"Yeah, they're saying that the game always crashes at 'Populating Empyreal Entities.'" -- Coop, my officemate, on the phone with our support team.

Welcome to SimCompany.

A land where all the sodas are 25 cents, where there's free alcohol on Friday nights, and where the first thing you do upon being hired is install the daily builds of their games on your computer (For testing purposes, of course) and read the cheat books (for reference, of course!)

It's been a long two days. The first few days at an internship are always difficult and feel unsatisfying because you never feel as if you have done enough work.

(I should know, this is my third time 'round.)

A time when you're second-guessing every word and facial expression, and you're crestfallen if they don't love you when you go home for the day.

Today has been pretty good though - and surprisingly, there has been a good amount of female presence, which makes me feel more at ease. (I was very tense about this issue - there are only ~45 women at this 300-person company.)

But my team, as it turns out, has quite a few women (and many female techies, including the tech lead and development director!).

One of the Object Engineers, Vick, visited me this morning and filled me in on where all the food, free candy and snacks were, and how to get them. Then, through the course of conversation, she mentioned that she used to be a ballroom dancer, and that our team goes swing dancing every Tuesday night!

How perfect is that?

Jeannie, the localization producer across the hall, chimed in and told me more about Tuesday swing - she's a regular too.

I ended up going to lunch with these 2 lovely ladies at a Vietnamese place downtown. The food was OK, but the company was great. We walked back to the office after taking the shuttle there, basking in the 95-degree heat of California.

We stopped by Target to get cooking oil for Vick's rice cooker - but lo and behold, Target didn't have cooking oil.

My concept of the universe is shattered. Target didn't have something???

It's going to take awhile for THAT shocking revelation to sink in.

I'm sure Vick would get bonus points with my mom, too - she hands out Vivactiv caramel calcium chews to the ladies. :) Mmmm yummy nutrition.

And Jean? She's an ex-archeologist turned video game producer.

Wheee!

I'm currently sharing an office with Coop, another member of the production team, but next week I'm moving to a corner window space (and hoping no one kills me in my sleep for it.) It's on the "train line", a toy train that runs along the windowsill bringing candy and other tchotchkes.

Yep. A videogame company.

Today Cooper brought me a new monitor - and while it's not a slick LCD like most of them here, it IS one of the largest CRT screens I've ever seen in person. I am dwarfed.

The Aeron chair is cool too.

So I've spent the day synching my build of the game and gathering art reference materials for new objects. :)

Just another day in the life of an intern.