I really can’t even say that I have much to talk about from this past week. I did have one interesting event happen Sunday night though.

Rob had all of us over for a big BBQ get-together. The kicker is, he also invited Don Graham along with several other people from the Post (who’s names have slipped my mind). So essentially, I got the chance to have a beer and chat it up with some important folk. For anyone who is as clueless as I was when someone first mentioned the name ‘Don Graham’ to me; he is the CEO and Chairman of the Board for The Washington Post Company. He actually seemed like quite the pleasant guy. Adam told me that at some point during the evening, Don was out playing baseball with some of the others, although I didn’t actually witness this myself.

This whole night could be summed up simply as: ‘very nice’; I met some people that just a few months ago, I would have never imagined meeting, Rob cooked up some good food, and we sat around and watched ‘All the President’s Men’ till late. This was followed by a drive back to home in traffic that was much easier to navigate than the trip out. Just in case anyone is wondering: I don’t like driving in stop ‘n go traffic on an 8 lane highway.

There was another night in there somewhere where Adam, Chris, Jinae, and I all went walkin’ around up around the Courthouse area. We decided to head up to the office and go stand out on the 12th floor balcony overlooking the DC skyline for awhile. This was really nice — the city is really pretty at night. It’s at this point that you can probably tell that I really have nothing else to talk about. Oh, I know…

Since I started this summer job, I’ve had several people approach me asking me how I got it, etc, etc. I updated my ‘About Me’ page to kind of mention this, but I will go into further detail here.

Back in… April I beleive it was, Rob was back in Kansas giving a little talk on his hyper-local strategy, etc. He had done a talk before (sometimes late last year I believe) that I missed, but my friends said it was really interesting and worth going to. So this year, I wanted to make sure I went to see what he had to say. He was giving three talks that day, but I only managed to make it to the last two. I went to the first one with a couple friends, then to the second one alone (as the friends had to go back to work). After the second one, I really didn’t have anything to do and I didn’t wanna walk home, so I just stuck around to see what the various conversations in the room were. I was just fixin’ to walk out the door and head home when I figured that I would run up and talk to Rob for just a minute. I wasn’t sure at this point if he was actually doing any programming on these projects or just managing them. I figured since he had mentioned Django (a web programming framework) that I would at least make small talk since I had been trying to learn Django for about the past six months. I talked to him a little and finally got around to mentioning that I new Django a little. When he discovered that I was into the programming and Django and such, he immediately told me to give him a call in a couple weeks and he would “bring me to DC”.

I left not know what the hell he meant by that. Does he just want me to visit? to intern? what? I finally got ahold of him after a couple weeks and he said that he wanted me to come up and work for the summer. I couldn’t believe that I was getting the chance to go work at the washingtonpost.com. The rest of the details of organizing the whole trip are pretty minor. I talked to Deryck (the lead developer) a little bit and to Rob a few more times, then before I knew it, school was out and I was on a plane to DC.

I think this is probably where I will call it a night. I don’t want to waste too much of my B-roll in one night. Until next time…

Cheers,

Sean Stoops

PS – Thanks everyone for the comments!

Since I arrived here, we’ve been working on a sweet project that I really wasn’t able to say anything about. But now that it has gone live, I can talk about it all I want, after all, the rest of the world is! I won’t, however, be able to detail this story as well as it deserves since I’ve only been in on the last leg of the project, so for more information, head on over to Rob Curley’s blog, or go check out the real story here.

To both bring you up to speed on what this all entailed and to sorta summarize Rob’s blog a bit (as it is pretty long), let me divulge a few details. When I arrived here at the Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive on the 23rd, I quickly jumped right into helping out with what I could on this project. The data had already been collected and and the design had already begun. It was down to organizing all the data (and cleaning it up a bit) and Jesse (our amazing flash guy) was continuing work on the interactive map. After my first day of getting comfortable with the office, people, coffee machine, etc, I dove in to some work.

They had all this data strung out in various spreadsheets which needed parsed through and organized into one big file (called an XML file) to be used in Jesse’s flash map. Jesse had mentioned a few ideas on how to do this, but he didn’t have the time to sit down and massage the data, so this is where I volunteered. I said that I could probably write a little Python script to do that in a couple hours. So I put on my headphones and coded away. That night I had my first version of the converter script written and it worked as it was supposed to. Then, like with any project, guidelines changed and I had to rewrite the script a few times and tweak it around here and there according to what people needed before I could call it good. My script worked like a charm and I was proud to have contributed something during my first couple days of joining the team.

Now enough of the technical mumbo jumbo… on to something that you can see.

This past Monday morning was the day that this entire project went live. It was the center of attention in many locations.

The front page of The Washington Post had this section:

The business section also had the full front page dedicated to this story:

Three additional pages of print:

(My name is somewhere in that right column of really small text above )

And finally the centerpiece of it all — a gorgeous double-truck in the middle of the business section:

(Images all courtesy of Rob Curley and his lengthy blog)

Being able to open up The Washington Post and see all this stuff that I watched coming together and being created was just a sensational feeling. I know to those in “the biz”, it’s just another day on the job, but I’m just some kid that decided one day to be a programmer and somehow ended up in DC spending my days at WPNI. So I’m going to be excited about it.

On a slightly different note, I went to a couple Smithsonians this past weekend, but those pretty much pale in comparison to what I get to do at work! Maybe I’ll talk about those another day. I’m going to call it a night here. I’ll try not to let another week go by before I blog again, but life has been crazy around here with work and living in random places until I get into an apartment (which is happening this weekend, woo!)

Cheers!

Sean Stoops

PS – I want to reiterate, if you enjoy reading a blog, then please comment on it! It’s the only way the authors know you enjoy it! Now head on over to Shanna’s blog about her Europe travels; I think she’s going to post a lot more than me. Oh yeah.. she’s a friend from ESU doing a summer blog like I am.

Rob Curley finally made back into the office after being out all week last week. I hadn’t seen him since he was in Emporia giving his little talk about hyper-local web apps. It was good to see him again, especially in his natural environment. He was really excited to hear what all I had been doing and was pumped to get goin’ on some more stuff this summer. I spent the day rewriting a couple things and optimizing some code that I wrote last week.

If you haven’t noticed, I really been talking about work all that much. This is because I heard someone (Deryck I think) mention that if any blogging is done about anything even close to work related, that we would have to have some sort of disclaimer on the blog site stating that the view expressed in the blog are mine and not those of WPNI. Also I was waiting for Rob to return to discuss the blogging situation a little bit. When I get things figured out with the disclaimer and Rob, then I may mention a few more things about my job. Now back to today’s happenings…

After I finished up my code again and read through some of the source code of WPNI’s other sites (just to get familiar with their style of coding), it was time to head to the DC Nationals baseball game. A group of about 10-12 of us headed to the stadium where WPNI treated us to a game. I’m no baseball fanatic by any means, but I did enjoy going to the game. It was something that I hadn’t done since I was really young. After the game, it was back to the office for a little bit (this was around 10:30pm and then off to find some supper.

Chris and I stopped by this little restaurant called Cosi because they have outdoor seating and it was too beautiful of a night to be inside. I think we sat out there and had a sandwich-type-thing until around 11:30pm. It was really nice to just sit back, relax, and watch people walk around. The neighborhood that the office is in is really pleasant at night. It’s all pretty quiet and calm. This was all followed by a short walk home.

Now for a quick off topic comment that I’ve been meaning to make. I’d like to invite everyone who read this (however many of you there are) to leave a comment. It’s nice to see that people read it and are actually interested in what I’ve got to say. Also, if you click on through to my Flickr photos (to the right), feel free to comment on those as well. It would be really nice to see what you guy’s think! Thanks for reading!

Cheers!

Sean Stoops

PS – New Flickr photos from the ballgame and etc are up!

The morning was slow, but I liked it. Just lounging around for a bit, chatting online, etc… I decided to run to the Whole Foods market and grab a couple things to have around here so every meal didn’t have to be a $10-15 expense. That all went as expected; just a quick walk to the store a few blocks away, loaded up the backpack, and walked back. I guess we stopped by the Apple store and Barnes & Noble for a bit — all pretty boring stuff.

We get this call from Adam, a fellow intern (but of the journalism kind), about going to the zoo. This sounded like a good idea. So we went.

It all started out well, just a quick metro ride up to the nearest station, then a 10 minute walk to the zoo. We saw some of your typical zoo animals: pandas, cheetas, bears, etc. I took some photos, but haven’t bothered uploading any of them because they weren’t that good. We walk around this thing for probably an hour or better, then the fun starts happening.

About two-thirds of the way through, we notice it getting a little windy and overcast. We figured that a little rain was moving in and we’d hustle through the rest of the park. Little did we know that a complete downpour was on its way. This hit very quickly and we found ourselves 100% soaked. We scrambled in a sad attempt to find out way out of this place through the crazy winding paths and bridges. We were of the park for a little bit, somewhere in the woods, then back in. We finally found a path that we recognized and kept to it. BOOM! A huge bolt of lightning hit a tree no more than 50-75 feet from us. We all covered and dropped down a little bit. We kind of decided that it was time to hustle a little more. We spent the next 20 minutes walking around paths and over bridges and finally make it to the front gate. Evidently everyone else was conveniently next to a map when the rain hit and easily found their way out. How nice it must have been.

The next 20 minutes was spent walking to the metro station and getting gawked at as we rode the escalator down a few stories. From here on out it was just a ride to the Courthouse station then a little walk to home to change into something a little drier. I called it a good day from there. The rest of the evening was spent sitting/laying on my bed, resting up for tomorrow’s full day of wandering around the city. Until then, I’m out.

Cheers!

Sean Stoops

When the second day of work came, I had to hit the ground running. There were csv files (basically like an excel file) that needed converted into xml files (used for web stuff), so I had to write some python that did all this. I got into work around 1:30pm that day (Thursday) and worked till 9-ish. I then got to the place I was staying and continued writing python till about 2am. I managed to finish that little script up.

Friday came and I was informed that we needed different csv files converted into xml in a completely different manner. So again came another full day of python scripting. FYI, I got into work around 9:30am this day. I would like to go out of the way a little bit to cock my head back and grin at all those professors that went on and on about how 8:00am classes were a good thing because “once you guys get outta here and join the workforce, you’ll have to get up and go to work earlier than this.” WPNI is a dot com company, very modernly operated. You work when you need to until you get your stuff done. We have the freedom to come in and work all night if we need to. I like this style a lot.

Friday came to and end with a completed script that did everything it was supposed to. The plans where on for “pizza & beer” and who knows what else. Six of us (the some of the folks I work with) left the office right around 8:30 that evening (yay for 11 hours of work for me) and headed to the pizza joint. After this, we headed in to DC for a little place called Millie & Al’s. This is where the night got hopping. I’m not going to detail too much on this part, because you can improvise on the happenings of a bunch of young dot com folk on a friday night after work. This night ended around 3:00am after a bit of a walk and a metro ride back to my hotel room.

Thus came Saturday. I didn’t really see much of the morning here; waking time was well towards the end of it. A good long shower and I was ready for a long way of walking followed by a lot more walking. We (Chris and I) headed to the heart of DC (and evidently, the country too) for a little stereotypical tourism. I can now say that I’ve seen a number of the big political buildings: White House, Capitol Building, US Treasury, World Bank, several Memorials, the Monument, etc. I’ve got photos of some of these over at my flickr account, just click the link on the right of this page (if you want to see large versions of the photos, click the ‘all sizes’ button directly above the photo). Also, I’ve created this little Google map of all my walks, etc. You can find that here (click the image):

We made it to the Arlington Cemetery metro station and decided we’d explore more another day. Back in the hotel room we kicked up for a little bit, I uploaded some photos to flickr, did a little Photoshop work, and just relaxed my feet. Nine o’ Clock hit and we were back to the streets; we needed to score some food!

This was a little shorter walk that earlier in the day, but I was already sore, so it seemed pretty long. We managed to run across some really cool little areas around Clarendon; they reminded me a lot of the Plaza area in KC, but a lot bigger. I found a Whole Foods market just a few blocks from WPNI, so you know I’ll be hitting that up after work sometime. There were also a lot of really nice looking restaurants in this area and maybe a blues club or two. I will be heading back to there. We wandered around this neighborhood till about midnight, then headed back to the hotel to call it a night. You can see the path from this night on that Google map as well.

I’ve got to look up what all happenings there are tomorrow and Monday around here since it’s Memorial Day weekend and this is Washington DC. I’m sure it will be another two days full of walking.

I wanted to touch on one point I was thinking while we were walking around tonight. This DC area (Arlington, DC, etc) seems like a really nice, clean place. I know you hear about all the crime and stuff, but it’s really not that horrible from what I’ve seen. Sure I’ve seen a few neighborhoods that I wouldn’t wanna spend too much time in, but that’s when you just stay on the metro and ride on through to the other side. The Arlington area that I walked through tonight is really clean and well lit; it feels like a very safe place (no bars on the windows helps that feeling).

I’ve got to call it good here. It’s 2am and I’ve gotta get some sleep so I can hit that continental breakfast in the morning. Until next time…

Sean Stoops

Today was quite the long day to start out this whole summer experience with. It all began somewhere around 4:00AM. I decided to stay with a friend in KC for the free ride to the airport. Everything went very smoothly. Fifty minutes of flying and I arrived in Chicago. I had to wander around that airport for about an hour and a half looking for some coffee and just generally pass time. The second flight took about an hour and a half to make it to DC where the sun was shining and it was genuinely a beautiful day. I had to hop a cab over to the WPNI offices while trying to carry a backpack, a large suitcase, and a full duffel bag. The cab ride was a bit interesting too. I got to see my driver get into a fist-shaking cursing contest with another cab driver. It ended with the other guy speeding off into the distance swerving between cars.

I arrived at the office where I began meeting everyone I’ll be working with all summer. Let me tell you, it’s definitely a dot com style office. It’s all full of glass and stainless steel with a lot of younger folks working there. Maybe I can manage to snag some photos once I get settled in and a lot more comfortable. Chris and I walked around the streets a little bit shortly after I got there looking for a place to eat. We settled on this little deli/pizza shop that wasn’t half bad. It was called something along the lines of “Jerry’s”…something. We headed back to the office where I met more people and dove right into getting some code setup. I spent the rest of the day (from 2 to 6) tinkering with my development environment on my laptop trying to get ready to dive into some bigger projects.

I’d have to say that my first day in DC was pretty awesome! The city is really nice from what I can tell (and I’m really not the city type) and the office is full of really friendly and entertaining people. I want to get this blog tied into a Flickr account so I can upload photos that I take from either my good camera or just snapshots from my camera phone. Maybe that will be coming within the next week or so. Until then…

Cheers!

Sean Stoops

PS – Categories will be setup very soon so I can organize my posts.