Ah, the score. Perhaps the least obvious of the undercover zings. I'm sure if you ask any of the other guys what it means they can tell you. Or maybe you can figure it out, but there's a distinct reason you'd have more trouble than the rest of us. And it's not your straw hat and overalls.

Ah, another great night of tennis. Actually I started to think maybe I didn't have class since there was very little traffic coming out of De Anza, and it is after all a holiday for non-Lockheed employees. I got to the courts and there were two people playing. Yup, no class. But I had already decided I would hit against the wall and practice serving in this situation. So I hit against the wall for a little while, then... ENTER MANAJ (sp?). "You wanna hit?" "Sure." Man, I have the best rallies with this guy. We run each other around the court and feed off one another's power and angles. After a while it felt like there was a little rock or something in my left shoe. It bugged me and I didn't want it to irritate to the point of blister, so I shook the shoe out. Then the same thing happened to my right shoe. Afterwards it still felt like something was in each shoe. I realized the truth when I noticed the squishy quality to the foreign objects. It was the flaps. What the hell is Jonathan talking about, there aren't any flaps on the inside of shoes! Not flaps of leather or rubber... flaps of ball-of-your-foot-flesh. I guess that'll happen when you're running around, starting and stopping, changing directions all the time. It was worth it.

Oh yeah, first day of work heheh. My dad went to his building in Sunnyvale, and off I went to the Palo Alto site. My manager Bill let me in and showed me around, introduced me to the others in our group. My cubicle is okay... the room is almost exactly like at Northrop Grumman. I want to clean my desk and other surfaces I'll have to touch... I'll bring some handiwipes or something tomorrow. The atmosphere seems pretty laid back, people are friendly and Bill's cool. He said there's no dress code, no set daily hours, I can decorate my cubicle however I want ("no naked girls though"), and I can eat/drink and listen to music in my cubicle. But company policy forbids use of Hotmail or AIM. I spent most of the day getting acquainted with my computer and trying to set straight the spelling of my name in the company database and my e-mail address. It's still almost all men, but there's one girl who's young and has been there a year. There's no gym, and the cafeteria is small. I had a decent lasagna/salad/bread lunch, but it was $7. In no small part due to the Sobe drink I decided to try--"Orange Cream"... sounded good, but it's like drinking melted sherbet. I'll probably start bringing lunch soon. There was one young looking girl in the cafeteria, but she was all by herself around the corner of a wall and I thought if someone sat there they probably want to be alone. I sat outside where the sun was shining but a gate made sure there was no view whatsoever. There isn't too much for me to do yet, as Bill repeatedly pointed out. I can tell he doesn't want me to get too bored--he gave me a bunch of stuff about the project and the type of work they're doing to read/browse through. Tomorrow's another day, so far so good.

Maybe I'll change the name of this blog to "The Eecs Bangs Diaries, featuring Brian"