A few great weekends

Alright, well I know it has been over 2 weeks since I posted on this "weekly" blog, but the Internet that Comcast installed has not been working yet, so I haven't been able to get online. Hopefully everything will be all fixed up this week and I will be able to update this more frequently.

Weeks 2 and 3

So the weekend right after my first post, which I guess was 3 weekends ago now, was awesome. After work on Thursday I drove up to Grand Rapids and met up with Katie and her parents and ate dinner at a cool Mexican place. On Friday we just chilled around GR, went to a pizza place for dinner and then saw Indiana Jones, which was awesome! If you haven't seen it yet, then you definitely should. Katie's sister and her husband came in from Chicago, so the whole family was in for the weekend. On Saturday morning all the boys went out to breakfast and then spent a little while walking around the local flea market. When we got back we drove about an hour north to her grandmother's cottage on Big Whitefish Lake. We spent the day moving the hoist and docks into the water, getting the boats in the lake and then playing wiffleball. Some of us even went up to the driving range for a little while. On Sunday we all went to mass in the morning and had a great breakfast. After that Katie's Dad, her sisters husband, her other sisters boyfriend and I went and played 18 holes of golf, losers wash the cars the next day... which meant I was washing cars on Monday. :) All in all, a great weekend. The following weekend Katie came and visited. We saw The Strangers, which was the scariest movie I have ever seen in my life. It was very good, but scary! This past weekend was also fun. On Sunday morning I took the early train into Chicago and met up with Carolyn and Jason. We spent the morning seeing where Carolyn used to live and some of the City. We also went down to Navy Pier and walked around a while. When Carolyn and Jason left for Milwaukee I started to walk to where Katie is living this summer. After one or two blocks the sky opened up and it started to pour. The entire way from the Marriott to the restaurant where Katie and her family were it was pouring rain and I got soaked! I was the ONLY one walking, everyone else was standing on the sides of the streets trying not to get wet. I spent the rest of the day helping Katie get moved in and then we got some pizza at Giordano's for dinner. So the past few weekends have been great.

Work

Work so far has been a little boring. The work itself isn't too bad, but it is a lot of research and my boss is on vacation for two weeks. So this project that I am almost ready to present, I am not presenting for another 2.5 weeks. The drive is long, but I met someone who I work with that actually lives in the same apartment complex that I do, so we are going to carpool 3 times a week, which will definitely save gas money! Now I will try to explain what I am working on as non-technically as possible so that everyone can understand.

Web 2.0

I am working on a topic called Web 2.0, which many of you have probably used before and didn't know that it was called that. When the world wide web first became popular, people viewed websites that were created by a webmaster. Companies would decide what information to put up on a site and then put it up there. In last few years however, websites have started to change the way they put up information. Instead of the company deciding what content to put up, the users of the site put up their own content, and share it with everyone else, so all the content of the site is actually a collection from its users. That is the essence of Web 2.0, websites that are full of user-generated content. Examples of this that you are probably familiar with are Wikipedia, where all of the articles and information were added by users of the site, or YouTube, where the site consists of videos all added by different users. So basically web 2.0 refers to all blogs, wikis, social networking sites, or any other page that depends on user input to generate content.

Now that you are familiar with Web 2.0, it is very simple to explain my job. I am basically the Web 2.0 expert at the company for the summer. So it is my duty to think about different ways that we can use Web 2.0 in order to help strengthen the relationship with the customer. That is all for now, I promise that next time I post I will have more pictures and I will not wait 3 weeks to post!

My Summer Blog

Hello Everyone! 

I have decided that the best way to keep everyone updated on what I am doing way out here in the 'Michiana' area is to keep a blog.  Therefore all summer long I will try to update this blog with information on all my adventures and probably some random thoughts too.  I don't have any pictures yet, but I will take some soon and upload them as soon as I can. Please check back each week for new updates and please leave comments, I would love to hear from everyone!

My First Weekend

The drive on Thursday out here was long, but it actually wasn't too bad. With that said, I would not want to make that trip by myself any more often than necessary! The apartment is very nice and I have most of the furniture in there

 now, but I am still unpacking some boxes of clothes so it is not completely finished yet. On Friday Katie and I drove out to

 her sister's place in Chicago which was a 

lot of fun.  On Saturday we went to Ikea and did a long day of shopping. I don't think I have ever been to an Ikea before, so that was quite an experience! That night we played a VERY competitive two rounds of this gr

eat game for the Wii, Kabooki.  If you have ever played the board game Cranium, Kabooki is basically the same thing, but on the Wii. So you need to use the controller to draw, find countries on a map, and act out random actions like fishing, shaking maracas, sawing a log, etc. I got back on Sunday and did some more packing before my big first day on Monday. It was a great first weekend.

My First Days at Whirlpool

This was probably the second adventure of the summer if you consider my Chicago weekend the first adventure. The first day began as I mistakenly set my alarm for 6:45 am, when in fact I was supposed to LEAVE by 6:45 am, therefore I walked through the doors JUST in time at 8:14. After a long day of orientation I got my office assignment, which was actually in a different building, not the Administrative Center.  This other building is about 10 minutes closer, but in my opinion its in a pretty bad area.  The Whirlpool building is in good shape, but all the ones around us seem to be crumbling.

The next morning was just as interesting.  Since I was traveling to this new building, I wasn't completely sure how to get there, so I decided to just go the reverse way of how I came home the day before.  However, since the midwest does not know how to make roads, you can go from Main St. ONTO the highway towards South Bend, but you can't go from the 

highway back onto Main St... cause that makes sense.  So it took me about 1:15 minutes to get to work, and it was only that short because Katie was awake at 8 am and gave me directions to get back! I would like to tell you about all the successful work that I got done on my first full day, but as it turns out my boss was out of the office for 2 days, so I did not have any assignments yesterday.  Today was much better! I went a different way into work, which only took me 40 min. (75-40 = 35 min less!) Also, my boss was here today and he gave me my first assignment. It is a really cool project that fits exactly what I have been learning at the Kaneb Center the last few years. I will go more into that next week when I have done some more work with it, but basically it is working with Web 2.0 and Second Life. Tomorrow after work I am heading up to Katie's house for the weekend, and we are going to spend some time at her grandmother's cottage by a lake. So I am sure that next week I will have many pictures to include on here. Until then stay safe and go see Indiana Jones!