A typical day

Some of you may wonder, what exactly do you do at IBM? Well, while it may not be project Aardvark, it is an awesome learning experience. I get to work with a hardware design team. Where i get to see how they develop these chips. from the design phase to the end result. My exact job is to work on the verification area. Where they basically test the logic of the chip, before it is built.
Today I am pretty tired because it was a typical day. I arrived at early at 7:00 AM, (I do that b/c I want the extra hours, God knows there's a baby coming) I wrote some testcases, which basically tell the computer how to test the logic of the chip. I did not come up with the content of the testcases myself. My supervisor did that. He showed me what we were looking for and I modified existing testcases to fit the new ones. He told me to do that late yesterday, so I finished it up in the morning. Then, at 8:00am I went to a formal class on VHDL, which is a modeling language for hardware. In Normal English, it is what Engineers use to design chips. This code gets interpreted by the computer and it figures out how the chip will be built. For those of you with a technical background: I know there's more to it than that, but this blog is for everyone, and not all of us are computer geeks.
Anyway, I tried to pay attention the best I could, but two hours into it, I was gone man, My Brain will not stop taking me other places. I knew better than that, but I couldn't help it. So after four long, I mean long hours we were finally released and went back to our normal business. So I went back to my cage, I mean, cubicle to work on my knowledge, I read up on all kinds of stuff, in order to learn my job. (gotta make a good impresion) It is not easy being an Engineer, and there's always the possibility your job may end up in India.
That's why I want to do a good job. IBM may do outsourcing, but it is one of the few companies that will take the time, money and effort to entry-level computer engineers. I look at all the job postings in South Florida, and there's almost nothing out there for newbies. So it's the Catch-22, you can't have a job without experience, but can't get experience without the job. I am lucky to be here. And I am doing my best.
Around 5:30pm I came home, made myself a pizza (the kind that comes in a box, frozen) and talked to my wife and my folks, Later on I moved some furniture and now I am back. I have to hit the books though, there's a research paper I got to write for my Data Security class.
More on the exciting life of an IBM intern coming up soon....