clintonb's blog

For the past two years I have spent IAP in Africa. This time around I'll be hanging out in India. I joined a team of students that is traveling to Bhuj to study a health clinic and determine what we can do to improve operations at the clinic and also to take lessons learned from the clinic and apply them to other clinics in the country. This will be a completely different experience from Africa and I am totally looking forward to it.

I doubt anyone knows this, but I am currently in Reno, Nevada interviewing with International Gaming Technology (IGT). IGT currently owns about 60-70% of the global gaming market which is primarily slot machines.

For those who still don't know, I spent last weekend in Dallas, Texas, home! The reason for the lack of notice was to surprise my parents; the only people who knew that I would be in town were my sister, brother and his family.

I was in town interviewing for another position with Hewlett-Packard in Richardson. Ironically, the night before I left to go to Dallas I met with the manager for the group in Colorado Springs and received an offer. Unfortunately, I did not get the job in New York City. I still have an interview next week with Booz Allen Hamilton and Texas Instruments has finally called back so it is also possible I may end up where I started over 3 years ago. We'll see how things turn out.

I returned from New York City around 10 PM last night quite tired. I did not get much time to see the city, so I have no pictures. I had 5 interviews with Capital IQ that lasted pretty much all day from 10 AM to 3 PM. I was originally only interviewing for a software developer position, but after meeting the CTO (for my second interview) of the company he thought I might be a good fit for a database administration or design position as well, so I interviewed with folks from those groups.

I have just returned from Colorado Springs, CO. On Friday I interviewed with Hewlett-Packard, and spent Saturday exploring the city. I visited the U.S. Olympic Training Center, but was unable to reach the summit of Pikes Peak due to high winds. Colorado Springs is a nice location and the work interests me, so starting my career there is definitely a possibility.

While I did not get picture of the U.S. Olympic Training Complex, I did take pictures of the view from my window:

Note: This entry is a bit longer than most, so here's the quick summary:

I am officially an IronNerd!

What's that you ask? Well, to promote Wellness Week here at MIT, the Undergraduate Association sponsored the IronNerd competition. IronNerd is a triathlon: swimming (200 yards), biking (3 miles), running (1.1 miles). I'm no athlete, so I just competed to prove to myself that I could do it, and I can! Here are my times:

Now that I'm moving from Dallas for the summer, I finally get to face what most interns face: finding housing. In Dallas, it was easy; I stayed at my own home and drove my own car. Now, I have to deal with apartments and car rentals which is not that great. I was referred by HP (more appropriately, a contractor) to an extended stay place. Guess how much they charge. Come on, guess. $67 per night. For those of you without calculators, that's over $2000 per month. That's a few house payments in Boston! It's probably a whole house in Boise. So, I get to spend next week dealing with this crap.

I was in Dallas this past weekend and Monday and Tuesday. Unfortunately my flights to and from Dallas were delayed by the storms. I spent about 3 hours on Friday and Tuesday sitting on taxiways. On Friday there were no gates at which to disembark. Tuesday, we had to wait out a storm, which was pretty powerful - it rocked the plane for a good 2 minutes. Friday's flight was supposed to get into Dallas around 8:20. It arrived around 11. Tuesday's flight was supposed to land in Boston around 11:05. It landed around 1:20 Wednesday morning.

Randall Pinkett was here at MIT on Thursday. I received a signed copy of his book and a picture. The pictures are online here.