I started my first week at Gaia last Wednesday (after the 4th of July weekend). The good news is that Gaia is just as awesome, if not more awesome, than you could imagine it. The bad news is that I was sick my entire first week.
So basically, it was a constant counterbalance between the awesomeness of Gaia and the suckiness of my sickness.
My First Day
When I first came here, there wasn't much space for me, so we had to find some available space to move a desk into. They apologetically put me into the merchandise storage cube -- so my desk sits next to stacks of Gaia posters, T-shirts, Kitties, and so forth. My cube is directly adjacent to Lanzer's, too. In fact - I'm siphoning power from his cube to power my computer. Mmmm, precious life juices.
One of the best moments from my first day (the worst being nearly passing out because I was sick) was when Lanzer came in with his airsoft gun to show me. It was well built, and I mentioned I had a spring-loaded one. He said he had an electric one and a gas one, and ran off to get them.
He came back first with the gas one (which had a really cool mod on the end of the barrel) and told me to fire it off while holding down the safety. It had some kickback! So I fired it a few times, unloaded. A girl walked by and then squealed and ran away as I pumped it.
Then I went to his cube to check out his electric-powered Baretta. The auto-cocking on it was cool enough, but then he showed me the rapid-fire switch. Hooo-leee crap! That kinda freaked out the office, to hear a rapid-repeating gun going off. Fun!
Day 2
I was set to upgrading some of the "View forum" code (notice how guilds was down for a little while yesterday? That was me!). The technology powering Gaia is pretty sophisticated. I guess it's gotta be if you're going to support 40,000+ concurrent users and supporting a virtual economy.
It took me a while to understand the infrastructure of the code -- made harder by the fact that the room was spinning while I stared at the screen (on account of the sickness). I've mostly gotten it, I think, but I haven't really gotten to build any features of my own yet.
Da Rest
Later, we organized into project teams. Originally, I was supposed to be part of a team that improved the New User Experience. I got switched to working on improving the Casual User Experience. I presented some ideas to my team, and since they overlapped with the New User Experience, VO (who's my team leader) just made me the liason between the New User and Casual User teams.
It's fun to-the-max (probably because it's all just designing and fleshing out features at this point, and not actual coding). I've designed a few new features, which I've run by my little sister - who is a long-time Gaia fan. She loved them - so I think you guys will too, if they get implemented.
Ooo, I bet you wish I could give you details!
This is the end...
So I've already started week 2, where I saw feature releases, pushed some code live, and got more involved in projects. So far, it's even more exciting than week one -- and I'm slightly less sick. Huzzah!
Update!
I forgot to mention - someone was flying a remote-controlled plane around the office, and we were using all the nearby artillery to shoot it out of the air. WHEEEEE!
View User's Journal
Gaia Life
A catalog of my experiences as an employee and citizen of Gaia.
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-adds journal to list to check up on-
ninja