#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!).