I think I have found the coolest coffee maker ever. I noticed them the first week I got here for my internship, but I didn't decide to try it out until today. The machine allows you to choose a flavor (from many -- see pic) and make a fast, single cup of coffee (or Tea, Cocoa, etc).

Here's a picture to illustrate:

I'm really tired this morning, which is probably the only reason I decided to make myself a nice cup of French Vanilla (a little sugar/creamer). I'm not usually a big coffee drinker. I've got a meeting in about 20 minutes, so hopefully it will wake me up enough to look over the details and contribute to the meeting.

Anyways... it's a cool coffee maker.

Another week goes by and I've learned even more about the the company. It's easy to understand why the University of Texas (McCombs School of Business) recommends taking as many internship opportunities as a student can get. Don't get me wrong: school is tough... especially when working 30 hours each week while i'm finishing up with courses within my major. But working in the corporate headquarters for a fortune 500 company gives you a much better perspective on what the real world is really like. It's a lot of work, but it has its payoff.

Working 40-50 hour weeks is definitely not as long of a week as some of my dads (and friends) 70-80 hour weeks. But it is representative of what the employees at Flowserve HQ work. We recently started doing "summer hours" in which we work an hour longer on Monday-Thursday then only come in for a half day on Friday. This is perfect for me. I come in early and leave late already -- just to avoid the rush of traffic -- and I get to extend the enjoyment of my weekends....

I went back to Austin for memorial day this (3-day, long) weekend to see Laura and my family. Laura got back from Paris on Friday and flew into Houston. She came out Saturday morning, which was perfect because I needed to fix a friends laptop on Friday. I bought a new phone (Treo 650 smartphone) on Saturday, then on the way to my parents house my car decided it was time for a new alternator.

We pulled the cable from the alternator, jumped the car, then drove it up to Georgetown with all the power-drawing equipment turned off. This works alright for old carbed motors that dont have much computer equipment. But with my car, the computer controls all the fuel ratios and everything else that creates a smooth environment for the engine. It ran rich/rough on the way up there, but it was a hell of a lot better than fixing the thing in the parking lot with little/no tools.

I ended up spending the whole weekend modding my dad's xbox (which might I add is pretty SWEET) and Laura wasn't too happy that I didn't spend more time with her. Well, lucky me, she's moving into my apartment this weekend so I'll be back in Austin again. I was really hoping to get out to the lake this weekend to run the Jet Ski.

I can't believe I forgot! The JetSki which was down for TWO (2) years has been revived by Travis and me. We pulled the CDI (electronic) box from under the oil tank only to discover that it had a seal broken and had a nasty funk growing inside it. We bought a whole new CDI box, choke cable (also was broken), and a new battery and got her up and running for the first weekend. We went out to the lake, got burned, and had a good time.

So I started my internship with Flowserve Corporation this week. I'm positioned as an IT intern in their Dallas/Irving based Headquarters. My first impression of the facility was a good one: the main floor is beautiful--cherry wood, open to the floor above, marble, brushed metal, and a waterfall by the stairs.

The people here are really similar to the recruiters I met during the interview process. They're all really helpful, cool people. It's interesting to see how much politics and the bureaucracy of the Corporate World affects every move I make. People are always in meetings, on conference calls, or waiting for something.

I found myself waiting to start my project on the first day. I needed to get my security/name-badge and equipment for working on my project and I ended up making a good contact within the IT group and got myself setup with a laptop (IBM T43) and wireless notebook mouse (Microsoft) in no time flat....

It's been fun so far, but not extremely challenging. I'll hopefully be switching over to a new project which will involve learning a new technology that I haven't had a chance to get my hands on yet: Oracle Databases. I've worked with ADO.net in ASP.net using VB.net -- what a mouthful -- in the past, but it was all accessing SQL databases on a Microsoft SQL Server.

As you might imagine, the access/connection/tranmssion to a Oracle database is just slightly (read: VERY)different. They have a lot in common, but everything in Microsoft's Development Suite (Visual Studio) is geared toward microsoft products. There is basic functionality called OLE that will allow you to connect to any database that follows a standard data structure, but it isn't very optimized.

Although this will work, I'll probably get the Oracle Data Provider which will optimize the connection and provide the level of scalability I would want for a company of this size.

Well, I'm done boring everyone with all the technical stuff. I'll try to post a few updates over the summer to let everyone know how everything is going.

Our sister site, flamingcube.com, has finally been restored. The data was lost during a transition from one host to another and the most recent backup was corrupt.

An old home-directory backup was found, allowing us to save most of the files. However, a recent database backup could not be recovered. The site had not seen many updates (to the DB) recently, so it wasn't that big of an issue. An older copy of the database was found and flamingcube was restored to it's normal self.

The forums have been locked down due to a recent outbreak in phpBB script attacks to the version currently being used on the site. flamingcube.com will now serve as a reference version of the old site.

Check out the site: http://www.flamingcube.com

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I really need to update the site to the new phpBB forums, as a new hack has been released for the version I have on the site. I think I may just take the site offline temporarily and forward the URL to this site.