It’s official, I’m a Yahoo.  I’ve filled out my paperwork, listened to other Yahoos talk about what the company has to offer its employees, and even snagged a very identifiable corporate email address.  During orientation I met a couple of other new hires but was disappointed to find out I was the only new grad that week.  All the new hires received cool Yahoo! swag and we were even encouraged to doodle during the introductory talks.  After lunch, I went down to URL’s cafe and ordered my first free iced chai, a beverage I have not gone without since I started.  The free coffee and drinks have definitely made my ten hour days more bearable, but the lack of dinner being offered in my building’s cafe is enough to get my tummy rumbling!  That’s really my only gripe so far, at least on the perks side of things.

On day two I received my company Macbook Pro and was trained on how to change passwords, vpn, access internal sites, etc.  At first I was totally thrilled with my new Apple hardware, but I’ve only become frustrated with the lack of customization OSX offers and being pigeonholed into using the predefined keyboard shortcuts.  Not to mention Microsoft’s Entourage is the worst mail app I’ve ever used–this is coming from an Outlook fan.  I tried setting up Thunderbird with Lightning on my RHEL desktop, but I wasn’t able to sync my Lightning calendar with exchange so I’m still using Entourage for now.  If any of my 14 readers knows how to configure Lightning or setup more configurable OSX keyboard shortcuts, please comment or msg me.

Aside from customization limitations, the Macbook Pro is slick and OSX is more aligned with my Linux desires.  Having a laptop and desktop has allowed me to work effectively from anywhere on the Yahoo! campus (and beyond) so it’s not uncommon for me to be missing from my cube throughout the day.

I also met my team on the second day and organized my empty cube.  Surprisingly, most of my team was hired within the last year and a few were younger than I had expected.  A couple members of the team eat lunch together on a daily basis so I joined in on the fun and spend my 12-1 with them.  At AMD I usually ate lunch with my team in code review sessions, but the ‘work hard, play hard’ attitude of Yahoo! employees doesn’t leave too much room for staring at code during mental and food breaks.  Maybe one of these days I’ll organize a lunch review session and see how the team accepts my more agile practices.  Until then, I’ll be eating in the cafe sipping on my white chocolate mocha.

I like to think my journey to the Bay Area started last year when I began interviewing with companies in November.  After a week of absorbing San Francisco and the rest of Silicon Valley, I’ve realized this place has always been home and I just didn’t know it until moving out here in the beginning of July.  Although I love Austin and miss the people and city, I always knew Texas wouldn’t be able to satisfy my desire for temperate weather and cool technology.  I definitely see myself returning to Austin at some point in time, though, but for now, I’m comfortable with calling Silicon Valley my new home.

Since I’ve moved into my new place, the A/C has only been used once due to the agreeable day temperatures and cool summer nights.  This week, however, a heat wave now occupies most of the area and the weather peeps are predicting 100s every day this week.  Ironically, the ONE time I tried to use the A/C is the time I found out it didn’t work.  Hopefully things will be back to normal (70s and 80s) in a week.

For only being here a week, my experience here has been eye opening and memorable.  I found out one of my favorite hobbies back home dropped in price from $60 to $35 and for better quality.  If you think I’m taking about gas then you’re probably smoking something since gas is about 50 cents more per gallon here than back in Texas.  Native Californians are not too different from the people I went to school with but I still feel intimated by them for some unexplainable reason.  The people here are more attached to their iPhones and Blackberries as I saw the other night when it seemed like everyone was either microblogging, texting, facebooking, or god knows what else on their cell phones.  My doubts on the vitality of twitter and friendsfeed have been overruled.

The food here is also pretty cheap which goes against the higher cost of living rumor that’s been going around.  Footlong subway sandwiches are still $5, In-n-out burgers has complete meals for around $3-5, and the neighborhood market has BIG boxes of blueberries for around $3 a pop.  In an effort to calm my Thundercloud cravings, I ventured out to try TOGOs which actually offers a sandwich that includes copious amounts of avocado and cheddar cheese–two of my fav sammich items.

My coolest experience here so far can be attributed to the wonderful free wifi spots around the Santa Clara University campus.  I’ve been frequenting two small restaurants for students not so much for the food but the free internet.  Yesterday, I was eating at University Chicken when someone there caught my eye.  At first glance I thought it was someone who looked like Steven Wozniak, co-founder of Apple, but since I had access to the interwebs, I was able to quickly verify my first pseudo-tech celebrity sighting.  Good thing I caught his very awkward interview on The Colbert Report not too long ago.  After I confirmed Steve Wozniak was actually sitting within feet of me, I called my friend Glen who works at Apple.  He took a break from working and came down to the restaurant and eventually met and talked with Steve for five minutes or so.  Maybe I’ll get the nerve to talk to him the next time he’s around.

Well my first ever blog entry was certianly a doozy.  I hope to keep the emo content to a minimuim and fully intend to update the site every so often.  Keep in mind, however, that this is my first blog and I’m not much of a writter.  You get what you paid for!