automaticable

Well, the first week of my vacation/internship has concluded, and I still have a smile on my face!  My first day of training at the Wide World of Sports was cool, but trying to get home was a pain in the butt.  It takes me an hour and a half to get to the park by a double bus transfer, but if I had a car to drive there, it would only take half an hour.  Going home is where the real problem is, because the bus doesn’t stop at the Wide World of Sports very often to pick up cast members (that’s what they call Disney employees).  So I called the bus before I went out to wait, which I then waited an hour, called the bus company AGAIN then preceded to wait another half hour until the bus came.  Once it arrived we rode to the Pop Century cast back lot to go over to Costuming to get our Disney Regulated uniforms (costumes).  We were there for about a half hour, and were pushing our luck on trying to catch the next bus (which left at 4:00), and we arrived outside at 4:01 and JUST missed the bus and had to wait ANOTHER half hour to catch the next bus.  Once that one came it was a half hour ride home, and a fifteen minute walk from the bus stop to my apartment.  All and all, it was about three hours from the time I clocked out until the time I stepped back into my apartment.

Other than that little fiasco, work has been pretty good and very enjoyable.  The rest of my training has consisted of stocking condiment shelves, stocking ALL of the concession stands, and then yesterday was our first day of event work, and I worked in a very non-busy tent selling Soda, Water, Power aid, Turkey Legs, Hot Dogs, Hamburgers, Pretzles, Nachos, and Candy.  Right now the event is the College Cheerleading, Dance and Mascot National Championships, so that should be alot of fun, I’ve already ran into a bunch of the cheerleaders and mascots so it was quite exciting.

On my days off that I had last week I did alot of shopping as well as went off to the amusement parks with with my roommates and that was alot of fun.  This week has also helped me create alot new friends around the apartment complex and find people to hang out with when I have nothing better to do.  Well, it’s getting to be around lunch time around here, and I have to start getting ready for work as well, so I hope you all have a wonderful week and I’ll write again next week!

P.S.  Hope everyone in the Midwest is doing okay with all that snow and and cold weather you guys have been having.  Stay warm, stay safe, and stay up to date by subscribing to our RSS!

Hey everybody!  Good news!  I made it in Orlando, FL safely! YAY!  I left around 6:30 AM on Wednesday, and everything was pretty smooth flying, and I got a window seat, so I took a bunch of pictures while in the air.  When I arrived, I got to the baggage claim and my bags were the first ones off the chutes, so it was perfect!  After that I went down to find my shuttle to the apartments.  The ride from the airport to the apartments was pretty fun because I shared the shuttle with other people from Chicago, Ohio, and California, and when I told them that I was going to be a Disney Cast Member, they all became really excited and had millions of questions for me.  I remember a couple days before I was leaving for Orlando, I was so nervous, stressed, and scared because of all the unknowns coming down here, but upon my arrival, all my worries left me and I became extremely excited.

The first day was all the registration nonsense, which took an hour and a half, mainly because the fingerprinting process took 45 min in itself.  After that I went off to go to my apartment, which was unfortunately (in some aspects) is on the third floor.  But I can’t complain, because the apartment I’m in is brand new, in great condition, and I get my own bathroom for my room.  Once I found my apartment and got situated and everything, me and my roommates headed off to Walmart to pick up a few things, but were all greatly disappointed that the 1000 other people that showed up today, raided the same Walmart and took all the hangers!  It was the one main thing that I needed from Walmart last night, but alas, we all struck out in the hanger department.

Yesterday was another long day, but luckily it wasn’t alot of registration stuff.  We had to go through SOME stuff, where we signed up for classes, got our work assignments, and turned in our I-9 information.  After about 45 min or so I was done, and made a trip to the wonderful Chic-fil-et for lunch, and it was D-E-L-ICIOUS!  On our first day they gave us coupons for there, so lunch was pretty cheap and well worth it on such a beautiful day.  After lunch, we waited bout 30 min for a few more of our roommates who got caught up with the registration process, but once we all were home, we made our second Wal-Mart trip, but to a different one, and it was perfect.  I spent a good chunk of money, but I should be set on groceries for about a month or so.  That night was alot of fun, all my roommates got together and we held a small party where we watched the BCS Championship game (GO GATORS!!!) and just hung out for the rest of the evening.

Today was another long day, but luckily it was a later start day so I get some extra sleep.  Speaking of sleep, the beds that we have feel like they are just pieces of plywood with some fabric over them, so I went out and bought a mattress pad, and oh man, it made the bed amazingly more comfortable.  But back to day 3….Today was our Traditions class which was a 5 hour class where you sit in a room and go over all the legal issues like harassment, the two finger point, the Disney Look, and the Show.  It was alot of movies, and alot of very boring information, but obviously essential for a company to work as well as Disney does.

Tonight’s going to be a pretty low key night due to me starting my work training tomorrow and having to be awake at a very early hour tomorrow, but I get done early tomorrow so I think I might hit up the theme parks and hang out with my roommates and neighbors.  But for now, it’s about 9:30 here, and a few of my roommates want to watch Donny Darko, so I’m going to go join them!

Oh, btw, I hope all you kiddies from Chicago don’t get buried in snow!  I’m glad it’s supposed to be in the 70’s here tomorrow!

I’m a couple days late, but Happy New Years!  2008 was our inaugural year for automaticable, and it has been a huge success.


Let’s look back with some stats:

• Total Posts: 147
• Total Comments: 376
• Total Visitors: 54,679
• Number of Visiting Countries: 154
• Number of Sites Linking Here: 364
• Busiest Traffic Day: Sept. 21 (10,285 views)

Here are some of the most popular posts from our first year:

• Lock Down Your Ubuntu Computer with A Bluetooth Cellphone and BlueProximity
• How-to: Enable Surround Sound on Ubuntu Hardy
• Organize Your ToDo List in Ubuntu with Remember The Milk and Tasque
• Electric Sheep: A Screen Saver That Learns (and is the best I’ve ever seen)
• How To: Host a Subversion Repository in Ubuntu Hardy
• Comcast Blocking DD-WRT?
• Void My Firefox Warranty?
• How-to: Mount a Network drive in Ubuntu
• Customize Your Dual-boot: GUI Frontend to GRUB
• Easy Subversion GUI for Nautilus and Ubuntu

And as the New Year is upon us, I’d also like to make some personal goals for myself.  I don’t believe in New Years resolutions, but I do have a few things I’d like to improve in the upcoming year:

• Run More: Last year I started excersing and running regularly, and even did a half-marathon in the Fall.  I’d like to keep it up, and push even harder this year.  If all goes well, I’ll be running the Chicago Marathon with a friend later this year.
• Study More: I’m coming up on my last semester as an undergraduate, but it really doesn’t end there for me.  I just applied for graduate school, and hope to pursue a Masters in machine learning starting next Fall.  I want to end this year strong, and get ready for harder classes and more research in graduate school.
• Revive automaticable: You may have notices lulls in posting during our first year.  This is mostly due to my own lack of time and motivation, but I’d like to fix that in 2009.  Brian has already alluded to a few changes we are planning in the site layout, and there’s a few other things we have planned as well.  Stay tuned.

These are my goals for 2009.  Have you made any for yourself?  And as we begin a new year for automaticable, what would you like to see more of on the blog?  Leave your thoughts in the comments.