The first day of work.

So far things are going fairly well here. I arrived in Seattle sunday night, picked up my rental car (which I will probably keep through the whole internship) and found my apartment complex. I brought in my first two bags and as I opened up my door to go back out for the last two, there were four people by my front door about to knock.

So some introductions were done — two of the guys had just gotten in that day too, and the other two had flown in from India the week before. We talked for a while, introduced ourselves, talked about our positions with Microsoft and what groups we had been assigned to.

One of the guys, Byron, and I decided we wanted to go to the grocery store to pick up some essentials, so we hit the local Safeway. The other three guys tagged along, probably just because they were bored. After shopping, we five decided to go find a place in Seattle to grab dinner (Seattle is about 15 miles west of Redmond, where I live and work — not a huge drive).

We found a street full of furniture stores, but could only find one resturaunt, and it was closed. I have started to suspect people in Seattle are inhuman (or, possibly, humans that do not need to eat). We headed back after driving around Seattle for a few hours, which was fun anyway, and ate in Redmond — back where we started probably around 3 hours earlier.

We didn’t start work until Tuesday, so Monday was free to run about. After unpacking I realized another trip to Safeway was in order, so I headed out. As I’m checking out a sale on pork chops and turning the aisle, I run into Byron who has once again returned to the Safeway. This time he’s with his roommate, George, and the girl who lives across the hall from them, Brittany. So more shopping is done, mostly on their part — they purchase in one order a total of like $350 in groceries.

After that I happily find out that George has brought his Gamecube in, so we all sit down for some old fashioned Mario Kart. We’re all pretty much good at the game, even matched so it was quite a bit of fun. I also got to try out Wario Ware for the GC — another really good party game. It’s like crack on crack.

So Tuesday, today, was the first day of actual work. The first half was an orientation where paperwork is filled out (and I unfortunately forgot my birth certificate, which thankfully Dora UPS’ed overnight to the HR lady). I got a neat waterbottle out of it too, and a whole lot of papers on corporate ethics and legalities. Even though they have a orientation meeting every Tuesday for new interns, there were at least 200 at this meeting today. All told the program has between 800 and 1000 interns. And these guys are the best from everywhere. I met a few other people, including some from U of I, which is nice.

After that we all were sent our seperate ways to meet with our mentors who help us set goals, tell us what we’re going to be expected to do, and get us familiar with everything.

This is where my day hit a snag. My team was extremely busy building an alpha release which was due out today (I actually don’t think I’m even allowed to say what I’m working on, because it’s a new product that hasn’t been released yet), so I was pretty much on my own to set up my computer, get it up and running, and figure out whatever I can. Tomorrow I meet with my mentos to (finally) find out what I’m going to actually be working on.

After work I stopped by George and Byron’s to find out how they fared that day. We all talked about our projects and it’s amazing we can all get completely excited about working on things that sound totally mundane or uninteresting to an average person. Anyway, based off what they’re working on and what I get to work on, sounds like I’ll get to see some pretty cool stuff over the summer.

Anyway, that’s my recap. I tend not to like to put up daily summaries (as any reader would know) but since I’m in a different situation and far away from everyone, this makes it much easier than explaining it over and over and over again.

Here’s some pictures of my apartment — it’s pretty nice, including a giant fancy dinner table (and it even has, in my closet, the little leaf to make it bigger). It’s corporate housing, though, so it still has a very hotel kind of feel to it… but at least it has all the features an apartment needs.