Written by Dallea Caldwell

You know Jaime, Rochelle, and Steven D as well as Aman, Gurpreet, and the big MP, but do you know the most anonymous intern of all? Dallea, the blogger intern, had a very shiny nose (before Pro-Active).  And if you ever read the blog, you would say her awkwardness shows.  All of the other interns introduced themselves by name. Then after 6 months blogging, she figured she would do the same. Way back one January day,  she responded to a Craigslist Ad. Then Manpreet said “Since you like to write, won’t you blog long into the night.” Now working with more interns, she’s loving their creativity; but feels slightly intimidated, saying, “it’s so weird to talk about me.” (more…)

Written by Jaime Fawcett

That’s Michael. He’s pretty great.

You may remember him from Rochelle’s blog on our 4th of July excursion to DC’s start up event 1776. He is also one of the star ping pong players here at Seva Call. More on that later though.

I’m excited to introduce Michael in our 8 Interns : 2 Months : 1 Office series, because he and I both go to Carnegie Mellon University! Which means I get to ask him all the deets about going to CMU.

Just look at the CMU Swag.

What exactly are you wearing in the photo above?

That’s my uniform for Kiltie Band (the CMU marching band). We are very serious about our kilts and uniforms, but not very serious about everything else. Playing tenor saxaphone in Kiltie for football games is one of my favorite things at CMU. We get to heckle and just be loud for the entire game. When we march, we all wear funny hats — wolf hats, bicycle helmets, just crazy stuff — but I have yet to find my own personal funny hat. It’s also pretty chill. They know the coursework at CMU is really strenuous, so they’re okay with us missing a couple of rehearsals, as long as it doesn’t become a habit.

What other hobbies or extracurriculars do you do? Inside or outside of school.

I went to a hackathon in April. Hackathons are these intense weekends where the hosts create an environment where you can be really productive and creative. The goal is to start from a clean slate and then create a working demo of your project in 24 hours. Sleep is optional. Myself and three other CS freshmen rented a Zipcar, drove to Princeton and brainstormed ideas on the road. We ended up making a game where you upload a song, and then the enemy ships fire at you based on the beats of the song. I learned a lot, but it was exhausting.

So you do development here at Seva Call. What are you working on specifically?

I’m part of the engineering team, so I work on the database and the website. Recently, I’ve been improving the admin panel which the Seva Call employees see, which allows everybody else to be more efficient.

If you could possess any superpower, what would it be and why?

The power to stop time. Because if you’re in a fight with a superhero or supervillain that had any other superpower, you would win. Obviously.

What do you get on your Chipotle order?

I get a bowl with steak, no beans, mild salsa, corn and sour cream. But it varies. Sometimes I get guac when I’m feeling adventurous.

Tell us about the photo down below.

That’s the fence. We painted it to promote the final Kiltie Band concert of the year. It was fun, but it was a bad night to be painting outside. Even though it was in March, it was below  freezing. Every 10 minutes or so we would have to run inside to get warm and return feeling to our toes.

So you play ping pong here at the office, and you’re pretty good. When did you start playing ping pong. Are you a ping pong pro?

I can’t remember when I first played ping pong. I never had a table, so it was always just at friends’ houses. I’ve been playing tennis since I was 6 or 7 though.

Which Intern is your most worthy opponent?

I enjoy playing with Andre the most. We’re the most evenly matched.

Tell us about this Ping Pong Ranking system you’ve created?

In the office we each have our own mental rankings of the players. Matteo wrote down his own rankings on one of the whiteboards and proclaimed it official. I thought we could do better, so I made a google form so we can all input our own rankings and get a consensus. We’ll see where it goes and how it changes for the rest of the summer

Who do you think will reign champion in the next Seva Call Ping Pong Tourney?

Augie for sure.

Any weird hobbies or talents?

I built my own computer back in June. I picked the parts that I wanted and then put it all together in my bedroom. It ended up looking pretty sweet, and it runs a whole lot faster than my old computer.

Zombie Apocalypse Survival Team: 4 People. Ready. Set. Go.

Jaime, (Huzzah again! I keep telling my interviewees they don’t have to pick me….=P) because she’s awesome in every single way.

Umm…Let’s just go with a bunch of Jaime’s. Like Jamie and 3 clones of Jaime.

Hogwarts House?

Ravenclaw. I’m actually reading this really interesting Harry Potter fan fiction called Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality. The twist is that Harry Potter is a rationalist, and he has adventures while trying to apply logic to the magical world. It’s really clever, and I recommend it to everybody.

I will definitely have to check it out, Michael. So, Seva Callers, now you know all about our fellow Tartan fan, Michael. Be sure to check out the rest of the Seva Team and to like us on Facebook!

Written by Steven D’Adamo

Good day, fellow survivors! I’m back with more tips to zombie-proof your home…and your life. Your home is now a castle, but can you survive in it? Probably not for long. You need food, and that means going on a raiding mission of your nearest mega-bulk-everything-warehouse. I hope there’s a CostCo near you.

But before you un-barricade your doors and windows and rush headlong into that mob of zombies that has been waiting for such a desperate, brash move for weeks, you’ll want to make sure you can actually outrun them first.

It’s time to get yourselves into zombie-fighting and running-away-from shape. Since you are now hopefully holed up in your Fortress of Solitude (from zombies), you won’t be able to do much training outside. And that means getting creative with some indoor calisthenics.

Resistance Training

In order to be able to escape in any circumstance, you’ll basically need to turn into an amateur parkour runner. Pull-ups aren’t just for the Army anymore. Find a balcony, a stack of desks, or an actual pull-up bar and start hanging from it until you can literally pull yourself up. Once you can do that, add weight using a backpack or a small child, and keep pulling. Then do it with someone on your back. You never know when you’ll need to carry dead weight (Ha! Bad pun).

Then do some push-ups. Why? Because they basically work every muscle in the body. Increase the amount of weight you actually push up until you can do at least 50 with any weight. Use the same increments you did for pull-ups: your own weight > small child > fully grown adult.

Then, you can do squats to build those legs. Squatting your own body weight can be quite the workout, but eventually, you’ll need to do some squats with extra weight on your back.

You can also do box-jumps to help your ups. Simply stand in front of a desk, a table, or some stairs, and jump up onto it. Do this in sets of 10 to 12, and increase the height of the “box.” By the end of your training, you should be able to scale a 10-foot wall by jumping, grabbing the ledge, and pulling yourself up.

Cardio

If you’re completely insane — and I’m guessing by this point about 60% of you are — you can go running outside. See how long you can make a pack of zombies trail you before they give up, or you give up and die. Then practice cutting and juking around them for some directional speed. And of course, you can take the term “suicides” literally by doing wind-sprints through a field of grabby, bitey hands and mouths.

Or you could just stay inside and jump rope for a while. It’s your call.

Don’t forget to train other muscles too, using whatever is lying around. Your overall strength will benefit greatly from strengthening secondary muscles like you triceps, hip abductors, and deltoids (shoulders).

The Fort Talk Local Team has been doing a lot of training. What do you think we’ve been doing with the twenty-something computer monitors we had laying around? They work surprisingly well as junk kettlebells and free weights.

Now get to training! And here’s the last installment in case you missed it. Steve out.