Friday, July 31, 2009

Today Jacqueline, my fellow Shad intern at Stantec Inc., and I were able to go out on a site visit to the Pine Creek Wastewater Treatment Plant. Once we got there Simon, our tour guide, showed us around the whole plant. While we were walking around and learning about the wastewater treatment process, there were contractors on site still in the building process. Pine Creek was just finishing off completion of its first phase of development. It was proposed that this buildout will have the capacity to handle 700,000,000 L of wastewater a day!

One of the most exciting things was seeing the underground tunnels and how they sprawled around the whole site. While walking through, we saw pipes of different colours. These pipes carried a variety of fluids; hot water, return activated sludge (RAS), waste activated sludge (WAS) or the effluent after each small process, and were colour coded based on what they would carry. Pine Creek Wastewater Treatment Plant has some of the most sophisticated water treatment technologies in the world, which allows for cleaning of the water in such a way that it is able to be discharged to the Bow River. Overall there was a lot to learn about where our wastewater goes and how it is treated.

Maxwell Nguyen
Hometown: Calgary, AB

Thursday, July 30, 2009


I have the great opportunity of working at George Kelk Company in the Information Systems department. The job is challenging, but the friendly environment makes everything much easier. For example, on my first day an E-Mail with my picture was sent out to all employees explaining that I was interning for a month, it made introductions less stressful.

200 words will not nearly cover today’s work, so I’ll mention a few highlights. Today was a very busy day, I came in at 7, got a coffee and sat down to work. After installing windows on a laptop with a new hard-drive, I dual installed Vista on a machine that was already running XP. At the same time I was also researching trial versions of a potential new software that the Information Systems team was going to test. I was invited to the weekly IS meeting where I was able to hear their future plans and get a better sense of what projects they are currently working on (it’s hard to keep track). I also burned a few CDs and changed the memory in a laptop. Although an attempt at resurrecting a hard drive resulted in short circuiting it, the day’s projects ran fairly smoothly.


Romi Boimer
Hometown: Thornhill, ON

Wednesday, July 29, 2009

Today at Ross Video, I spent the first several hours of my day testing a web application developed in-house to manage licensing of Ross Video products. I did so by testing many different possible inputs and actions and comparing the actual with the desired results. Afterwards, during my lunch break, I played pool with a few of the other employees, before returning to work once more, wherupon I tested a network interface card for various criteria, such as maximum number of connections and resilience to failed software updates. To do this, I inserted it into an actual network-connected frame and used the dashboard software to monitor various parameters while I performed the test. I also tested a rail-based rack mounting system in development, by using it to mount a frame in an unused rack. During the course of my day, I found several minor bugs, which were sent to development to be addressed.

Matt Farkas-Dyck
Hometown: Ottawa, ON

Tuesday, July 28, 2009

Like some of my fellow Shads, I had a chance to become an intern after Shad Valley and work for the rest of the summer. I am currently working at McCain Foods in Florenceville, where I will be studying potatoes, microorganisms and all sorts of topics of this nature.

Today (my 2nd day on the job) was quite interesting. For one of my tasks, I worked with sulfuric acid, ammonium molybdate, some sort of syrup and a machine. I started off with two test tubes. I poured 500 microlitres of sulfuric acid into each tube, followed by 50 microlitres of ammonium molybdate. I boiled test tube A for 6 minutes, while adding 1400 microlitres of the syrup into test tube B. Once tube A had finished boiling, I had added the same amount of syrup into it. I put the solutions in a machine that did some calculations. I recorded the data, inserted it into Excel, and then I repeated the task. After the data had been collected, I was told that I had gotten the hang of it pretty quickly, which was good to hear.

That’s my story so far…


Zach LeClerc
Hometown: Florenceville, NB

Monday, July 27, 2009

I woke up this morning, dressed business-like yet casual for my internship at Sentex Communications, an Internet Service Provider, and communications solutions company. Honestly, I don't know very much about either of those fields, but after Shad Valley, you're ready to take on just about anything.

When I arrived, I received a warm welcome by the same man who had interviewed me, and got an honorary tour of the office, showing me places such as where I would be working, the server rooms, and the break room (free coffee and soda!). He also introduced me to my coworkers, all of whom were equally welcoming.

Perhaps what surprised me the most was the workplace environment. Everybody seemed so social and so friendly, which didn't really match up with my preconceptions of what working at an Internet Service Provider might be like. The office even had its own internal chat program, so employees could converse and exchange ideas without having to move about. It all seemed social and constructive, and I'm sure that this will enhance my ability to work and make my work experience considerably more enjoyable.

Although it is still fairly unclear what I may be doing at Sentex Communications (as much of the day was spent introducing me to the company and syncing me with its various social and network accounts), I'm extremely excited for what it has to offer. The great people, and great workplace environment will be sure to make my internship at Sentex Communications unforgettable.

Grant Robson
Home City: Guelph, ON