I just want to preface this with something. I finished this entire post then accidentally copied over it in the command line. Yay! So if this one seems brief or lackluster, that’s because it’s late, I’m annoyed. So yeah. The internship is nearing its end. Let’s talk about what’s changed with me. I no longer…

It’s common knowledge that Computer Science is a lucrative field. Or at least, that’s what I’ve gathered whenever I tell someone what my major is. Lately, I’ve begun to see the demand for as well as the payout that programmers, developers, and the like can expect. This got me thinking. Am I doing all of…

I used to be really into games. I am competitive. I love puzzles and challenges. I like to train and watch myself get better at a particular skill. For me, most gaming was on Xbox and PC. I liked video games because of their complexity. Often there were ways to win without playing fair. There…

So, recently I’ve started working my first 40 hour work week job. At first, the impact of the 40hr/week lifestyle was a shock but I’ve adapted. This scares me. The obvious thing I’ve given up is time. 40 hours of work really means 50 hours of lost free time when lunch and travel are included.…

Let’s talk about what I’ve been doing. What I’ve contributed to Punchmark and what I’ve learned. This summer I’ve gotten to work with several popular APIs including Facebook, Google+, Instagram, Yelp, and Google for Merchants. Each API has its own nuances and methods for data retrieval. I learned how to use these platforms and integrate…

Many of the posts I’ve written about this internship are about observations I’ve made concerning my work style. I’d say I’ve finally gathered enough observations about my work style to make a conclusion. Autonomy I like to work autonomously. Give me a goal and I’ll make it happen. I’ve found that I prefer to receive…

In 1994, two professors from Stanford business school set out to observe and define business culture. They chose to observe over two hundred of the fledgling tech startups in the valley. Little did they know they were creating the most detailed account of early Silicon Valley tech giants. Nevertheless they found that five predominant work…

A big part of my learning from this internship has come from discovering how to stay focused and productive for so long. Staying focused was one of the first struggles I noticed early on and it remains a daily struggle to even more than six weeks later. I have noticed some patterns as well as…

Some employers think they are getting an excellent candidate only to discover that candidate’s greatest skill is self-promotion. Sometimes I feel that this is the case in my recent employment. I am amazed everyday at the amount of stuff I do not know. I often feel like a kid who just shows up everyday and…

So, recently I made a mistake. Several, actually. I was tasked with eliminating some cross-site scripting (XSS) vulnerabilities in Punchmark’s framework. A simple but tedious task. Basically just had to filter user content for HTML tags and clean it before storing it. To make the task a bit faster, I used a feature of my…