My First Week

Coming into my internship I half heartedly expected that I would toil over being called girls names, given nothing but grunt work, all the while pushing gomers around and not accomplishing much of anything. Other than the "occasional" name calling and teasing from Christine, my first week has been nothing near what I expected. (For those that don't know, I was in fact making a Scrubs reference) My first week has been an exciting week, I think the hardest thing to really get used to thus far has been the time shift. I am not a morning person, I am not and will not ever be completely acclimated at consciousness before noon. Give me a job between the hours of noon and 5 AM and I'm on the ball, but anytime outside those hours and we may have a problem. All in all I love the lab I am working in. I'm constantly surrounded by tech nerds, old computers, electronic parts, lasers, chemicals, and anything else a nerd's perspective of heaven could entail. Truth be told, the nerd half of me is filled to my heart's content.

However, there is another half of me that is not completely appeased. In getting used to new hours I also have not gotten used to fitting time in for my workout schedule. I've always been a stickler about balancing mind and body but recently I just haven't fulfilled the other half of my commitments.

My Projects thus far:

Labview:
LabView is very very weird. It's basically GUI based programming, no code, only GUI. It seems like the bounds are infinite with it, and in combination with a C background a person could be unstoppable. I personally am not the biggest fan of this piece of ... software... and I am having a hard time adjusting from the serenity of HTML and Java Programming. I understand the possibilities and implications of learning this language, it's just learning it doesn't get any easier, even with motivation. As much trouble as LabView has given me, I understand that it's normal and that LabView's learning curve is rather steep. I look around me and my fellow NSFers seem to have as much if not more trouble than I.

Outside of programming in LabView the overall experience of the Denton Lab has been a positive one. The thing I like the most about the people around me is that fact we all seem to work well together. It seems like we all have a lot in common and can go from working on projects together to just hanging out and eating pizza.

I think this aspect of the program is what perplexes me the most. To most of the world there are two Alan's:
Socialable relaxed Alan
Uber Tech Nerd Alan

I know, I know, I'm splitting hairs here, but there is a difference. The people I talk to about computers and hacking and stuff of that sort I rarely ever go to about philosophy, life and just general interests. The reverse is true as well. Take the Twirlers for instance, they are really nice cool people, but I'm not about to sit down and bore them to death about how I was able to use a parsing tool for my website so I could power it by XML Feed via Blogger! At the same token, I'm not about to go to my tech friends and ask them about how to handle this girl I like, or about the war, or about the Houston Rockets. All in all there are two separate worlds I associate with, and between them I am one of the few if not only bridges. NSF has completely flipped that around on me. I feel like the people in the program can go between those two extremes with ease. Maybe I only see what I want to see and no one really understands me at all. Who knows? Ehh, Reality is perception so on and so forth, and thus far I have had a good perception of things.

The One, The Only, The Alan Show