Class of 2008
Major: Electrical and Computer Engineering
Project Center: Silicon Valley, California
Major Qualifying Project: An automated system to allow researchers in Silicon Valley, California to operate remotely an optical telescope located in Alaska.
Tom Niemczycki
January 14, 2008
The weather is one of my favorite aspects of life in California so far. Today we had high of sixty-five degrees in sunny California; New England got slammed with almost two feet of snow. I took advantage of the sunny skies to get my bearings and explore the San Francisco Bay area.
For the next eight weeks, home is a complex of suite-style apartments for young professionals. I say apartment, but this place is really like a hotel. When we’re not at work or off exploring the west coast, we have at our disposal tennis and basketball courts, a swimming pool, hot-tub, and a gym. Each apartment has two bedrooms, two bathrooms, a living room with balcony, and kitchen shared by four students.
Mountain View is a pretty nice town to live in. The downtown area, which is about a ten-minute walk away, has dozens of great restaurants and cafes with food from all over the world. There’s also a train station nearby that I use to get to work and to visit nearby towns in the bay area.
Last Tuesday was the first day of work at SRI. We were greeted by John, a WPI alum that now works for the company, who introduced each team to its project mentor. My team’s mentor, Andrew, has worked with MQP teams from WPI for several years. He will provide our team with guidance and help us keep the project on course.
After lunch, my team settled into our office and got down to work. We spent much of the first week refining the preliminary design we prepared last term and making key decisions about how we will complete some parts of the project. A unique challenge presented by our project is that it isn’t really tangible. We are developing a system completely remotely, and we have to make sure that the interfaces between the different components will work perfectly as we won’t be on-site to troubleshoot hardware problems. By the end of last week we had compiled a detailed list of goals for each week that will guide us for the rest of the time we’re here. We are looking forward to making progress, but getting organized and planning our milestones are important steps toward success.
Going away for a project isn’t just about living and working somewhere else, however, it’s about experiencing a new place. This weekend I took my first excursion into San Francisco. We didn’t really have a plan except to explore. We walked past the stadium where the San Francisco Giants play, the Bay Bridge, and stopped for lunch at Fisherman’s Wharf. Next we checked out the famous Lombard Hill, and then started the trek toward the Golden Gate Bridge. We didn’t realize that we were a few miles away, but after coming so far, we decided to just keep going. Finally we made it and walked about halfway across to check out the great view of the city. Exhausted from walking around all day, we decided to take the bus back into the city and make our way home from there. Having a good idea of the layout of the city, though, we’re ready to plan another trip to check out more sights.
Until next week,
-Tom
