I will have something a little more interesting next week. I will be going to the regional YSA event next weekend.

Until then, I hope you are all having a wonderful summer.

Well this was certainly a good week. I made really good progress on my project. I went from being 5 weeks a head of schedule to being two weeks behind schedule :) Oh well, maybe in the future I won't decide to throw away what I had done and start from scratch. Either way my boss has been happy with my work. He wanted to offer me a job starting next summer, but because of my time in China it will just be another internship. I still have to check with the flagship program if it something that I can do, but I hope that I will be able to.

I got a 3 and a half day vacation this week because of office moves. Come Monday I will have a huge office all to myself. I am really excited about this. It was also nice to have the additional time off. That Friday morning I went with my friends to breakfast to celebrate their birthdays and was introduced to how wonderful the Microsoft prime card was. We were able to get 2 for 1 on our food, essentially cutting the price of the dishes in half. It made what would have otherwise been an expensive meal a very well priced meal. It is really an awesome perk for working at MS.

Saturday we had a wonderful opportunity to go as a ward family and serve the grandparents of one of the ward members. We did all of the yard work for her, and then we helped her plant a garden. It was so much fun, and it was wonderful to be able to help someone that needed it. I really should spend more time doing stuff like this in the future. So Ryan, if you ever want help getting service projects together you have got my full support.

This Sunday I was also given a calling. I am... ummhh... how to put this... the acting Sunday school president. Yea, kinda weird. The deal is the ward already has a Sunday school president, but he is gone from the ward. The ward doesn't want to release him because then they would have to re-call him once I left. Officially I will be getting called as the first councilor, but I will have the responsibilities of the president. Hopefully I can make a good impact on the ward in the six weeks I have left. Pray for me!

Life goes on.

Well, not much happened this week. I did play tennis everyday of the week which was a lot fun. I really need to practice a lot more, or Chris will kill me when he gets home :)

Work is going really well. My project got an upgrade from prototype to feature in office 15 (i.e. Office 2012/2013). So it will be a long ways off before anyone gets to use what I am doing, but it will be a feature that is eventually shipped. I gave my first presentation on it at the developer all-hands meeting for my team. It got very good responses. I am really happy with the progress it is making.

And of course, since it was doing so well, I decided to re-write it from scratch =p. As all of you that know my coding style understand, re-writing is my favorite approach :) Hopefully this time I will get it right so I can pass it off. I already know who my replacement is. He will be starting work in 4 weeks. I will be responsible for training him and getting him up to speed.

Well, other than work and tennis nothing really happened. I hope you are all enjoying great weather like I am. Best of wishes.

-Scott