Alex Fewer Blog
Welcome To My Blog!
- I am a TY Student spending a week of work experience at Red Hat
- I will be documenting my experiences thoughout the week
- I will update thsis blog daily
Monday
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On Monday morning I came in sort of worried as is was going to be a new environment with people I didn’t know. I had been stressing all night beforehand but the first day didn’t turn out too bad. When I first went in, I went to reception when I met someone who works here called Becky. She gave me a tag with my name on it that allowed me to open doors. Then another person called Jennifer came in who showed me and the rest of the students around the place. I recognised her from the emails. She gave us a tour of the building, along with another guys called Pat.
- We were brought into the offices where we were given our laptops.
- We were shown the canteen where we could have our food and drinks. There were also snacks supplied for us and the staff and we greatly enjoyed access to free food. There was also LEGO in the canteen that we were allowed to build on lunch. There was also a Nintendo Switch were we were allowed to play videogames such as Mario Kart
- We were then showed the Bolger Suite and introduced to James
James talked to us about some stuff in the Bolger Suite that I totally didn’t forget about… We were also introduced to Dominic, who did this same programme in TY, then studied it in college and ended up working here. All of us 13 students were asked to share a fact about ourselves. I shared that I’m a drummer in a band, howver I noticed that I’m the only one who wasn’t asked a followup question, but that’s okay. Someone else called Riona mentionedshe’s also in a band, howver she’s the singer. A guy here called Cian also plays bass and someone else plays guitar. These 2 guys who I later found out are two twins in a triplet, Robert and Adam, talked about how they love racing karts. James leaned in at this point as he was greatly intrigued.
Next we did an icebreaker. Usually I don’t like icebreakers but this one wasn’t too bad. We were given the name of a celebrity or fictional character taped on our bacs and we had to ask yes or no questions to the other students. I was told mine was a female solo musician, and I finally guessed Lady Gaga after I find out my person was also an actor. Someone called Keelan had Luke Skywalker from Star Wars on his back and it took him about 20 minutes to guess it. I found that very funny. The hints were so obvious, even after learning he hasn’t seen Star Wars I don’t know how he didn’t get it.
For the next hour or so, Jennifer, Jen for short, suggested that we play on the Nintendo Switch. We all took our turns at playing Mario Kart, unfortunately I didn’t win any races but on my first race I came second. At this point I was becoming frienly with Robert. He seems funny so that made me happy. Towards the end of playing Mario Kart, Dominic and Viktor joined in and they talked about school in Mount Sion. Viktor knew some people I know in Mount Sion like my friends Quinn and Philip. After Mario Kart, two girls called Kayla and Katelyn talked to me for a bit but I found it awkward. Then Robert came over and start talking so that saved me a bit. We started talking about my band.
Next we had our proper lunch break for an hour from 1pm to 2pm. I got some snacks from the canteen and sat down with Robert for most of my lunch. Towards the end of it, me, Robert, Oisin, Adam, Cian and Jack went into the pool room and Robert and Oisin played pool. Robert also followed me on Instagram and TikTok. Then we went back to the Bolger Suite once lunch was over.
Next we were taught about a process called Agile, which the engineers use to work on projects requested by customers. They let us demonstrate our own attempts at using it by customising figures of MR Potato Head from Toy Story. One of the workers pretended to be a customer and gave us a request to customise it. Me, Jack and Kayla had to make a hero themed Potato Head. We had to put sticky notes under the categories of “To do”, “Do” and “Doing” as we acquired the requested pieces. We could find many hero parts so we went for more of an anti-hero theme after I found arms belonging to Darth Vader even though the figure was wearing an Iron Man mask. Our customer had one reqest to change it, and it was to change the eyes. They now had blue eyelashes and stuck out more. We soon had to go up and present our project. It was quite interesting because beforehad, I got distracted and moved the arms on top of the head and on the back. When we went up i played off the arn on the back as a built-in back scratcher for Mr Potato Head, and everyone found that funny. Jack commented on how we managed to “Keep it PG”. Afterwards we had to write sticky notes about things that went well, things we could improve, etc. I didn’t know what to write so I just drew a Stormstrooper and i found it funny when the guy reading them read out the last sticky note as “Stormtrooper with a gun”. We then got a short break for around 10 minutes.
Last thing in he day, we had a talk about something but somehow I’ve completely blanked on what it was about… Oops. Well, at least we got to finish earky at 4, rather than the usual finish time at 5. I waited around for a bit and got a hot chocolate in the canteen because my mom waan’t finished work until half 4. Luckily she works nearby so i walked there and went home.
Tuesday
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Today I came in this morning not as nervous as I was before, knowing it atually wouldn’t be too bad and that I have friends to talk to. When we arrived we have to be in the Bolger Suite first thing at half 9am. I was actually on time along with most of the others. We spent most of the day in that room.
Pat gave us a talk about the basics of coding using Bash. The layouts of the laptops took a while to get used to at first due to them being set up on Fedora, a version of the Linux operating system, since I use Windows on my computer at home. Thankfully it wasn’t too confusing and my small bit of knowledge of using a computer interface came in handy. We had a few problems with the keyboards being mapped wrong a few times like with the @ symbol being mapped to 2 + Shift rather than ‘ + Shift, as well as the # symbol not existing for some people. Pat showed them how to switch the keyboard mapping to English (US) in settings. Mine still isn’t mapped correctly but I know to get #, I have to press 3 + Shift.
After that was fixed, we got back to the basics of learning bash code. Pat showed us some basics commands such as echo, which would repeat what you just typed, ls, which lists whatever is in a folder, nano, which lists what’s in a file, etc. Robert came to many complications with figuring out how to write the code. I found it hilarious watching the interactions between him and Pat as Pat has a good sense of humour.
After finishing the basics of Bash coding, Pat showed us how to edit our daly blog that I’m actively writing right now. I was a bit confused on how to confirm my edits at first but Pat helped me in the end. I ended up writing quite a lot which Robert found quite funny after he showed me his 2 paragraphs compared to my 8 relatively long ones. Robert is nice to me and that makes me happy. I’m always worried about having no one to talk to when I got to a new place so I’m glad he’s nice to me.
After the blog we had our hour break. Me, Jack, Robert, Adam, Cian, Jeff, Keelan, Viktor and Oisin decided to begin a pool tornament that will hopefully last to the end of the week. First up was Cian against Robert. it was close but Cian won. Next was Jack against Adam. Again, it was close, but Adam one. I was next. I was against Oisin. He’s a pretty good pool player. I wouldn’t be too bad myself but it was a while since I last played. I didn’t start of strong, I wasn’t hiting the ball hard enough. But soon I warmed up and got some good hits, managing to get the balls in the holes. Mainly for the gane, I was either really bad, or really good. There was no in between really. We ran out of time due to lunch being over, but in he end I had a higher score than Oisin by one, so I won! That was cool. I also got a hot chocolate that lunch break. It was a good hot chocolate.
After lunch, a guy called Sean came in to talk to us about college life and picking a tech related subject in college. He was a good choice for this as he was still young and fresh out of college. He gave us a good talk about his experience and he gave me a nicer view on college. I also learned that him, Jen and Dominic all went to college at the same time, in the same place, SETU.
We next had a twenty minute break before another talk. We continued the pool tornament and this time it was Viktor against Jeff. I can’t remember for certain who won but I know it was very close.
When we canme back to the Bolger Suite, we had another talk, this time from another employee but she was from Ukraine. She was giving us a talk about women in tech and how there’s a large lack of women in tech jobs. She also talked about how even with the war in her home country of Ukraine she still managed to persue her dreams in working in tech. As of now, she is still a part-time student in SETU and a full time worker in Red Hat.
There wasn’t much else to say after that so we got to start working on today’s blog early. It was scheduled for 4pm, but as I’m writing this, it’s only 15:49, and I’m thinkig about how I’ll probably have to wait around before being collected…
Wednesday
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This Wednesday morning I headed to the offices to wait around until half 9 and to check the timetable. There I foudn Robert and then we both walked to the Bolger Suite for our groups daily meeting. We talked aout the things we did yesterday and Adam mentioned how some mnonitors weren’t working and also that Oisin complained about the lack of smoothies. Jen said that after the meeting we would try fix the monitors.
Up until today I had no problem with my laptop but when we went to go fixed them, I tried to turn it on and weird screen canme up kind of looking like it had crashed. It wasn’t the Blue Screen of Death but it was some sort of black screen with a command or something. Even Jen was confused but she managed to reboot the laptop and it was working fine. While we were waiting around for a bit, I opened Frv.com to find some games to play but the connection was weird and the ganes wouldn’t work. So, instead I used a different game called Territorial.io and it worked but I lost.
Next we went into the canteen for a bit and I watched the boys play Mario Kart again. It was only 15 minutes or so until we went into the Tuskar room. It was like a small meeting room that was realy cold at first to step into. There was a guy on a video call called Kevin but he didn’t say much because james showed us a presentation about the history of computing. There was a quiz on company logos at the start and I worked with Jeff and Cian. I was very tired and nearly passed out but I took in most of what James said I think. Next we were given 25 minutes to work on our blogs.
After that, we were given an engineering task where I was paired with Robert and Kayla. We were given uncooked soaghetti, tape, a marshmellow and string, and we had to make a structure to get the marshmellow as high off the table as possible. We tried to make a cube with a pyramid on top but it fell and we lost. For our second try we were allowed to take inspiration from the winning group, Group 3. We stacked stuff on top of each oth by cutting the envelope into two rolled up cylinders anf taped them together. We would’ve won if it was stable.
For lunch we continued the pool tornament. I was agasint Jeff and it was close but in the end he won. A few others also played but I forgot the order of them. I briefly picked up the guitar and tried played Pork and Beans by Weezer. Then I played The Sweater Song - Undone by Weezer, Breed by Nirvana and School by Nirvana. I can’t play much on guitar, I’m more of a drummer.
After lunch we were given another engineering task. This time I was paired with Sophia and Katelyn and we were required to make a roller coaster out of paper straws and tape. There was one rule however: it needed to have a 360 degree loop. It took us nearly the full hour and it was still falling over and couldn’t hold the ball. Out of the 4 groups, only Group 1 managed to successfully create a working roller coaster. They thought outside of the box and made they’re 360 loop vertical. The roller coaster was also just very stable in general. There were 3 judges flown over from America for sme reason to take a look at the roller coasters. Unsurprisingy, Group 1 one.
The roller coasters took quite a while so we didn’t get to finish as early as the last two days so I’m finishing off this blog at half 4, and at this rate I’m very tired and want to go home. But I still can’t go home until neary 7 because I have drum lessons from 6 to half 6.
Thursday
I came in today not feeling worried about the day, I was rather just tired but glad i didn’t find the week too bad. At half 9 we had our daily stand up meeting where we duscussed what we did yesterday. We’re goinng to get free breakfast at 10 past 10 today once the other staff have gotten their food first. I had 3 sausages because I wasn’t too hungry as I already had breakfast this morning. They were very good sausages.
After breakfast, we went into the Bolger Suite and we got a talk about AI from Sean as today is our AI Day, like yesterday was our engineering day. I can’t remember much about what he said as I am very tired but I know he went over different types of Ai and what they do. Next we had a talk from Dominic about an AI service that he and a group of other Red Hat employees had been working on called InstructLab. It was still in Beta as it had only been released 3 weeks ago so it didn’t have much information on newer stuff. Dominic showed an example of that by asking it about the fairly recent album from Charli XCX called Brat. I can’t express how much I hate that album afte being forced to listen to it in full every day while working at Golden Discs. I also tested the Ai with the most recent Twenty One Pilots album called Clancy and it didn’t have anything on that either. Dominic tasked us with writing up information about something to add to the AI’s database, preferrably not political or religious, so that the AI had more information when people ask questions. Me and Robert wrote up about Mario Kart 8 as we had been playing it all week. It was weird that it had nothing on it considering it ccame out in 2014.
After the talks, we had lunch where we played more pool. How surprising! We let Oisin play muliple games as today will be his last day since he unfortunately wwon’t be here tomorrow. I believe he won both of his games. He’s quite good at pool. We had fun as usual and joked about.
After lunch, we had make a presentation about sustainability in terms of a rain garden. I was paired with Robert again and we had to use AI to gather our information and or pictures. Me and Robert used Perplexity AI to find our information and simplify or expand on it. Other people used Deep AI or Chat GPT. We were the only ones who didn’t make a PowerPoint presentation and used paper instead because none of our Microsoft accounts were letting us sign in for some reason. I tried both of my accounts and it said the two different passwords were wrong. Presenting it wasn’t too bad and ours was actually one of the longer ones.
After that, we got a break to continue working on our blogs as I am doing now. After this, we will be going back to the Bolger Suite to get a talk from a man from Italy.
Finishing off the blog for today, the Italian, Paulo, gave us a talk via Zoom about Sports Telemetry and how all the data in transferred, particularly in Formula 1 which Robert found interesting. I saw him writing down a lot of stuff. He showed us a PowerPoint and also a video of the data actively showing while his son was playing a Formula 1 game. Now it’s time for me to go home athalf 4 as I am now finished my blog.
Friday
TodaY I came in and we had our stand-up meeting in the canteen as they were setting up something in the Bolger Suite. Today was robot day.
First we went into the Bolger Suite where a guy called Adam had some motor-powered remote control car things ready for us, we just had to progra them. He showed us a few things and a link to a controller code and a link to a reciever code. I was in a group with Robert and Jack. We were using a weibsite called Microsoft Microbit to write the code. First was had to code the robot to drive left. That went okay. Next was when we had problems. We couldn’t get it to turn right even after getting all the code right and checking with Adam. We even tried two differwnt robots and it still didn’t work. In the end we managed to get it to turn right but then it wouldn’t turn left. That was so strange. All but one other group had the same problem. That group was Jeff, Cian and Adam (Robert’s brother Adam, not employee Adam). We also eventually managed to get it to go straight after a while of Robert being lost and me suggesting an idea to Jack. At one point we got all forward, left and right to work but stop was only working sometimes.
Next we had lunch. They gave us free pizza. There were two pineapple, ham and mushroom pizzas… that’s gross. Me, along with nearly everyone else had pepperoni pizza. We all sat around in a table and after our pizza we played more pool. I was playing against Robert and I was s close to winning. The black ball was right on the rim of the pocket but I hit the ball weirdly and it flew right off the table. Me, along with everyone else burst into laughter. It was embarassing but in fairness it was quite funny. Robert ended up winning unsurpirsingly.
After lunch we went back into the Bolger Suite for a restrospective of the week, or as they call it, a sprint, however a sprint is usually two weeks for them. We had to write things on the whiteboard under three categories: start doing, stop doing and continue doing. There were lots of things on the board. Some people hated the ice breakers, some loved them. Some hated the pasta structure thing, some loved it.. Many people agreed that Pat should be hired as he’s an intern, and also that Dominik, Jen, David and Sean should all get a raise.
After the restrospective, we went back to the robots and got to race them. My group was calle R.A.J. (Robert, Alex, Jack). We came last with 110 seconds… who could’ve guessed. We also got 12 penaulties so that added up to 12x5, increasing it by a lot. The winners were Adam, Cian and Jeff’s group, unsurprisingly. Riona, Sophia and Kayla’s robot even fell off the tabel and smashed once. That was kinda funny. On the second time Robert raced ours, he skipped about half the track by accident and he ended up getting 15 seconds, not including penaulties. Also Pat was watching on video called as he wasn’t in work today. There were no prizes for the winners but we all had fun and it was actually a very enjoyable day.
As I’m writing my blog here, Jen gave us all a Red Hat bag with a Red Hat Ruler, a Red Hat squishy ball and a Red Hat pen and pencil. When we leave we have to leave our keytags with Becky at the reception. We’re finished earlier than usual today, it’s only ten past three.