Last Day *sniff* At Nautronix *sniff*

Last Friday was my last day at Nautronix! I decided to take a week off before I go back to uni to get everything organised, and get my sleeping patterns all back in check. I was looking forward to this week off, but I really had a great time at Nautronix so I'm sad that my vacation work is over for another year.

Just a little bit of background info...

I worked at Nautronix as a software engineer, and so I was mainly writing code. Last time I worked there I was working on an acoustic simulator that was helpful to the company, but not exactly a product. This time I was writing code that is embedded on devices that sit on the bottom of the ocean... Scary!

Nautronix deals with underwater acoustics and all sorts of projects that derive from this. There's many sub projects, and I worked on two of these during my time there. I also developed a set of wiki pages to help new people ease into working at Nautronix, since going from uni to a company is a gigantic learning curve, (or rather, a learning cliff of death if you get overwhelmed!).

The last day...

My last day was also the last day of James (another vacation student) and Ryan (an engineer leaving to Aberdeen for a while), so everyone went out to lunch at Sandrino's in Freo to celebrate. I think almost everyone got the number 10 pizza, which would have to be my favourite meal in any restaurant in all of Freo.

It was really sad to leave! There's a lot of people that taught me A LOT, and I just learned so much, that I feel like I'd rather stay there and get more educated than I do at uni! It's not every day that you're surrounded by people who are all smarter than you, and when that happens you just need to be a sponge and get as much advice/info/suggestions/mentoring as possible.

I'll also miss the culture. I guess it's because Freo is a walk away, and the fact that the beach is so near by, that people are just so relaxed. People generally walk to get lunch, even if its just to get some fresh salt air. Oh I just remembered I didn't write about my yacht adventure! Side tracking...

When one of the projects was coming to an end, Mark took us out for a twilight sail on his yacht! How exciting. I'd never been on a yacht, and I actually didn't KNOW what a yacht was. It was really great, but not what I expected. I envisioned relaxing on still water with cocktails, but because it was windy, it was quite a rough sail, and there's no time for cocktails when you're holding on for dear life! When the yacht turned, the side of the yacht was actually in the water! It was awesome though and although I feel quite useless at actually doing anything, I'll quite happily be a passenger again. Anyway enough about that...

Oh OK there's this really strange thing... There's this plaque that is passed around from cubicle to cubicle, and you sort of pass it on after you've had it for a while. Paul, one of the engineers, bought it at a garage sale, and it's been at Nautronix since then. I myself had it the last day I was there, and passed it on to Alistair, an engineer who started the same time I did. It's this small plaque of a bizarre red dragon, with an interesting message on the back. Joshua... if you are out there... please tell us the origins of the Dragon Plaque!



So that's that!

The summer went really quick, and I'm already busy getting stuff organised for uni. I've already found out that I need to change my enrollment, so that's a good start to the semester :( Oh well, I'm planning to go back as a vac student again next year, so hopefully that all works out. So to all the Nautronix people - thanks for always taking time to help me out, and thanks for everything you've taught me - you'll all be missed!