adjusting to using a Mac

I restarted my mac so I could get something in Picasa working, but now I can't find eclipse or intelliJ using Finder. So now I'm trying to figure out how to fix that, which would be pretty easy but I'm having trouble understanding the mac filetree because this is my first time...

Backup solution is to reinstall but I'd really rather just fix what's wrong.

Mosquitoes

There was at least one mosquito in my room last night, although from the splat of blood and bug guts on the bed I suspect that I killed it in my sleep. Go me!

I have three large impressive bites on my left arm, and three large impressive bites on my right back-of-hand, and a small but very itchy one on my right elbow... but none anywhere else!

Provided I don't get malaria (unlikely; I'm taking the right pills) I'm still not overly bothered by this distribution of bug bites. There are far worse places to be bitten. I won't go into that.

There's a raised white hard lump in the middle (about a half-centimeter in diameter), surrounded by a larger reddish area from where I've been scratching in my sleep.

Question 2 is why the hell am I awake at 2:30am? I went to sleep around 10pm and I was exhausted. Logically, I should still be very unconscious. I was going to have a perfect sleep schedule, dammit! Sigh. I blame the mosquitoes. Maybe I should have dosed myself to sleep... I would have, but I thought I didn't need it! And if I did it now, I know (by experience) that it wouldn't wear off fully by the time I had to get up... which would be very unpleasant. Maybe I should do it anyway. I definitely will tomorrow night.

It's 3pm in Chicago right now... not really a waking-up time. So I don't know.

I saw the damn thing fluttering around before I went to sleep but I was too tired to do anything about it. Dammit, tired-me. Mosquitoes.

Edit: in the good news, the bug bites of doom detumesce and stop itching after an hour or so. Tom commented on that earlier today also so I think it's a trend which I can count on. AWESOME!

Pics from day 1 of TWU

http://picasaweb.google.com/wordymusic/IndiaImportAndDay1#

United flight credit

Fellow TWUers, here is the link to the simple form to get your flight credit. https://www.mileageplus.com/mp/retro/retroForm.do?userAction=loadForm

To fill out this form, you will need the email that Kenyia sent you and ALSO your boarding pass. I believe that if you have tossed out your boarding pass, Kenyia can send you the important number from it which the form requires... but I'm not sure.

Also, "You must allow 3 days after travel is completed on a United or United Express flight before submitting your request for Mileage Plus credit." And you have to wait like two weeks after the completion of your Lufthansa flight. So in other words don't even bother until Jan 15 or so. (I just now learned this.)

TWU evening

Had a great conversation with my Indian flatmate about the differences btw the Indian and USA university systems and what it does to hiring requirements by the companies in each country, and companies that hire in both companies.

I've been increasingly cranky all night because of being tired. I really need to develop better tired-me social skills. I developed better drunk-me social skills years ago; this shouldn't be hard. I just need some more practice.

I wish I'd gone out with the other TWUers to dinner, but I wasn't hungry, and I just had a pretty wonderful shower, and I'm going to get like 10 hours of sleep, so I guess I don't regret it that much. I do want to experience India but I'm content to do it tomorrow and Sunday rather than tonight.

So far I have no bugbites that I've noticed, and only mild intestinal discomfort. Hopefully this happy state of affairs will continue. Brushing my teeth with bottled water isn't difficult.

I feel bad for Tom because apparently his room is much less wonderful than anyone else's... bugs, no bottled water, no snacks, small... Tomorrow if this is still going on, I think I'll try to talk him into calling housekeeping and getting some of that fixed.

Dani's room has broken internet... the router puts out a network but the network isn't connected to anything. I think Ron was going to try to fix that... I wonder how that went.

I feel like everyone here from the USA has had more travel experience than I have. Everyone is like "I just got back from Amsterdam/Belize/LA/etc..." I mean, I travel excessively... but they travel uber-excessively. Which I'm cool with but it means that I'm a little behind when it comes to the ability to understand and discuss the common threads and themes of travel.

I'm really really really looking forward to shopping. I have a list. On the recommendation of Wolter, each of us withdrew 5000 rupees, which will probably last us about two weeks, maybe a little more? My bank charged me $111 for the amount and didn't charge an atm fee, which makes me happy. Wells Fargo is so much better than Chase. I'm leaving most of it in the same locked cabinet with my US money and checkbook (oops, didn't mean to bring that) and carrying my pared-down wallet and my passport (in a passport baggie holder thingie) in my pocket...

Mango cornflakes

Mango cornflakes are delicious

Rebecca and I agree that women in CS are a good thing and you have to start mentoring young- before college, proabbly before high school, and that mentoring is a high return results for time invested.

Day 1 continued again

Someone is ringing a bell in the office. The kind that's on the desk of the IIT post office. It's making me oddly homesick. Or that might be the fact that I turned my screen brightness to max to try to make myself more alert. It's not really working, but I'm still plugging along. I really hope that I'll think better tomorrow when I'm better rested.

Things I'm trying to do:
- get Ruby and ruby version manager working on mac
- finish the analysts problem part 1
- finish the microtesting segment of Industrial Logic

Things which are making me fail:
- indian bathrooms
- the book cabinet is locked
- my music and the micrpotesting movies can't exit simultaneously
- Mac keyboard shortcuts
- IntelliJ vs eclipse
- eclipse autocomplete is different on mac
- shouldersurfing
- worrying about the stuff in my room that's locked up because the locks are crappy

I'm enormously happy that I have a power converter. I can charge everything now.

I'm a little worried that my team isn't meshing yet... but these things take time. Actually, I'm more worried that I specifically am not meshing. Partially because cubbing, tourism, and drinking are subjects of lesser interest to me than to others. I shoudl stop worrying. It's day one. We barely know each other. And we're all sleep deprived and in culture shock. It'll be fine.

The guys in reddish-purple polo shirts are... servants? Staff? They serve the food, come around and pick up the dishes, take out the trash, etc. It's a little awkward but not that bad.

There are two coat trees of motorcycle helmets in the front lobby. Apparently almost everyone has one of those.

Martin Fowler is sitting at the table to my right. I'm debating with myself whether it would be too terribly horribly geeky to ask him if we could take a picture together. I know several people who would be very envious. ...to be honest, that would involve getting up, which would involve motor control... and I'm too tired to have that.

Something about India makes me use many elipses. Possibly because of the uncertainty factor inherent in everything?

India Day 1 continued

Six of us are working in the main room at TW on some hw stuff. Fun times! Lol, non-programmers programming (Analyst training, etc)

The biggest difference between India and America so far are the bathrooms. I prefer American bathrooms. By a lot.

I'm the only one here with headphones in... also the only one working alone... eh, these things happen. i was teaching for a while but now rebecca is doing it. I'm shouldersurfing and learning along. :)

All of our trainers showed up around 10am or 10:30. We're sitting at a table with them... they're doing their own stuff. Tomorrow, we have to be downstairs at 730 and we'll go get breakfast and have orientation...

Day 1 in India

Last night we arrived at the airport a bit past midnight. Went through security and Customs (they were very fast and much milder than USA. Our driver (there were two vans for the eight of us. I rode shotgun! Exciting.) The driving was not that exciting because there was not much traffic.

Driving with my friend Sanborn in the USA was a good preparation for this driving. Late night little-traffic driving didn't scare me... probably rush hour traffic will, though.

We arrived at the office a little after 3am local time. There was a little confusion about room keys...

We arrived at the front door to C tower, but there was no one at the desk so we went up to the 2nd floor, where TW's main offices are. A guy at the desk gave us our keys after some confusion, and summoned a guide to help us find our rooms (which were not all in C building... I'm in H building, we have some guys in P, C, A...) there were some language difficulties. Eventually Uchenna(spelling?) and rebecca and I hared off on our own and found H (all the girls are in H I guess) after some exploration (the front area of the buildings have large signs on them with their letters, and they're in roughly alphabetical order, so it wasn't too hard)

Our rooms are very large- Uchenna and I are in a suite for 3. We each have our own private room. There is a kitchen and a laundry nook. The kitchen has some cookies in it...

All over, there are switches, and we don't know what they all do... we figured out the ones for the hot water heater in the shower... and some of them are for the fans, and some of them are for the lights... but really, that's all we know .

The taxi van on the way here had a little Ganesh on the dashboard and it made me think of Ursula. :)

In the apartment, the outlets are India-style so we didn't get to charge anything... in the office the outlets are dual-style, so that's good. :)

This morning I woke up around 8:30am local time (after taking a 2hr nap after getting to my hotel room). Took a caffeine pill... walked to the office (not hard to find but I did make one false start in the wrong direction...) hung out awkwardly for a while, since no one seems to know or care that I'm here... a nice guy from the London office told me where the breakfast was. It's some kind of short-string pasta, and coconut curry... and I have pseudo-Fanta to go with it and I am happy. On plate two right now. I hope it doesn't do anything awful to my digestion.

So now I guess we'll hang out for a while... eventually our trainers will show up and tell us what to do... until then, I'll work on the Industrial Logic courses, I think.

Currently 1PM in Chicago and 9:30am in India.

But then Shefali and Rebecca showed up! They went to go get breakfast. There is an option for custom-made omelettes, lol.

TW: Day 1 in Chicago

Yesterday was my first day of work at ThoughtWorks. This Friday will be my first time trying to figure out how to fill out my timesheet/ expense sheet.

First day: lots of listening to presentations. Lots of filling out and signing papers. Presentation from Legal on open source participation (do it. and for gods sakes tell us what you're doing), review of read before you sign (anything, but especially anything a client hands you- and call Legal before you sign it), got our building badges (but don't bring them to India and lose them!)

Sessions ran from 9am to ~5pm. Getting the RSA on our new laptops set up was the most error-prone part...

Yeah they gave us laptops. As a dev, I had a choice between a macbook pro, and some kind of Dell... I chose the macbook and I'm a little giddy. I've never had a mac because macs are bloody expensive. It's not actually mine... it's on lease... but I get to use it! And it is pretty. Analysts can't have the pro, they only get the regular... maybe because devs theoretically need faster computers. I'm not sure that the mild resentment is worth the cost savings...? Eh, it's not that bad.

One guy is using his mac air instead... usually not allowed to use your own but he got some kind of deal working with 8600 (8600 is tech support. Awesome name.)

New Hire Lunch was tasty. Pizza. I guess they order from that place a lot.