hortont · blog · qualcomm

QChat from 30,000 feet

2010.08.21 in code, personal, and qualcomm

Ed.: the majority of this was written on the plane from San Diego to JFK, and then emailed to the QChat client dev list (plus a few extras)

Almost exactly three months ago, I boarded a plane from Burlington to San Diego, solo, entirely unsure of what lay ahead. I'd been to San Diego before — for a few hours — and I'd heard only good things about it from people who live in the area, but beyond that, nothing. I knew that I would be interning at Qualcomm, writing embedded software — that was about all I knew beforehand; I had yet to be introduced to QChat, and I certainly hadn't met anyone I would be working with.

My second day (the first was consumed with intern orientation activities, and discovering that I had to walk 2 miles to work and back every day) was filled with introductions to everyone, which, being as shy as I generally am, was expected to be as intimidating as could be. But as soon as they started, it was clear something was different here. From Ali, the first QChatter who I met, who toured me around and helped me get settled in, to Vikram, who I didn't meet until many weeks into my internship, as he was on vacation when I arrived, everyone was ridiculously friendly, approachable, and helpful.

I've worked with many teams of varying shapes, sizes, and purposes before (though less often in the real world), and the QChat client team is unquestionably the first to be this universally awesome. Throughout the whole summer, there was a complete lack of raised voices (except in laughter and jest), blame-laying (I think I was the worst offender there, because I wasn't totally used to the laid-back workflow yet), and argument — which made it extremely easy to quickly become comfortable with the group and the atmosphere and get to work.

I might have gotten too comfortable — after being here for three months, I felt so much like a part of the team that yesterday's departure was quite hard to bear. Unfortunately I didn't manage to find everyone (Shobha, Sachin, Sanket, and Vikram, at least, and Teja was still on vacation — so an extra goodbye and thank you to all of you) to say goodbye to, but if I'd hung around for much longer, there would have been a few tears, and we didn't need that.

I won't miss fighting with the ever so wonderful prototype handsets, nor cursing the engineer who thought that using the C escape character as their path separator was a good idea (or that you needed two characters to represent a newline — basically, I won't miss Windows), nor silly little things like timecards, but the list of things that I will miss is innumerable. The whole team, for starters — every single one of you. The spirit of QChat. The long walks in the San Diego sunshine into work every morning. The daily status meetings (you guys will think I'm crazy, but I was already missing these when they stopped halfway through — it was good to see everyone every day and get a handle on what was going on in the beginning of the day; I learned a lot about what we were doing just from listening to the chatter there, and I hope if you have another intern next summer, you'll do daily status at least for the first few weeks). I'll miss our little faraday cage, and the wonders of release days. So, so many things.

I think the moment it all really clicked for me was that one super long (4 AM) sanity day. I think it was my third or fourth release; hanging out with everyone just trying to finish up (through the USB hilarity that ensued that everyone who was there surely remembers); ordering Indian food (my first time!) and being introduced to that by the people who know it best (by the way, the countless anecdotes about home from everyone makes me feel almost obligated to visit India... someday!)

And then on the opposite end of that was Shilpa's goodbye lunch — the end of the team as I knew it for most of the summer, and the first realization that the summer really was coming to a close. It was certainly a bonding experience for me; a chance to hang out with a majority of the team and talk about anything but work. I think that was actually one of my favorite days of the summer, bittersweet though it was.

So... I don't know. Maybe I'll run in to some of you again; it seems incredibly unlikely that I'll run in to all of you again. If I end up back in San Diego, I'll be sure to look you guys up, and if any of you are ever in Albany, Burlington, or Boston, send me a note! You never know where I might be...

And who knows what might happen in May! I certainly don't...

Thanks for everything, and goodbye (for now), and good luck!

Tim

First Quarter Summer Update

2010.06.13 in personal and qualcomm

Work

If I'm counting correctly, I just finished the first quarter of my summer internship! Both Qualcomm and San Diego have treated me quite well so far — my team (the QChat client team) is awesome, the weather's been beautiful, and there's lots to do.

I won't talk about what actually goes on at work, since it seems like nearly nothing we do is public at the moment (likely intentionally), but about work itself instead.

Right now, I get up at 7:15, shower, eat, etc., and leave my apartment at 8:10 or so. I get to walk about two miles along — among others — the very busy Genesee Ave. to building AA; I get there right around 9:00, depending a lot on how quickly crosswalks turn in my favor — sometimes they turn instantly, sometimes it takes well over a minute.

We have a daily status meeting at 10:30, where the 12-or-so of us meet and go through a list of in-progress work, talking about what work has been done. Pretty standard stuff.

I'm — someday — going to get a laptop; at the moment, I run back and forth between my office and the lab quite frequently (there are computers to use in the lab, but my development environment is on a VM, and RDP seems much faster from my thin client, for some reason — also, the display in my office is much, much bigger). In theory, the laptop is coming on Monday... we'll see! Then I'll get to cease this laggy RDPing and hang out in the lab with everyone permanently... poor them!

I usually leave at 17:00 or 17:30, or 18:15 one day. Luckily, there's a bus on the way home, so I get to skip a good part of the walk in that direction. I tend to call Carol for the part of the walk before I get on the bus, and call home after I get off; a nice daily routine.

Not-work

There's usually not a great deal of not-work during the week, as it's usually almost 19:00 by the time I get home; just time enough to read the news, make and eat dinner, watch an episode of something (I'm currently making my way through Mad Men), and go to sleep (usually by 22:00 or 22:30 or so).

The weekends are a different story. I don't really seem to associate with the other interns — I don't work with them (in fact, I work five miles away from most of them), and I'm not forced into non-work-related interactions with them like I was during freshman year (when I met all of my friends at school), so I really just don't see them. That's OK with me, there's enough to do here anyway!

I've got an org-mode file (somewhat unfaithfully (where'd my newlines go!?) rendered to HTML here) filled with trip ideas from a reddit thread. I've been going through them slowly, and everything I've done so far has been excellent! There are lots of pictures, as always, on Flickr.

Next weekend I'm going to refrain from exploring San Diego, because I'm going home! I'm leaving early in the morning on Friday, and coming back late on Sunday. It's going to be a whirlwind trip across the country so that I can be home for Amy's high-school graduation! Should be fun, though... I'll write more about it as the time comes. I'm quite tempted to just sling my camera over my shoulder and take nothing else on the trip — I've got clothes at home, and won't have time to need a computer other than my phone. We'll see. I also get to figure out how to get to the airport at 5AM... that'll be a trick!

Other Stuff

I'm quite excited because Nate, Carol, and I are going to see Belle and Sebastian in NYC (outdoors, at Brooklyn's Williamsburg Waterfront) in September! It's far too far away, though... should be fun :-)

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	hortont · blog · qualcomm
	QChat from 30,000 feet 2010.08.21 in code, personal, and qualcomm Ed.: the majority of this was written on the plane from San Diego to JFK, and then emailed to the QChat client dev list (plus a few extras) Almost exactly three months ago, I boarded a plane from Burlington to San Diego, solo, entirely unsure of what lay ahead. I'd been to San Diego before — for a few hours — and I'd heard only good things about it from people who live in the area, but beyond that, nothing. I knew that I would be interning at Qualcomm, writing embedded software — that was about all I knew beforehand; I had yet to be introduced to QChat, and I certainly hadn't met anyone I would be working with. My second day (the first was consumed with intern orientation activities, and discovering that I had to walk 2 miles to work and back every day) was filled with introductions to everyone, which, being as shy as I generally am, was expected to be as intimidating as could be. But as soon as they started, it was clear something was different here. From Ali, the first QChatter who I met, who toured me around and helped me get settled in, to Vikram, who I didn't meet until many weeks into my internship, as he was on vacation when I arrived, everyone was ridiculously friendly, approachable, and helpful. I've worked with many teams of varying shapes, sizes, and purposes before (though less often in the real world), and the QChat client team is unquestionably the first to be this universally awesome. Throughout the whole summer, there was a complete lack of raised voices (except in laughter and jest), blame-laying (I think I was the worst offender there, because I wasn't totally used to the laid-back workflow yet), and argument — which made it extremely easy to quickly become comfortable with the group and the atmosphere and get to work. I might have gotten too comfortable — after being here for three months, I felt so much like a part of the team that yesterday's departure was quite hard to bear. Unfortunately I didn't manage to find everyone (Shobha, Sachin, Sanket, and Vikram, at least, and Teja was still on vacation — so an extra goodbye and thank you to all of you) to say goodbye to, but if I'd hung around for much longer, there would have been a few tears, and we didn't need that. I won't miss fighting with the ever so wonderful prototype handsets, nor cursing the engineer who thought that using the C escape character as their path separator was a good idea (or that you needed two characters to represent a newline — basically, I won't miss Windows), nor silly little things like timecards, but the list of things that I will miss is innumerable. The whole team, for starters — every single one of you. The spirit of QChat. The long walks in the San Diego sunshine into work every morning. The daily status meetings (you guys will think I'm crazy, but I was already missing these when they stopped halfway through — it was good to see everyone every day and get a handle on what was going on in the beginning of the day; I learned a lot about what we were doing just from listening to the chatter there, and I hope if you have another intern next summer, you'll do daily status at least for the first few weeks). I'll miss our little faraday cage, and the wonders of release days. So, so many things. I think the moment it all really clicked for me was that one super long (4 AM) sanity day. I think it was my third or fourth release; hanging out with everyone just trying to finish up (through the USB hilarity that ensued that everyone who was there surely remembers); ordering Indian food (my first time!) and being introduced to that by the people who know it best (by the way, the countless anecdotes about home from everyone makes me feel almost obligated to visit India... someday!) And then on the opposite end of that was Shilpa's goodbye lunch — the end of the team as I knew it for most of the summer, and the first realization that the summer really was coming to a close. It was certainly a bonding experience for me; a chance to hang out with a majority of the team and talk about anything but work. I think that was actually one of my favorite days of the summer, bittersweet though it was. So... I don't know. Maybe I'll run in to some of you again; it seems incredibly unlikely that I'll run in to all of you again. If I end up back in San Diego, I'll be sure to look you guys up, and if any of you are ever in Albany, Burlington, or Boston, send me a note! You never know where I might be... And who knows what might happen in May! I certainly don't... Thanks for everything, and goodbye (for now), and good luck! Tim First Quarter Summer Update 2010.06.13 in personal and qualcomm Work If I'm counting correctly, I just finished the first quarter of my summer internship! Both Qualcomm and San Diego have treated me quite well so far — my team (the QChat client team) is awesome, the weather's been beautiful, and there's lots to do. I won't talk about what actually goes on at work, since it seems like nearly nothing we do is public at the moment (likely intentionally), but about work itself instead. Right now, I get up at 7:15, shower, eat, etc., and leave my apartment at 8:10 or so. I get to walk about two miles along — among others — the very busy Genesee Ave. to building AA; I get there right around 9:00, depending a lot on how quickly crosswalks turn in my favor — sometimes they turn instantly, sometimes it takes well over a minute. We have a daily status meeting at 10:30, where the 12-or-so of us meet and go through a list of in-progress work, talking about what work has been done. Pretty standard stuff. I'm — someday — going to get a laptop; at the moment, I run back and forth between my office and the lab quite frequently (there are computers to use in the lab, but my development environment is on a VM, and RDP seems much faster from my thin client, for some reason — also, the display in my office is much, much bigger). In theory, the laptop is coming on Monday... we'll see! Then I'll get to cease this laggy RDPing and hang out in the lab with everyone permanently... poor them! I usually leave at 17:00 or 17:30, or 18:15 one day. Luckily, there's a bus on the way home, so I get to skip a good part of the walk in that direction. I tend to call Carol for the part of the walk before I get on the bus, and call home after I get off; a nice daily routine. Not-work There's usually not a great deal of not-work during the week, as it's usually almost 19:00 by the time I get home; just time enough to read the news, make and eat dinner, watch an episode of something (I'm currently making my way through Mad Men), and go to sleep (usually by 22:00 or 22:30 or so). The weekends are a different story. I don't really seem to associate with the other interns — I don't work with them (in fact, I work five miles away from most of them), and I'm not forced into non-work-related interactions with them like I was during freshman year (when I met all of my friends at school), so I really just don't see them. That's OK with me, there's enough to do here anyway! I've got an org-mode file (somewhat unfaithfully (where'd my newlines go!?) rendered to HTML here) filled with trip ideas from a reddit thread. I've been going through them slowly, and everything I've done so far has been excellent! There are lots of pictures, as always, on Flickr. Next weekend I'm going to refrain from exploring San Diego, because I'm going home! I'm leaving early in the morning on Friday, and coming back late on Sunday. It's going to be a whirlwind trip across the country so that I can be home for Amy's high-school graduation! Should be fun, though... I'll write more about it as the time comes. I'm quite tempted to just sling my camera over my shoulder and take nothing else on the trip — I've got clothes at home, and won't have time to need a computer other than my phone. We'll see. I also get to figure out how to get to the airport at 5AM... that'll be a trick! Other Stuff I'm quite excited because Nate, Carol, and I are going to see Belle and Sebastian in NYC (outdoors, at Brooklyn's Williamsburg Waterfront) in September! It's far too far away, though... should be fun :-)
	See Older Posts