Date: June 20th 2007

#01 Summer and Arizona Sunshine

This first issue is playing catch-up, starts in the summer of 2006, discusses my first semester at ASU, and ends in January 2007.  (Click any image to see it larger and with a caption.)

• FIS Empower - Summer 06
• Arizona! ASU Fall Semester
• Winter
• Photos
• Next Time
• Contact Me

FIS Empower and Summer ’06

At right are (left to right) myself, Steve, Katie, and Kara; we cousins all graduated as the summer of 2006 began.  Also a family affair was the traditional Independence Day celebration at Westminster college.  Below is a snapshot I took there.

Also last summer, Brad Kelley at FIS Empower Division (formerly Eastern Software) kindly invited me to apply for an internship position there.  I was glad to accept and interned under the talented Jason Bell (after a short camping excursion ).  It was a very educational experience, as I not only gained experience writing reports, working in C# and Visual Studio, using Backus Normal Form, Oracle, and SQL Server, but I also learned about the corporate environment.  I am very grateful to them for the opportunity.

One last summer experience was camping and boating on the lake with my family.  To the right, my cousin Kevin and I are tubing behind my uncle’s boat. 

Arizona!  Part One

As most of you know by now, I am going to school at Arizona State University.  The first photo to the right was taken in April 2006, when I visited campus; the construction then was an accurate foreshadowing of what was to come!  The new Light Rail being installed has rendered some streets barely navigable and altered some bus routes, but when it is finally completed, should be an easy way to get from ASU main campus to downtown Phoenix and other campuses.

I love this photo of a beautiful sunset visible from just outside my freshman dorm. The building silhouetted in the right is Gammage Auditorium, a work of Frank Lloyd Wright and where I would later see Chicago and Al Gore live.

The first semester was pretty amazing.  I knew, when my plane landed in Phoenix, that for the next several months, I would be in a place I had only seen once before and knew only a small handful of people (and not very well).  I did not know just how wonderful my new friends, the town, and my professors would be.  My classes first semester were pretty good: Calc I; Pan Devils; an easy introduction to programming with Java; a Spanish course; and Human Event.  Human Event is an interesting humanities course in which we studied various classical works, from Plato to the Bible to Hindu texts.  We would then have to write papers arguing something about the texts.

A one-credit class full of fun times was my steel drum class.  More than a class, really, it was also the official practice time for us Pan Devils, the university's steel drum band.  We put on a winter concert and then got together again next semester.  You should be able to see the distinctive cake-like music building to the right, where we practiced and performed.

My first semester job was lifeguarding for ASU.  The pools of the Mona Plummer Aquatic Complex, where I worked, are visible here.  The unofficial lifeguard initiation was jumping off the 10-meter diving platform.  Lifeguarding there was easy as most swimmers at that pool (one of two on campus) were mostly on swim, diving, or polo teams; when not on duty, it was easy to work on some homework or hang out with the other guards.

Winter

Winter break came right after finals (which went well) and lasted a month, which I spent in Pennsylvania.  I didn’t work, so I had time to see family and friends again. And snow.  Below are a couple small snowmen my youngest sisters (with Mom’s help, I’m sure) made in our backyard, as seen with the snow accumulating around and on top of them.  To the left is Pitt’s Cathedral of Learning.  there is quite a view from the top of it.  That was just one highlight from visiting some friends at Pitt as their spring semester started before I flew back to Arizona for my second semester... which is where we will pick up in the next installment of this newsletter!

Photos in this email

To see all the photos in this message (and a few more!) with captions and in larger sizes, go to http://www.flickr.com/photos/94946679@N00/sets/72157600298595588/detail/.

Next Time

In the next issue, I’ll discuss my second semester in Arizona, my internship with Ustrive, summer 2007 so far, and whatever comes up. Know someone who wants to get these emails? Forward this message to them, or they can sign up at http://mail.alanhogan.com.

Thanks for reading!

I would love to hear from you.  What's new with you?  What should I discuss in the next issue?  Write me at mail@alanhogan.com, or just reply to this email.  Take care!

Sincerely,

Alan J. Hogan