(I also have pictures of the Ducks game I attended...)
Well, here's a couple of snapshots of what working at Broadcom was
like for me. Broadcom has implemented compute pools, consisting of
racks of Sun and HP workstations. Jobs are then submitted to the
pool, and automatically routed to the system with the lightest load.
Since all the filesystems are stored on Network Appliance NFS servers,
where the job runs matters less than how fast it can be completed.
Of course, this is a picture of the old server room in Building 4. Since I was there, Broadcom has moved everything and everyone into a new complex. The server room there is new and nicer, but the racks used are the same as pictured here. (Just less crap piled around.)
Of course, there are advantages to working in Southern California.
<grin> I took a lunch break one of my first days at BC and drove
south, ate lunch at a park. I'm sitting on the Dana Point park, here.
Capistrano is in the background.
This is just the Dana Point Marina.
The sun always shines in Orange County. (If only there weren't so
many cars....)
And here is the quality work space I was given to complete my contract
at BC. Pretty classy, eh? I though the pallet was a nice touch,
personally.
Another day, another hotel room. These are pictures of the Atrium Hotel
in Irvine. It's chief advantage was that it is across the street from
the John Wayne airport.
Actually, the rooms are pretty mediocre. But the price is right for the company, and just a few miles away from BC.
And this was my life. A desk piled with papers and receipts, and the
television. The TV is the most important part. Just a note: the
Atrium has a poor cable selection...
One thing that you can't really see is that the bag on the desk is from Fry's. The geek superstore. Fry's has one of the better selections of computers, gear and accessories available. All this, combined with the worst customer service imaginable. It is so amazing, Yahoo has an index dedicated to sites paying homage to Fry's (in one way or another...)
The fact is, that even in December the flowers are blooming in
Southern California. I suppose that's why some folks think of this as
a paradise. I'm not so sure, though I can see their viewpoint.
The fact is, in any job, eventually it is time for the consultant to
ride into the sunset. (If the consultant didn't leave, it's much
harder to blame all the problems on him. <grin>