Today Justin Tunley and I visited the Human Resources department of SAS! We were greeted in the morning by Bethany LeClair, who was able to tell us all about SAS , what they do, and her position. She talked to us about how with her job, she is able to go to different universities, campuses, and career fairs and promote SAS software, as well as try to recruit more people to intern/work at SAS. I thoroughly enjoyed talking to Ms. LeClair, and thought she shared a really interesting perspective on how the data can be used! Later on, Justin and I shadowed another woman in the HR department and spent the rest of the day with her. She told us all about college, her life, and provided us with advice for the HR department. I found it interesting because going into the day, I did not really have any grasp of what HR was responsible for, and she clearly explained all of the different departments to us and what they did. One thing I particularly liked that she said was about technology and knowledge in general. She told us that as part of her job, she is always having to teach herself new websites and programs. She said that although this can sometimes be challenging, that in the end it is really interesting and that it can be beneficial to constantly seek out new technology and new knowledge!
Category: Z WEP Archives
Day 4
Today I did a little more research on Dr. Malone and his works and writing. Before today I did brief research on him and discovered that he wrote an entire book on country music titled Country Music, USA and it was published in 1968, but has since had more editions come out. While I couldn’t get my hands on a copy or an online copy, I read several reviews of the book from journals on JSTOR. One review that I found gave a very nice overview of the book and was unbiased. The journal article was titled on JSTOR as Review: Country Music U.S.A A Fifty-Year History by Bill C. Malone. And it was reviewed by Gilbert Chase. His review was very clear and concise but used several quotes from the book itself. It went over what the book was about. The book is not just about country music but the history behind it, how country music came to be a thing in the USA. It talked about how the attitudes of the rural southerners filtered into the music. The book admits that country music does stem from folk music but has evolved saying that is changed per the region it was in. For example Oklahoma and Texas became more Western swing rather than folky mountain music and so on. It also described how Dr. Bill C. Malone feels about country music and he feels that it is still primarily in the south and that he south contributed to the creation of a lasting regional music. The book not only analyzed specific careers of country stars, like the first one, Jimmy Rogers aka the father of modern country music, but also went over the different styles of country music, historically such as: Western swing, honky tonk, country-pop, the “Nashville sound,” saga song, bluegrass, urban folk song, etc. the review also stated that Dr. Malone feels that country music will never be fully appreciated by American culture to those who don’t listen to it because Americans are busy giving higher praise to other genres and tend not to pay attention to it. Overall the reviews were good but I thought this was the best one out of the ones I read. Dr. Malone still hasn’t called me back from yesterday, so I will most likely give him one more day to call back until I call again.
Day 4
Today I continued to work on my assignment of building a 3-D model for a current client. To my surprise, the house looked better than I thought. Once I added on the roof and little acccesories it felt complete. What felt like minutes working on the 3-D model was actually hours of clicking and dragging shapes. Other than the 80s and 90s music playing in the background, the office was very peaceful and I felt like I got a lot done. Today was also the last day of working at Linton Architects so it sad to say goodbye to everyone. Every single employee made me feel comfortable and tried to inform me with whatever they were working on. After lunch I went back to my table and continued to work on the finishing touches of the 3-D model. It’s amazing to see that a drawing could be turned into something a step further. I really enjoyed working with Mr. Linton and the rest of the employees and will use the knowledge that I gained in the future. I look forward to working in downtown Raleigh in a much larger firm called LS3P. 
Day 4
Today was my fourth day at SAS as a part of the Cary Academy Work Experience Program and my day was spent in the Marketing department in Building C. My favourite part of the day came when I talked to Mr. David Phillips, the Senior Digital Marketing Specialist. Mr. Phillips explained to me how he is responsible for pushing SAS’s websites and resources to the top of the Google search engine. He does this by bidding on keywords which then allows SAS’s sites to appear closer to the top of the Google page. I found it super interesting how some key words such as “Big Data” could code up to $50 a click. That means when someone types in “Big Data” into Google and hen proceeds to click on the SAS.com link below, that click costs $50! Although the day was mostly spent talking to employees of the Marketing Department, I was able to venture up to the sixth floor and inspect Dr. Goodnight’s world reknown rock collection. His collection contained geodes from India, fossils from Egypt, and stalactites from Spain!
Day 4- Corporate Creative
Thuc and I really enjoyed today. We learned how the graphic design team comes together to create the look of SAS. Even though we were not very interested in graphic design, it was still interesting to learn about what goes on behind the scenes of SAS. We saw the programs they used, and the demos of the designs they make. Thuc and I got a full tour of SAS as well, and our favorite part was the video production room. Thuc and I went to the room and pretended to be on film, which was a lot of fun. We also saw where the designs are officially printed, and the machines were huge! We could really see how much work is put into these designs. We can’t wait for next week!
Day 4
Pictures are hard to come by considering their restrictions and Non Disclosure Agreement, but I will try to post at least one a day. This is their most famous title!
Upon arriving at Mighty Rabbit Studios today Shane and I were greeted by an empty conference room. At first we were very confused but very soon after the owner of Mighty Rabbit Studios entered the room and told us that Ben, the guy we would be working with, was running a bit late since he has been working so much overtime with a current project. Considering that the company has rights and licenses with outside companies I am not allowed to discuss what sort of software he was working on throughout the rest of this blog, but the project is soon to drop and everyone is working super hard to push for meeting the deadline.
One of the first things we found out upon arriving at Mighty Rabbit Studios is that, the company isn’t like many other companies in that it is also split with Limited Run games, and owned and worked by the same staff. At first this seems confusing and hard to keep up with. But in reality it is a technique that seems to work very well. Considering the company works out of the same building they dont have to pay two different rents. And one of the most important and helpful things that comes from the company being split is that when one side of the company isnt bringing in a good bit of revenue efforts can be focused in the other side, and the first side will just be put in sleep mode for a portion of time.
Limited Run games is cool because it takes hit games from last generation and revamps them to run on the new consoles and PC’s. In doing so they redo the graphics as well as redo how the game runs, but they keep the same story line and characters that everyone used to love. I think that it is a very cool idea because it brings back really fun games and reinterests the older generation into video games.
Day 4
The most interesting part about my time at Forthright today came after lunch, when Steve, Bryan, and another engineer named Graydon met together to talk about new internal projects. A lot of the work that the company does comes from clients, people who have this idea that they need someone else to create for them. However, they also occasionally meet to discuss ideas the engineers have thought of for new products they could create. The meeting consisted of the engineers creating a list of concepts they had brainstormed and explaining the rationale behind each idea and what the market for that product is like now. They then ranked their top three ideas and the ones with the most votes were noted to be researched later and followed up on. During this ideation process, I saw many aspects of group brainstorming that I’ve been taught in robotics and art and design. No concepts were rejected or thought of as bad ideas, and everyone was open each other’s thoughts, instead of being close-minded and only focusing on what they had thought of. This type of objective conversation helped the engineers reach an agreement of which products they thought were best to pursue efficiently and without overlooking anyone’s thoughts.
Day 3
Outside the Building looking down the Tobacco Road
The Staircase down to Lucid VR
The actually facility of Lucid VR
Today Shane and I got to travel down to Downtown Durham where we were found ourselves working in the American Underground District. The American Underground is a place where small start up companies can rent out small sized facilities for a low monthly cost so they can focus on starting to get revenue and not so much on paying the bills. Upon arrival we found ourselves literally walking down a staircase to the basement of the building. Truly in the Underground area.
After meeting up with Josh Setzer, we were given a short tour of the area and introduced to all the members on the team. Just like any other software company they had members ranging in different fields, from overall product sales to straight up coders.
The software that Lucid Dream VR is working on is primarily dependent on their clients’ desires. The company designs software that meets the demands of their clients so that the clients can spend that time on more necessary tasks.
Throughout the day we were able to test two VR headsets: the Oculus Rift, and the HTC Vive. It was really cool to see the progression of VR technology time, and hear from the guys there where each of them sees the industry going in the future.
All in all I really enjoyed my time at Lucid Dream VR, and I am interested to watch what happens to Virtual Reality in the near future.
Day 4
To begin, here is the quote of the day, the week, and even possibly the entire work experience program: “I’m still trying to get this lubricant off of my hands.” This was calmly/ordinarily said by our esteemed tour guide, our biology expert, at FHI 360’s product quality and control center, more commonly known as the PQC. There, people are tasked with testing contraceptives – condoms, IUDs, tablets – as well as other items including bed nets and more in many different ways.
Although most people would find the discussion of condoms and contraceptives uncomfortable, awkward or downright embarrassing, Hope, Caroline, Maddie and I quickly became immune to this type of talk following today’s interesting (to say the least) experience. Despite being kindly lectured on the difficulty of reaching this destination, Celia, Maddie, and I found the PQC with ease; Hope and Caroline piled into the car with Lauren and followed.
Upon arrival, we were each given a pair of safety glasses, to be worn at all times in the lab, validating the “realness” of the situation. We were immediately shown the various tests condoms go through, both male and female, with demonstrations.
First, we saw condoms being attached to a device and filled with a certain amount of water, testing whether or not they had holes and were able to hold a certain mass. If just two of the selected batch failed, the entire group is found to be unacceptable. In addition to this, the water-filled condoms were tied at the end and rolled onto a board, again testing their structure.
The next part of the tour was probably the coolest: the Airbust. We entered a room with a sign outside labeled something along the lines of “DANGER! Use ear protection.” Yes, we were going to explode condoms. This test is particularly important, for each condom must reach a certain volume when filled with air, and pop once it reaches a certain pressure. It was interesting because female condoms exploded in around thirty seconds, a substantially shorter time frame than that of males.
Once leaving this test, we went to another room, where the odor of condoms was being tested: someone was tasked with taking observations of the odor 90 days after it was manufactured, 120, 180, etcetera because users sometimes refrain from usage due to their bad smell after a certain period of time. In this same room, there were also refrigerators that monitored various contraceptives in different temperatures, allowing the scientists to see in what conditions they were still effective in, among other things.
This pretty much concluded our biological tour, and we were then handed over to a chemist to talk about the tests they go through. Although chemistry isn’t one of my favorite subject matters, I was immensely interested in the tests they use, from chromatography to dissolving tablets in a wide range of solvents. It was cool to see how the various tests went hand in hand, and how some of them preserved the tablet while others destroyed it. A rising problem is counterfeit, so one of the main jobs of these people is to ensure the tablet is composed of what the company (or manufacturer) says it is. They also utilize computer software to assist their data collection; for example, graphs are electronically drawn depicting a “peak” which serves as a means of comparison the standard pill.
All in all, this experience was really cool, and it was quite neat to see the long process each method goes through before it can be sent to the low-resource settings. I am excited to bring this knowledge to our projects and am sad our week has come to an end!
Work Experience Day 4
Friday, June 2nd
Today I spent the day with the legal department at SAS. Interestingly, SAS has its own attorneys in-house, consisting of 45-60 employees. Their jobs range contract negotiations to dealing with international SAS subsidiaries. I got to shadow the latter team which included five team members.
One interesting thing I learned was that SAS has so many global offices, and that the relationships between SAS headquarters and these entities are controlled by legal. Each employee has a map in their room in order to pinpoint which countries they are responsible for. For example, one of the women were in charge of Latin American and the southeast and southwest countries in Europe. Today, she received requests from Brazil to have twelve different documents to follow their legal processes. Apparently, in most other countries outside the US, documents such as passport information and social security numbers are not seen as necessarily confidential which may cause legality concerns when SAS headquarters has to share that information to comply with the various international legal systems. I learned that there isn’t an actual definition for “international law” because law is so differentiated from country to country, making it impossible to always know how every process works.
One random fact about today: It was cake day! I really enjoyed the atmosphere of this department and how everyone got together in the afternoon in order to eat cake to celebrate June employee birthdays.
