It's time for me to start blogging again. 

First, and most pleasantly, I no longer feel so overwhelmed.  Work is starting to be a pleasure again.
After struggling, for far too long, to transfer a single integer from a xen front end to a xen back end, I expanded this code to handle multiple data transfers, of varying sizes, as multiple requests and responses.  This second task took me 3.5 days.  Quite a difference, and a relief.

I still want to be sure that before this internship is over, I have done something useful:  at a minimum a decent subset of the original task.   If I am able to continue to work more effectively, I might be able to finish the task.

I have learned a lot, so, for me, this hasn't been a waste of time,  but I do like to give value for money being paid me.  I began this project wanting to get into the Linux world (after 30 years of not touching Unix), and I have learned numerous tools, from shell scripting to an easy facility with find and grep, to git; concepts such as the Xen project, and how it is organized and the 9p file system.

Since I lost a week to health issues, I've committed to my mentors that I will continue for a week after the internship is officially over.  I suspect I will use much of that time to update documentation that tripped me up, so the next person will find their task easier.