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.