Kev

As many of probably have noticed, I have not been here for the last week or so. But, aha, I have explanations for why, and am prepared to share those with you.

1. Intern Presentation (Part 1): So for most of the summer at Apple, I have spent my time working on a project for my team that I was going to present to my department. So two weeks ago from this Thursday (26 July), I presented the project to my department director, his staff, and the 13 other interns in the department. Oh, and in case you forgot, the department I work in is Development Technologies. The presentation went really well, and it was a lot of fun showing everyone what I had been working on.
2. Intern Presentation (Part 2): At the head of Apple is Steve Jobs. Under him, there are about 11 Senior Vice Presidents in charge of things such as iPod, iTunes, retail, finance, operations, marketing, industrial design, applications, and software engineering. And as you can probably guess, I am under software engineering, which includes everything that ships in the Mac OS X box (which does not include iMovie, iPhoto, etc., or any of the pro apps). My Senior Vice President is Bertrand Serlet, and under him are 6-7 directors of departments, with Dev Tech being one of them. As with my department, the other departments also had intern presentations. From the 6-7 departments, one intern is chosen from among all the other interns in that department to present to Bertrand and the rest of his staff. My project was chosen for this, so last Thursday I got to present to the Senior Vice President of Apple’s Software Engineering, and I think it went ok. It was mostly just fun to do. So along with that, he invited the 8 of us (a department had 2 interns instead of 1 present) to dinner tomorrow night, so that will be exciting.
3. Yosemite: Right after my presentation on Thursday to Bertrand, my family and Leslie arrived at Apple. We spent that day touring Apple and Pixar, and then having dinner with friends. On Friday, Dad, Mom, Jon, Jennie, Sarah, Leslie, and I packed up and headed five hours across the San Jacquin valley to Yosemite National Park for the weekend. It was absolutely gorgeous! We started out by driving up to Glacier Point which overlooks the entire valley and half-dome. Oh my, it was beautiful! We spent Friday night and Saturday night at this little hotel about an hour from the valley. It consisted of these little cottages which were the rooms, and they were very quaint. On Saturday, we drove into the valley and hiked up Vernal Falls, which is a 317 foot waterfall cascading between two huge rock faces. It was, as with most things in Yosemite, absolutely gorgeous. We finished Yosemite on Sunday with looking at the sequoias at the Mariposa Grove. Those trees are just massive! They are 20-30 feet in diameter it seemed, and tall, and just big. The trip was awesome, and it was just great to be with my family.
4. San Francisco with Leslie: On Monday, Leslie and I spent the day together in San Francisco. It was my surprise to her, and while she knew that we were going to do something together, she had no idea what or where. We took the 8:00 express into the city, and then rented bikes on Fisherman’s Wharf. The first time I was in San Francisco, it was really warm and sunny, but this time, it was cloudy and freeeezzzzing! So as we biked around the wharf and across the Golden Gate Bridge to Yellow Bluff on the way to Sausalito, we were just frozen little ice cubes. We had lunch on Yellow Bluff, which I just mentioned, and looked out over the bay and San Francisco. Despite the clouds, it was still pretty. We biked back to the city, dropped off our bikes, and then walked to Pier 33 to catch a ferry to Alcatraz. Alcatraz is just freakin’ awesome! It has so much history. Les and I took an audio tour, and got to hear all about the stories of the place. We both really enjoyed that. And as we were going around Alcatraz, the sun broke through the clouds, and as we took the ferry back, we were able to enjoy a beautiful sunset. Upon arriving back to the wharf, we went to Boudin bakery and got hot clam chowder and a huge loaf of sourdough. Oh, so good! We finished our evening off by walking to Ghirardelli Square and got some chocolate. At that point, we decided to look at the train schedule, and which to our dire concern, we realized that the last train for a few hours left in twenty minutes a long way from where we are. So we payed a cabby well to get us there on time, which he did. Another great adventure with Leslie!

So that is where I have been. I have had a great couple weeks, and I am sorry for not writing on my blog earlier. I took over 400 pictures in Yosemite, and another 220 in San Francisco, and I will post them soon.