Tales of the 4th Week Intern

It has now been four weeks since my onboarding. I struggle to stay awake past 9 pm, I feel like a kid with playtime again, but at least I can wake up at 5 am rather than still be awake by 5 am. I have also properly timed my commute on the way here and going back home, which takes up a total of 2-3 hours of my day… yikes.

Monday (2023-09-04)

Up to Standard

On this day, we interns were resuming the activity that we had done from the previous week which was to find bugs in a project. During our daily standup, our manager provided us with more insight into the perspectives of other people when they view tickets and bug reports. We were informed and advised to update our ticket report into an agreed format structure to maintain a form of consistency. We had to communicate properly what the bug was, concisely enumerate the steps to reproduce the bug that was brought up and lastly provide a proposed solution on how to resolve it.

It gave us the experience that we were slowly becoming professionals as we slowly became more accustomed to the standards of this globalized industry.

Public Key Infrastructures

On the other half of the day, we continued our activity and then our manager gave us a challenge and asked us if we wanted to proceed with it. By the end of the challenge, we were to receive a website with a database associated with it. It was proposed to be a “15 min” challenge. Initially my fellow interns were hesitant one move forward with the challenge. But after 10 minutes of deliberation, we decided to push through with it.

Instead of the 15-minute timer starting immediately, it began with a lecture on the concept of the Public Key Infrastructure. It is a system used to significantly increase the security of a network and provide the foundation for securing all internet-connected devices. Afterward, we had to set up an environment on our phone which would enable us to connect to a host through the computer, from the phone. Shockingly, the initial setup itself was longer than 15 minutes. Weirdly enough, despite me being the first one to begin downloading the necessary applications, it was the last one to finish updating and upgrading the application, despite all of us being on the same network. After catching up and having the environment prepared, that’s when our “15-minute” long challenge began.

Our task was to implement a PKI twice. The first one allows us to access our phone via secure shell (Secure Socket Shell or SSH) from our Macbooks, and the second one allows us to access the ronins.site website from our mobile device. The end goal of the challenge is to access the website directly from the Macbook, without being required to input the password. But me and a fellow intern had similar setbacks which prevented us from progressing. The problem would be when we would attempt to connect to our mobile devices from the Macbook. Despite both already being on the same network, we couldn’t connect even though another intern succeeded. It turned out to be an unfortunate set of coincidences, one was that the network was configured in a way that prevented us from successfully connecting. We did not figure that out until I switched to a different network for the 3rd time, despite being told that it probably was not a solution. It is important to exhaust all options before concluding.

After that issue was out of the way, we encountered our next roadblock, despite having the process enumerated to us, we just did not know how to do it, so a bulk of our time was spent on just researching and having numerous attempts.

A simple “15 min” task became a 4-hour endeavor. However by the end of the session, through our collaboration, we managed to pull through and reach our goal. In retrospect, it really could have been a 15-minute task. But it was a struggle in the beginning because we were so unfamiliar with the process. But now that activity has given us a foundation if ever we work with the SSH in the future.

Wednesday (2023-09-06)

On this day, it was just a continuation of assigning tickets to others and doing the ones assigned to me. During our daily standup, our manager provided insight into how vital it is that we should never assume upon initial impressions. Always make sure to ask questions even if it may seem redundant at first.

Following that advice, our task for today on top of the one we were already doing was to verify the tickets that we were assigned to if we understood the task.

Friday (2023-09-08)

I asked my fellow interns what they did the day before as I don’t have classes on Tuesdays and Thursdays. It was a further continuation of the previous tasks. We were instructed instead of finding visual bugs and inconsistencies, we were to find bugs that are impeding the functionality of the application.

However, we were not able to find much because we addressed such bugs at the very beginning when we started our tasks and now that leaves little to remain. I wanted to further explore the functionality of the website however that will be a task that I will be able to do on Monday.