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Curious Web

I use 30Boxes as my calendar and it’s been work really well, until I got to Boeing. I couldn’t see my calendar! The site would load and I could see the header and footer, but the actual calendar was nowhere to be found. Curious.

I had no idea why this was happening, except maybe the proxy server was tweaking some of the HTML on the way to my system. So I tried using the Mines HTTP VPN portal to see if that would make a difference. It did: I could now see the default calendar. But I couldn’t log in.

So I tried to view the site straight up on the Internet (without using the Mines VPN portal), and it worked! Weird.

[tags]boeing internship, boeing intern, boeing, intern, internship, 30boxes[/tags]

Badgetiquette

This one is for the new interns:

When you go outside of the Boeing premises, take your badge off or stuff it in your shirt. No one told me this at training until our group went out for lunch today. It’s not a big deal, more for personal safety.

[tags]boeing internship, boeing intern, boeing, intern, internship, tips[/tags]

Quote of the Day

“I’m not offended. I detect a joke. I feel loved.”

– Co-worker

Note: This wasn’t posted until 6/19/2006. I needed to review it and didn’t have time until now.

[tags]boeing internship, boeing intern, boeing, intern, internship, quote[/tags]

Whack Whack

Often during a conversation someone will say something like, “Did you check whack whack elmo whack system whack data?”
It didn’t take very long to figure out what “whack” actually was: a backslash. Thus, the above phrase becomes, “Did you check \\elmo\system\data?”

See also: http://www.unixwiz.net/archives/2004/11/whack_whack_1.html

Note: This wasn’t posted until 6/19/2006. I needed to review it and didn’t have time until now.

Requirement Analysis and a Name

I have my schedule, and now I’m working on the first step of my Intern Project: The Requirement Analysis (RA). The goal of the RA is to make sure that I understand what DeIcer needs to do. Part of this also involves figuring out if what I want to program into DeIcer is even possible, so a feasibility analysis sort of ends up being part of a the RA. This could end up being a rather challenging project. Excellent.

D. asked if I had a name for my project (which I’m externally calling DeIcer), I had been toying around with names that morning and I had the perfect one: *********. (I’ll ask at the end of my internship what I can put on my resume; when I figure out that, I’ll try to backfill some of the information I’m leaving out now). The name is actually pretty clever.

[tags]boeing internship, boeing intern, boeing, intern, internship[/tags]

Back to Monday

Monday’s are the most unproductive days. This should change. Any ideas on how to make Monday’s more productive?

[tags]boeing internship, boeing intern, boeing, intern, internship, monday[/tags]

It’s Friiiiiday!

I’ve been doing a better job in getting to bed on time (i.e., 10pm). Had a meeting with D. today to go get a time-line for my internship: It’s going to be busy, but should be manageable.

Next up is a requirement analysis. I’ll should starting working on this Monday afternoon, as I’m waiting for D. to complete some preceding work. My analysis will be completed a week from today (next Friday), culminating in my first PowerPoint presentation.

[tags]boeing internship, boeing intern, boeing, intern, internship[/tags]

Note: This wasn’t posted until 6/4/2006. I needed to review it and didn’t have time until now.

DeIcer Prototype

I’ve been working on a pretty cool prototype of DeIcer. I doubt that any code from this will actually make it to the final version. But it’s kind of fun to play around with some ideas.

It’s also been frustrating learning Java and trying to implement it right away. It’s an overly comprehensive language with more than one, or even two, right ways of doing something. This causes issues when I use multiple learning sources as each source has a different, yet equally valid, way of performing an action.

Java is also a ridiculously OOP driven language. Something that I have some experience in, but not this much. As I said ridiculous.

Note: This wasn’t posted until 6/12/2006. I needed to review it and didn’t have time until now.

[tags]boeing internship, boeing intern, boeing, intern, internship, java[/tags]

It’s All About the DNS

Domain Name Servers (DNS) might be considered the single most important aspect of the Internet, yet many people don’t know what they are and those that do probably don’t know how they work. In the end, this ends up being a good thing. But over the last week or so, they’ve unknowingly been the bane of my internship.

Domain Name Servers really serve a single purpose: they take a domain name (such as AndrewFerguson.net) and return an IP address (such as 70.96.188.33). In reality, there are many DNS which talk with each other and share information and (usually) ensure that you get to the website you’re trying to reach.

But what happens if a DNS goes down? Or actually: What happens if the person responsible for add the names of a half dozen DNS to your TCP/IP settings fails to do this? Short answer is: You can’t do any work. Long answer is: you spend days trying to figure out why you don’t have permissions to access a network share despite the fact that permissions aren’t the issue.

So yea, all fixed now. Today was probably one of my most productive days yet. I started playing around with some code to get a proof-of-concept design for DeIcer and made some great headway on that.

Java’s so weird.

In case you really want to learn more about DNS, check out HowStuffWorks and Wikipedia.

Computer Issues

One of the “perks” of working at a company as large as Boeing is the efficient network infrastructure that is in place. Just about everything at Boeing is done from the Intranet, which is cool because it saves on paper and I get to spend just that more time on the computer. But, there’s quite a process to be a part of that system, a system I have been attempting to be part of since I started.

Today was the end of the line in terms of being to do work that I didn’t said system for. I spent well over an hour with C., D2., and K. to try and get it fixed. And nothing. The Suck.

Hopefully tomorrow will be better.

[tags]boeing internship, boeing intern, boeing, intern, internship[/tags]