This is the end

Well, I've been back for a while now, and just finished uploading pictures of my trip (See link 1 and link 2). I miss it already.

Thanks for watching!

Joyeux anniversaire à moi!

I'm now a year older than I was three hours ago! Woo-hoo!

I also got to see Subtle tonight, a band I've wanted to see for months and never thought I'd see. They were _incredible_. What a night.

Pictures!

Two quick stories about pictures:

One, tonight, two interns, a full-timer, and I were sitting in a cubicle talking. One of the interns (Boris) asked the other (Cyrus) if he could copy Cyrus' Pictures folder to use as a slideshow screensaver. Cyrus said no, that he'd spent too many long hours scanning deviant art for pictures he liked and that he wouldn't have Boris leeching off his effort. The full-timer (Paul) said that since the computers are all running off of networked drives, that Boris could simply copy them directly. Cyrus decided he would remove read permissions from the folder, so Paul immediately opened a terminal and tried to copy them out before Cyrus could do it, which made it look exactly like one of those old hacker movies. Cyrus ended up beating Paul, but while he was distracted by his success, Paul simply copied them out of Cyrus' snapshot directory (the contents of our /home directories are backed up every hour), which honestly was a pretty brilliant move. Fun times.

Two, although I've had my camera back for a while now, until last week I did not have any memory cards on which to store pictures from it. That has changed, and since then I have taken some, which will be up as soon as I can so you can see stuff. Cheers.

IIFIFFIFPFIIICCCIICIFPPCFIIC

Since 12PM European time on Friday (3AM here), I've been working on and off on the ICFP contest (http://icfpcontest.org). It is a "functional programming" contest by name, but just a difficult programming puzzle by nature.

The general idea is that we have a blob of text (containing only I, C, F, and P) about 7.5MB long, that we have to get a picture from. First, there is a procedure in which the text is read in chunks, and then modified (by prepending), until it is all gone. During this, a new stream of text is created, which must be parsed into instructions for how to draw on a 600x600 canvas. Once we can do this (according to some given rules) correctly, we have to figure out how to create an almost completely new image by adding some prefix to the original blob and running it through again.

It is a pretty intense puzzle, as they've basically created a virtual stack machine in machine code written in 4 characters, but the cool thing is that after two days, we've begun to understand a significant portion of it. It's pretty cool being able to look at a bunch of seemingly random characters (see title) and actually see form and semantic meaning come out.

Box of Sunshine?

I awoke today to a smell that seemed familiar, but from a place and time far away, as if it was a commonplace sensation in a past life. It was somewhat disturbing, but faint, and I paid it little mind.

I found its source when I walked outside. Into rain.

What.

(It was gone by lunchtime, don't worry.)

Battles!

Last Monday, I went to see a band called Battles play in San Francisco. They were very good. If you find yourself listening to something they've recorded, make sure to turn it up really really loud in order to enjoy it the most, and then go see them live because the recordings really don't capture much of what's there.

On Wednesday, I returned to San Francisco to see fireworks. They were firework-ish, as expected. The return trip was pretty rough, because apparently all of the Bay area chose to go see the same fireworks in the same spot, using the same Caltrain to get there. One would think I would have thought of that beforehand.

That is all. I have a new mini-project that involves lots of reading Ruby, which is unfortunate, because I love writing Ruby but it is absolute torture to read.

TAJ is an Acronym for Jazz

I went to see this dude on Friday, because of the Stanford Jazz Workshop.

It started out pretty awful by my standards. The first song was horribly compositional to begin with, and then for no particular reason went into a "let's just play notes and see what happens" mode. Also, they were all playing way too loud, and seeing how I couldn't tell what was going on, and I was sitting Way Back Here, and they were All The Way Up There, they probably couldn't either. I stuck around though, because I had hope for them, and because my ride wanted to stay.

They improved drastically over the course of the two sets, especially after the intermission. Although the drummer insisted on punishing his drums to no end until probably the last song where he sounded laid-back enough to be in a jazz band, they all got to a point pretty quickly after they came back where they were actually jamming together, and seemed "in the groove" (TM?). The one thing I couldn't get past was the saxophonist, who really had only one tone, and, while it was soothing, the "velvety-soft" thing doesn't really make it seem like you're improvising, and I don't think he was. Thankfully, as the only member of the band on a wind instrument, he had to take frequent breaks, so the rest of the band could play some good music while he rested to come back and monotonize it up again. Although I've spent some time bashing most of them, by the encore they had come around fully, and were extremely good, at one point even playing something I would consider applying the label "rockin' jams" to. 'Twas worth it, by the end.

Today I slept all day. That is all.

Gooooogol Conglomerate

This weekend, two interesting things happened:

1) My computer decided to completely bork itself, particularly in the area of connecting to the internet, and then when I got it working again, a new feature appeared that wasn't working before.

2) I participated in the first ever puzzlehunt at Google! There is a good definition and list of related links here, and the challenge's website (with soon-to-come full puzzletext, I think) here. Those sources will do a much better job of explaining it than I ever could, so I'll list only my personal reactions below, and leave the exposition to better sourced people:

Wheeeeee!

Usability

I went to a thingamajigger today where I won some entries into a raffle, some silly putty, and some chances for all of you to participate in google.

If any of you want to be registered for google's User Experience Research participant database, go here and use the Referral Code "MV2" to sign up.

Enjoy.

Pier 39

So I haven't updated this in (let's see...) six days (or so). Here goes, for the important stuff:

Saturday, I went to Big Basin with a few other interns, and walked around for a bit. The trail was fairly uninteresting (almost disappointing), but there were a few really great sights. Not many great views, because of the Huge Freaking Trees Everywhere Around You Effect, but there were a few pretty amazing picture chances (yet another reminder that I need to yell at Radio Shack, again). Also, we did the whole walk-on-a-log-spanning-a-river-to-get-to-the-other-side thing, which was fun. There really isn't anything more to say about that, which is why I wish I had my camera.

Sunday, I finally checked out Fry's Electronics. I don't know if it's because it was the one in Palo Alto, but I was pretty disappointed. Most of it was like a large-ish Best Buy, with one section for Large Appliances (washers and dryers...?). The only interesting section was where they had cases, motherboards, ram, CPUs, etc. all for sale separately, but unfortunately, the selection was puny compared to what I was expecting. I was later told that the original store is in Sunnyvale, so I might have to try that out. Anyway, I continued on my way to the Caltrain, which I took into San Francisco to meet up with Jason (for the uninformed, he was at Stony Brook last year on exchange, and is now back in Hawaii where he will be staying. He was visiting San Francisco, which is why I went to meet him). I biked from the Caltrain station there, along The Embarcadero (the northeast coast of SF), where it was quite windy, up to Pier 39 (protip: The piers are not numbered the way you would expect. Get a map.), where I walked around for a while until I met up with Jason. Yes, I did see the sea lions, yes, they looked exactly like sea lions always do on TV and in zoos, no, they weren't that special, but yes, the view of the ocean was pretty cool. Pier 39 was Yet Another Tourist Trap, so we played some arcade games, walked around, visited a magic shop, and ate dinner at the Hard Rock cafe (which of course made us both feel like awful human beings), and then I biked back to the Caltrain station as fast as I could because it was almost nine and the last train out leaves at nine on Sunday nights and oh my gosh what will happen if I don't make it I don't have anywhere to stay well maybe I can stay with Jason? but how will I get to work in the morning man this hill is steep what were they thinking when they planned this damn city?.... I got to the station just before the train left (I think I was the second- or third-to-last person on), and got home safely.

Apart from those adventures, I've just been working (my code finally compiles! Yay! But some of the unnecessary dependencies are broken! Boo!), eating great food, and relaxing with the other interns every night. This is actually the first time in a while that I've left work before midnight. Oh, and I got (Yet Another) free t-shirt today! Hooray for schwag!

#00FF00, #000000, and #0000FF make the colors in the sky.

Today I found a DDR 5th mix arcade machine in my office.

Apparently it had been out on loan somewhere for a few months, and returned today.

This just doesn't stop getting better, does it?

Suggestions

I'm starting to think about a side-project to do at work (with my 20% time), and although I can't talk about any of the ideas I'm working with right now, I'd like to open the floor to all of you. If there's anything you ever wanted to see the internet do (and don't want to keep the idea for yourself), let me know. I figure now's the best time to do something cool, since I already have tons of nice libraries to work with, so if you have anything, say it soon.

You can post here if you have an account (or want to create one, it's not hard), or e-mail me at "walshl" at the domain you'd think of. A human should be able to do here what a robot should not, which is to add an "at" symbol (@) followed by "google", a period, and the letters 'c', 'o', and 'm'. Eat that, CAPTCHA.

Great weather today.

Today was fun. After a really bad breakfast (I ordered crêpes with strawberries and nutella, and I think they used an entire jar of nutella, plus they butchered the cappuccino), I read for a while and then biked up to the park north of Google and Shoreline Amphitheatre and biked around there for a long time (good views, I wish I had my camera, thanks again Radio Shack), then found a place with a good view of some mountains to sit down and read some more. After a bit, I kept biking, got back to the main road, and headed back to the park because I had seen signs for a restaurant. I got there, and it was more of a country club than a restaurant (and didn't look that great), so I left, and went back to Mountain View to find a better place to eat. I think if you follow this link, you'll get to a page where you can follow the interesting part of my trip pretty much verbatim. Directions are to be had there; I didn't make a really great map, but you can get the idea.

I found one (some Turkish/Greek place), and ended up having these amazing ravioli that were filled with beef and topped with some kind of yogurt sauce, and had this really cool aftertaste that was almost like eating tea, but not overpowering. Anyone that comes to visit will definitely be brought here, unless I find someplace better.

How are things on the West Coast?

Last night, I was shanghaied into playing a few rounds of Warcraft with some of my co-workers. Yada yada yada, I didn't leave work until 8 in the morning. After a decent nap, I got some breakfast, went back to work to print out my ticket, and then went to Shoreline Amphitheatre for the show.

Early this week, I got a ticket to a music festival that some local radio station put on today. That ticket got me in the door.

I saw one weird and interesting, but not very good small band, and then went over to the main stage where some band called "Scissors for Lefty" was playing. The only thing worth mentioning about them is that most of them weren't wearing pants. After that was Kaiser Chief, who were pretty good, but I only recognized one of their songs (and the rest sort of sounded the same).

Interpol played, and gave me the title for this post (protip: it's in one of their songs). They sounded exactly like an Interpol CD, which was somewhat disappointing.

Finally, Queens of the Stone Age came on, and the real concert started. They played 4 new songs (from their CD that apparently is coming out tomorrow), which were mostly awesome (one was kind of mediocre), and a few of their old standards. The general awesomeness of the performance just really can't be put into serial form. I'll leave it at that.

And, actually, I left it at that (because I was really hungry and wasn't that interested in Social Distortion or Bloc Party (who are Bloc Party?)).

So now you know that work is not the only thing I do.

Those of you that have never played Mario are about to be left clueless. Be warned.

Hanging from one section of the ceiling of my office, by which I of course do not mean one panel, rather an abstract sense of section, there are some brick-patterned and question mark-patterned boxes, among some clouds and coins, on top of which I would very much like to place some pennies.

I'd also like to set up a video camera to capture responses, but they don't allow pictures, so we'll just have to let that one go.

I lied.

I will talk about one cool product release: Google StreetView. I think it's one of the coolest applications of Linear Algebra I've ever seen, plus, you can see the house in front of my apartment.

That is all.

Transportation Guidelines In French

Today, in addition to all the normal "sitting in a chair reading APIs and documentation and writing small pieces of code for practice" stuff that I've been doing all week, I went to an event that apparently occurs each week on Friday afternoons (TGIF, if you missed the title), and which is essentially a huge company-wide meeting with Larry and Sergei (and other people walking up to answer specific questions or discuss specific topics). They stood up in front of everyone and talked about some new product launches, the Developer Day that happened the day before, and a few extra things. I can't talk about a lot of the things they said, and I won't bother listing the product launches (because you can find them yourself if you really want to), but it was pretty cool and they were pretty funny all around. At the end, they took questions both from the audience and online, which ranged from policy/internal workings questions to "can we please get rid of the damn gradients that make all the Google Apps look like MS Office?" That question got an agreeable response, and apparently it is going to be gotten rid of very soon (oh, look at that, they're already gone). I considered walking up and asking them to get rid of the 'i' in iGoogle, but the line was already formed. I'll ask next week if it's still up.

Not a lot else to say, except that I'm going to be pretty bored over the weekend. Oh well, plenty of reading to do (they gave us textbooks!).

Le premier jour

There aren't words to tell of the wonders I've seen today. I'll give it a shot though.

Many interns started today, and most places were packed. We started the day with boring stuff: signing in, filling out forms, etc. I took the opportunity to find as many comfortable places to sit as possible (lots of really big bean bag chairs, at least one being right next to a bunch of Legos and what looked like a childrens' play area --- that is, until you notice the books on the shelves). After some of that, we had lunch, which was great, of course. The place we ate was basically a big cafeteria like you might find at any university. They had all sorts of food at different stations: Indian, Chinese, Italian, Mexican, plus salad bars, waffle making stations, and other sorts of things. They also have big drink cases with all sorts of drinks, including normal sodas and water, and also really good looking teas and Naked smoothies (SBU people will recognize this). For everyone else, Naked smoothies are typically about $3 ($4 if you are on campus), and taste great. We're also told that they're healthy. At Google, as expected, they're free. Insert wide grin here.

As I was eating lunch, my host found me, said hi and sat down at my table, and pretty quickly got excited about a meeting he had and got our whole table to finish eating quickly and go with him. He gave us a quick but in-depth tour of part of the campus, and brought us to a parking lot where his meeting was, because he had to talk to someone about the solar panels they were working on getting situated above the parking lot. It was getting to be time for our next orientation thing, so we headed back to campus. I grabbed a bike that I found at the edge of the parking lot and rode it back. Sidenote about that: Google bought a bunch of old-ish looking bikes (swept back handlebars, low-riding seat, splash guard, front basket, single fixed gear) in different colors, and now they live all around the Google campus for people to take if they need to get somewhere else on the campus (it's sort of large). You can take one wherever you want, whenever you want, as long as you just leave it lying where you end up (and you're not going, say, home). Anyway, we got back, had a long, drawn out lecture about what we would be doing (or something), and then got to go walk around for a half hour. Most of us found our way into one of the mini-kitchens, where they had all manner of snack food (all of which very healthy-looking), a coffee machine (the kind with single-serving grounds cups that look like creamer containers), plenty of tea (even some bagless tea --- they tie whole leaves together with string, which ends up being the string you hold it with, so it looks like you're dunking a flower), sushi and salads in a refrigerator, and another refrigerator filled completely with stuff like milk, half and half, soy milk, and chai tea mix. We had another meeting just for Engineering interns, which was a bit more interesting but still fairly general.

Finally, I met my host (wait, didn't I do that already? Well, not officially, at least...), and we went to the office where I actually have a desk. It's pretty far away from the rest of the buildings (hooray bikes!). We got up there, and he showed me rooms with lots and lots and lots and lots and lots and lots and lots of hardware (that I don't have (or need) access to), and then we went to his office and discussed my project. There is an internal application they have right now, that was his baby from last summer, but it's written in Ruby (which is slow), so my job is to make the same thing, but in C++ (which is fast). I also get the standard "20% time," which I'll probably spend working on one of the ideas I had previously, like some fixes/addons to Gmail (by the way, e-mail me if you have any ideas you want to see implemented because they might be better than what I have in mind).

I got to my cubicle (which is shared with 5 other interns apparently), and played with my computer for a while (huuuuge monitor!), ordered some better input devices, fiddled with the settings in the OS (most of the workstations there run Goobuntu, a (slightly) modified version of Ubuntu), and generally got comfortable with the UI. There is a whole intranet within Google, with all sorts of cool resources and inside-only applications, as well as the latest (bleeding-edge) versions of the already-released pieces of software. One cool thing is that they have very nice URL redirection, so that if you just open up Firefox and type a word that describes what you're looking for, it probably links to the page you want. For example, "http://stuff/" takes you to the page where you can request, you guessed it, stuff (like keyboards, mice, laptops, headphones, etc.).

It was getting a bit late at this point, so I went back to main campus and got more food, and then returned to my cubicle to keep fiddling with stuff. I found one of two micro-kitchens in my building, which has a full espresso machine, so I made a feeble attempt at making cappucino (turns out I'm pretty good at it too!). I also used the bathroom, and made the startling discovery that all the bathrooms are equipped with heated toilet seats, that also have automatic bidets in them. I discovered the first part by sitting down, and the second part by looking to my right, where there was a wireless control box with buttons for "Rear Cleaning," "Front Cleaning," "Dryer," and "Stop," as well as controls for the water and seat temperatures, water pressure, oscillation, and a few other things. I was too afraid to try any of them.

I ended up staying until about 9:30 or 10. I was told, well before that, that it didn't really matter when I arrived or departed each day (unless I missed lots of meetings or failed to produce any output, of course), except for the fact that it was required to go home at some point each night. Darn.

I need to get to bed now so I can go back there early tomorrow morning. =D

P.S. - I have a plastic beer mug that I got at Target. It's the kind with liquid in the side walls that you can freeze to keep your beverage cold. It's making a Mountain Dew Squishie right now, which is delicious.

Carmel has only one 'a.'

In high school, I went to a math competition in Boston, put on by Harvard and MIT. One of my teammates was Frank Fan, who is a current student at Stanford. He came with me today.

First, we went up into the hills on a fairly windy road (Page Mill), took route 9 South to Big Basin Redwood National Forest, and took a short detour through there. That was fun. Imagine a road with no straight sections for more than 40 feet, that makes turns that travel up to 150 degrees at a time, and is just barely wide enough for two cars to pass without touching mirrors (in most parts). Now stick the biggest trees you've ever seen on all sides. It's okay if you can't imagine it, because I (will soon) have (a few) (badly taken) pictures. Praise to Frank for having a camera. Now remember I'm in a massive Chevy Silverado, that I'm not quite (but quickly getting, out of necessity) used to.

Once we got out of that, we kept driving south on Highway 1 (the not-so-pretty part; don't worry, we'll get there eventually) from Santa Cruz, around Monterey Bay, to Monterey and Carmel. The only thing to note in this section of the road was something we found, called "Pot Stop." Aside from its palindromic nature, it wasn't nearly as cool as the average college student would expect. We got pictures anyway (soon to come).

Monterey was pretty boring. What we saw of it (maybe we missed the cool part?) was yet another boring, touristy fishing village where every damn restaurant has the best clam chowder in a bread bowl that you can find anywhere in this arm of the Milky Way. After being stopped by a hobo that, contrary to what previous experience would indicate, wanted me to play him some music on his guitar, we left quickly.

Continuing further South on Highway 1 (it sounds so epic!), I made an erroneous assumption that, if there is one lane going straight and two going left, and more cars are going left, then there must be more interesting things to the left. We went left. For a long time. Saw some nice scenery, but realized eventually that we were going to Carmel Village, not the fabled Carmel itself, and that Carmel Village was full of great wines (that neither of us could purchase yet). We did get some dry ice at a gas station, before heading back to Highway 1, and again turning South, this time, to Carmel.

We walked around for a good bit there. There are tons of shops in Carmel (but frighteningly few good-looking restaurants). We found a Sharper Image, and had to take a look (to see if it was cooler in California), but it was mostly the same, except for one thing --- I feel the need to emphasize this a bit: Sharper Image sells something called "Trump Steaks." Well, it's more like TRUMP STEAKS the way they package it, but the fact remains that it had an entire poster, table, and TV looping a video of Trump directly selling you his Trump Steaks, for prices up to $999 (it was for a large number of steaks at once, don't worry). For a long time, we couldn't figure out how The Donald thought he was going to make any money; after all, there's a fairly small amount of meat on the guy, and I don't think it was even enough for the $999 package. Eventually, we decided he must have the secret to cloning. Anyway, back to the show --- we only visited one other store of importance, which was a cigar shop. Stupidly, we left without asking what time he closed, thinking we'd come back eventually, but when we did, guess what --- he was closed. We left Carmel.

Driving back up the Monterey Bay coastline (sort of --- the road isn't that close for most of it), it took a long time, but eventually we got to Santa Cruz. We found a decent restaurant (guided by a hunt for steaks, as those Trump Steaks had us pretty hungry) and ate. The best part about Santa Cruz is that we saw a bumper sticker claiming that we should "Keep Santa Cruz Weird," which apparently was the guiding philosophy of the whole town. Man, was it weird. Lots of hippies playing music in the streets. Cool, but sort of uncomfortable to walk by that many people asking for money. We found another cigar shop, but it was closed also, which made us sad.

We left Santa Cruz, and it was starting to get a bit late, so we quickly designed an algorithm to get back to Stanford, and followed it North on Highway 1 past where we had originally met it. This part of the road is very pretty, but it was getting pretty dark by that point. I took a few pictures, but they didn't come out very good. I also got to touch the Pacific Ocean for the first time, which was cool, and I still think I have a few grains of sand stuck to my feet as I type this now. It made me feel a powerful, fundamental need for a guitar and firewood and a tent. Maybe later.

We found the road we needed (Route 84), and followed it back over the mountains. This road wasn't quite as windy as our route South, but it was pretty close for about 7 miles, and it was pitch black at this point. For some reason, I actually ended up having a lot of fun driving along it this time, and in retrospect, I probably went a bit faster than Frank would have preferred. Oh well. We got back to Stanford eventually, played with the dry ice a bit, and I came back here.

I have to get up tomorrow to pay some people and switch cars, and then be at Google by 10. Wish me luck.

Kill Imperialism!

Today I got a bike, and then travelled north around the bay. I visited Berkeley and Sausalito, and drove through San Francisco. I wish I had a camera for the trip. Maybe another time.

Berkeley: Nice looking town, incredibly beautiful (and hilly) campus. I saw a handmade sign on University Ave that said "Kill Imperialism! 104.1," so I tuned in, and it had pretty good music. Unfortunately, the signal doesn't go much farther than the town itself. Parking in Berkeley is awful. The campus, though, was great. I saw some really nice looking trees (again, really wish I had that camera), and some very well maintained buildings. Also, lots of construction.

Sausalito: When I arrived, the town was packed, presumably for some sort of Memorial Day Weekend celebration. I saw many expensive looking restaurants and clothing stores, and a few decent coffee shops. I followed one road up for a while, and parked to take a walk around. Walking through the main part of the village (along the water) wasn't very interesting, just the restaurants and shops I mentioned, and lots of people. I eventually hiked up one street away from the water, and began to wonder about the mental condition of the first person to decide to build houses there. It's steep. These were 35-45 degree slopes we're talking about, with plenty of nasty curves. I saw one section of the sidewalk, on a street corner, that sloped upwards as it curved around the building, and must have hit at least a 70 degree incline. It did make pretty much every house have a nice view though. Still insane.

Got back on the road, and took 101 to the Golden Gate Bridge and San Francisco. On the way, there were more steep slopes and windy turns (and a really cool tunnel), but not nearly so much as in Sausalito proper. The bridge really wasn't that cool. I don't know what everyone is always banging on about.

Route 101 goes through the middle of San Francisco, for whatever reason, which makes for some awful traffic during rush hour. It also means that I got a chance to sit in traffic and look around. Not a very interesting looking place, but I did see a cool looking bar with a huge mural covering the outside wall, in 19th century advertisement fashion. I also saw a drive-thru coffee shop.

Not much else interesting to say. I'm going to drive out to the coast tomorrow (over some mountains) and head south to Santa Cruz, and hopefully make it all the way to Monterey and Caramel. I'm really going to miss that camera.

Also, I tested out the bike. It needs a bit of work (new chain, maybe clean up the wheels a bit), but the good news is, it makes it to Google in under 20 minutes.

Also also, I noticed that Google has a water fountain in the shape of a binary tree.

Planes etc.

So at 6 o'clock this morning, my plane took off and went to Chicago, while I slept (a little bit). At 8 o'clock, a different plane took off and went to San Francisco, while I slept (a lot). They took a long time getting my duffel bag, but that was the biggest hassle I had there.

I took the CalTrain, which is a lot like the LIRR in that it's a commuter train, but is a lot better because it looks cooler and is cleaner (and has a neat second story type thing so that the seats are one wide on each side on the second story, and the middle of the floor is gone, so they can see down to the first floor), to Mt. View. As a sidenote, the part about having a kind of "open" second level is a common theme it seems --- what I've seen of California so far just feels, in general, a lot more open. Lots of breathing room, you might say. Sunny, too, so far.

So I got my apartment and a very big pickup truck (in error --- I'll have a smaller one on Tuesday) that is very difficult to drive and park without running over babies, got some food and Jamba Juice (which is actually really good, but still pretty overpriced), and ate it. Even without cable I still get Stargate Atlantis, which really isn't that big of a deal at all, but I did watch it this once. Watching that got me thinking that I should call the cable company and get that and internet set up, which, skipping the details, I'll have on Tuesday. I will also have a "home" phone number that I'll probably never answer. It begins with 650- and ends with 6-5432, but I don't remember the other two numbers. You could brute-force it (only 100 numbers to search through, and you can trim it down by eliminating numbers like 1 and 9), but you probably wouldn't know if you got it right because I wouldn't be there to answer it. I'll leave it here once I get back (from where, you ask? I haven't gotten to that part of the story yet!).

After the food and Stargate, I went to a Target and got some stuff to make it feel more home-y (like sheets), brought that back, and took a shower. I tried to connect to a nearby wireless network (the only unsecured one was GoogleWiFi), but it was very slow, so I left, and took a drive out to the Googleplex.

When I got there, I followed some signs for the Visitor Lobby past some retro-styled bikes with front baskets and small orange flags (presumably the bikes are standard issue), past some palm trees and cacti, past a very small pool/hot tub, to some Googlers playing volleyball. Someone let me in the building as they were exiting, and I got to see some of the food places, but it was pretty empty and not sunny, so I went back outside. There is cool architecture and landscaping, and a nice looking hill on one side that partially obscures the Shoreline Amphitheatre. Pictures to come if Casio ever sends my camera back.

So because I couldn't get decent wireless in my apartment, and the real internet connection didn't exist yet, I came to this place in "downtown Mt. View," called Neto. It's a small coffee shop/bakery type thing with free WiFi, which is what is enabling me to type this. Now I'm going to go back across the street to a restaurant that looked kind of Greek and very good. Wish me luck.

EDIT: GoogleWiFi is working fine now. Don't know what the problem was earlier today (maybe just unusually high load or a bad spot in the apartment), but as long as it doesn't persist, I'm cancelling Comcast. I also learned that the reason it exists is that Google provides wireless internet access all over Mt. View. Yay Google!

Mission Statement

This blog is for recording my experiences during a 12 week internship at Google in Mountain View, California. It is named after a Led Zeppelin song, for hopefully obvious reasons. Its primary purpose is to reduce the problem of large-scale story-telling to large-scale link-providing.

I hope you enjoy it considerably less than I hope to enjoy the trip itself.