amd internships...

So I did a co-op at AMD during the fall semester of what would have been my senior year of college. It was quite eye-opening, and made me realise that going out into the "real world" and working could wait; grad school all of a sudden didn't seem so bad. The one perk of being an hourly employee (as opposed to salaried) was that I got overtime pay anytime my workload for a week exceeded 40 hours...hehehe.

Back in the beginning of the co-op, they gave me a cubicle with a window. It was quite nice, being able to see into the parking lot and all, except that it was ten degrees hotter than anyone else's cube on those 100+ degree days. But anyway, one day I saw a little birdie on the windowsill....

And the perk of the co-op came at the end when I got an employee discount on a 800MHz Duron processor (at the time, it was going for about $100-$120 online; I got mine for $60), and rebuilt a computer with it. For kicks, I wondered what this would look like...the amdmoron: the newest in a family of processors designed for the average moron.

Summer 2001...

Yup, I was crazy enough to go work at AMD for the second summer in a row. This time, though, the work was less chaotic, since there were actually people in my group (as opposed to people who just left my group). And this year, my focus was on enjoying myself more, relaxing at work, and of course, making money to pay rent on the apartment in Berkeley. Here are a few random shots related to AMD from this summer...

Here's a shot from my corner of the office sometime around 10:30pm one night when I was working late being a code/debug cow. Notice how I've got strategic positioning so I can see what's going on in both of the other cubes...yeah. whatever.

Here's a shot of a bunch of us interns at lunch one day at the Chinese place across the street from the 915 building. I don't remember what kind of face I was trying to make, nor do I remember the names of all these people here.

And this is Sherylen, the HR Intern at AMD. If she knew this picture were here, she'd probably complain...

Since she went all camera-happy that one day and took pictures of a bunch of us in our cubes hard(ly) at work, I thought it only fair to return the favour....

And here's a shot of Tien, Edris, and me at work one day, as taken by the aforementioned HR Intern (hence the blurriness...tsk tsk...never trust a d-cam to someone who's not a geek). Notice how we're strategically blocking the "company confidential" info that's on the big bad white board behind us...

And here's a shot of Sherylen and me somewhere.

This is Tien sitting at his desk. Posing for a picture. This is what I get to stare at everyday when I turn my head away from my computer screen.

And here's a shot of Tien in a similar pose that one day he came in and we noticed that he had slicked his hair back for a change

Here's a glamour shot of Tien and his wife. We were bored one afternoon, so we played with his wedding pictures and the scanner...hehehe...

And so on the 17^th of August, it was Mike's last day, so we all took him out to lunch, and even bought him a nifty yuppie toy as a going-away gift. Here's Mike posing with it, along with Bill, Steve, and Edris.

And here's a shot of all of us CAD people (including Steve, the cool dude boss from last year), perhaps for one last time? nah...