The biggest news of my summer!

Well, it seems my dreams have come true. And the one thing that I thought had no chance of happening this summer did. I got asked if I would be interested in staying on at Pixar full-time in a regular, non-intern, position! So after a week of interviews with important people and lots of waiting, Tuesday morning I received an official offer letter from Pixar Animation Studios!

I've worked it out with my supervisor and I will be "starting" as a regular employee in 3.5 weeks, on 9/22. I'll continue working with the same team doing exactly what I'm doing now, but this time there is no end date. After I start and find a place to live, Jessica, along with all our stuff, will move to California to begin the rest of our lives. Sometime in the next couple years I will continue, and finish my Master's at a school near Pixar, maybe UC Berkeley.

It's all happened so fast and I still don't think it has sunk in. I'm already deep in the process of moving, initializing many of the processes that have to be complete.

So, now I can extend an invitation to all of you to come visit us in California after October, and see some of the inside of Pixar's studio. (Or just come to see us, that works just as well) We are both very excited about this opportunity and all it means for our future. I think we are both relieved to have a sense of stability and peace in knowing that I have a permanent job. And above that, the job I've wished, hoped, and prayed for most of my life.

God has completely orchestrated this and his fingerprints are all over everything that's happened leading up to this opportunity.

Long time in coming

Well, if a picture is worth a thousand words, then according to wikipedia, I've already written a novel this evening. Meaning, I just posted 60 pictures on facebook which I hadn't updated since 6/15! I also added several pictures to the web album that all have been taken since the last time I posted on this blog.

Well, the end is near. Friday is my last day and it will be a fun and busy week. Our team has a review tomorrow with our director, John Lasseter. Exciting. I also have to get all my stuff packed up this week since I fly out Friday evening right after work.

Hopefully the pictures are self explanatory, feel free to leave comments on here or on the pictures if you have questions or want to hear more about specific things I've done since I last gave a detailed account of my adventures.

It's been fun to become pretty good friends with many of the interns here, and it has been a little sad to say good-bye to so many of them already. But hopefully many of us will return for full-time employment.

Sorry this is so short, it's already after 10 and i really wanted to get a work-out in today, so I'm off to the gym. Talk with you later.

Reid

Finally

So, this weekend I am down in the Southern part of the bay hanging out with some friends from Brown. I am currently in Redwood City and my friend, Korhan, had an SD reader in his laptop, so I finally was able to upload some pictures! He's on his way back here and we are going to go to lunch and then head to Monterey to go to the beach! I'm super excited. Enjoy the pictures, they can be found in the Album.

Gotta go, talk to you again soon, hopefully.

Yikes, I'm falling behind!

Well it's been 10 days since my last post! And I only have a couple minutes cause I have to catch the bus that goes by in 6 minutes to get back to the apartment. I purchased a new power jack for my laptop! It should be here in the next couple days and then I can try my hand at desoldering and soldering a part on my motherboard. Sounds scary and it is. Hope it works.

Jess and I had a wonderful time together this last weekend we got to go to the SF zoo and had a lot of fun! I have pictures, but currently no way to transfer them. I hope you are all doing well. Feel free to leave a comment or even better, send me an e-mail and let me know what's up with you! I am still enjoying work, got over a couple hurdles today that have been plaguing me for upwards of a week. We have some fun team reviews this week and some other things going on too.

Talk with ya later.

Idée Inc.

I just ran across a very cool website that I'd like to share. labs.ideeinc.com/multicolr They also have a collection of other image searching tools that are very cool and very useful. Their main website is ideeinc.com

I'm sure this type of searching technology will (and already has) become very prevalent in the different media forms that are stored digitally. Already I can think of Pandora that does this type of search with music and BookLamp that does it with books. Amazing!

Bad News

So, my crazy laptop has had weird power issues for the last year or so. But, I think it's finally decided to die. It won't take power from the wall anymore, so once I use up my battery it is done for. I can still post from the computers at Pixar (like I am right now), but they don't have SD card readers so I don't have a way to get the pictures off my camera. Hopefully I'll have Jess bring the USB cable for the camera with her from RI on Friday.

Today I went to Home Depot and got a few things to take apart my laptop with and I bought a super cheap soldering iron at Radio Shack and I'm gonna try to figure out how to fix it. Wish me luck.

I'll try and keep up with posts, but we will see how it goes.

My week so far

Well, to be honest, I don't really feel like posting. But, I really have nothing better to do, so here I am. I haven't uploaded the pictures from this week yet, but I guess they aren't very exciting anyway, so it shouldn't really matter.

So, I was going to go to the A's vs. Mariners baseball game on Tuesday night but it ended up being Wednesday night and none of the interns wanted to go with me. So, I went by myself. I have some pictures from the game, but they are pretty typical pictures of a baseball game. I had fun, and the Mariners won 6-4.

Work's been very good this week, I've felt productive, helpful, and for the most part, independent. This weekend is the move for my team so I'm excited to start in my new office on Monday. Maybe I can take a picture before we're not allowed to anymore.

Today, our friend Kendra stopped by Pixar while on vacation and I got to catch up with her and give her the tour. She enjoyed it thoroughly (by what I could tell). Which reminds me to again give an open invitation for you to come and tour Pixar. It is quite an experience, and a special one too, since it is not an open studio and you can only get in if you know someone on the inside (and fortunately you do).

I don't really have any significant plans for tomorrow again. I'm sure I will sleep in some, exercise quite a bit and relax too. There is an open house at the chocolate factory across the street tomorrow afternoon, so I am going to have to check that out. Then, I think our apartment is going to have another movie night (we usually invite the other interns that are living in our apartment building).

Nice and short tonight, and now I'm going to get some sleep.

4th of July weekend

I've realized that I've started to get pretty wordy, so I'm gonna try and be less boring. As usual I've updated the photo gallery before getting to posting. So, check out the pictures the the ever increasing region of land that is being represented by the gallery.

Thursday I got to leave work a little early since our team was so scarce for the long weekend. I jogged for over an hour before heading home. Even after waking up on Friday, I had no idea what I was going to do for the 4th, and figured I might be on my own. But, after randomly running into some of the other interns that were still around here, we headed over to the local grocery store and bought a bunch of picnic food.

Adrienne, Nancy, Will, Greg

After hanging out at Pixar for a while and waiting for the brownies to bake, we headed up to park right next to the Berkeley Marina.

There were quite a few people there already, so we hiked up a hill in the center of the park and staked a claim for our blanket. We then enjoyed sandwiches, chips, fresh strawberries and watermelon, vegetables and dip, and still warm brownies. We had some time before the fireworks so we pulled out a soccer ball and my frisbee to enjoy the nice weather and relaxing atmosphere. As it got dark we could see fireworks in the distance pretty much in a full 360 degree view around us. Then finally got to enjoy the display there at the marina. It wasn't near as grand as the San Francisco show we could see across the bay, but it was at least satisfactory. The traffic was horrible trying to get off the peninsula and so we watched youtube videos on Will's iPhone for an hour and a half while we waited.

Saturday wasn't very eventful, I hung out at the apartment by myself all day, then finally got over to Pixar to work out at about 8:30 pm. It was very quite and part of the time I even ran in the dark by myself. It was peaceful and fun.

Last week I was a little bit late to church and so this week I decided to leave early and ended up getting there while the 10:30 service was still going. It was another great service; and the sermon, given by one of the associate pastors, talked about our worth to God. After the service I didn't have the same type of exploration goals like I've had the past several weeks, so I decided to explore more of the downtown shopping region near Union Square.

I was very happy to find a Jack in the Box for lunch (I hadn't eaten there since last July).

Aquatic Park

And after I ate I watched a very cool acrobatic performance in Union Square. I then wondered through the area and did some shopping, eventually ending up at a BART station and heading home. Since it was still early evening, and all my roommates were still gone, I decided to try and find the local Target since I hadn't been there yet. I rode my roommate's bike the 3.5 miles and got to see the Berkeley Aquatic Park on the way. Some really pretty views and another relaxing, but good exercise, trip.

Today was pretty standard, but we started talking about our department's move at the end of the week. The people on my team are currently spread out around the west half of the main building. But we are all getting moved to another location a couple blocks away that has been recently re-finished inside for us. I am pretty lucky and get my own cubicle! I'm excited and I'll let you know how the new space is next week.

Tomorrow I'm doing something very different...I'm going to a baseball game! I'm actually semi-organizing a trip for any interns that want to go to watch the Oakland Athletics play the Seattle Mariners. I'm very excited since it's only my second professional sporting event and I'm finally getting to see the Mariners play (something I've wanted to do since I was about 5). So, hopefully I will have lots of pictures and a fun story to share.

Hopefully, this wasn't too winded. Have a great week.

WALL·E and Famil·E

Finally, I'm getting around to letting you know about my weekend. It was great and as I mentioned I got to do a little more exploring.

First of all, as I'm sure you've figured out by now, it was a big weekend at work. There was a lot of buzz around Pixar last week and over the weekend since WALL·E opened on Friday. We were all very pleased that it brought in the 3rd largest opening weekend of all the Pixar films, $63,087,526! Monday we had a small party on the front patio at Pixar with the directors and producers to celebrate the great weekend numbers, and Disney even sent cookies for the entire company to congratulate us.

But, the coolest part about WALL·E opening this weekend was that the interns got our very own screening of it in the Pixar theater on Thursday night. As I mentioned a couple weeks ago, we were allowed to invite two guests to watch it with us. I had a couple people get back to me and say they were interested, but it was Jessica's parents, Arnie and Elsie, who were able to make it to town to enjoy the screening with me. They were able to stop in Emeryville on their way back to Idaho from LA for about 24 hours. It wasn't a lot of time, but I did get to spend a lot of it with them.

So, on Thursday, before the screening Pixar threw the interns a small welcoming party with Pizza and a few cheesy games to help us get to know each other a little better. After we were done with dinner we had just about 30 minutes before the screening was supposed to start. The plan was that mom & dad would arrive at the San Francisco airport, ride the public transit over to Emeryville and then check into their hotel before meeting me at Pixar for the movie. Unfortunately, their flight was delayed out of LA and they barely made it to Pixar in time for the screening to start and they didn't have time to stop by the hotel. But at least they made it safely and we were all able to see the entire movie.

I really enjoyed WALL·E and I think it may be my favorite Pixar movie so far. I was amazed by the details of the graphics, but I was also very impressed by the quality of the characters and how they developed through the film. It was a lot of fun to sit through the final credits and look for all the people that I've met and gotten to know that worked on it. After it was done, we headed to their hotel and were able to spend a couple hours just talking together.

On Friday we scheduled for them to come to Pixar at 11:00 for lunch and a tour. That morning I had my first "triage check" which is essentially me showing the section of Toy Story that I've been working on to the rest of my team and seeing if it was complete enough, or if there were some changes I still need to make. It went really well and I got done just in time to meet mom & dad in the atrium. I gave them a full tour of the atrium and the other areas that vistors can see, including a large display of original WALL·E artwork. Since they are considered immediate family, I was able to show them my office which was special too.

We ate lunch at Cafe Luxo in the atrium and had a relaxing afternoon. After a while we decided we still had time for them to see my apartment before that had to head to the airport so we caught an Emery-Go-Round bus and stopped by my place. After that we headed back to their hotel where they grabbed their bags and were off to the Oakland airport to fly home.

Although the trip was short, it was a lot of fun to get to spend some alone time with them since I really haven't had a chance to do that very much since Jess and I got married. I get to see them for another short amount of time at the end of the summer when I stop in Idaho on my way back to RI.

After they left, I rushed back to Pixar to meet one of my Brown friends who is working in Silicone Valley (an hour+ drive away). He was super excited about getting to see Pixar and it wa fun to give him and a friend of his he brought along the tour also. It wasn't as meticulous, but they really liked getting to see the inside of the campus and the atrium area of the main building. I worked a little more that night cause I wanted to get some stuff done. But, it was nice to have several visitors and I like getting to share my experience, in person, with family and friends.

Saturday was another very relaxing day, which was a nice change from a fast paced, busy week. After church on Sunday I wasn't sure what I was going to see, but while I was eating lunch I decided to head over to the beach again and just spend some time on the sand. The first time I visited the beach I only had my tennis shoes and I didn't want to get sand in them so I didn't really walk out in the sand at all. This time I remembered to grab some flip flops so when I arrived at the beach (by Muni rail), I was very excited to take of my shoes and enjoy the sand on my bare feet.

After I got down to the water front I saw these funny shaped completely clear things along the line where the sand turns from dry to wet. At first I assumed they were jelly fish, but they weren't shaped like the jellyfish that I had seen and I couldn't see any tentacles. Well, after walking around several hundred of them, I found a few specimens that made it a little easier to verify that they were jellyfish of some sort. I got some pictures of them that you can check out in the photo album. I'm still not sure what kind they were, but I know they weren't the very common "Moon Jellyfish".

After walking a couple miles on the beach, I rode another train back towards downtown and caught a BART back over to the East Bay. It was a nice and relaxing day even though I traveled quite a bit. The only anoying part was that the BART trains I rode in both directions were way overloaded, and completely packed with people. I found out I'm essentially too short to hold on to the hand rails on the ceiling of the train cars.

Well, this is much longer tha I anticipated, but I hope you enjoyed my account of the last several days. I still have no idea what I will be doing for the 4th of July. My team gets half of tomorrow off and the whole company gets Friday off. So, I hope to find something fun to do, but we will see. I hope you have a great holiday weekend with friends, family, or by yourself like me.

A quick post

I explored the beach some more today after church, but I don't have much time to talk about it because it is so late. So, I'll let you know I added some pictures to the web album and will add some others from this weekend soon. Also, I went back through all of the pictures in the album and tagged the locations where they were taken. So, if you click on a picture in the album, there is a little map that shows where the picture was taken. Or, there's another feature that I think is very cool that allows you to see a map with all the pictures in the album on it where they were taken (you can even load the map of picture locations in Google Earth!). Here's the link:
Map View

I've tried to place them with as much accuracy as possible. So, you can kind of see my walk through Golden Gate park from last weekend and the path I took. As well as where my apartment is in relation to Pixar. And you can even find what I think is one of the best places in SF (it's on Vallejo).

Well, I guess that's all for now. I had a great weekend and a very busy, but fun day on Friday. I hope you have a great week and I will try to give more info about this weekend tomorrow or some other time very soon.

Sunday on my own

Yesterday was much more relaxed than the other two Saturdays I've had in California. I had planned to check out the Oakland zoo with one of my roommates, but it was supposed to get into the low 90s so we decided not to stand around outside all afternoon. So, instead we took a nice stroll down to the shopping area here in Emeryville. We stopped a couple of places, but mostly just explored to see what is available. I bought an armband for my MP3 player, an instructional book for playing the drums, and a little bit of See's candy. We then came back to the apartment and just relaxed the rest of the day.

Today however was another crazy exploring day. I really wanted to go back to the church I visited last Sunday so last night I figured out the quickest route to get there via public transit. Then, I got up and headed out. I ended up not taking the bus I normally take to the train station, but just walked the 2.5 miles instead. This sounds a little crazy, but I wanted to stop at Pixar on the way to pick up my earphones that I left at my desk cause I knew I'd want them for the rest of the day. So, it was a little easier to walk to Pixar than to ride, and I ended up just missing the bus from Pixar to the train station, so I walked that too. I then rode the Bart over to San Francisco and walked the three blocks to the church. The service was very good again and the worship was simply outstanding. i hung around for a little while afterward and met the pastor and a few other people before walking over to another burrito restaurant and getting lunch. This time I took a picture of my mostly eaten burrito. The picture doesn't do it's size justice, and it's just $5.

Once I was done eating I was craving some soft serve so I stopped at a McD's (I know, how lame), and got a cheap hot fudge sundae. I very much enjoyed it while I walked up several blocks to the southwestern edge of downtown to catch a bus. The bus took me over to the eastern edge of Golden Gate Park. Now this park is actually several miles from the bridge which I found rather confusing when I first heard about the park.
It is 176 acres larger than Central Park in NY, so in other words...it is HUGE. I ended up walking the full length of the park (about 3.5 miles!) and getting see a lot of the diversity it offers. I was so surprised to see all the different little sections of the park. After I'd been walking for probably 45 minutes, I started hearing some music, which I soon found out was some type of large rock concert. There were probably 5,000+ people there and I just "stumbled" across them in the middle of this park. Most of the park was fairly empty and I enjoyed the peacefulness a lot. I finally exited the western end of the park which is right across the street from the Pacific Ocean! This was actually the main reason I went to the park in the first place.

The beach was wide and sandy, but very windy and cool. There were lots of people out on the sand but no one was in the water for several reasons (deadly undertow, great whites, and freezing water). I called Jessica to share the beach with her (we both love the beach), and then just sat at the edge of the sand and took in the air/sound/smell/feel that comes with the open sea. After that I walked a couple blocks inland and caught a bus, got off that bus and caught another, which didn't go far enough so I caught another, to end up at the Golden Gate Bridge. The winds were even stronger near the bay, but I walked about 1/3 of the way across the bridge and back and took several pictures as you can tell. I waited around for a bus that was heading back towards the city, and ended up having to ride three more buses to get back to the Bart station to get back to the east side of the bay. I finally got back to Emeryville at about 7:30, which was an hour after the last bus left that goes by my apartment. (It only runs till 6:30 on Sunday, stupid bus) So, I decided to just walk it, and walked the 2.5 miles again.

So, just in case you couldn't tell, the theme of my day was walking and buses. I figured out that I walked more than 11 miles today and rode 7 different buses! But, even so I knew God was helping out. First of all, my feet really held out and I can tell I'm getting in better shape cause the walking is much less intrusive than it was just two weeks ago. Also, I ended up only having to spend about $1.00 more for transportation, than it would have cost to just go to church and back home! The SF buses have a transfer ticket that allows you free transfers for 90 minutes after you've purchased your ticket. Well, today, for some reason when I got on my first bus after church and paid my $1.50 fare, the bus driver gave me a transfer ticket that expired at 7:00 pm, 5 hours after I got on the bus! Then throughout the day I took my time and didn't feel like I needed to rush at all and just figured I'd pay for another fare if i was out later than my transfer ticket allowed. Well, it ends up I boarded the last bus I needed to take at about 6:52. So, I rode 7 different buses all over San Francisco for a grand total of $1.50! And that last bus took me to a Bart station that is closer to Emeryville than the one by the church so it was actually cheaper to get home than it would have been.

So, all that to say I had a great day with a lot of virtually free fun. I hope you enjoy the pictures. Oh, and I also added a picture of the 20 foot tall Wall-E that was inflated in the Pixar Amphitheater this last Friday. The whole place is abuzz with excitement for the upcoming release. You better all go watch it or I will be greatly disappointed in you!

Feeling settled and a little romance

This weekend was a lot of fun, and work today actually felt pretty "normal", in a good way. We had a team meeting to overview some details of the pipeline for our work and to just make things more standard for all of us. I felt more like a part of the team and started to get some real work done.

Yesterday was a lot of fun too. I got picked up for church and we headed over to the Mission district of San Francisco. The building was smaller than I expected but they have 4 different services each weekend. I was very impressed with the church in many ways. I will certainly be going back and will probably write more about it in a week or two. After church, on the way back to my apartment, we stopped at a very authentic burrito restaurant that had very good, and inexpensive, food. I was dropped back off at my apartment and relaxed for a while.

After an hour or so I suggested to my roommates that we head over to Pixar to have some fun. They agreed that they didn't just want to sit around all afternoon so we took off and had a lot of fun all afternoon. We ended up throwing a frisbee for a while, then playing a little soccer, and several games of shuffleboard. Other options that we considered were basketball, ping-pong, pool, foosball, and guitar hero. I took a few outdoor pictures while we were walking around the Pixar campus, and updated the photo album with them.

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I kind of breezed through the account of this weekend cause there's something I wanted to talk about that I'm feeling much more strongly about right now. So, I'm going to totally change subjects and talk about something more personal.

And that subject is my amazing wife who I miss and love so much! And there is a reason for me to bring this up other than just the fact that I haven't seen her in more than 2 weeks. Tomorrow (in just 1 hour), is our 3 and a half year anniversary. Now, we don't usually "celebrate" half anniversaries, but today, I want to verbalize some of the thoughts I've been having and really let you know how much she means to me.

Every time I think about Jess (which is a LOT), I am so thankful that God brought us together. Not only is she the most gorgeous woman I know, but she shows me her complete love so frequently. In the little things and the obvious ones, she is so encouraging, helpful, and amazing. Earlier this week I was letting myself feel overwhelmed and was feeling sorry for myself and how difficult my assignment has been here at Pixar. Jessica was able to say a few words to me, which at first hurt me and made me want to get frustrated, but her honestly was from the heart and she knew that it was what I needed to hear. It has made a big difference in my attitude and her words were a blessing from God. I am so thankful I get to hear her voice everyday when we talk on the phone.

Everyday that passes while I am here in California I realize, not just how much I miss her, but how much she is part of me. We share everything all the time and it has been harder than I expected to explore new places and have fun without her here to share it all with me. I miss sharing milkshakes and meals, sunsets and scenery, laughs and smiles, hugs and kisses, and so much more!

It is getting late so I will wrap this up. Jessica, I know you will read this, and I just want to say in front of our friends and family who read this, that I am more in love with you than I've ever been. With every passing day I realize a little more clearly how much you mean to me, how much I long to make you happy, how much I love everything about you, how much I know that I will never love you less and how you are everything that I've ever hoped or longed for. You are part of me and these last 3.5 years have been so much better than I thought they could be. I am so excited that we get the rest of our lives together! So, have a great Tuesday and remember that I am thinking about you and can't wait to see your beautiful face again. In just 31 days now.

Goodnight my love.