Memoirs of a CPUNERD

Luckily that isn’t the case at Google. As it turns out, I have one boss. And unlike other places I’ve been, only that boss gets to tell you what to do. There are a lot of really nice things about Google too, besides the relatively flat hierarchy. For example, you can’t go wrong with all of the free food (three free meals a day) and drinks. The talks are also really interesting. On any given day, there are several (usually two to five) engineering geared talks. There are many other perks that I’m sure I’ll disclose as time goes on.

However, before I learned of all the joys of Google, I still had one day left in Davis. On Monday morning, I had breakfast at Posh Bagel with Shakeh. Afterwards, I drove down to the Bay Area, unloaded my stuff at my apartment, then went to lunch with Andrew at Google. After I was done with lunch, I went back home, unpacked, bought a few more random things, then went to Greenpoint to play tennis with Matt. When I got done, I showered, went home, then went to this Indian-Chinese fusion place on Castro street with Lee, Ciderman, and Chief Justice. Unfortunately, the place wasn’t really fusion. It just served Indian and Chinese Food. I wouldn’t really recommend it over any other Indian or Chinese place.

On Tuesday, I had my orientation. There were over over one-hundred and twenty interns who were starting with me. I met an incredible amont of people. We all did the obligatory paperwork and what not, and then got to take a small tour of the main campus. I say the main campus because the entire campus is actually a collection of twenty or so buildings, but there are four old SGI buildings that are the heart of the Mountain View office. At the end of the day, all the engineers got a rather entertaining talk on what life as an engineer is like. I met my summer host, was shown my desk (a thirty inch monitor!!!), started some reading on the Google code base, and then went to dinner. Shakeh showed up shortly after I got home (she just finished her finals). We went to get her some food, then watched some South Park before going to sleep.

I might not have eight bosses, but I’m in meetings virtually every minute of the day it seems. Seriously, on Wednesday, I was in meetings for all but thirty minutes of the day. The canadians came for dinner, and Louise ended up joining them. Rachel and Andrew ate with us, as did Mike. After dinner we rode an electric scooter a bit, then watched some search queries run by for a few minutes while the canucks got some naked juice. I gave Mike a ride back to his hotel (he was only here for orientation, he got a spot in the Kirkland office).

On Thursday, I got in around 0915 and had breakfast with Ray and Ashley at the No Name Cafe. I had another meeting at 1100, then went to lunch. I ran into Ben, a friend of Alden’s from last year. Afer lunch, I went back to desk, worked through some more readings, then (you guessed it) went to more meetings. I got home and tried pulling out Rosetta Stone. the program is pretty cool, I like the way it works. Perhaps with time I’ll figure out German after all.

Friday, my day started out with (you guessed it again) more meetings! This time, we actually had a meeting scheduled for 1000 that got cancelled at 1025. I had another meeting at 1100 for my group’s interns. After the meeting, I went to lunch with group. I somehow managed to lose them. I ended up having lunch with Ray and his friends, Tom and Stephanie (and another guy who didn’t say more than two words and thus I dont remember his name). Fridays at Google mark a cool event called TGIF. At TGIF, upcoming product announcements are shared ahead of time, and the new Googlers (Nooglers) are introduced. I had a quick bite to eat with Andrew and Rachel while waiting for traffic to die down. This proved harder than one would think because of the cafe closures. Rachel and I went to several different cafes before finally going back to No Name. After dinner, I drove up to Redwood Shores to hang out with shakeh. We spent some time together until 2200, then I headed home. I went to Google and got massaged by the char for half an hour before actually going home.

On Saturday, I went to Ikea with Dan (under half an hour booya!). After that, we went to Best Buy. We went home and put stuff together for quite a bit of time. Dan left around 1530. I watched some Red vs Blue, then decided to get some food (for the record, I had a single chipotle burrito to eat all day). I went to Bed, Bath, & Beyond, and then to back to Best Buy again for an audio cable and tried to find headphones (but couldn’t find any good ones). When I got back, I watched some more Red vs. Blue until Conny and Daniel showed up. I helped them carry some stuff into my place for temporary storage, then showed them around the Googleplex. I ended up hanging out with Brian, Kim, and the Canadians watching South Park. I wanted to get onto a good sleeping schedule, so I continued watching Red vs. Blue until 01:15 or so. It turns out that was also a good idea as I forgot to put my computer desk together, and this gave me time to finish that.

I intended to get up at 0630 on Sunday, but I just couldn’t. I figured that I needed at least six hours of sleep, so I slept until 0730 instead. I showered, then headed to Google to do laundry and caught up on my webpage while I was there. The cafes aren’t open on Sunday, so I had cereal for the first time in years. After laundry, I went home, hung everything up, then went to In ‘n Out before going to the Wii party at Google. I played in a Wii tennis tournament (i suck btw= \ ) then played ping pong with a guy named andrew from Georgia Tech. I went home after that, then headed up to Redwood City to check out a place for T-Dawg. After that, Justin came over to my place, followed by Rachel and Jessica. We then went out to dinner on Castro street in Mountain View. We found a really good pizza place (which I totally wasn’t expecting). After dinner, Justing and I went back to my place and watched the Scott Tenerman Must Die! episode. Oh man! I so did not see that one coming.

Wow… everyone is either gone or leaving. Saying goodbye at the BBQ was especially hard. I was lucky that I didn;t have to say goodbye to many people, since I am going to see them again before they leave. But saying goodbye to Rachel and Sunny was painful. I expected Sunny to cry a little, and she did. Rachel though, seeing her cry just made the whole permanence of the situation hit home. For many of my friends, it can’t be see you later. I will most likely not see them again. Don’t get me wrong, I fully intend to try, and when I go to their country, I’m seeing them if they’re there. But the problem is that we all travel, and many of them aren’t reachable during the summer months. But I’ve told myself not to look at the past. I still have many friends in Davis, and I am one-hundred percent positive that I will make more friends this summer at Google. I just wish I didn’t have to lose the ones I already have.

Monday was nothing special. Just the usual sports-grind. I did end up hitting with Desiree for awhile in tennis because Paloma’s leg was really bothering here. In tumbling, we practiced our routines and handsprings some more.

I think I finally figured out what is going in frisbee. Of course, it takes until the last day of our class to do it. There is one person in our class who is injured. Most of the other people in the class are just in the class to screw around, and maybe get better if they’re pushed. Recently I’ve always been on the team with those people, and the one injured person has not been on my team. Hence, we were able to focus on playing and getting better, and since our oppenents were just screwing around, we tended to beat them quite handedly. After all my sports, I went to the MU and had lunch with everyone, then met up with Desiree and helped for an hour or so with some ECS 30 questions.

The last day of tumbling was a lot of fun. All the groups did their routines, most of which were pretty entertaining. Racquetball and squash was good to. I got to play almost everyone in the class, and I played Mike one last time. I hit with Desiree in tennis as Paloma’s knee was still bugging her.

Dan I went down to Mountain View on Thursday to sign our lease and fill-out the move-in form. Dan forgot to call the cable company so we couldn’t get cable set up that day. I actually ended up having to call to get the cable installed since the cable company was feeding Dan a line of crap about having to pay a one-hundred dollar installation fee. What happens when I call? Why what else, they don’t have any free appointments for a week. Oh well, after I got home I got changed and went to go play racquetball with Rachel and Anne. We played for about two hours, then they both had to leave.

Minya and her friend Sol played racquetball with me on Friday. After I played them, I played with some people from my class, then also played Elaine. I ran to Wal-mart afterwards for an oil-change and to pick up some stuff for the new apartment.

Shakeh and I went to the Farmer’s Market on Saturday and met Verena there. Chris showed up a little later. We hit up a head-shop for some cigars, then just waited around for Justin to get back. Once he was back in town, we picked him up, then headed for Reno. We got in around 17:45 and just went straight to Bully’s. I was shocked when I got there. Apparently Nevada passed a measure to ban smoking in restaurants! I’m glad, but still very shocked that Nevada would pass such a measure. Anyways, Mike, Sebastian, and Nathan joined us for an hour or so. After we were done eating, Sebastian, Chris, Justin and I headed to Stoney’s to see Static-X play. The venue seemed alright, except it got ridiculously hot! A band called In Vitro was the first to play. They were alright, but for silly reason they came out in tin-foil masks and hats. It looked kind of lame, but they lost them fairly quickly. After In Vitro, Ot3p played next. They were pretty good. I saw them several years ago at the Ozzfest, and they were pretty decent. Of course, we couldn’t wait for Static-X to come on. They came out, and Wayne was already incredibly drunk. They still played an awesome set though, besides being completely trashed and continuing to drink as time went on. I couldn’t believe it though, they only played for an hour! They were the headliners, I thought they’d play for at least an hour and half and do an encore. However, with the air inside at ninety degrees and completely stagnant to the point where sweating did nothing, I wasn’t surprised that they chose to end early. I got to hear most of my favorites, though there were a few requests that went unanswered. Specifically, the songs I remember them playing were Cannibal, Cold, Behemoth, Push It, and Love Dump. They played more obviously, I just forgot which songs.

The international student thrown farewell BBQ was on Sunday. Shakeh went to that and hung out for a few hours, then took off and saw Knocked Up which was really funny. Not surprising though, the writer was the same as the one for The Forty Year Old Virgin. After the movie, we went home and Shake studied for a bit. We got a little hungry around 20:45 so we went to Woodstock’s for a slice. Afterwards we went to get gelato, but the only place in town was already closed.

Wow… I just realized that I have a week left in Davis. It’s very scary to me. Last year, I was with Deanna and knew all of her friends. But then, when we broke up, I had basically no true friends in Davis. So when the Summer came around, I welcomed it. I really wanted to get away from Davis, to get away from all the drama contained within. Obviously the thought of making a real salary for a few months helped entice me further. But the real draw was getting out into the world and discovering what I had been missing for the past four years.

I was with Deanna for a long time. More than four and a half years to be exact. I mean we were engaged! But really, in that entire time, we never really got out and did much. During the school year, we were always “work! work! work!” During the summer, she was so busy trying to scrimp and save money for a rainy day (meanwhile I was paying for all of our dinners and dates around Reno), and I was content with letting her, that we didn’t get out much. We went on a total of three trips in our four years. Yes, my reluctance to travel had a lot to do with that. But in reality, I went on every feasible trip she offered. Of the trips we went on, really only one of them was truly a new experience. We went to Santa Cruz twice (Seascape resort to be precise), but that was nothing truly new. I’d been to the Pacific Ocean several times before. The trip to the Carolinas was a lot of fun, the East Coast and the culture and sights were definitely new and exciting to me. But really, besides that, most of what we did was just the daily grind.

The reason I bring this up is just to illustrate how much I had been missing. I essentially sat idle for four, count them one, two, three, four! summers, while other people my age were taking road trips, going to Europe, seeing old friends, etc. I can’t put a lot of blame on Deanna though, I had a lot to do with my idleness. But breaking up with Deanna and having an out-of-town job lined up really helped open me up to the idea of getting out from my comfort zone (which didn’t exist in Davis anymore) and trying something new and exciting.

But that was last year. This year is a whole different story. The coming of Summer, while still bringing the possibility of nearly endless fun (I’m going to Google for goodness’ sake!), brings the realization that almost all of my friends are leaving. It also brings the problem of only being able to see my girlfriend sporadically. If I were to stay in Davis, it would be easy to bolt out of town with her and go along the coastline somewhere. Oregon, SoCal, Washington, they would all be possibilities. Since I’m working though, our excursions will be limited to treks between Davis and the Bay Area, with hopefully one or two three day weekends giving us a bit of extra time to spend alone in a place new to us.

This last year did have its down moments. The worst and most chilling was probably the realization that some of my former “friends” chose the friendship (or the seeking of a relationship) of a selfish girl who has never done anything for any of them them over my friendship. This one really hurt me, especially since I felt that I had extended myself to help or embrace some of these people, and they just idly threw me to the wind. That hurt, but it helped me to get over them and realize that I have true friends who wouldn’t do something like that. Another sobering moment I had came as I tried to re-establish friendships with friends of Deanna. I was close to a few of these people, but they felt that they couldn’t be friends with both me and Deanna. That was their choice, but it still hurt, since they were really the closest friends I had in Davis for my entire first year.

However!… The good times this year far outweighed the bad. I made so many wonderful friends. They’ve come from several walks of life, with many of them not even being from the U.S. Talk about an eye opener, I didn’t even have to leave Davis to get a taste of what life outside the U.S. is like ; ) But seriously, I love the friendships and relationships I had over this last year, and am sad to see some of those change due to the soon to be thousands of kilometers between us.

And of course… there’s always the sports I’ll miss = ) It’s hard to beat being able to work out for five hours straight, four days a week. Especially when you have so many others who you know you can depend on for games, matches, etc. Google will offer some of this. They have their own gym (thank goodness, NVIDIA didn’t, that was rame), and have pickup games for most sports I enjoy playing. There are tons of tennis players, and even a few squash/racquetball people there. All in all, I should be able to find people to play with on a relatively regular basis, but it won’t be the same as playing in the classes.

Oh well… Here’s to another Summer in the Yay Area! See you all back in Davis in the Fall!

Monday was your typically “loose ends after a long weekend” day. I did my laundry, ran some errands, and then just chilled out with Shakeh. Of course, since it was a holiday, that meant no PE = ( It was alright though, I got to relax. We watched Accepted, which, with the exception of the last ten percent of the movie, was actually surprisingly funny (though predictable).

And then came Tuesday, or as I like to call it, the day before the day after the day coming immediately behind the day where I tied up loose ends… Yeah, a bit excessive, what can I say? I had another fantastic day of Ultimate. Badminton was the usual, as was Tennis. I had a meeting with Staadt at 15:00, which went fine. We talked about funding for the next year and my projects and my status. Later that night, Camran, Abhi, Shakeh, Carlos and I went to watch Shrek the Third. It was really good! Obviously it is the third in the series, and that tends to mean it can’t be as good as either of the previous two. But that wasn’t the case. The first one was obviously hilarious and original. While this one wasn’t original, it maintained a solid pace of hilarity and laughs. I would highly recommend this to anyone who hasn’t seen it yet.

For some reason, we didn’t have a racquetball coach on Wednesday. Not sure why, he just didn’t show up. I played a few people. I’m trying to play everyone in the class at least once. I set up a lesson with Coach Maze for tennis. In the afternoon, I met with a geologist for KeckCaves about some possible research. It’s great, If I decide to take it, the research would be exactly what I was doing for LBL. I went to the gymnastics club meeting with Sara, and almost broke my neck. I was doing roundoffs on the tumble-track, and Kristen noticed that I was coming out of them looking down. She told me to look forward. I tried, but instead of looking forward, I looked up. This caused my body to rotate backwards and I landing on the top of my shoulders and my neck. Needless to say, it hurt. After that, Sara, Justin, and I went to the Farmer’s Market for dinner.

Another day of Ultimate, another great day of Ultimate. Funny, I wonder why my teams keep doing well. It seems that as long as I’m not on a team with an injured player, we do great. Tennis was good, I just practiced serving for a bit, then I had my lesson early. The lesson was awesome. It’s really nice to get some actual one-on-one attention, and I think it really helped. I went to lunch at the MU all sweaty, which I wouldn’t have done otherwise, except I thought I might catch Shakeh getting food. After that, I went home, showered, then took Justin to get his car in Sacramento. I dropped Shakeh off at her lab, then went out to dinner with Falcon, Tony, and Brian. As soon as I got home from that, Shakeh called, so I picked her up. We got home, then decided to watch Ghost Rider. Seriously people! WTF?! I loved the comic. I usually love Marvel comic movies. I like Nicolas Cage. That movie just plain sucked. No, it was beyond suck. The entire world would be a better place if that movie simply ceased to exist and all memories of it were erased.

I went to the GSA bagel day with Shakeh as usual, then she took me to her O-Chem class. It was alright, though I understood approximately 0.0001% of what the professor was talking about. After class, we went to Ali Baba for lunch. I worked until 19:00, at which point I dropped Shakeh off at an internship orientation, then went home and napped. She called me about an hour later, so I picked her up, then we went to Anita’s for the Yellowstone photo viewing.

My Saturday was a lot of fun, but a complete wash in terms of productivity. I woke up a little late, 9:15, hopped in the shower, filled up my gas tank, got Carl’s Jr. for breakfast, then headed to Palo Alto. Verena, Lee, Ciderman, Chief Justice, and I proceeded to move Lee’s apartment from Stanford to his new place in Mountain View. We got the majority done in four hours, then called it quits for the day. We went to Togo’s for dinner, then I went to Greenpoint to try and find the Canadians. I couldn’t find them, but I picked up another South African, Chris. We headed back to Lee’s place, then to Castro street to get some gelato and let Verena look around. We got back around 23:00, at which point I headed home.

Being as I am going to the Yay Area in a week and a half, I need some new clothes. I went to the mall with Shakeh on Sunday for this purpose. We started by getting some crappy mall chinese food. I don’t know why, but I am just a sucker for this stuff. It is nothing compared to good American-Chinese food like P.F. Changs, yet I can’t seem to turn it down. After eating, we proceeded to visit Anchor Blue, American Eagle, Forever 21, Hot Topic, and Macy’s for clothes. We ended up taking four hours, and I spent almost two-hundred dollars. I was okay with it though, being as I need new clothes, especially for the summer. After the mall, we got home, rested for a bit, then went out for an early celebration of our six-month anniversary. We went to Tucos Wine Market and Cafe. It was awesome. You know how you can have expensive food, like $70-$80 a person, and it doesn’t taste that good? Well this was not that way. Everything we had was awesome. The cheese and wine were excellent. The salads were of a different nature than we’re used to, and that turned out to be a great thing. The appetizers (of which we only had a small sample) were superb in quality and taste. And the entrees were to die for. I loathe seafood. The swordfish tasted so fresh and good though, it didn’t even matter that it was fish! The vegetarian lasagna was cooked perfectly, and the combination of vegetables worked marvelously. And of course the dessert was great (but then again, it’s dessert, hard to screw up). The final bill came out to $160, which I gladly paid. Truth be told, I actually thought it would be more, just based on the shear quantity of food we ordered (we only sampled the non-entree dishes). Actually, right after we ordered our gigantic meal, the owner came out and said “how hungry are you?” I informed him that we were both decently hungry, and he said that for two people, this is a lot of food. I felt a bit embarrassed, but in the end it was worth it to get to taste everything we did.