I am getting ahead of myself though. Today would be the day the Outreach Program for Women applicants would be announced. They would be announced at 11:00 but I had an interview at Urban Airship from 10:00 to 12:00 so I would have no way of knowing if I got it or not.
I got up and got ready. It was really cold and windy out so I picked something warm and cozy to wear. The email from UA said they are a casual environment so business clothing was not required. Perfect! I decided that instead of making myself nervous and sick about the interview I would just go into it thinking I was not actually getting the position but would interview as practice. It may sound silly but it calmed me a LOT. I drove down and had a bit of a panic when I couldn’t find a parking spot nearby. I circled around once though and found an open spot. I checked in with two women at the front counter. One woman was training the other and it seemed as though it was the new woman’s first hour of her first day. This made me even calmer for some reason. The UA offices are in an incredibly beautiful building owned by Vestas. Cherice, the recruiter, met me downstairs and took me up to the third floor and into a conference room.
The customer engineering team was already there waiting for me. I met with Mele who is the manager and Jesse, Jhenna, Bretty and Donato. They were all so nice and friendly. They asked me questions, I asked them questions and before I knew it our time was up! I was really enjoying our conversation though. They left and Robb, a professional services engineer, came in next. He explained his position and what he envisioned an intern taking on in order to help further this. He is very big on test driven design which is awesome! I don’t feel that TDD is really taught or presented in a way that shows how beneficial it is. I’d love to be on a team where TDD is the way things are done. We had a great talk and once again our time was up so quickly. Robb left and Todd, the lead data scientist, interviewed me next. He was also as easygoing and friendly as everyone else. We talked about all sorts of things and I don’t really know if I am what they are looking for but I sure enjoyed the interviews if nothing else. I really got a sense of how happy everyone seemed to be working there.
Once we were all done, Cherice gave me a tour of the rest of their space and then walked me down to the front desk. I thanked her for having me, told her I was immediately available and said goodbye. I walked to the lobby and looked at my phone only to see I had been accepted to OPW! I still had to drive to meet Amanda so I couldn’t go home right away and jump on IRC to thank Peter and thank people for their congratulations. I hope it didn’t seem like I didn’t care. The timing was just not ideal.
Now I had a real problem. The UA internship and OPW would most definitely conflict. What to do?? I wasn’t going to think about it right then. I was too happy with my entire day. I met Amanda at Green Leaf Juice Company. I was definitely skeptical about this place because I wanted food not juice! They had some steamed soups that sounded ok though. I ordered the Tomato Basil with raw cashews and she got some spicy southwestern type soup. I told her how wonderful the interviews were and how nice everyone was. I was hoping to calm her for her interviews the following day. We talked about what she should wear and what type of technical stuff they asked. She was still ridiculously nervous.
Our soups came and I took a sip of mine. Wow! It was incredibly good. It far exceeded my expectations. I guess they were kind of low to begin with but really this soup was incredible. We sat and talked until our parking permits were about to expire. I headed home just as happy as could be even though I couldn’t figure out what to do about the conflict. Whatever was supposed to happen would happen. Either way, I was a Mozilla Intern!
I got home and told the guys my good news. They were very happy for me and both said the obligatory, “I knew you would get it!” They are always so good to me. I jumped on IRC so I could thank people for congratulating me and to thank Peter for choosing me. He responded by giving me another bug! I love it 🙂 Now I have two to work on. Andrew says this is how it goes and to be prepared to have a lot more than two in the future. I’m good with that!
One of my bugs involves surveys so I was researching Django ModelForms. I have set up Django websites but I don’t really remember much about form validation so this will be a good refresher for me. I had to leave again to get my hair cut. My stylist was working at the Pearl location this time so I asked Wayne do drop me off so I wouldn’t have to find parking. He dropped me off and picked me back up when I was done. He and I went to the grocery store to get dinner stuff for the next two nights since there was supposed to be a snow storm. The store was packed with people doing the very same thing.
Wayne made us yummy nachos for dinner. I ate a huge plate of them and then went back to my research until I could barely keep my eyes open.
Today I learned that even seasoned developers struggle to set up development environments from time to time.