Leedberg.com

The online home for Greg Leedberg, since 1995.

Thursday, July 01, 2004

Interesting summer...

Well I've been working hard at my Verizon internship for 4 full weeks now! It has been quite an experience. Just getting used to the real-world job schedule was quite an adjustment. I have to get up at 6, leave at 7, drive in rush hour traffic, start working at 8, work till 5, drive home in rush hour traffic, and then I have 4 hours to myself until I go to bed and start it all over again!

Luckily, I really like the internship. I'm working in the Network Services group of Verizon, which, as far as I can tell, deals with the building, upgrading, and maintenance of the physical domestic telephone network. So, my overall group is where a lot of the innovation of the company goes on -- Verizon is much more of an engineering/science corporation than you might think. My organization is Field Operations, which deals with managing the people who go out and build/fix things. My job is to develop a database which automates a lot of stuff which is currently done using paper and spreadsheets. It's interesting, and I'm learning a lot along the way. Also, all the people I work with a great. I have yet to meet someone I don't like. The other day we had an intern welcome event, where I got to meet all the interns in this region. They were also all great people.

Last week my girlfriend and I also went to see Aerosmith in concert! It was a lot of fun. My parents had rented us a chauffeured towncar to drive us there, but the company ran out of cars so we got a limo! And the concert was awesome. My girlfriend is a big Aerosmith fan, and I like them a lot too! They were filming a scene for a movie at our concert, so we got to hear one song three times, for three takes -- luckily, it was a song we both like a lot :)

I got housing at Cornell, which is good to know. I got into the graduate student dorm, which was my first choice. And this weekend is the fourth of July, which excites me because that is my favorite holiday! Yay!