I had the great opportunity this last Sunday/Monday to go to Microsoft GameFest in Seattle, Washington, for free! ($450-650 reg price). 

Our school, OIT, received a grant this summer for 20 xbox 360s, 20 developer licenses, and $10k to put on a few classes.  That’s pretty much how I got to go, but this just is exciting.  Our school is finally getting involved in game development, and it’s about time.  This will also be great for the club (OTGD)!

GameFest was more of a current developers in the game industry event, but having an avid interest in game development, I was able to get the opportunity to go and meet many people in the industry from programmers to researchers.  It was a blast.  There was free food, some great prizes, good information, and a great way to meet some new people and get my name out as an interested student in game development.  Don’t know for sure whether I’ll hear from people I gave my business card to, but oh well, I had a great time meeting them and hearing about all the different things going on.

I got there on Sunday for the reception, and met a few interested people there who had started up a company about a year and some ago.  We stayed at a friend’s place (free) and then had some free breakfast at the event.  Key speaker was there who announced the winners of the dream.build.play contest that Microsoft put on.  Went to a bunch of lectures, had some free lunch, met people in the expo area, and then went to some more lectures.  It ended that day at 6 or so, then at 6:30 was the after party.  That was a blast.  Free food, pool tables, Foosball, Xbox 360s with Guitar Hero 2 and a bunch of old arcade machines.  I also met a bunch more people while I was there towards the end, sadly we had to leave early since my friend had to work the next day.

I had a great time and wish I could have stayed for the next day, but oh well…there’s always next year!

I had a great time being toured around Credence this last Friday.  They design systems that test circuit boards and processors.  Pretty fancy test equipment.  We were toured by 2 MECOP students and one of the new employees that work with one of the students.  I got to meet the senior software engineer who was working on a project in Java ( 🙁 ).  He was working on an interesting project atleast. 

Overall I had a great time and got to catch a small glimpse of the air show that was going on around the city.  Love those things! 

 Enjoy yourself!

It’s been quite a while since I’ve made a new post, so here I go again.

 This last Friday I went on a tour at Boeing in Portland and the Thursday before that (July 26th) I toured at A-Dec.  The tours are setup by the MECOP interns to give a chance for other interns to see the company they are working at.   The program allows for us students to have our employers cover our expenses for 3 afternoon tours.

A-DEC is a dental equipment company who doesn’t just design and manufacture their own dental chairs, but all the fixtures, cabinets, dental lights, and delivery systems.  The tour wasn’t setup for a person in software engineering since it took us around the manufacturing area and just showed us what they did and how they did it.  I can’t say I could see myself working at A-DEC, but the tour was interesting…they had some really cool telescoping monitor stands!

 Boeing on the other hand is a company I could see myself working for.  Probably not the Portland campus where we toured at, but perhaps one of their branches in the Seattle area.  Unlike A-DEC and even Garmin AT, they were very tight with their security.  We had to have background checks and be checked in with badges that couldn’t leave the premises.  I could understand why though; with single pieces costing a half million each and some pretty amazing machinery, it’s understandable that they would be so strict.  They talked about the new 787 they’ve designed and about mentioned that it should be up in the air in the next 2-3 months.  That’s pretty exiting.  We’re talking about a plane that will hold between 210 and 330 passengers depending on the seating configuration.  It’s also going to be more fuel-efficient than the other 7X7s they design and manufacture.  The Portland branch manufactures the parts for the planes and ships them up to Everett, Washington where they get pieced together.  This was a cool company to visit and see how the big planes are made.

 Overall I’ve had a great time touring the companies (and it was nice to get paid doing it too 😉

This upcoming Friday I’ll be touring Credence Systems.  Hopefully this company will have something that perks my interest and has more of an involvement with software.

-J!-

Hi,  my name is Jason Gill.  I’m currently persuing a degree in Software Engineering at Oregon Tech (OIT, Oregon Institute of Technology).  It’s a great school, with a great engineering department, in a town that isn’t so great.

Since it is the summer, I’m partaking on an internship at Garmin AT.  I started June 25th and will be interning here for 6-months (December 28th) MECOP internship.  So far it has been a great experience and am really glad that I’m here (I just got my second paycheck!!!).

I’ve got a great girlfriend who is very understanding of me and loves me for who I am.  Her name is Christina, and on July 30th (10 days) we’ll have been together for 2 whole years.

Well I’ll jot more stuff down as the days go by.  Thanks for taking a look at my site here, and have a great day.

J!