Toulouse

This past week I traveled to Toulouse, France, on business to receive training and discuss plans for a near-term integrated display system project. It’s essentially a display with a PC attached to it; think rugged iMac. It’s a sure bet that the system will run a flavor of Linux and utilize an embedded monitoring module for thermal management. I will be responsible for integrating the operating system, drivers, and our in-house applications, which may require modification for the project.

Our French hosts were very courteous and easy to work with. All business was conducted in English and I had no problems communicating my thoughts. Even so, it was satisfying to note my high school French coming back little by little. Every day we were treated to lunch in the Thales cafeteria several blocks removed from the BarcoView Texen site. Dinner was typically at a local restaurant of our choosing. I tried a number of interesting dishes including fondue savoyarde, magret du canard, and cassoulet, one of the local specialities.

Toulouse itself was mostly untouched by the Industrial Revolution so it managed to retain a great small town charm despite its recent growth into an industrial center and the fourth-largest metropolitan area in France. I had ample opportunity to roam the city on Saturday so I took my camera along and tried to capture some picturesque views of Toulouse. You can browse the results using the gallery link below.

Drained

The title says it all. Almost immediately after I completed my first major project at Barco, I got shifted to another project and it has been draining both my time and energy ever since–perhaps my health as well as I’m currently ill. A significant portion of our engineering resources have been allocated to meet some tight deadlines issued from our customer. My seemingly endless task has been to test our system designs against a specification and pursue any and all issues that we can identify. I can only say that it has been an increasingly frustrating experience and I can only hope that it ends on a positive note.

I have largely left my website in neglect. I have not touched the code in weeks and anyone can see that content updates are increasingly infrequent. I can only apologize and restate that I do make it my goal to increase the quality and frequency of content I place on this website.

Cinco de Mayo

We celebrated Cinco de Mayo in proper fashion as Frontera catered a lunch buffet for all of BarcoView. The buffet proceeded much like a Mexican-American rendition of the salad bar, with numerous ingredients available to roll your own concoctions. I constructed a couple of soft tacos and went about enjoying some excellent free cuisine. There was plenty of food for seconds, even though the vast majority of BarcoView turned out for the event.

I’ve been working at Barco for less than two months and this is the third food-related event we’ve had. We were served free ice cream a couple weeks ago and we’re due for free Subway in another couple of weeks. It’s a pleasant surprise coming from my internship, where we rarely enjoyed such company-sponsored events. If nothing else, it’s an opportunity to meet some people you otherwise wouldn’t encounter in your day to day routine.

Settling in

It’s been a busy couple weeks. I had forgotten just how much time work takes out of your day. I got to enjoy my first three day weekend under Barco’s 9-80 program, which allows you to take every other Friday off in exchange for working an extra hour every Monday through Thursday. It definitely comes as a welcome break after working a couple 12+ hours in a row. We’ve been pushing to get one of our consoles out the door and I’ve been working extra hours to help with that effort. My primary responsibility is the system’s software configuration, but I try to help in other areas when I can.

I’m settled into my new apartment now, but there are still things to do and the living room isn’t completely cleared of boxes yet. In the near future I’m going to be looking for a new wireless provider as well as looking for a few small furniture pieces and upgrading my computer (it’s that time again). For reference, my new address is 607 Ivy Chase Lane, Norcross, GA 30092.

Mom informs me that I’ve been running overages on my mobile phone so it seems like a good time to shop around for a new plan and/or provider. My mobile phone is really my only phone so I tend to use it whenever I need it rather than wait for the off-peak hours. T-Mobile provides my current service, but I’m leaning toward switching to Verizon. They lead the way for cell-phone service providers in PC Magazine’s most recent Reader Satisfaction Survey. T-Mobile didn’t do too bad either, but I’m inclined to try something different at this point.

I’m looking to scrap my current tower and replace it with a small form factor (SFF) box in the near future. After living with a huge tower for a couple of years and moving it constantly, I feel that a huge case no longer meets my needs. SFFs have evolved to the point where I feel like I could make one my primary machine without compromising much. I’m looking to use Shuttle’s SN25P, which should hold an Athlon 64 CPU, 3 hard drives, 1 optical drive, 2 memory sticks, and a double-wide PCI-Express graphics card in a box that measures 320mm (12.6in) x 210mm (8.27in) x 220mm (8.66in) (L x W x H). For reference, my Lian-Li PC75 full tower measures 23.125in x 8.25in x 22.625in (L x W x H). I’m quite looking forward to putting one together.

First week at Barco

I started working this Tuesday after accepting an offer for full-time employment with BarcoView in Duluth. It took a few days to get everything settled with my employment, but by the end of the week I had a spacious cubicle, access badge, and workstation at my disposal as I seek to come up to speed with our business. My boss and several other engineers have been working to quickly provide me with a broad view of Barco’s business and our role in the systems integration group. The biggest suprise so far has definitely been the amount of paperwork associated with the engineering process; it’s a definite change from how IT operates. It looks like my first task will be to aid a Design Verification Test (DVT) process.

There are plenty of places to eat in the immediate vicinity of work and I have already eaten at Frontera, Moe’s, Jersey Mike’s, and Wendy’s. It’s taking between 35 and 40 minutes to get to work from Smyrna, so I’m definitely looking forward to moving into our new apartment and cutting my commute time down. Titus and I eventually decided on an apartment in Norcross and we will be moving into the new apartment next weekend. Most of our utility providers will stay the same, so I just need to see about having them transferred. My parents should also be coming up to help us with the move.

I’ve spent my off hours absorbed in World of Warcraft and working on reworking my blog to better fit the object-oriented programming paradigm. I flirted briefly with a full migration to PHP5, as well, but I eventually decided that the new classes and objects didn’t really gain me as much as I had hoped. I’ll likely wait until my hosting provider decides to offer PHP5 before switching.

Job offer (recent events)

This past week has been quite eventful. I got the call Monday morning from Patrice over at Barco offering me a full-time job as a software/hardware systems integration engineer. I was quite excited about the offer, but I asked for a week’s time to think it over. I scheduled a meeting on Tuesday with Lara Hanley over at the Georgia Tech Alumni Association to discuss my options.

I drove down to Dothan Wednesday to discuss my offer and spend a nice evening with my parents and grandparents on Mom’s birthday. The kitchen has been completely stripped of wallpaper and a few other things in preparation for a thorough remodeling. It seems like I come home to a new house each time I visit now. I completed my 2004 tax returns Thursday morning with the help of TurboTax Deluxe 2004 and made my yearly IRA contribution. Even with all the hand-holding TurboTax does, I still feel daunted by the tax code. After a nice lunch at Pizza Hut, I bade farewell to Mom and drove up to Auburn for the remainder of the day. There I was able to partake of ping pong, PC troubleshooting, and a nice home-cooked meal.

I returned to Atlanta on Friday to formally accept the job offer from Barco. I tracked down the offer package at our leasing office, filled out some paperwork, and sent some e-mails to get everything squared away. Some of the details will have to wait until Monday to be finalized, and I don’t yet know when I can start working. Titus and I hit ProMove on Saturday before heading up to the Norcross and Duluth areas to look for a new apartment. My Aunt Kathy and Uncle Tinker were in town to see the Fry’s and they graciously treated us to a nice dinner at Applebee’s. Whew, what a week!

Farewell Luncheon

The IT department held a farewell luncheon for me this afternoon with Pizza Hut from Blakely and Blue Bell ice cream. Billy presented me with an FNP IT polo shirt matching those owned by the rest of the IT staff to show that I was truly part of the team. These past few summers have truly been memorable. I’ll miss these guys.

On the way home I stopped at Radio Shack, where I secured an RCA to stereo Y-adapter that should allow me to pipe audio from my PS2 into my PC’s sound card.

Telecom

I finished up my last half-day of shadowing with Mardis Howell and Doug Barton in telecom. I got to see a lot of radio equipment and fiber switching in the various communications rooms we visited, covering from the peak penthouse to the lower-most basement of the APCO building. I was quite surprised to learn that a substantial amount of Southern’s older network infrastructure is built off of digital microwave radio. In truth, I really didn’t realize that long-distance radio commuinications were even viable for high-speed networks. After the tours were over, I thanked everyone and made a small excursion to Inverness.

I skipped lunch and made for the Southern Nuclear building, where I found Doug McComb, a good friend of my father’s and an all-around nice guy. I mean, I just showed up out of the blue and he made time to share some of his experiences with me and even offered to buy me lunch. I thanked Doug and went next door to meet with SNC IT manager David Cox, also unannounced. I caught David just before a meeting, but he graciously offered to make time for me afterward. David has done very well in the company and I felt like he was the kind of person I could learn a lot from. I shared my thoughts on the company and probed for opinions on graduate school, MBA’s, and the work environment. I felt like the meeting went very well and I think I got a lot out of it.

On the way out of town, I did some quick shopping. I found Dark Cloud for $7.99 used and Star Ocean: The Second Story new for $19.99 at EB Games. Star Ocean sells for upwards of $30 used on eBay, so I felt like it was quite a lucky find. I wouldn’t have even gotten it if I hadn’t asked. I also searched for a CD binder to compress my games shelf to a more manageable size, but I couldn’t find just what I was looking for.

Infrastructure Services

Things went about as well as yesterday; I met lots of interesting folks from Enterprise Storage, Server Support, and Voice & Data Networks. For example: Robert from the UNIX side of Server Support gets his background from the Marine Corps., where he set up Solaris servers that were used to coordinate offensives with Air Force divisions. I tried to learn a little from each person in turn, and I also tried to make a point of asking about experience, career options, and advice for a soon-to-be college grad. Each meeting took a little longer than scheduled, and I subsequently ended up leaving at about 5 P.M. again. That’s okay, though, because my tuna steak at Landry’s was quite a bit better than yesterday’s sirloin. I did go over my $25 meal limit, though. Whoops.

Help Desk

The good news is that my brief stay at the IT Help Desk vastly exceeded my expectations. Suzanne McCreedy met me in the lobby just before lunch and instructed me to report at approximately 12:00 P.M. At said time, I proceeded to the 8th floor of the Alabama Power Corporate Office to begin a series of handoffs that would take me through the RLC, PRC, CCC, and CPIC groups. At each station, a Help Desk employee would share a little bit of what he or she did. I got some good insight into the corporate side of IT as well as some honest opinions about the company along the way. I hope the next 1.5 days will build upon this positive experience.

The bad news is that my dinner was not so good. The closest two restaurants to the Birmingham La Quinta Inn are O’Charley’s and Lone Star Steakhouse. O’Charley’s was jam-packed; Lone Star was relatively empty. Now I know why. The soda machine was broken; my steak was undercooked, on top of being a poor cut of meat; and I dined alone, so the company was unremarkable.