Mefi Intern

My name is Dominic, and this is basically my day to day life as a summer intern for the community weblog, MetaFilter. I love comments and hearing what people have to say, so you can contact me at: [email protected] var _gaq = _gaq || []; _gaq.push(['_setAccount', 'UA-24321764-1']); _gaq.push(['_trackPageview']); (function() { var ga = document.createElement('script'); ga.type = 'text/javascript'; ga.async = true; ga.src = ('https:' == document.location.protocol ? 'https://ssl' : 'http://www') + '.google-analytics.com/ga.js'; var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(ga, s); })();

[mefiintern-blog]

Final blog post.

I don't really know what else to call this other than "Final blog post". It's mainly melancholy that I've put off doing a day already because I just didn't really know what I wanted to say. I had a lot of fun this summer and it sucks that it's coming to an end. I am very thankful for the experiences I've shared, and the knowledge I've gained. I'm incredibly excited about college, and continuing what I've started here as mefiintern. 

In the last post (day fifty seven I believe) I said that I will be starting a new blog at a new place. For those readers that wish to follow me in all of my future endeavors as my life continues to unfold, you can find me and my writing at domallen.com. In regards to everyone that read loyally through the summer, thank you. I'm not exactly sure what my new blog will be themed around, but I'll be posting daily for everyone to enjoy. I was thinking about starting it once I arrived at school on September 22nd due to all the craziness of getting ready to leave, but who knows, maybe you'll all get lucky. Take care and thanks for reading my life as mefiintern.

[mefiintern-blog]

Day fifty seven.

Those that have followed this blog throughout the summer should have realized that I didn't exactly do the normal intern like work. If you hadn't yet stumbled upon that landmark, well, I'm sorry but you probably needed it spelled out for you anyways. 

I came into this internship expecting to learn a lot of information that would help me as  I went off to school, and my hypothesis proved to be correct. Working alongside the boss and the programmer this summer has really given me an inside look at different careers I could choose once after college that I've really developed an interest in.

Originally I wanted to write, and for that reason I wanted to major in some form of journalism. To aide this, the boss (blogfather) has gotten me into blogging, and once done here at mefiintern.tumblr.com, I will be beginning anew elsewhere (my next post will include details). The experiences I had in New York meeting with Nick and Joel at Gawker, Jake at Gothamist, and David Gallagher at the Times further opened my eyes to where the journalism field is going, and if I'm going to pursue some sort of webpage/writing career, how to be successful. Surely it's not a guarantee, but I listened and absorbed as much as I could, and hopefully it will pay off in the long run and put me a step above the other Journalism majors this year.

I'd always wanted to learn how to code helpful tools and run a website, but the classes that were offered at my high school didn't provide a foundation to understand much of the vocabulary and life spans of how web pages work, leaving me "high and dry". At the beginning of the summer the talk between the the boss and programmer didn't make any sense to me, yet after a few months, is now understood fairly quickly. Another area of interest I've developed over the summer is in application creation and now that I have developed a bit of foundation for coding them, I will be better ready to take an iOS application class at the University of Oregon to jumpstart me into that field.

Being thrown into the MetaFilter community 100% cold was an absolute blast! During the trip to New York I got to meet some users that I had talked with previously on the site and it was super cool! I learned a bit about successfully managing communities, and the reasons behind some of Emanuel's (Cortex's) post deletions. As I shared in the Mefi podcast, my first few days I was very nervous to make a post anywhere, especially the blue wall. Three months later, I have yet to make a blue wall post and have developed an attitude thanks to all the corrupt Mefites out there that chastised my use of the english language. You all are too great.

I am very blessed to have received this (one final time everyone) pinternship, and I thank all of you for welcoming me into the MefaFilter community with open arms. Everything I've learned here is priceless and I can't wait to see where I end up.

[mefiintern-blog]

Day fifty six.

Today was the "Good bye Dom!" lunch seeing as my last day is rapidly approaching (Tuesday the 13th). The boss took a couple friends and I to lunch at Pok Pok in Portland, OR and we enjoyed a nice shared meal that involved a variety of food. The food was great and I especially enjoyed the spicy papaya salad. Once we finished at Pok Pok that we drove across town to have ice cream at Salt and Straw. 

The boss ended up needing to stop by Souney Media to pick up his "back scratcher", so we made a quick pit stop before heading back to McMinnville, OR. Though we didn't really do much today, I'm a bit exhausted and am going to follow this post with a nice nap. Monday the boss and I are going to climb the Peavine hill before doing any work/ talking about the blog that I'm going to be starting as this internship draws to a close this summer. I'm pretty excited, but I am going to enjoy this weekend before I get overly excited about Monday.

[mefiintern-blog]

Day fifty five. (With some days missed)

Hello again to whomever continues to come back to this blog day after day and read the wall of nothing that I've posted the last week or so. I know there was a delay I feel like 12 days maybe including weekends, but I continued to tweet what I was up to (geo locating) instead of blogging here, because well, geo locating was not exactly the most intriguing topic to write about.

For each location I typed the name of a city or country (sometimes both) into a back end form and then clicked "set". Some did not have any locations because the questions were either far to broad to cut down to a single location (road trips), or just in the wrong section. The boss told me to do a couple hundred a day and call it good. But I worked hard and in a couple hours was able to get 2,000-3,000 posts located every time I sat down. It took me a week, and I just finished yesterday.  I just read the programmers (pb) post in the MetaTalk thread announcing the subtle launch of the system and would like to say thanks for all the praise, but it was just my turn to get a nice tedious intern's job at least once this summer. Well, besides cleaning up throw- up multiple days in a row while house sitting for the boss. Anyway, I hope you all enjoy and make use of this awesome new feature because the links were the fruit of my labor.

[mefiintern-blog]

Day fifty four.

In the last few days I've found that doing back end locations early in the morning is easiest because I don't really think long and hard about whether or not a post deserves to have a location tagged to it or not. I just make the simple decision and continue on down the list. Today I did 609 more locations, and ended up stopping because for some reason, it wouldn't let me "Set" anymore locations. I quit and then started again later until I ran into the same problem. Tomorrow the boss comes back from a trip to California and I'll be able to put in some good time locating hopefully close to 3000 more AT work. Until then, I'm ending the night with The Big Bang Theory, South Park, and texting my girlfriend. Goodnight. A quick after thought... I need to put some pictures up soon so that my readers don't see just a wall of text when they come to my blog. I promise some sort of photo inserted tomorrow, because I'm at work it will be a lot easier to get something semi- interesting.

[mefiintern-blog]

Day fifty three.

Today I did 1015 more back end locations. 

[mefiintern-blog]

Day fifty two.

So now that I'm back from my weekend of getting spoiled, I have been working on some back end "AskMefi" location questions. In the few hours I did it this morning, I did 1039 location questions with a nap in between because I felt like I was going crazy. Only 11,372 more to go...

[mefiintern-blog]

Day forty nine.

Turns out I was wrong in my last post, because the boss has an arm appointment today and so I will not be going into work, but instead reading my iOS book and preparing for four days of camping and boating at Lake Billy Chinook with my girlfriend. My life is definitely tough. I'll be gone through Monday the 22nd, so I'll see you all on the 23'rd for Day 52. Don't have too much fun this weekend.

[mefiintern-blog]

Day forty seven.

Due to the boss getting back from a crazy time schedule, I will have today through wednesday off so that he can recuperate. We'll see all your happy faces Thursday for day 49.

[mefiintern-blog]

Day forty six.

Today I woke up to an alarm going off in the garage, that I thought was the washing machine. I went down looked at it, and thought that maybe after I took a shower I would be able to think a little clearer so I ran back upstairs to wake up a bit. I turned the water on and then undressed and waited a few seconds before reaching in and testing the water with my hand. It was ice cold. I decided to give it a few more seconds and then try again but it had only gotten colder. My plans of showering first thing were thwarted and now I had to deal with the beeping noise.

After a call to my dad, I still couldn't figure it out so I ended up running an extension cord into the house so that the freezer didn't thaw out and spoil all the frozen foods(all the circuits in the garage were out). The boss's wife (the professor) texted me to try and explain where the gfi was but I just could not find it. So after I had plugged in the freezer I took off for PDX.

After a nice drive in the boss's BMW, I arrived at PDX and picked up the family. Due to it being close to 4:30 we hit prime traffic on I-84 and instead took the back roads home. The boss and his family got me an authentic rugby Australian rugby jersey while they were away and it is really cool! That's about it for today. 

[mefiintern-blog]

Day forty five.

After I woke up and did some intern jobs such as cleaning cat puke off the floor, I did some reading in my Programming iOS book, and then waited around all day for the DHL express guy to come. It's safe to say that it's almost seven pm and he has yet to show up, so I'm now heading home for dinner. While all this was happening in Oregon, the boss was snorkeling and swimming with sea turtles in the ocean off the coast of Australia. What a tough week he's having.

[mefiintern-blog]

Day forty four.

Today I had to get home early to help my mom with some things at home and due to being in a hurry, I forgot to clean up my room before the cleaning lady came at 11 am. I was extremely embarrassed that she had to see my cycling kit and shirts in a little heap, waiting to be taken down and cleaned. After I got over that embarrassment I did a load of laundry and washed some dishes that hadn't been cleaned. 

The picture above is some interesting coral that the boss found while on the beach. I picked it as the picture of the day, because I wanted to give you a visual of what the cat puke I clean up daily looks very similar too. Yep, drink it in.

[mefiintern-blog]

Day forty three.

Amidst my daily reading of Programming iOS and trying different tutorials within Xcode, I couldn't stop looking at the pictures that the boss was taking, and uploading to flickr. I can say that this is easily my favorite day of his travels because of the great pictures that are coming from it. 

Whether it was the Butterfly house in Kuranda or riding the sky rail above the canopy,the pictures are incredible and I can only imagine what how great of an experience it was to experience it first hand.

[mefiintern-blog]

Day forty two.

Anyone that's read the last week of my blog knows that I don't have a ton of tasks to do besides work on my iOS programming of my first application while the boss is away, so today is nothing new. Look at this picture, dingoes are pretty cute.

[mefiintern-blog]

Day forty one.

Happy Monday, and welcome to the beginning of week two of house sitting. I now have a poison oak looking rash in the crook of my right elbow thanks to some carpet cleaning chemicals made to get rid of cat stains that I get to live with for awhile. Moe Moe and Chloe didn't score any points there...  On a brighter note, the country of Australia can now pride themselves on another athletic feat besides Rugby, thanks to Cadel Evans' win in the Tour De France. He may be one of the few men to get their face plastered on the front cover of Woman's Day. Could this be because of his high pitched voice? Either way, props to Cadel for taking the yellow jersey back to Australia.

[mefiintern-blog]

Day forty.

Due to it being Friday, today I got up and lounged around watching peep code videos in my pajamas until eleven am. When I got tired of watching videos, I went and started my house sitting duties and then got ready for the day. 

[mefiintern-blog]

Day thirty nine.

I think that whenever I start out thinking everything is going to go exactly as planned, life slaps me in the face with fall throughs and drawbacks, today being no exception.  As I got in my car this morning on the way to drop off the boss's frame in Portland, I pulled my key out of my pocket in two pieces. Holding both sections of my key in my hand, I thought about every plan I had made that day falling through.

Immediately I called my dad and asked if he had the spare key (which he didn't). Then my mom drove me over the van and I took off to Portland after dropping her off. I didn't want to drive the mini-van downtown, so I drove it to my girl's house in Vancouver, WA and then we took her 90's audi into the city. 

After a delay dropping off the bike, we went to lunch and then went back to her house to exchange the cars. Once back out on the rode, I sat in traffic for over an hour cursing my late morning departure before I got to Tualatin, After another hour of driving, I reached home to find that the cats had thrown up on the carpets. Welcome home.