I figure that it is about time to update this again. It is a slow day at work, so there is no better time than the present.

Last week was my first week, and as is usually the case with internships, the person who had my assignment was out for most of the week, so I got to look around, get tours of the area, and work on some busy work (same thing happened last summer... just comes with the territory).

I did get to take a tour of the datacenter, which happens to be about 25,000 sq ft. In the center, there is a big command center with a whole bunch of big screens, lots of people all around, and CNN showing in the corner. On the right side are all of the racks of servers. Apparently, they like to switch between computer manufacturers so they have Dell, HP, Compaq (yeah, when was the last time Compaq made servers?), IBM and Sun. They have decided that Sun is the best option for them for some reason and so they are slowing moving their whole datacenter to Sun. Sun has its merits, but it is also expensive... oh wait... this is the government.

They even said that they are still running a mainframe… they need it because some of their critical applications are written in FORTRAN from the 60’s, and they will only run on something that is as old and decrepit as they are. I was told that they planned on switching them over eventually, but it is one of those “eventuallys” that is going to be shelved until the system dies and they have to scramble to get something together.

On the otherside in a room that is about as big as the command center and the server room combined is the backup room. It is a room of thousands (maybe millions) of backup tapes, and "tape silos". Eleven big grain silo sized cylinders that are about 12 feet tall that house more tapes and have a mechanisms inside to easily retrieve any tape you want.

They have other rooms like the "war room" and the "situation room", which are basically just conference rooms that are for those really bad times when the servers that serve millions of people across the US go down (but since it is the government, I guess they have to have sensationalist names incase they have to fight "the war on terror" or "the war on global warming" or "the war on ________").

One thing that I was told over and over again was that I had to try the crab around here. In my first week, I was told that about half a dozen times. So Amaris and I tried it, and I have to say that I was impressed. They bring out this platter of whole crabs and dump them on your table, and then you go at it ripping these things to shreads to get every morsel of crab meat out. I felt like I was doing dissections for science class. But the experience was fun, and very tasty. Amaris is way better at the dissecting than I am, but I guess it is good practice for her future as a surgon (as long as she doesn't start eating the meat off of her patients).

Friday we saw Pirates of the Carebean 3. I am really starting to see a pattern on these trilogies: they have the same great production values and acting that the first two did, but they lack the story that made them so popular. Spiderman 3 was the same, and I am going to guess that Shrek 3 is the same (also see Matrix 3, and ending of Lord of the Rings 3).

Saturday we went down to the Inner Harbor in Baltimore to actually get into the major city that we were living right outside of. I was pretty surprised just how much it looked like the harbor in San Diego, but I guess that shouldn't be too much of a surprise... all they have to work with is water meeting land. Do that, and hundreds of restaurants will come.

And a great site compliments of Digg... it needs no introduction: Badonkadonk Land Cruiser Tank (and make sure to read the reviews).