Awesome week!

This week I was assigned a project to migrate a website from the old Stellent CMS to the Drupal CMS. Over that past couple weeks I have been learning the in’s and out’s of Drupal, now I get to use what I have learned in a real situation. So far everything has gone relatively smoothly, and I expect to have the project done before my internship reaches fruition. I look forward to the remainder of my internship.

This week I also attended the trip to the Microsoft Technology Center in Reston, VA. I was so excited to attend, as I am a big fan of Microsoft products. During my time there, they presented and demonstrated different technologies and talked in particular about the Enterprise side of Microsoft products; as opposed to the more commonly known consumer products such as Windows and Office. I got to see a few things that I have never seen before, and I also learned some new things about technology I had previously know about. What I found really awesome was their future prospects for consumer and enterprise technology. They had ideas for products that I would absolutely love to get my hands on.

I was a busy week and a good week.

Benjamin Tshudy

Good week!

This week went rather well. I am getting adjusted quite well and have a somewhat consistent routine down now. Currently, at work, I am learning about the in's and out's of Drupal, a content management systems, which is used by the many offices in the DoC to maintain their web sites. I am glad that it is something that I have not learned about before and it is also something that I could use for my own purposes. I have come to determine that my one co-worker reminds me of Ryan from the television series "The Office" and the web developer in the office reminds me of someone from back home who is a diesel mechanic; just thought I would add that for the humor of it.

I have also been running a lot, as I am currently registered to run the Marine Corps Marathon. I have been many places in DC and have got to explore the area on my runs; I have even been to Virginia! My runs are rather enjoyable given the wide array of monuments and places to go around here. I recently ran to the Air Force memorial, which is about a 7-mile run round trip.

The week ended very well with a tour of the Newseum, hosted by the very generous and delightful Cheryl Sensenbrenner, and her husband Congressman Sensenbrenner. That was such a great experience as the museum was just amazing. I enjoyed the interactive parts of the museum, as well as being able to see the most prestigious news staples throughout history. Also, the dinner that we were also graced with afterwards, at the Capital Grille, was awesome. I was fortunate to be able to sit with two interesting and funny gentlemen, David McKee and Nick Imparato. What a great day it was!

-Benjamin Tshudy

An exciting and busy week!

This week is started my internship at the Department of Commerce. I have a great supervisor and have also great co-workers. I enjoy working there and I look forward to everything I will get to do this summer and I expect to learn a lot. In addition, I got to meet the new CIO of the Department of Commerce, Simon Szykman, which I thought was pretty neat.

I also met with my mentor, Pablo Chavez of Google, for the first time this week. He is an awesome guy and I know that I will benefit greatly through my mentor-mentee relationship with him. I look forward to every opportunity I will get with him this summer, as I know it will be time well spent. I don’t think I could have gotten a better mentor.

I am still working on devising ways to advocate for persons with ASD’s and disabilities in general. I hope that I will greatly impact people’s perspectives for the better this summer. My current strategy is to get people to ask questions and that I can answer them, as I am not much of one to initiate social interaction; though I am working on that.

Some of the exciting things I did in my free time include visiting the National Air and Space Museum, the National Aquarium, and the National Zoo this week. They are all very neat places and I am already planning my visits to some of the other offerings such as the International Spy Museum and the National Museum of Crime and Punishment.


-Benjamin Tshudy

Revved up!

I have not started my internship yet but I am highly anticipating it. Even though I haven't started work per say, I have been keeping quite busy. This past week I met my supervisor, who is a very nice and accepting and person, and reviewed what I will be doing during my time at the Department of Commerce. He advised me of some things that I can do to start preparing myself. One thing in particular that I started working on is getting acquainted with the Ruby programming language. I am also did some refreshing of my web development skills. In addition to that, I am also taking two summer classes through Penn State World Campus, so they have also been keeping me busy. I look forward to this coming week and starting my internship.

I have also started collaborating with other IT interns on developing a website for Michael Castillo's DC Wakeboarding business; for those that don't remember, he spoke at orientation. Currently we are in the planning stages of the SDLC or Software Development Life Cycle. We are working to determine what the website needs and also buildilding a skills matrix to determine who will be doing what.

All in all my week has gone pretty well.

 -Benjamin Tshudy