Hello all,
Sorry it has been so long since our last post. This past weekend my mom came to visit which was so wonderful. We went to the farmer’s market and just her and I made a trip up to Berkeley to explore the shops. She helped us get more settled by hanging art and getting some comfy couch cushions (the old ones were very uncomfortable). Besides that, Oliver and I have just been hanging out. He has been working and I have been working on college applications. I have applied to three schools; Santa Clara University, Penn State World Campus (an online program), and University of Illinois Springfield (also online). Those are the only ones I am planning on applying to for now. If I don’t get into any or for some other reason I will apply to more California state schools. The reason I am not now is because I can’t apply to start in Spring/Winter because (in some cases) I need to have my AA which Western won’t give me or because my program won’t admit me in the Spring/Winter. My next projects will be finding doctors here and applying for Summer Internships and Co-op positions. For those of you who don’t know what co-op positions are, basically I would be an employee for a company under the expectation that I am still going to school. It’s like an internship except longer term. That’s my understanding at least. Anyway, that’s what I am currently up to. I’m still adjusting but I am becoming more and more comfortable here.
An update on the possible friends we are making. As previously mentioned (I think), we met a guy, Luke, who moved in just a day or two after we did. We kept running into him and exchanged names and apartment numbers. After that we didn’t see him (and we couldn’t remember his apartment number). Well we saw him again while my mom was here loading up a moving truck. Oliver went down and offered to help then I went to help as well. We found out the Luke and his girlfriend were only living there briefly while looking for a new place (its way more complicated but I’m trying to keep it simple and clearly failing). Long story short, they left the apartment but we exchanged phone numbers so we might try to get together with them in the coming weeks. Oh, and they gave us a banjo so that’s cool.
Overall, we are doing well. We are having dinner with Oliver’s cousin Steve and his wife on Friday which we are looking forward to. Unfortunately, we are finding more people using the pool which is a bummer because we were being spoiled by having it to ourselves. We are missing the fall weather in the Northwest but the sun and +70 degree weather is not too bad. We continue to miss friends and family but are feeling more and more settled here. Hope all of you are well and please feel free to email us and update us on what’s going on with you guys. We have loved the emails and letters that we have received.
Love and miss you all,
Hannah
Some people have been clamoring for coworker stories (well, no one has, but I can just imagine it) and those will be coming in good time. However, I don’t feel like I should just put them up on the website in case any of them were to stumble over it (no bad stories, I just wouldn’t want anyone to feel awkward). Which would be exceedingly rare. And near impossible. However, just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they aren’t out to get you. So we will likely add a password protected section of the site in which stories such as those will be shared. And that will be soon. I promise. In Hannah and Oliver time. Maybe even with this post. Unknown yet. (Update: not with this post, but likely the next one).
Work has been good. And that about sums it up for me. Thanks for reading. But I jest. For those of you who may be curious, I can describe what I actually do now. I’ll put this in two sections, one for the casual reader who wants a sentence or two but not death in the details. The other section is for the reader who wants a little spice. The casual reader may skip over the second section with no real damage.
1: I am a software engineer working on firmware and drivers that deal with data storage on servers. These servers are used by many companies, from Microsoft to Blizzard Entertainment to Major League Baseball to LG to Cigna (those are the only ones I know about. My coworkers tell me we only find out who the customers are when they send us bug reports).
2: I work in low level environments, flipping bits and caring about physical specs of cables. I write in the C programming language (sometimes dealing with assembly). My team works specifically with a newish protocol called Fibre Channel and specifically Fibre Channel over Ethernet. We handle writing data to a disk and reading data from said disk. These are all traditional Small Computer System Interface commands encapsulated within Fibre Channel (Fibre is because of optical fiber and the Brits). The reason for my team’s existence is that the actual physical storage device used by the servers in question are not onboard the machine (i.e. the server stores its data on a different computer, much in the same way we can save data on the cloud (though completely differently, of course, just to make it confusing)). My team works on a specific chip within the servers, of which all the releases are named after California beaches and peaks. This chip has the purpose of talking to other computers, either through internet protocols or my Fibre Channel protocol. And that’s it. My team’s reason for being. Not necessarily glorious, but I am rather enjoying it. There are a million more details and caveats, naturally, but anyone who is interested may inquire at their leisure.
I am grateful to be working here. The team is very encouraging, helpful, and inclusive. They are very open to letting me learn at my own pace and the stakes do not seem to be too high. I don’t feel huge pressures towards deadlines or getting caught up to speed. The work seems interesting, too, and they are starting me off on bug fixes and some small enhancements to the code before I jump into mainstream projects. People invite me to lunch all the time and I was taught all the social niceties of eating and so they keep inviting me. Best of all, I get home at 3 pm and can hang out with Hannah for the rest of the day.
When I asked my team leader if I should be in the office at any particular time, he and another engineer just laughed and laughed. They couldn’t believe that anyone would have a set time you have to come in. I can do what I want with my time at work, as well. Nothing I have to do, just suggestions if I want to, more or less. I arrive at the office at 7 am. I am the first person in the entire building to arrive. The next person comes in around 9:30 am. The next person after that comes in at 10:30 am. And then everyone else comes in around 11:30 am or later. I enjoy having the mornings to myself, it is very peaceful. Below are pictures from the balcony where I eat my meals and take little walks. The view from my desk is essentially the same, unobstructed view of the hills.
It was great having Sherry down for a few days, things are beginning to be hung up on the walls, feeling more and more settled. More stories to come. This week has been very busy (to the point that I forget the last update to the website was so long ago and thought that I had already said a lot of things) and the writing of this section was piecemeal, hence the incoherence. But next week there will be stories! (Probably).
Oliver
