Archive for August, 2006

Leaving Hudson

Published
by
Nate
on August 22, 2006
in Hudson, MA
. 0 Comments

This morning I packed up my stuff and left the magnificent world of Massachusetts.  I will miss it dearly in the future!  Hopefully something will work out in the design front of Intel for next summer.  Only time can tell.

Anyways due to Rochester being on my way home I was able to drop off some stuff instead of taking it home and immediately bringing it 4 hours back.  This also broke up my drive so I only had to drive 6 hours today.

When I got to Rochester, I explored my new suite and hung out with Christine and Sanjay.  The times worked out perfectly- when Christine had to goto work, Sanjay got back.  We went out and got some chinese food for dinner which was pretty good, but not great.

Monday night at like 4AM I noticed a great DVD burner deal so I jumped on it.  I got a new DVD burner (quality brand) with good features for $30.99.  But wait, theres more- I got 25 free blank DVDs and a $10 mail in rebate.  Not bad!
After getting a coffeetable from some guy on craigslist and eating lunch at panera, I left Rochester tuesday morning.   Arrived home, in Cleveland at around 5PM.  My voyage is complete!  Summer 06 is over :(

Maine Again

Published
by
Nate
on August 20, 2006
in Hudson, MA
. 0 Comments

Well, until this point I had not really spent much time in Maine, and I really needed some decent seafood. So, I decided to make a trip out to Phil’s house in Kittery Point. He had invited us to come and visit, but I never really took advantage of it until this weekend. The plan was to go up Saturday afternoon, eat seafood, then go kayacking Sunday morning and head home. Of course things never go exactly to plan!

When I finally got a hold of Phil on Saturday, he explained how he was coming back to Hudson for the weekend, but everyone was welcome to come up. So we (Dustin, Galen, Andrea and Me) all drove up and got into Kittery at around 7PM. We were starving by this point so we went to a local lobster house. I didn’t want to deal with the complexity of actual lobster so I had a lobster roll sandwich. It still was really fresh and good. I also got some Clam Chowder, just so I could have tasted some authentic chowdah. Both were amazingly good.. too bad I don’t live in Maine. I wouldn’t mind the great food! Dustin and Galen both got actual lobsters and had an intersting time getting the meat. I was happy to watch but equally happy to not have to do it myself.

After food we touched base at the house and unloaded our stuff, then we immediately headed to Portsmouth, NH. The town was actually pretty lively- there was some live music in the streets and a number of people were milling about. We just checked out the town and stopped in a few stores. There was a joke / amusement shop which had some really great stuff. I got Nunzilla (you wind her up and she walks and shoots sparks out of her mouth) and a Pig Lighter (yea I don’t smoke, but who can pass up a pig that has snouts that shoot fire). We were hungry for some dessert, so we got some Gelatto at a local coffeeshop (my flavor was coconut).

After we got bored of Portsmouth, we headed back and watched Eternal Sunshine of the Spottless Mind. I know I saw this movie before, but I guess I had forgetten parts of it. Good movie, and was great on the plasma screen TV that Phil owns.

We still weren’t tired, so we played a few games of cards after watching the movie. We finally decided to call it quits and sleep because we figured it was taking away from our time in the morning.

Unfortunately mother nature was not planning to be on our side. I was awoken at 8AM by thunder and lightening and a downpour of rain. Of course all of the windows were open so I ran around closing them all up. Then I went back to sleep for an hour or so. When I awoke again, the rain had not relented at all, so we decided to take our time and get breakfast.

Not only was it raining, but it was also COLD. We all had worn shorts / tee shirts so we were freezing in the rain when we went outside. We were hungry so we just went back to portsmouth and found a place to eat. Asked a local and had the best pancakes ever. When we got back it was still raining but not quite as hard.

We found some warmer clothes and just decided to go out kayacking.  The warmer clothes didn’t help much- we all got pretty wet.  Of course our arms were warm, but my hands and legs froze.  Also we left about 3 hours before low tide, so the water was low and still dropping.  We got back right at low tide.  This meant that we had to walk through a few places, and there were a few places with pretty strong currents that were hard to get across.  At one point we were in a grassy area and the path got narrower and narrower (and shallower and shallower) until we didn’t have room to paddle.  It was a good time to turn back at that point.  We took the scenic route one way, then went back and went closer to the ocean.  This was fun, but the larger waves made us take on a lot of water.  Finally we got back and took showers!

Then we trekked back to Hudson (after stopping at Burger King for dinner).  Twas a fun weekend!

Goodbye Internship

Published
by
Nate
on August 18, 2006
in Hudson, MA
. 0 Comments

Okay so I have not bothered to write about my last week for a long time. I’m home now in cleveland and about to leave for Rochester on Wednesday. Anyways here is what I did in my last week at work:

Monday (8/14)

Worked on my projects. My projects are all coming to a close so I should be able to finish them all by the end of the week. I just have to document them and pass them down to other members of the team.

Played my last game of Ultimate Frisbee. I ended horribly- did not play very well. Maybe I was a bit sore from last time or something else went wrong but I was just not ON today.

Tuesday (8/15)

After work, went to Gillette Stadium (home of The Patriots). Apparently they have summer practices open to the public. After practice a number of players come out and sign anything that people throw at them. We arrived right when practice ended because Nick wanted some autographs. Interestingly enough, the players were all behind a caged in area. I don’t know if the cage was to keep the people out or the players in. I didn’t bother getting anything signed because I don’t really care about football :) but it was fun to see the stadium.

Wednesday (8/16)

Had my going away lunch in my department. We went to the local mexican restaurant in Marlborough. Was very tasty and many tears were shed over the knowledge of my imminent departure.

After work wanted to play minigolf. We found a course nearby, but it was extremely neglected. Noone was managing the course and no people were playing on it. Also, all of the water was dried up, and the course was a bit overgrown. Instead of trying to play, we decided to move on and do something else.

So we got some dinner at Beef Grill. This area of Massachusetts has a giant Brazilian population, so getting some authentic Brazilian food was necessary before leaving. The food was great. It was buffet style, but you could pay per pound if you wanted to not have a flat fee. Good food!

After food, we wanted to see a movie but didn’t have any times, so we went back to Dan’s place. The movie didn’t start for an hour or two so we played some euchre beforehand.

We ended up seeing Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby. This is a hilarious movie that everyone should see. Have you seen it yet? If not, I’ll wait. Just remember, If you ain’t first, you’re last.

Thursday (8/17)

Worked extremely hard all day, finished up a few projects and got some more almost done. Unfortunately one coworker wanted a lot of changes to one of my projects, so I worked at home a lot at night. This meant I couldn’t do very much else. Oh well.. these last few days were pretty busy.

Went to Bertucci’s for a few people’s final lunches. Was tired of ordering pizzas with groups of people, so I just got an individual dish (some sort of pannini) good.
Friday (8/18)

My final day :( First thing in the morning I had my final evaluation. I was happy with the comments the gave and feel like I did a good job over the summer. I then spent the rest of the day finishing up documentation for my other projects. I finished up around 4:30 and then just spent the rest of my final time saying goodbye to coworkers. I had a really good summer and a lot of fun. I feel like I really learned a lot! ASP.NET (focused around C#), SQL, Oracle.. I had no idea how to use any of these before the summer.

Lunch was at Longhorn. Technically it was Steve’s lunch, but a number of people had their last day today so we all just went to the same place.