My first work rotation with Texas Instruments began January 6, 1999.  I had been interviewed by and hired to work under Mark Abramowitz in the customer support department.  I was gradually integrated into the office environment by attending numerous presentations through which I was able to meet my fellow co-workers and learn about the technology which TI used and developed.  I also read the plethora of documentation which was available on Digital Signal Processors (DSPs) and the software tools developed (most of which are used in conjunction with one or more DSPs).  Through such sessions and informal discussions, I learned what a support engineer accomplished in his daily activities, and developed a general idea of what would be expected of me.
                    The second full week of my employment was when I first began taking phone shifts.  Every business day was divided into five phone shifts.  The first went from 8:30-10:30 A.M., the second from 10:30-12:45 P.M, the third from 12:45-3:15, the fourth from 3:15-5:45, and the final shift from 5:45-8 P.M.  Each person took three to four phone shifts a week, and was responsible for the support inquiries received during those time intervals.  While my knowledge of TI DSPs and tools was increasing, it was still very limited, so at first my job consisted of using programs such as Vantive and Adante (standardized technical support email and filing programs to enable tracking of particular issues over time), following standard procedure to open support cases for incoming emails and calls.  I would then assign the cases to the specialist of the particular DSP or tool in question.  Between accomplishing this and other tasks assigned to me, I would sit in with different members of the support team and work towards solutions for numerous cases being worked on at the time.  This would increase my knowledge of the various DSPs and tools, and after a few weeks I was able to make a noticeable contribution to the support team, either solving cases on my own or working in close conjunction with others.  Working through a support case takes on a variety of different forms.  Generally, however, it requires asking as much information as possible about the customer’s working environment,  and recreating that environment as closely as possible through using a similar system and/or code sent by the customer that exhibited the problem.  If the problem is recreated and there is no valid explanation for the behavior, a bug is filed and assigned to a developer.  If the problem is unable to be recreated, one must continue working with the customer to attempt to provide an explanation and workaround for the problem.
                   During this work rotation, I performed two other tasks as well.  I edited the SDS bug list in order to make its content more presentable and coherent to customers browsing the support website, as many defects are eventually are published externally.  I also performed user testing for a product in development known as Code Composer.  This application provides a user with a development environment in which to write and execute code on a particular DSP product line.  The Code Composer product that I tested was in development for the TMS320C27x DSP product line, geared mainly towards the hard disk drive market.  I reported to my superior, Scott Smith, any errors that occurred when using the basic functionalities of the tool, and he saw that they were taken care of accordingly.
                  My customer support experience was a very pleasant and productive one.  All of my fellow team members and people throughout the site in general were very helpful and inclusive in welcoming me to the TI team and providing me with an information which I needed.  I found the tasks I was performing to be interesting, educational, and rewarding.