So what do I do in a normal day now that orientation is over?

Usually I get a bunch of emails telling me to moves files from one place to another. Renew a few domain names once a week. Renew some SSL certificates as well.

And when there is nothing like that to do? I get to mess around with ASP.NET and try and make a nice WAN map for our company network. With the power of SQL and a whole lot of googling I’ve gotten decently far. I still wouldn’t say that I know much about it but it’s better than just sitting on IRC all day. Which I might be doing anyway…

Oh, and it’s an all Windows environment which makes me a little bit frustrated at times. It’s nice in relation to how things work very nicely across the network when they work. It’s not so nice when things don’t work and you have no idea what is going wrong.

I’ve been there before for little tours and things but we finally have to moving in and work there. My cubical about twice as big as what some people have to share between two people. It’s about the same size as my room in residence was. It’s way too awesome.

But I won’t be doing actual scheduled work for a while. We have to set up the lab which will probably take the greater part of the next week. It’s not a problem for me though since I love the hardware aspect of computers nearly as much as the software side. Not the really small details like circuit boards and stuff but each component as a whole. It’s what separates me from the rest of CSers.

After that move it will be a bit of work with the new co-ops coming from U of T (I don’t get to see my UW replacement), a bit of busy work, going away lunches and then I’m back to school.

And that starts with living at a friend’s house for about 4 days then moving in part way through orientation week while I’m orientating. Probably the busiest weekend of my life. It’s gonna be so much fun.

for x in $(ls -1 .); do
mount -t iso9660 -o loop $x temp/;
cp -r temp/* .;
umount temp/;
done;

Which did the job but was horribly messing on doing it more than once with tons of errors and stuff.

When I came home I decided to make it much better. I even included how long it takes to do the whole process, which was harder than the process itself.

So right now it looks like:

before=$(date +%s);
mkdir temp/;#tempdir
for x in $(ls -1 ./*.iso); do
echo Currently unpacking $x | sed -e ‘s/.\///; s/.iso//’; #remove extra output
mount -t iso9660 -o loop $x temp/; #mounts iso
cp -ru temp/* .;
umount temp/;
done;
rmdir temp/; #cleanup
after=$(date +%s);
elapsed=$(expr $after – $before); #time calculations
((hour=$elapsed/60/60));
((min=$elapsed/60-hour*60));
((sec=$elapsed-hour*60*60-$min*60));
echo “Elapsed time: “`printf “%02d” $hour`”:”`printf “%02d” $min`”:”`printf “%02d” $sec`;

Which does everything I want it too, even the pain in the ass zero-padding of the times. Remember to chmod +x <filename> if you want to use it .

Edit: Well, I messed up a few things, I only tested in under one minute times and the shell on that server only contains sh and ash. Here is the revised edition:

#! /bin/sh
before=$(date +%s);
mkdir temp/;#tempdir
for x in $(ls -1 ./*.iso); do
echo Currently unpacking $x | sed -e ‘s/.\///; s/.iso//’; #remove extra output
mount -t iso9660 -o loop $x temp/; #mounts iso
cp -ru temp/* .;
umount temp/;
done;
rmdir temp/; #cleanup
after=$(date +%s);
elapsed=$(expr $after – $before); #time calculations
hour=”$(expr “$elapsed” ‘/’ ’60′ ‘/’ ’60′)”
min=”$(expr “$elapsed” ‘/’ ’60′ ‘-’ ‘$hour’ ‘*’ ’60′)”
sec=”$(expr “$elapsed” ‘-’ ‘$hour’ ‘*’ ’60′ ‘*’ ’60′ ‘-’ ‘$min’ ‘*’ ’60′)”
echo “Elapsed time: “`printf “%02d” $hour`”:”`printf “%02d” $min`”:”`printf “%02d” $sec`;

And now I know that sh is *really* annoying to do math in.

I used to have to get up at 6:30 a few summers ago for my part time job but that was about three times a week tops. Now it’s five days a week for the next four months.

And then I get home and it’s 7-8ish most of the time, a few short hours and I’m off to sleep. Those hours are usually spent watching TV, which I haven’t done too regularly (missed an episode of 30 rock already) and playing on my computer.

And it’s usually not long sessions of gaming like I’m used to. I’ll play Unreal Tournament 3 for a few hours then stop. Then wonder what to do. Then I’ll start again.

I actually did some work from work on Friday. Out of interest and out of boredom.

That said, work hasn’t been too hard at all. A bit of a learning curve but I’m familiar with half of the stuff already and have easily learned everything thrown at me so far. Tuesday was actually terribly boring because everyone except the co-ops were out of the office yet I hadn’t learned enough to actually do any work yet. So I did the one thing that I had assigned to me… multiple times. And I played some games. And I talked with the other co-ops.

Great guys at work, laid back, and the “work” I’m doing is really just playing around with systems which is the kind of thing I love to do in my spare time anyway. This is going to be a great four months.

I’m back at home now and it feels weird. It was Tuesday and I wondered why no one was around. My brother was writing and exam, my sister was at school and my mom was at work. And I get to sit and home and play video games, just like at school. But there is something exciting coming up…

My job is starting on Monday. At about 8:30 am Monday morning I’ll be walking into the Net Integration Technologies Inc. (makers of Nitix, small-medium Linux business server) building. But wait, I said I was working at IBM! Well I am. Net Integration Technologies Inc. was bought by IBM about a week before my interview. They still got to choose me as their coop student, but afterward it was really an IBM process.

So I am still technically working for IBM but I won’t actually be working there… Until partway through the summer. About halfway through the summer we’re moving to the newest IBM building in Markham from the Net Integration Technologies Inc. building. It’s just down the street but it’s a big upgrade on the inside.

And how could I possibly get a job this awesome? You have to answer questions like “Why did you go into Computer Science?” with answers like “Because I’m awesome at it.” I actually said that. I actually got the job.