I guess all good things must come to an end... after 3 summer months, I just concluded my internship at Cisco for the second time, which I thought went extremely well. My project was to port the ASE (Automatic Signature Extraction) system from a plain linux platform to the Cisco AXP which was quite an interesting experience. Porting ASE was the easy part, it was porting libc, apache, postgres, mysql, php and a boat load of tools and dependent libraries the more interesting part.
Other than work which felt more like a fun project, I really enjoy the people I got to work with, very laid back and chill group. On top of all that, there was always something to do with the rest of the Interns, so many interesting folks to meet. The social mailer list was extremely active and quite hilarious, and I think the Intern forum I had set up at internmix.com was quite sucessful.
The area... the number of parks and natural getaways around California is crazy. While I was in Cali, went camping in the Big Basin Redwoods and it was quite a relaxing getaway from the busy life down at Silicon valley. On top of that, there were many hikes and picnics up the closer parks which I really enjoyed. Several times I just jumped in the car with just a gps in hand and drove to the mountains east of San Jose with no destination other than looking for windy roads... and in one such journey I accidentally came across the Lick Observatory. When I got there, it was totally empty and I even got a full private 1-on-1 tour of the place. The mountain where the observatory is located is surreal, it's calm, relaxing and completely free of civilization, only the windy roads. It was so windy that on my way down, I had to stop for about 30 minutes because it was making me dizzy (imagine a 1 hour roller coaster ride) Map.
And to end this all, I drove a epic drive from California to Texas in two days. 1900 miles, 14 hours per day for 2 days. I have driven this path before several times, but for the first time it was green along I-10 in Arizona and New Mexico! I think the mild weather along with the nice scenery is what made the drive bearable. It's been a whole day since I got back, but my body is still recovering from sitting still for so long.
In my opinion, this summer went way too fast. All these together makes for a kick ass summer experience. New people, new experiences, the work was fun, so many things to do... just perfect. You never know, I just might wind up in San Jose again....
Other than work which felt more like a fun project, I really enjoy the people I got to work with, very laid back and chill group. On top of all that, there was always something to do with the rest of the Interns, so many interesting folks to meet. The social mailer list was extremely active and quite hilarious, and I think the Intern forum I had set up at internmix.com was quite sucessful.
The area... the number of parks and natural getaways around California is crazy. While I was in Cali, went camping in the Big Basin Redwoods and it was quite a relaxing getaway from the busy life down at Silicon valley. On top of that, there were many hikes and picnics up the closer parks which I really enjoyed. Several times I just jumped in the car with just a gps in hand and drove to the mountains east of San Jose with no destination other than looking for windy roads... and in one such journey I accidentally came across the Lick Observatory. When I got there, it was totally empty and I even got a full private 1-on-1 tour of the place. The mountain where the observatory is located is surreal, it's calm, relaxing and completely free of civilization, only the windy roads. It was so windy that on my way down, I had to stop for about 30 minutes because it was making me dizzy (imagine a 1 hour roller coaster ride) Map.
And to end this all, I drove a epic drive from California to Texas in two days. 1900 miles, 14 hours per day for 2 days. I have driven this path before several times, but for the first time it was green along I-10 in Arizona and New Mexico! I think the mild weather along with the nice scenery is what made the drive bearable. It's been a whole day since I got back, but my body is still recovering from sitting still for so long.
In my opinion, this summer went way too fast. All these together makes for a kick ass summer experience. New people, new experiences, the work was fun, so many things to do... just perfect. You never know, I just might wind up in San Jose again....
-Dave