Screw it, I don't need to sleep this weekend

"Surfing"
More Pictures

Busy and exhausting weekend.

Friday

• Aperol
  • Went to a party with Michele and Jenny introducing Aperol, an Italian orange liquor, to the US. Situation around the aquisition of the invitation by Michele is still a bit foggy.


• "Shut-up Michele and drink"


• Do you believe in love at first sight or do I have to walk by again?
  • I found my "invitation to flirt" match with the first person we talked to.


• Jon, you need a cell phone (Part 3)
  • Jon finally found us (after we left the party to get food at YoYo Sushi before heading to the club). He called me from the cell phone of some random person he found on the street.


• GPosh
  • I don't think it's too much to expect quality food and service if I'm actually going to pay for food, considering that I get good food and friendly service for free.


• Unmarked club
  • Not sure what the club was called, but it was across the street from the Italian furniture store. Despite my objections, Jenny tried to set me up with my "invitation to flirt" match, who was like as old as my mom.


• I don't know what happened, but I woke up and it was 4 am and I was home
  • Lost while driving in SF, looking for Jon's place. Of course, he was very helpful drunk and none of us knew SF. Oh, and we didn't have any maps. Not sure what happened b/c I fell asleep in the car. Apparently Michele got pulled over right as he got to his place to switch drivers with Jenny, but nothing happened.

Saturday

• Sacramento!
  • Went to Sac with Adam (Jahmeilah pulled out b/c she was sick) for the AVP Pro Beach Volleyball tournament. Only about a 2 hour drive from the South Bay.


• Awesome volleyball
  • Saw Mike Lambert and Stein Metzger beat Todd Rogers and Phil Dalhausser (who won the last 4 tournaments), and then go on to win the finals over Jake Gibb and Sean Rosenthal.


• Ah, Rachel...
  • Caught a game where Rachel Wacholder and Elaine Youngs beat Holly McPeak and Nicole Branagh. Hot and amazing at volleyball.... *falls into a day dream*
    
    


• Roasting
  • It was SO hot. Like 35 degrees, not a single cloud in the sky, and the sun was just burning. The thermometer on the court was maxed out in the sun. Sat/stood in the sun for like 4 hours straight. I wasn't even playing and I was dripping in sweat. My arms were shiny and wiping my arms or back left me with a very wet hand.


• Personalized schwag
  • Adam loves personalized things (omelettes, smoothies, sushi, etc.). We got autographed DiG magazines and the Men's tournament champions (Mike Lambert and Stein Metzger - played volleyball in high school together back in Hawaii) signed our bags, plus some other stuff. He was just touched by the personalized autographs.
    
    


• State Capital
  • We checked out the state capital building and surrounding area after the tournament. Pretty nice, but we didn't get to see Arnold.


• JON!!! YOU GOT A CELL PHONE!!!!
  • FINALLY. 415-308-427#


• Peer pressure (Part 1)
  • Got back around 7:30. Exhausted after only like 4-5 hours of sleep, driving for 4 hours in total, and roasting in the sun, plus I had to get up early the next day. But hey, it's time to live it up. Decided to go out with my roommate, Amy, and her boy toy John (yes, I know you read this) and a bunch of their lawyer/Apple/dog walking friends. Figured I would just sleep Sunday night, but I'm not b/c I'm blogging :p


• The Saddle Rack
  • I'm a bit little country... I know you know the words. Sing along. Wasn't too bad actually, actually pretty good. The band did play country, but not hardcore, and deviated later on.... umm... like Outkast. I had a really good time.


• Haven't seen a club so white since Winnipeg


• "I expected more mullets"


• "It was him!" -- John
  • John framing me for slapping peoples' asses. But I guess it did what he wanted to do b/c she was very friendly to me the rest of the night.


• Apparently I drank enough to dance on the stage... with the band


• They all seem to be named Jennifer
  • So apparently if you meet and dance with a girl at the end of the night, her name is Jennifer. Well, at least this weekend.


• Stalled 3 times in front of the cops
  • Amy had some trouble driving stick. Fortunately the cops only checked to see if things were alright and we came off clean.

Sunday (Pictures)

• Peer pressure (Part 2)
  • Crashed at John's. Woke Amy up at 7:30 and convinced her to come surfing with me.


• Linda Mar
  • We went to Linda Mar beach (in Pacifica) instead of Santa Cruz b/c it was closer to SF for the SF'ers.


• Tons of interns, none of us knew how to surf


• "Those are not beginner waves"
  • Massive waves and not so great b/c they were breaking too early. It was really hard to do anything b/c of that.


• "Surfing"
  • I gave up trying to actually surf (which requires paddling through the massive waves and way out into the ocean and then just falling off the board and being pushed right back to shore), and instead, decided to just do my own thing that sort of resembled surfing. I just went like waist deep, waited for a "wave", which was just a rolling white mess since it broke really early, and then hopping on the board and riding it. At least I got to stand on a board and get pushed around by the waves. Snowboarding made standing on the board and the required balance more natural.


• Need booties
  • The wet suit made the freezing water bearable, but my feet were freezing. Next time I'm getting booties. Seriously. You can actually rent them.


• "Beach"
  • Hard to call it a beach when it's frickin' cold and windy. We frolicked on it for a while playing a bit of volleyball, but left after lunch b/c it wasn't so pleasant.


• "Jenga"
  • Heidi started it. That's what happens when you give building block like things to a bunch of geeks.
    
    
    

    Stonehenge and how it got destroyed - dominoes



• Human circus
  • Featuring: levitating humans, people walking on their hands, jugglers, human pyramids, human pretzels, ear wigglers, random human tricks, inflatable tv's, and humans immitating seals.
    
    


• More pictures (the rest to come later)

Picasa Web Albums (Test)

My Picasa Web Albums

Picasa Web Albums (by Google) was released today in "Test" mode, rather than "Beta". I think they called it that b/c they were sick of all their products in "Beta". It's nothing particularly ground breaking, but it's pretty slick and gets the job done. I resisted using other sites (eg. Flickr and its variants) because it was a pain in the ass to upload lots of images, flipping through images was slow, and storage space was limited.

Picasa Web Albums is nice because:

1. While it says that you're only supposed to have 250 MB, my account has 1 GB :)


2. Uploading from Picasa is a cinch and that's the most important thing - making it easy to put the pictures up. The best part is that it resizes the images before uploading because there's no reason I need to have pictures 1 MB in size just for viewing on the web. This not only makes it faster to upload, but also saves on storage space.


3. Viewing images is fast and easy. You can flip through the images by using the left and right cursor keys, it prefetches the images to make this fast, and since it uses AJAX, it doesn't need to reload the page for each image, which is really nice.

But it would be nice to have:

1. Growing storage space like Gmail


2. Tags/labels like Facebook, where you can label people/things in the picture by drawing a box around them


3. Ability to SEARCH the photos


4. Ability to upload in batch from Mac OS X and Linux

Here are my albums. Just random photos I had lying around. Pictures from my ATV camping weekend at Oceano Sand Dunes are up there. And of course there are photos of my grass and pet pictures.

Hurry up and lose, we have work to do!

Pictures courtesy of Michele

I don't know how anyone gets anything done here. If it's not food, it's volleyball, shooting pool, maybe watching a talk, you know, anything asides from being at your desk.

Still no green card, maybe next weekend

I decided to come back from vacation. I was unsuccessful in finding a millionarie to marry me so I can get a green card and retire as a trophy husband. I did however, see a place for same day weddings, but unfortunately was missing the bride.

The drive down to LA on Saturday morning was 6 hours door-to-door, but that included a stop over at Google for supplies, breakfast, gas, and lunch. The drive back was only 5.5 hours, with one stop for gas and a snack, but it took me like 45+ min. just to get out of LA b/c of the traffic, so you can do the drive in less than 5 hours.

Didn't do much in LA itself, just chilled with Mimi, Anne, and Jamie. Nice relaxing weekend away from where I had all the stress of working 3 jobs. Now I can relax in California b/c I *only* have to work at Google :p.

The best part of the weekend was that I stayed away from the Internet. I watched them use the Internet briefly, but didn't check my e-mail or anything. It was great. It's time to boycott the Internet.

Done. It sucked. Going on vacation. Might not come back.

Oh, and this is post #300 for those of you who are counting.

What happened to the 3 posts per day?

Well, when you have a conference paper deadline and you're trying to submit 2 completely different papers to it while having to work full-time during the day (and evening) and playing 8 hours of volleyball in 3 days, you kinda become short of time.

I'm gonna go on vacation after Friday at midnight Pacific time (the paper deadline). Still up in the air if I'll come back from vacation. Check back Monday to see if I do.

Happy 666! This could only be better if I was blogging from my apartment in Toronto (666 Spadina Ave.)


Song of the day: Christina Aguilera - Ain't No Other Man (listened to it like 50+ times today)

Who knew that spreadsheets could be fun!

Put a couple people together online, give them something to modify in real-time, and chaos and hilarity ensues.

All girls slumber party

In homage to Jill's recent post, this post is only for us girls.

Mimi, Anne, and Jamie flew down to LA last weekend and then drove up here to San Francisco with Mimi's "uncle" and "uncle's" gf. It's "uncle" b/c while technically he is, he's like only a few years older than us.

I met up with them at their hotel near the airport late in the evening and we had an all girls slumber party! This being my first all girls slumber party, it didn't quite meet my high expectations with respect to skimpy clothing and pillow fights. I'll be sure to bring my skanky lingerie next time.

Compensating for deficiencies

In volleyball, I compensate for my height by jumping higher. That's how I can play against people more than half a foot taller than me.

Today, I realized that in softball, I compensate for my utter lack of batting skills by simply running faster. 5 of out the 6 times I went to bat, I managed to get onto the bases! But, it sure wasn't because I hit well. Even when my hits were caught inside the diamond, I still managed to make it onto first base by running my ass off. The one time that I didn't make it onto the base, they just got me. Even my running skills weren't able to compensate for that hit.

I'm pretty much a billionaire

Sergey and I think and behave alike:

• We both use Powerbooks


• We both use our Powerbooks on the toilet (I saw him coming out of a stall with his)


• We both play volleyball in the middle of the work day when we should be doing work (it's really killing my productivity)


• We both work at Google

All I need now is to find my "Larry" and become a billionaire. My mentor told me to change my "Future Millionaire" shirt to read "Future Billionaire" since being a millionaire at Google impresses nobody.

Alternative titles for this post

1. Jon, you need a cell phone (Part 1)
   • Jon follows us to Santana Row in San Jose Friday night, but doesn't get to the lounge until 2 hours after we've been there as he has to find an Internet cafe to get someone's cell number, call from a broken pay phone, in which we can't hear what he says, but he can hear us


2. Jon the wingman


3. Jon, you need a cell phone (Part 2)
   • Jon makes it to my place an hour and a half late Saturday afternoon and the only way we managed to meet up was b/c I went outside and walked around to see if he was here and he had been walking around for 15 minutes


4. Haven't slept in my bed for days
   • Crashed at Michele's after putting back 4 martini's (espresso and apple) and a beer, though I think the martini's were a little watered down. Second night away from home was camping.


5. First time camping!
   • Sorry Jill, Rob, Chris, Justin, et al. I was gonna give up my "camping virgin card" to you guys later this summer, but this opportunity came up. You guys can take my "camping with torrential rain, flooding, and mosquitoes card" :p.
   
   
   • To celebrate my first Memorial Day long weekend, I went camping at the Oceano sand dunes (near Pismo Beach) with Michele and Jon and met up with a Googler there (Elaine) and her friends (Autumn, Lorrie, Johnny, and Hebert - just to be fair to everyone, I spelt all their names wrong). They provided us with a tent and went earlier to find a camp site. They also had a 4 wheel drive suv to drive through the sand to get us to the camp site. Good deal for us.


6. Free sleeping bags!
   • You win some, you lose some. Sleeping bag left on a post at night for literally like a minute disappeared. Worst thing, it was my roommmate's bf's.


7. I was under the impression that California was warm
   • With no sleeping bag, I resorted wearing two t-shirts, a long sleeve, a fleece jacket, jeans, and socks and I was still cold.


8. ...why can I see my breath???!?!?!?
   • Sitting by the campfire at night, I could see my breath.


9. Air mattresses should not be on top of you
   • I used my roommate's bf's air mattress as a sleeping bag as it had a cotton cover. It did a reasonable job. I had to turn away from the wall of the tent in the middle of the night and face towards Jon b/c the wall was frickin' freezing and wet. I slept reasonable well though.


10. "Let the little Asians out of the trunk!" -- Elaine
    • 8 of us, the SUV only sat 5. We squeezed in 4 in the backseat while Elaine and I sat in the trunk. Suprisingly comfortable (our backs to the back of the back seat and facing out the back window), especially at 8 in the morning.


11. ATV's!
    • Riding all-terrain vehicles in the sand dunes was a blast.


12. I think you're supposed to stay on the sand
    • Jon had the best crash of the day when he went over a metal fence and into plants, shrubs, and grass area. He was kinda zoned out after that and looked lost.


13. Air Michele
    • Michele was getting serious air on those dunes by the end of the day.


14. Surprisingly only minor scratches
    • Went up a sand dune really fast, got some serious air, but fell off when the ATV landed. Fortunately, it didn't run me over and I only had minor scratches on my ankle and random minor pains throughout my body


15. Missing (?) wallet
    • Elaine's wallet is mssing. Johnny goes back to look for it, but really we know that he just wanted an extra 45 min. out there. One of the guys that works there had found it on the foot rest of the ATV and had it in his clipboard the whole time.


16. "Does anybody else need a nurse?" -- Jon


17. Put that away Michele
    • Michele's had like 4 massive blisters on his hands from the ATVs. Guess he had a serious death grip on those handles. Either that or he's really not used to manual labour :p. My hands were fine. A little sore near the inside of the knuckle, but not blistering. My right thumb was seriously tired from pressing the throttle so much though :s.


18. Everything's award winning
    • All the clam chowders and fish and chips in all the restaurants in Pismo Beach are "award winning".


19. All I heard for the past 24 hours was motors
    • Constant motors running from trucks, jeeps, hummers, ATVs, motor bikes, etc. in Pismo beach and Oceano.


20. Volleyball practice
    • I did a lot of hitting practice on the beach - throwing the ball up and just hitting it over the net. First time that I was able to do it reasonably well. Hard to get the toss right. At the clinic, the coach told us to use two hands, which helps. But then factor in the wind and sand and it's even harder.
    
    
    • I had Michele set me a few later on and I was spanking them pretty good. Probably the best I've ever hit on sand and felt as good as my court game. My timing was on (which is rare for beach).


21. The 14 year old girls love me
    • Cute with a pink bikini on. Plus, she obviously plays on a school team or club. Too bad she was serious jail bait. I'd guess that she was in like junior high school. She's gonna grow up to be a hot volleyball player. She passed by after she was done playing and told me that I was "the amazing 1 man volleyball team" as I was playing 2-on-1 against Elaine and Michele (a guy)... and winning.


22. "To top it off, my face is burnt" -- Jon


23. OMG that water is cold!
    • The ocean water is frickin' freezing! Like 10 degrees Celsius. Stupid ocean currents bringing arctic water down here.


24. "You're gonna be able to see my nipples through the wet suit"
    • Surfing was on the table, but by the time we made it to the rental place, it was too late.


25. "Hey, we work at Google. We should just buy wetsuits and a surf board and just throw them away when we're done."


26. Skimboarding
    • Bought a skimboard ($32) instead of a surf board ($500 - $700). It's basically a flat piece of wood that you throw on like 2" of water and ride it like a skateboard. Elaine and I managed to ride it for a few feet at a time. Jon had a great fall, full landing in the (shallow)water and sand. Autumn fell ass first right into the water with her jeans on.


27. "I can't feel my feet"
    • Words said after skimboarding in the freezing water.


28. "If you go in that water, your balls are going to go up here (points to his neck)" -- Michele


29. "You guys are so dumb!"
    • Elaine and Michele run into the water to go swimming after skimboarding. Jon and I join them in their second run.


30. I'm so sore...
    • Neck, shoulders, upper back, lower back, arms, hands (esp. my right thumb from pushing the throttle on the ATV), and legs. That's the sign of a good weekend!

Pictures hopefully to follow later.

So apparently maiming, raping, and killing are frowned upon in this country

CDS orientation today all the way in San Francisco. Most useless thing I have ever been to. CDS is the company that Google uses to handle the visas for the foreign interns and we have to go to this retarded orientation session.

Did you know that you have to tip in restaurants, hair salons, nail parlours, and other service based industries? Did you know that they put sales tax ontop of the posted price in stores? How about that the drinking age is 21 and you're not allowed to drive while drunk? Or that banks often have hidden charges?

Then there was info on housing and suggestions on where to look and that they recommend an American roommate! Umm... I've been here almost 4 weeks... I would hope that I have a place to live by now...

Some of this info might have been usefule BEFORE I came (eg. social security card info, car leasing, housing, bank info, driver's license), but not after being here for so long. Plus, pretty much everything was common sense.

Ok, granted that some of this info may have been a surprise for some of the Europeans or Asians, but seriously, Canadians need an exception from this shit. Great line I heard today over dinner: Canada is America's hat.

Worse yet, everything was done using transparencies. They could have just sent us the pdf or something and saved us all a bunch of time... Fortunately it was just over an hour (originally scheduled for 2.5 hours), but after strolling around and lunch, parking for 2.5 hours costed $17.50 AMERICAN! That is the most expensive parking I've ever experienced. Absolutely insane. At least there were 4 of us.

Oh, and the presenter annoyed me SO bad everytime she said "veesuh". I can't get it to phonetically come across as poorly pronounced as she said it, especially with her slightly southern drawl. She like really blended the s with the "vee" and didn't end with an "a", rather it was like a southern "a". I've never heard "visa" prounounced like that before and it just really annoyed me... and believe me, she at least tried to say "visa" a billion times.


Other random things today... It was a weekday and I didn't have ANY meals at Google! Calm down, don't get too worried about me. I'm fine. Just that I had breakfest at home (b/c of stupid orientation in SF in the morning), lunch in SF (random food court with fake chinese food in what almost looked like Chinatown), and dinner at the bowling alley (just a bit of food) and Amy's dinner party (never met so many lawyers in my life).

When people mention bowling to me, I think 5 pin bowling. From what John tells me (no, not that one, the other John, the original John), they don't have 5 pin bowling down here. I think I enjoy 5 pin more. Maybe b/c I'm better at 5 pin than 10, since I've only ever gone 10 pin bowling like twice. For those of you who don't know, 5 pin bowling only has 5 pins (*shock*). The balls are smaller (they fit in the palm of your hand), the pins are spread out more, the pins are worth different amounts (head is 5, two sides are 3, and the two ends are 2), and you throw 3 balls a frame. I don't remember my previous 10 pin bowling scores, so I'm not sure how my performance today compared. I think my first 2 games today were like 62, but then I stepped it up in the 3rd with a 126 (I saved all my spares and strikes for the final game). It's seemingly such a simple concept, but what I envision in my mind is just not what happens in real life, I just suck (pretty much like in pool, but I'm playing quite a bit of pool nowadays at Google so I'm getting better). I think I'll stick to volleyball.

One more random thing. I had two people mention my blog today. I find it kinda strange/interesting to meet all these people that I've somewhat communicated with through the Google interns group (like a message board) and other interns' blogs. The second blog mention in regular conversation happened at the dinner party though. Apparently Amy's friends were a little protective of her having a guy roommate, so they were checking up on me and Craig was like, I saw your blog and read your post about chicken noodle soup and was like, he's cool. So there you go, my blog did help me get my place (and 4 other offers).

I don't think you're supposed to do that

The socks are rather embarassing with those shoes.
I ran out of non-white socks...

Examples of things you probably aren't supposed to do at Google:

• Submersing yourself in the ball pit or using it as a substitute for a hot tub


• Playing in Sergey and Larry's cornered off area, looking at and touching everything, and sitting in novelty chairs that say "Sergey"


• Having lunch on Sergey and Larry's private balcony, of which they have a very clear view from their office window (it was tinted, so I'm not sure if anyone was inside...)

Get your own @vincentcheung.ca e-mail address!

Sign-ups for "vincentcheung.ca" e-mail addresses has begun!

Let me know if you would like one. Sorry, vincent (a) vincentcheung.ca has already been taken.

Gstarving

Friday and no Galcohol or Gdinner!!!!1!!1one!!1!!

They were giving out Gtickets for the Da Vinci Code Gmovie, so I guess they Gfigured that there wouldn't be enough Googlers around for TGIF (the Galcohol) or Gdinner. I think that totally violated my human Grights.

I didn't think that Gstarving existed, but today I was forcefully enrolled into the Gstarving alpha tester program and that totally Gsucked.

Our Gplans totally went down the Gdrain with the Gnews that there was no Gdinner. We had to Ghunt for Gfood and we Graided all the Gmicro-kitchens. We Gsurvived on Gice cream, Gcereal, Gchips, and Gdrinks.

There were no parking Gspots or Gseats in the Gtheatre (had to sit in the Gfront row and got a little Gmotion sick). Worse yet, we didn't get any free Gpopcorn or Gdrinks! The Gannouncement mentioned free Gfood, but apparently it was only for the midnight Gshow. The Gmovie was Gok, but nothing Gspecial.

Let's hope for everyone's Gsake that this Gstarving program never makes it past the alpha stage as it's a horrible Gproduct. I'm going to remove myself from this Gprogram next Gweek and Ghope to never have to Gexperience it again.

Defectors, pee buddies, and "volleyball"

The other day, I'm walking around (I think one of those semi-hourly trips to the washroom because of the obscene quantities of consumed liquids) and I pass this guy. One of those "where have I seen you before" stares. It later dawned on me that I had played with him at the Pro Club when I was interning at MSR! A fellow Microsoft defector!

I saw him again at breakfast and chatted with him a bit. He's actually quite high up the food chain...

My next interesting tid-bit was also strangely enough connected with a trip to the washroom. Honestly, there's nothing wrong with me. I don't wet my bed (anymore). I just drink lots of fluids. Anyways, I peed next to a billionaire. I kept silent because you know, it's usually pretty weird to talk when taking a leak. What would I say to a billionaire at the urinal anyways? Umm... thanks for paying my salary.

A couple of us interns also went onto the sand volleyball court with a volleyball today. Out of respect for the sport, I cannot call what we did volleyball. But it's all good. Ok well, not really, but it was alright as I knew what I was getting into and I knew that it wasn't going to be volleyball. My jump serve is improving actually. I think it's a combination of a better toss and improved timing (practicing hitting against a wall with a really high toss and the clinic).

Happy Census Day! (Please respond)

Today is the Canadian Census day. To commemorate this day, I am holding my own census!

If you read this blog, meaning that you at least occasionally come by and read a post or two, please leave a comment on this post. The comment doesn't have to be elaborate (a simple "hi" will suffice), but it can if you want.

I'd rather that you don't comment anonymously, but if you are that embarrassed to be reading my blog, at least an anonymous comment is better than nothing.

Using a Powerbook will make you a billionaire

Silence still glazes over us interns when Sergey walks by. Well, today was actually the first time it happened. He was carrying a Powerbook into the cafeteria to grab some food.

This proves that using a Powerbook will make you into a billionaire. Sergey, Steve Jobs, need I say more?

Human adaptation

My body has seemed to have adapted to an increased consumption of food. In the first week, I was like in a food coma all day and while the second week was better, I still wasn't hungry at either lunch or dinner. Come the third week, I'm actually hungry for lunch and dinner! And I don't think it's because I've reduced my portions.

I can think of two explainations. Either my body has just become faster at digesting food (knowing that more is coming soon) or my stomach has just expanded. It's probably a combo of the two. I am finding that on the weekend, I am seriously craving food without the regular massive 3 meals a day. I dread the day when I have to go back to school...

Volleyball clinic notes

This post is pretty much just for my reference. It's things that I should remember when on the court (collected over the past 3 weeks).

Passing

• focus on platform - Tom suggested even separating my wrists slightly to form an even flatter platform


• keep low


• arms out at almost 90 degrees


• when passing, platform moves in direction of where you want the ball to go, so if you're facing away from the setter, you need to drop a shoulder


• during serve receive, watch server, try to predict where the serve is going, know where it's going less than half way to the net

Serving

• keep hitting elbow high throughout, starting with the toss


• aim for the same vulnerable places as in defence - back corners

Hitting

• last two steps almost simultaneous


• fast approach means higher vertical


• elbow high


• power comes from trunk rotation - put body weight through the ball


• hard shot down the line or cross court corner are vulnerable

Blocking

• big hands in like a cup shape


• arms not close together (cover as much space as possible)


• seal the net and reach over


• maintain seal as long as possible


• jump straight up and down


• about the length of your forearm away from the net


• take away as much of the court as possible - line up right shoulder with the hitter's right shoulder


• watch the passer's platform - predict where the ball is going and what options the setter has

Slumber party

Yes, you read that correctly. Vintage, Grade 6 era slumber party. We even had Hello Kitty attend.

GCheck

Got my first GCheck in the mail today! That is a lot of taxes... but I guess still less than in Canada, plus I'll get a lot of that back. In the end, it doesn't mean anything as I'll have to pay Canadian taxes on it anyways.

I found out that the Conservative federal government has proposed to lift the $3000 tax exemption limit on scholarships/fellowships in its budget! This is absolutely amazing! (i.e. much more of my earnings will be tax free if this passes!)

4 promotions away from running Google

It's true that Google has less hierarchy and is "flatter" than most. In browsing the company pecking order, I found out that I could be running the show in just 4 promotions! This is even fewer than the 6 I needed to take over Bill Gates's job. Being on the research side of things tends to cut down the heirarchy significantly.

You wouldn't however, realize that I was so close to running Google from the fact that I was basically eating all day. No seriously. I was eating like all day. It's disturbing to the point that it's scary. I have the uncanny feeling that they're trying to fatten me up for some evil purpose...something to do with the cafeteria food or perhaps human soap.

• Breakfast from 8:45 - 9:15


• *Productivity*


• Lunch at 12:30 - 2:00


• "Ben & Jerry's Ice Cream Interns Social" 2:00 - 3:30


• *E-mail*


• Weekly company meeting led by Larry and Sergey (aka beer, wine, and hor d'oeuvres) 4:30 - 5:30


• *Semi-productivity*


• Dinner from 7:30 - 8:30

Business hours: breakfast - dinner

People often ask me how long I work here at Google, to which I reply,

Breakfast to dinner

It may seem like long hours, but it's a sacrifice I'm willing to make for free food. Work also doesn't seem like work when it's fun. Being in a phd program, I got comfortable with the mentality that I won't work on anything that I don't consider to be cool, fun, and have a big impact. I maintain this attitude in the workplace.

It's also difficult to call it work when you take a nice leisurely scroll to the cafeteria you've never been to across campus with your friends for lunch (since the main cafeteria was closed because of press day and it was crazy busy in the main part of campus), you enjoy a nice bbq outside with friends, and after work, you spend 2 hours with other interns (avg age around 28) frolicking around Google playing the piano, relaxing in the message chairs, snooping around, playing pool, chillin' in the plastic ball pit and treating it like a hot tub while the full-timers look at you funny, playing in Sergey and Larry's play area, and just acting like 5 year olds looking at and touching everything :)

The drink challenge

6 days so far. 4 or 5 drinks per day. Haven't had the same drink twice! How long can I keep this up? :)

Naked Juice, Vitamin Water, Snapple, fresh fruit smoothies, random juices, Orangina, sparkling apple juice, water, chocolate milk, freshly made cafeteria drinks, fresh young coconut, Powerade, and more. These are only the ones that I've drank!

I haven't even hit the canned soft drinks or the fountain drinks! Though I'm purposely avoiding them. There's tons of coffee, caffeine, and energy drink options, but they don't interest me. I leave those to Michele. I discovered the asian drink fridge, so I'll be adding VitaSoy to the list soon.

Banks love giving me credit cards now

Just got approved (instant response over the Internet) for a Citibank Dividend Mastercard (5% cash back at supermarkets, gas stations, and drugstores, and 1% back on other purchases). Helps that I have like 9 months of credit history here and an existing credit card.

Weekend Snippet

Sawyer Camp Trail
'Bladed down the Sawyer Camp Trail in like San Mateo. Nice scenery, shitty trail. Bumpy, cracky, and craploads of tar filling in the cracks. Decent jogging/walking/biking trail, but avoid it for rollerblading.

You can't see the actual trail in that picture, but the trail goes along side the Crystal Springs Reservoir and there's a lot of foliage. The trail was nice in that it went through the trees, so it was shady for most of it, which is appreciated when you're sweating. Wildlife wasn't that exciting. I saw some deer, which is about as exciting as looking in Kevin's or Kives's backyards in Winnipeg. I did see this rather large black and white striped snake.... and it was stretched out across the path. It freaked the bejesus outta me. Didn't expect that at all. I just narrowly missed it too. It would not have been pleasant to have run over that.

Parking at the top of this sizeable hill seemed like a good idea at first because I could start off by just blitzing down it... going back up after 8 miles of rollerblading was not however, very much fun.

The intent was to buy a new pair of rollerblades and use them on the trail, but Inline Sports in Sunnyvale had shitty skates and Black Diamond Sports in Palo Alto was out of the pair that I wanted (Rollerblade Crossfire 90), which sucks because I tried them on last week, but hesitated to buy them because I hadn't decided if I was going to buy a new pair. They're supposed to call me this week when they get a new shipment in. I contemplated buying online, but I wanted to try them on again to make sure about the size.


You call that a Downtown?
"Downtown" Palo Alto and "Downtown" Mountain View are almost as exciting as Winnipeg's. Wait, that's a little harsh. Both of them are like one street with a bunch of restaurants and pubs, but they close at like noon. Ok, well, maybe they're open just a little after noon. Palo Alto's a little more lively than Mountain View, but for a college town, it's pretty pathetic. Tied House in MV wasn't too bad (restaurant and brewery), but it closed at 11 pm. Nola's (restaurant/pub) in PA was pretty good and lively. Apparently there's another place in PA that's good as well.


Extreme Jenga
Apparently Jenga's an appropriate game for a group who's average age is 29. The sad part is that we were playing sober. And we weren't even using it as a drinking game (that's for when the average age of the group is like 24)...

Our first game, we actually finished Jenga! Yes. I said FINISHED. There were no more pieces left to pull out! It was pretty crazy. After having conquered Jenga and playing a few more times, we decided to mix things up and GET PERPENDICULAR. Ok, well, maybe it was more of flipping the pieces onto their sides, which is still perpendicular, just not as extreme. It then fits 5 across and gives many more options :)


Knee seems to be healing
Limiting volleyball to just once a week, and where that once a week isn't that intense on my knees seems to be really helping. Knee didn't really hurt today, though I still felt that it wasn't at 100%. It's really the deep squat and jumping that's a killer, but with this clinic, I'm not having to jump and much as I'd do in say, pick-up or a game, at least not for as prolonged as a period.


Mosquito bite
I have a mosquito bite just above my left ankle. Kinda itchy. It's annoying. Not sure when that happened. I'm going to guess the rollerblading expedition. I haven't had many bites since like 2004. I managed to miss the insane Winnipeg mosquitoes last year, you know, those "30+ mosquito bites on each leg, even with bus spray on" and those "mosquitoes bigger than birds chewing threw jeans". Playing beach volleyball in Assiniboine park surrounded by forests at dusk and where you literally see swarms of mosquitoes flying around, is not the brighest idea, though I'll be doing it again in August :)


And now for the weather report
The daytime temperature around here is beautiful, highs consistently in the low-mid 20's. Sunny. No clouds in the sky. Temperature inside Google's a little cool sometimes though. Night time gets a little chilly, particularly if you're dressed for mid-20's. Lows are like 12 or 13, but with the wind, shorts and t-shirts are not a bright idea. Once the sun goes down, the temperature drops faster than my blog audience reading this post. In some respects a cool night is good because then it won't be hot when you sleep (unlike in say Winnipeg or Toronto), though I have well-functioning air conditioning here :)

One step closer to factorgraph world domination

My paper got accepted into UAI (Uncertainty in Artificial Intelligence)! I don't think that I'll be going as it's only in Cambridge, MA. I'll save my conference trips to either ski resorts, beaches, or overseas. Plus, it's in July and I'll still be down here. I'll let Inmar handle it. It'll probably get more attention with a girl presenting it anyways.

Now I have to focus on writing these two papers for NIPS by the end of the month :s. Just gotta keep my eye on the prize: a free trip to Whistler *cough* snowboarding.

Cinco de Mayo?

First time I even heard the term was like a month ago. It's supposed to be like Mexico's equivalent to Independence Day, though I'm also told that this is not particularly accurate. Anyways, it's something that is actually celebrated down here. I think it's just an excuse to party and get drunk. They sure as hell don't celebrate Canada Day....

There were like tv ads for "Cinco de Mayo" sales. What does Oreo cookies have to do with Mexico and why should they be on sale for Cinco de Mayo?.... I don't get it. Looks like another bastardization of a holiday...

Google had a Cinco de Mayo theme for lunch. Outdoor BBQ and a live band, which was presumedly Mexican. I'm not totally sure, but I'll give them the benefit of the doubt. No one really paid much attention to them as they were too preoccupied with food. Some guy was also going around with a tequila bottle. I wonder if Google paid the band to play. I think the band was for the most part a no name band, at least no one knew who they were or had heard of them before, though none of us are really in the latino scene. I'm sure that they helped to pay for the set-up costs and equipment rental or something, oh, and the free food.

The rumoured Noogler humiliation on their first friday meeting where they have to wear beanie hats with propellers and half sandwich board signs and get ridiculed in front of the whole company, including Sergey and Larry, was over hyped. We stood up for like 5 sec. and that was that. There were quite a number of us so it was like whatever... I have never seen slides been flipped so fast before, as Sergey reviewed all the stuff that happened over the last week. I guess the whole thing is really about the Q&A session, which is cool b/c it lets anyone in the company directly ask Sergey and Larry (the billionaries that pay my salary) any question that they want. Eric Schmidt (Mr. CEO) chimed in a few times.

The intern co-ordinators were right when they said that you become good friends with the people that are in orientation with you. Well, for one, none of us really know any one else. Two, we were all in the same training sessions and we'd have the same lunch breaks, and it's just natural for us to sit together. So far, my social life at Google has revolved around the meal schedule. Using the internal communication methods, we managed to organized a sizeable number of us to go out and celebrate Cinco de Mayo. The suggestion to go some place to play pool and fooseball and get some drinks was shot down pretty quickly as we actually wanted to leave the campus :p

We soon discovered that places in Mountain View don't stay open that late. We did manage to get some drinks at a restaurant/brewery and just chill. The waitress was like, "really? none of you are getting food?", and we were like "ummm... we ate already". We also got to the point of the night when the Americans in the group realized that they were dramatically out numbered. That's always a fun moment :). I marked the occassion of my first Cinco de Mayo with my inaugural black out. One second I'm standing, the next I'm sitting up against a wall and I had no idea how I got from point A to B or how much time had passed. I didn't even have that much to drink. I think it was because of sitting so long and then just suddenly gettin up and getting too light headed. I'm also going to blame it on the altitude like Rob. At least I was in a private area with no audience and came out of it with no physical damage or enlargement of my hole. I like to think that I'm sober enough to blog right now.

Geyser spontaneously erupts right off the 101

I'm fully convinced that California has only days left before it breaks off from the continent. Today, a geyser erupted right off the 101, forcing half the highway lanes to close and me to be late for my first training session (not to worry b/c the slides are on the intranet). Water spurting everywhere and firemen apparently were trying to clog it or something to try and stop it.

The cover up story was that some retard ran his car off the road and hit a fire hydrant, though I don't buy it.

My celebrity encounter

I had a new hire luncheon today and the guest speaker was Matt Cutts! It was just for us interns, so it was pretty small. I was chuckling half the time b/c I read his blog and what he was saying was the stuff he talks about on his blog.

Matt works to fight spam websites (they are websites that contain no useful information and attempt to trick Google into ranking them high in some searches so they get traffic and try to make money by selling ads or running affliate programs). He was like, "let's put on our black hats and think like a spammer, how can we fool Google?" He told us some really interesting stuff and all these sneaky ways that spammers trick Google. Again, more confidential stuff :)

The other talks today weren't as good as yesterday's where they were basically telling us how Google worked. Tomorrow should be good. I get to be humiliated in front of the entire company, including Larry and Sergey.

I managed to control my food consumption better today. I was still kinda full all day and had to force myself to eat at lunch and dinner. The cantelope and blueberry drink at lunch today was pretty good. Every meal (day?) they have a special drink in these dispensers that tastes hand made. Well, at least it doesn't taste like anything that I've ever bought. I was much farther away from a permanent food coma today.

The "more out" part of my equation really kicked in today. My squatting technique that I perfected at MSR has really served me well. Not only is it more sanitary, but I also exercise my leg muscles at the same time! And you know how some people recognize stall neighbours by what shoes they were wearing? I noticed my badge hanging right by my shoes and was like ummm..... and tucked it in my pocket until I was done.

More in, more out

SO FULL! I was full ALL DAY. I'm still full even though it's 11 pm! My current strategy of seeing something I like, taking a pile of it and then continuing down the food aisle in the same manner, and sometimes even visiting multiple food stations, is perhaps, not the best strategy. I had this dull pain throughout the day as my stomach was permanently expanded. Bending over was not possible. I was fortunate that I didn't have to tie my shoes during the day. At both lunch and dinner, I was still full from the previous meal, but I ate anyways. The food is good. I can't help myself. No pain, no gain!

Today's highlights:

• Breakfast, lunch, and dinner at Google


• Fresh, fruit smoothie at breakfast


• Good, hot breakfast with a custom made omlette to start off the day


• Learnt more company secrets


• Couldn't figure out how to attend the "mandatory" company wide meeting


• One step closer to riding those scooters


• Real lobster in my soup at lunch


• Found the office supplies cabinet ;)


• Internal IM is great


• Learning stuff I kinda know


• Realizing that there isn't actually a "Google Store" to visit (boo!)

The food being this tasty is a problem, but because of being so full throughout the day, and not about weight. I'm not too worried about gaining weight. I managed to avoid the frosh 15 twice, and the last time I had buffet meals all year (though not nearly as good of food). Metabolism, don't fail me now! My motto in these kind of situations is

More in, more out

The only problem is that I'm pretty inactive at the moment (well, at least over the last two days and likely for the next two). I'm not rollerblading to school anymore and I haven't played volleyball for a few days b/c of my knee (and I'm busy). I'm hoping that once I get settled in this week, I can start ramping up the volleyball and start going through that open gyms list. I'll see how many of those I can get to (there's like 60 of them! So, 20 a month or 5 times a week :p)

I discovered the fresh, made right in front of you, fruit smoothie at breakfast today (frozen fruit blended, like the Freh and Fruity at Bubble Tease). Good stuff. The drinks are just amazing here. I went through I donno, like 6 or more drinks today. Fruit smoothie, fresh oj, one of the naked kiwi juices, V8 splash tropical blend, fresh young coconut (just rows of them sitting out for lunch), and the drink special at dinner which had a nice watermelon flavour. I'm just constantly going to the washroom because of all these drinks.

My only worry with these drinks is that many of them have various vitamin and mineral "boosts". While this is probably ok when just drinking one, but in the quantities that I'm drinking and mixing, this is probably not so healthy. I'm going to avoid all the ones with boosts from now on, or at least limit my consumption of them.

I have quickly discovered when the fresh fruit cups are delivered to my floor. I think at about 2:15 pm, all these little containers of fresh fruit are put on ice in the mini kitchen. They disappear very quickly. I've been going for the fountain drink sized ones. The alternative are these small little cups, though they are concentrated with berries as opposed to more melons. This sizeable snack so soon after lunch contributes significantly to my constant feeling of fullness.

All in all, while I'm consuming quite a bit of food, I think I am just naturally eating pretty healthy. More than anything, I'm consuming mass quantities of fruit (either in solid or juice form). I should probably shift to the vegetable side of things a bit. Pretty much everything is low fat and non-greasy. Of the meat that I'm eating, it's pretty healthy, today it was pork, shrimp, and sea bass. I will probably restart my "at least once a day" chocolate milk habit, like I adopted at MSR, to act as my calcium intake.

I plan on doing going on the Google "diet" again for all my meals tomorrow :). Will I ever learn? I'm going to say no.

Freakishly accurate...

You Are 24 Years Old

Under 12: You are a kid at heart. You still have an optimistic life view - and you look at the world with awe. 13-19: You are a teenager at heart. You question authority and are still trying to find your place in this world. 20-29: You are a twentysomething at heart. You feel excited about what's to come... love, work, and new experiences. 30-39: You are a thirtysomething at heart. You've had a taste of success and true love, but you want more! 40+: You are a mature adult. You've been through most of the ups and downs of life already. Now you get to sit back and relax.

What Age Do You Act?

I'll forgive it for being a week out of date.

Google Day 1: Overwhelming is an understatement

Just the decision on what drink to take is enough to overwhelm you.

Food is an entire beast of itself and I only went to one cafeteria. Food this way and that. So many decisions, so little room in my stomach.

And don't even get me started on the mini-kitchens on each floor. Un-frickin'-believeable! Fresh fruit in a cup (pineapple, cantelope, honeydew, watermelon, blueberries, strawberries, raspberries, blackberries)! AMAZING!!!!

Then there are the fridges with Naked Juice (fresh fruit juices). I was coming in thinking that I'd be drinking a lot of Vitamin Water, but no, I'm gonna be drinking myself silly with this Naked Jusice stuff.

Oh, and if you didn't already know, anything you can get your hands on that's edible is absolutely, no strings attached, FREE. Seriously, don't hesitate. No, I mean it. Don't hesitate. Take it. Consume it. Put on that Frosh 15.

And in terms of actual work related things, shit loads of stuff. The project I will likely be working on is pretty cool, but very ambitious. I could tell you what it is, but I'd have to kill you. Seriously. I'll just leave it as that I'm going to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful.

I'm also now privy to way too much confidential information that I think I need to know. In a one minute conversation with the press, I could get myself sued on over a dozen different counts and personally hunted down and killed by Eric, Larry, and Sergey.

Browsing around, I no longer need to scour digg or slashdot for rumours about Google. I have now gotten plenty of information that I've wanted.

Now that I'm all excited (and giddy like the little girl that I am) about all this information that I have, I have to worry about keeping my mouth shut. They are super anal about confidentiality and security, as they should be. So, don't ask because I don't know (or at least will pretend not to know).

I have intentionally been very vague because I have to. I can talk all about the Indian food I had for lunch and the burrito and shrimp I had for dinner, and I'd have to say that Google's food does live up to its notoriety, but I pretty much can't talk about anything else.

Oh, by 6 pm, I finally had a computer on my desk and was able to log in successfully (which is actually better than most as while many had computers, they weren't able to actually use them for several number of reasons). I also have two brand new massive 20" wide screen LCD monitors. WAY more desktop space than I know what to do with. I stayed until 9:30 pm just carousing around. I only left b/c my contacts were getting really dry.

Tomorrow I'm going in for breakfast (8:00 am - 9:30 am), lunch (11:00 am - 2:30 pm), and dinner (6:30 pm - 8:00 pm). I tell you, these are the most important events on my calendar.

Wow, that is cold!

No hot water. I really needed to shower... Shrinkage is an understatement.

Apparently the hot water tank somewhere in the complex blew so they had to turn off the hot water. It could be worse, it could be flooding in here.

I had to shower b/c I had played 2 hours of volleyball (only 48 hours after landing :p). It was actually a clinic. While I've been playing for... umm... 13 years, I was only coached for the first 6 and I've been wanted to be coached again for some time. Good thing I have a car, otherwise it'd be pretty impossible to get to volleyball :p.

It was alright. It's supposed to be intermediate/advanced (have to have at least the basic skills). Level of play was like typical rec pick-up. The instruction was alright, but each person doesn't get much attention b/c there's like 30-something of us and only one of him. He doesn't even have any assistant instructors.

I think I'm gonna pass on pick-up for the next little while and only do this (it's every Monday) until my knee feels better.

More errands...

$25 drop fee waived. Free upgrade of 2 car sizes (from an economy car blue Dodge Neon to a standard car silver Chevrolet Cobalt). Free car wash. 1 hour (it was busy and they didn't have any cars there). I would have liked power windows, power lock doors, and remote access though... I wouldn't have minded to have kept the Dodge Neon, but there was damage that they didn't have marked down on their system (apparently some genius decided to put chains on the wheels).

The guy at Black Diamond Sports laughed when I said I had lost a screw on my rollerblade. Then he proceeded to trash my rollerblades. He suggested that I just get new 'blades instead of trying to find a replacement screw and getting new laces and wheels. I've been considering getting a new pair for a while now since I do use them quite a bit. If I can twist Google's bike purchase discount to apply to rollerblades, it'll be a no brainer and then I can have my family bring my old 'blades back when they visit.

Random sightings

The number of tech companies here is absolutely insane. Without even trying (and mostly when I was lost), I saw Sun Microsystems, Yahoo, Lockheed Martin (a bunch of big hangers, presumedly where they build planes, etc.), A9 (Amazon's search), Microsoft Research, and Google (ok, I was trying to find Google).

I'll have to go on a tech company tour or something one of these days. In addition to these, there's Intel, Apple, NVIDIA, and crap loads of others.

Here and there

Conducted some questionable transactions thanks to Craig's List. First order of business was to meet up with some guy outside of a gas station car wash to unlock my cell phone. Took a whole like 1 minute and $10 to do it. He hooked up some contraption to my cellphone and it was magically unlocked. Now I can use it with any sim card. While I didn't really have to do this because I could just use Amy's old one, I wanted to do this anyways so I can use a sim card in my phone when I say, travel to the states some other time and then have a local number and not have to pay roaming charges. Or, next time I go to Hong Kong, I can just buy a sim card with prepaid minutes and use it in my phone.

This comes to my next transaction. Meeting some guy, "Elvis", who's cell phone is weird b/c when you call, you don't hear a ring, instead you hear a personal message and then rap music. I met him at Kinko's and $10 later, I had a brand new Cingular sim card. This will let me use the sim card with a prepaid plan with my newly unlocked cell phone. While, I don't really need this, it will be useful when Jill and my family visit (in two separate visits) or next time I travel to the states. Oh btw, it's ok for you to stay here Jill. You can either sleep with me in my double bed or bring a sleeping bag. Well, the couch may work as well.

After these, everything else was legit. I had lunch at Subway's, followed by Jamba Juice - I had orange berry blitz (like a fruit based slurpee) with a femme boost (yes, I got the female boost, but I wanted the calcium). The drink was good.

Also hit up Target, Fry's Electronics (geek heaven and I got a bluetooth headset for my laptop), and Albertson's (usually a pretty nice grocery store, but this one was pretty ghetto).

Then I rollerbladed around my place for an hour and a half. People don't really rollerblade around here. I've seen like a billion cyclists, but no bladers. The roads are also not very rollerblader friendly - sidewalks are narrow, are made from tiles or are bumpy, sometimes the sidewalks just disappear, sometimes the paths are dirt paths. The most telling thing that bladers aren't common is that people are freaked out by me rollerblading. It's like in Winnipeg. People jump out of your way when they see or hear you coming, unlike in Toronto where they don't flinch at all.

Went to a Big 5 Sporting Goods store to see if I could get a screw for my rollerblades and laces. The guy really had no idea what was going on, even though I had my rollerblades on and showed him. I saw some laces, but they didn't look very good. I think i'll have to go to a specialty rollerblading store.

Google apparently has a bike purchase discount program, hopefully it applies to rollerblades and if it does, I'll buy myself a new pair. Mine are still good and I like them, but they are 5 years old and they could be made out of lighter material.

I also randomly bladed around the Stanford campus. That place is freakin' HUGE. If it wasn't for the maps on the side of the road, I wouldn't have made it out of there. They even had some beach volleyball courts on campus. I managed to find the Hewlett and Packard Electrical Engineering buildings.

Oh, and one other thing, I found myself in the "Stanford Shopping Center". It was a strange thing. I rollerbladed "in" to see if there were any sports stores (for my rollerblades). I don't know if I was allowed to or not, but I don't consider it indoor because I never went through any doors, thus I should be allowed to rollerblade through the mall, but it seemed weird. It was like just individual stores next to each other in one area and the corridor between the stores on the sides had a roof like thing, but it was partially open air, so it was kinda indoor, kinda not. No one yelled at me, but I just kinda zipped through. There was an Apple store there :)

Bloggin' from California!

California Baby!!! I'm in my place in Palo Alto that I'm renting out. I couldn't ask for anything more. Everything's great! My roommate's really nice and I almost feel like I'm living in a hotel.

She was out when I got here, but left the spare key hidden in the drain pipe. The place was exactly like the pictures she sent and it's really nice. She furnished my room with a bed and two side tables and lamps. I got sheets, bedding, pillows, linens, and even a bathroom floor mat! Great that I didn't have to deal with all that! She has even offered me her old cell phone, which is still active b/c it was cheaper for her to get her new phone under a family plan.

I managed to pretty much unpack everything in like an hour :). That's a new record for me, considering that I usually just live out of a suitcase. There's tons of closet and cubby space. I think I need to go get some hangers.

Nothing much to complain about the trip here. The Gardiner (big highway) was closed, so the cab driver had to take side streets and then the 400 to get to the airport. Good thing I negotiated the fee beforehand. That's the best way to do it when getting a cab from downtown Toronto to the airport - flag down a cab (don't call one) and then haggle because cab drivers love driving people to the airport b/c they get quite a bit of money. At first he asked for $45, I said $35 (I've gotten $30 before, but usually at the Airport Express stop), he refused, but then accepted $40, which was a steal considering the price it would have been if it was on the meter (b/c of the highway closure).

I still managed to get to the airport an hour and fifteen early. Stupid 50 pound limit on the luggage. Fortunately, my bigger one was only 53 pounds and they let it slide without charging me. They didn't even weigh my "small" one. Customs was pretty smooth even with the whole J-1 visa stuff. The 5.5 hour flight went pretty smooth. I don't know what was going on on that flight though - the last 3 rows on both sides all had kids, it was like they were segregating parties travelling with kids or something. The bad part was that I was in the row just in front of them. Fortunately with my headphones on, their screaming wasn't too bad and I did manage to get some sleep.

The San Francisco airport is pretty big. They've got a nice monorail system going that transports you between the terminals, the train station, and the car rental place.

Nothing really exciting at the car rental place except that they were gonna charge me $75 to return the car to a different location, which is absurd considering that my 2 day car rental (I'm renting the monthly rental from a non-airport location for a better rate) only comes out to like $38. I said that they guy on the phone told me it was $25 (which he did), but I couldn't give a name. The guy was like fine and made it $25. I'll see if I can get this waived when I return it and then get the long term rental.

I got lost getting here - got onto the wrong direction of the highway. It turned out alright though because when backtracking, I found a McDonald's and grabbed some drive through. I was hungry as I hadn't eaten since the morning and the cheap ass airlines don't give out food anymore.

Alright, well it's 4:30 am Toronto time (1:30 here), so I'm pretty tired. Not too sure what

I'm blowing this popsicle stand

Flight in just over 12 hours. Pretty much packed. Not bad for only having started this evening :)

Next time you hear from me, I'll be blogging from my 5th different location. If you can correctly tell me all the places that I've blogged in, I'll give you a prize.

Oh, and if you have a good thesis topic (b/c apparently I don't have one), I'll give you an even bigger prize.

Great, this is just what my knee needed

Fire alarm at 11-something pm. Had played a couple hours of volleyball earlier in the evening. My left knee was really bothering me.

Walking down and then back up 24 flights of stairs did not help my knee. There were a lot of cats downstairs. Well, at least I haven't showered yet and I can cleanse myself of both in one shot.

Great, and the fire alarm is back on. I'll just go into the shower and I should be safe.

It's all good now

Tony and I resolved some outstanding rental issues and signed a new agreement. We came to a sensible solution that is fair to both parties and did so in a calm and mature manner.

Only one broken nose, one set of broken glasses, a dislocated shoulder, two broken windows, 1.5 holes in the wall, a broken chair, a fractured femer, a broken wrist, and one bullet wound. Oh and we killed at least a tree's worth of paper. All in all, one of our best discussions!

TD Canada Trust really wanted to give me a credit card

Signed up for a TD Canada Trust Gold Select Visa card last weekend. Got it by expresspost (Canada Post) today! 7 business days to check my credit, authorize me for the card, print it, and send it to me! That is crazy!!!! They've asked me a couple times now if I wanted a credit card, but I always declined b/c I didn't need another card.

But, I needed to get another gold card for car rental insurance purposes (credit card only covers 48 days max. and you can't renew the lease to extend the insurance). I saw that TD was offering a gold card for no annual fee and that they'd get it to me in like 5 - 7 business days, which was perfect for my situation and it came right in time :)

Happy Birthday Chris and Happy Birthday Blog!

Chris, you share this very special day with my blog! Happy 2nd birthday blog!

But Chris, while you're pretty much over the hill and ready to kick the bucket (yes, you're that much older than me), this blog is still youthful and vibrant.

Let's reverse the clock two years and see my very first post. It was very exciting!

I should thank Jill for notifying me of the pending birthday of my blog. She suggested that I do a timeline of sorts, but I'm too lazy. Maybe next year.

While this blog is officially 2 years old, I don't consider it to be that way, as it went through a huge shift in focus in October 2005, morphing from Matlab rules! to Found the missing condom!!!

All the best wishes to you on this very special day of yours and I wish you happiness and fulfillment over this next year! (this was to my blog, not you Chris, but if you really want, we can pretend that I meant it for you)

Torrent racing

This is the hottest game to sweep the Internet since Googling people.

Here's how to play:

1. You and at least one friend download the same torrent file (eg. the episode of 24 that just aired 40 min. ago)


2. Run the torrent in your program of choice at the same time


3. Make bets and see who wins!

11:01:50 PM Justin: 31.8%
11:02:01 PM Vincent: 21.5%
11:09:46 PM Justin: 238.4k/s!
11:09:53 PM Vincent: whoa
11:09:59 PM Vincent: i'm *only* at 100
11:10:04 PM Vincent: 30.5%
11:10:47 PM Justin: I could have this in 15 minutes
11:11:01 PM Vincent: nice
11:11:10 PM Vincent: i've given up on being able to watch this tonight
11:14:57 PM Vincent: whoa 250k/s!
11:15:26 PM Justin: 9m17s left
11:15:28 PM Vincent: 300!
11:15:40 PM Vincent: 12m left
11:15:59 PM Vincent: go! go! go!
11:16:07 PM Justin: damn. It's a race now!

Even though Justin started 30s ahead, I beat him by just over a minute! He took a substantial early lead, but I pulled through from behind!

Until next week! Same time, different place (Vancouver and San Francisco as opposed to Winnipeg and Toronto).


In other racing news...

I raced a tram (streetcar) down Bathurst from Harbord to Adelaide (~3 subway stops, well, 1.88 km to be exact) on my way to some volleyball. Despite all the traffic on the sidewalks, I pulled through on this one by about half a block. I only had to push 2 people onto the tracks to slow the tram down and run one red to pull it off. I still attest that rollerblading is the fastest mode of transportation in downtown.

Spring cleaning

Very productive day. Finally put away all my papers and documents from Microsoft. Filed away all my mail and old course notes. Yeah for file folders! Cleaned up some loose ends on some things that have been neglected for some time. With all this out of the way, I am now mentally and physically prepared to begin packing!

T minus 5 days!

I need another hit!

C'mon, just one more episode!

Over the past, I donno, couple of days, I've caught up in 24. All 18 episodes so far this season. I was so used to having the ability to just double click the next episode if I couldn't handle the cliffhanger, now I'm left having to wait for the next episode to come out like all the other chumps out there! This sucks.... I should've waited another few weeks before starting to watch.

I guess I'll just have to entertain myself with this:
Sesame Street video clips

This helped me out in my time of need when working on my thesis proposal. These video clips are the epitome of old school! And, you may actually learn something while reminicising!

Polyphasic sleep in practice

Just finished my thesis proposal! A beast of a thing at 25 pages. I also literally have this mound of papers on my bed. Actually it's in several piles because it's structurally unstable as one pile.

I haven't really slept for the past 45 hours (proposal was supposedly due last Friday, but I delayed it to this previous Friday, but I didn't finish in time, but hey it's grad school, all deadlines are soft deadlines). I've taken 3 naps (the last one was unintentional). The first two were about 45 min. each and lasted me 40+ hours. This last one, I just closed my eyes for what I swear was a second and then I woke up 2 hours later. Fortunately I managed to wake up! It probably didn't help that I was laying in bed when this happened. I was actually surprisingly awake during this whole ordeal. Usually after pulling an all nighter (let alone two), I crash and burn like crazy. But I have been in a very low energy state, just sitting on this damn chair or occasionally rolling onto my bed to do work. On the otherhand, maybe this polyphasic sleep stuff actually works....

Anyways, it's time for bed! I'm not setting my alarm clock, so don't expect me to be up for a while.

Volleyball 1, Office 0

Number of hours in the office this week: 2.5

Number of hours on the volleyball court: 6.5

Volleyball wins this week :). Even more so if you count the 4 hours of beach on Saturday.

On another note, this is my 2⁸th post! Someone add another bit to my post counter!

13.65 km of rollerblading later...

Number markers indicate number of kilometres travelled.
From Google Pedometer

• Home
  Where everything begins




• Optometrist
  Prescription didn't change much, but needed to do it b4 I am no longer covered under my parents' health insurance plan.




• Running Room
  Picked up a Knee Pro-Tec Patellar Tendon Strap because my left knee has been hurting a little bit during volleyball since I went snowboarding in Seattle. It hurt quite a bit during and after beach on Saturday, but then on Sunday it felt great. I guess sand really is therapeutic




• Home
  Ate left-over tacos I made from the night before and did no work...




• Volleyball
  Seriously on the diagonally opposite side of downtown. Pretty good ball and a lot of familiar faces. I haven't been there for like a year and a half! The knee strap seemed to do the trick. I wore it under my kneepad. My knee didn't hurt while playing and there's only a little pain if I push on the tendon below the knee cap. I should really rest to fully heal, but at least if I'm going to play, the knee strap seems to help.




• Hot House
  Post-volleyball food (as opposed to drinking) is mandatory with this crowd (Donny, Christina, Abbey, Patrice, Tim). We went up-scale this time instead of the regular Timmy's and Wendy's.




• Office
  Made sign for the delivery guys to deliver to one of the secretaries if no one was there (I'm having my power supply replacement for my home computer shipped to my office at school instead of my apartment.... stupid FedEx)




• Home Sweet Home
  Currently blogging in my underwear (I'm hot after I shower...)

Nerds Make Better Lovers

Need I say more?

Beach volleyball... in mid-April!

Middle of April and I already hit the beach! That is awesome! Yay global warming!

Amazing day too! Sun was shining, weather was warm (like 17), sand was cool, not cold, and decently dry - slightly damp, which is actually good because then there's less dust.

It was like a perfect day aside from the wind (a little strong) and bugs. Why are there bugs out? Weren't they supposed to die off over the winter? Well, they weren't the biting kind, just kinda annoying, and they went away in the afternoon.

Any warmer and it would've been pretty hot when playing volleyball, so it was actually great the temperature that it was. I was really skeptical about hitting the beach today. Yesterday was like cold, rainy, and miserable. I was like, shit, tomorrow's definitely off and if not, it's gonna suck. But I guess it dried off pretty quick and warmed up real fast and it was amazing! I have never seen Ashbridge's so bare before. Only like 4 or 5 nets up (when usually there's like 90+). Some people were actually there for the beach too. Amazing day, just guess most people didn't figure that it'd be a good day to hit the beach because it's friggin' the middle of April!

I'm so ready for California now :)

Negative Tax Rebate!

I owe the government $2,500+ :s

I guess that's a good thing actually. Getting a tax rebate means that the government ripped you off all year long and now is apologizing by giving you your money back... without interest. So, those of your celebrating a tax rebate, you're celebrating the fact that the government is ripping you off! Congrats!

In my case, I didn't pay ANY taxes this year. Now I have to pay it, but at least I earned interest on that money in the meantime. 4% interest on $2,500 is $100!

I didn't pay any taxes on my scholarship, research assistant pay, or interest earned on savings. I paid minimal taxes (compared to Canadian tax rates) at Microsoft, none of that to the Canadian Government. I was technically only enrolled in one semester of school this year, so I get less tax credit for tuition. But then I get tax credits for RRSP, relocation (to Seattle), housing costs (in Seattle and Toronto), and donations. So, when you look at it from the perspective that I didn't pay taxes all year (ok, some to the US, but I think I get that back...), $2,500 in taxes for the whole year isn't bad at all, actually it ends up being like less than the GST rate, which is pretty damn good for income tax. Plus I didn't have to pay for EI or CPP.

Google Calendar

Ya, I know I'm slow about blogging about it. In short, it's pretty good and if you don't have a Mac, it's probably the best thing you'll find in terms of electronic calendars. Support for multiple calendars, nice interface, interoperability with other programs (you can do round-about ways of getting your calendar on your pda or iPod), sharing calendars, viewable and editable (not edible) from any computer on the Internet, electronic invites, reminders, the list goes on.

I started using Apple's iCal calendar program about a year and a half ago and now I can't live without it. It's absolutely crucial for keeping track of all my meetings, deadlines, social activities, birthdays, daylight savings, etc. You just have to add things as they come up and then it's not much maintenance. Plus, it serves as a record of my life. Like an abbreviated journal - where I was, what I did, etc.

I imported all my calendars from iCal like early on the 13th. Pretty easy process because Google Calendar uses the open calendar standard (ics files). The only hiccup is repeating events and exceptions to repeating events which iCal and Google Calendar handle slightly differently (b/c it doesn't look right in Google) and Google Calendar doesn't do time zones as well as iCal.

Google Calendar is basically a rip-off of iCal. The look of it is very similar. It does a pretty good job on the interface. I love iCal and I think it does the job very well. My only beef is that I can only update my calendar from my laptop and viewing it online is a bit of a hassle (I eventually managed to do it with spymac, which won't be updated anymore if I stick with Google Calendar) and sharing and collaborative calendars are not possible. Google Calendar is great in this respect - editing and viewing from any computer on the Internet, sharing calendars, reminders through e-mail (I don't use Apple's mail program), and the ability to invite people (say goodbye to stupid Evite).

If you want offline access to your calendar (only for viewing when not connected to the Internet, you cannot update it when you're offline), you can subscribe to the private or public webdav calendar link in iCal (or Sunbird for Windows and Linux). The private link is really nice. It uses a hash to make it nearly impossible for anyone to find your calendar unless you tell them about it and if they do, you can just get a new hash and the old link will be dead.

So, go to it. Get organized.

Confused. Disoriented.

2 am. Just woke up. No idea what's going on. I took a nap at 9 with the intention of waking up at 10. That obviously didn't happen. I set my alarm clock to turn the radio on quietly at 10. Now, I didn't expect to wake up at 10, but the quiet radio should have eventually woke me up when I was in a light sleep stage, but I guess that I missed the first sleep cycle and then eventually the alarm clock just turned itself off :s.

Now I'm not sure what to do. Sleep? Work? I have tons to do. Stupid thesis proposal... Pile of papers on my desk is causing it to bend (also a function of the cheap IKEA table). I'm gonna shower to wake myself up and then work. It'll be one of those go to bed in the morning, wake up in the morning things, assuming that I wake up.

Oh right, Mark from Canada! He's dead...

Brother of friend in Toronto who works at NVIDIA in Silicon Valley:

Do you know "Vincent Cheung"?

Friend:

Umm... yes, why do you ask?

Brother:

Oh, b/c my boss is looking to hire him and he is a phd student from Toronto and I noticed that one of his interests is volleyball.

Friend:

So the only reason you asked me was b/c he played volleyball?!!??!!?

Brother:

Yes, and it worked!

MVP

"I'm better than you, and now you know it"

S-Dance, the Engineering Athletics Association's awards banquet, was tonight. Good times. Free pre-drinking at Sud's. Entertaining bus ride there (crazying singing Rugby players :p). Food was pretty good. Awards went well. Dancing, singing, and jumping was a blast :)

Would've been even more fun if everyone on the two teams showed up, but they all claimed illness, other plans, or too much work. Wusses.

(Updated) How can a delivery company not know how to deliver?!!?!?

WORST COMPANY EVER

The tracking page said an estimated delivery of 10:30 am. Important package. My J-1 visa stuff. I've been up since 9:00 am sitting by the phone, with less than 4 hours of sleep, bedroom door open, waiting, no music, complete silence. I even took the precaution of putting a sign on my door - "FedEx: Please knock loudly" b/c they don't know how to knock.

But no. Nothing. Nadda. No buzz. No phone call. No knock. Check the webpage. "10:09 am - Delivery exception, Customer not available or business closed". WTF???? I WAS IN MY APARTMENT AND AWAKE!!! WAITING!

WORST COMPANY EVER!!! HOW CAN A DELIVERY COMPANY NOT KNOW HOW TO DELIVER A PACKAGE??? I DON'T UNDERSTAND. APPARENTLY THEY ALSO DON'T UNDERSTAND WHAT IT MEANS TO DELIVER A PACKAGE.

What is the point of doing an express delivery when they don't deliver it? I'd much rather have it be sent by Canada Post. At least then I can go pick it up at my leisure at the nearby Shopper's, not f*ckin' on the other side of town between 8 PM and 10 PM. WOW!!! You gave me a whole TWO hours to pick it up. And I don't have time to sit around and wait for them to try and redelivery and just sit here waiting day after day. Waste of a whole day basically.

I called and complained and asked that my package be redelivered today and I also gave them my buzzer code and phone number. I later went downstairs to check and they did leave me one of those stupid "Sorry we missed you when we tried to deliver". Umm.. no, I was here. I'm the only Cheung on the directory! BUZZ ME!!! HOW ELSE DO YOU THINK YOU'LL DELIVER THE PACKAGE??? OR, JUST COME UP AND KNOCK ON THE DOOR!!! IT'S CALLED DELIVERING THE PACKAGE, NOT DRIVING AROUND TOWN LEAVING MESSAGES ON PEOPLES' DOORS!!!!

My mom wanted to fedex me my driver's license renewal. I was like NO! DO NOT FEDEX IT TO ME! I WILL NOT GET IT IF YOU SEND IT BY FEDEX! SEND IT BY CANADA POST! She did and while I wasn't home, I was able to pick it up at Shopper's on a SATURDAY! That's right. CANADA POST IS EVEN OPEN ON THE WEEKEND!

I guess my apartment is partially to blame b/c there's no security at the front door to which to leave packages, which is annoying. But regardless, any half-assed attempt at delivery would have the package in my hands right now.

Hopefully they redeliver today. I'm gonna go back to bed. Sleep for a bit more. Just my luck they'll probably try and redeliver while I'm sleeping. F*ckin' FedEx, that company needs to be put out of business. I just don't understand how they only do one single thing and they're completely incompetent at doing it.


Update (5 min. later): Got my package! Didn't buzz me, just gave a very assertive knock :). Maybe FedEx isn't the worst company in the world afterall, but it still isn't my preferred method of delivery.


Update (10 min. later): Another package! This time from my beloved Canada Post :D. They got it right the first time. I didn't have to call them to have them redeliver. No worries with Canada Post! It's my new high speed ulta dsl package. Basically faster internet connection for no additional cost. It was really fast too! I only ordered it like 2 days ago and they were telling me that I wouldn't get it until like the 11th (or maybe that's when my service is supposed to be changed over). Regardless, I got the package fast, efficiently, and without hassle, unlike some delivery companies. Plus, the delivery guy was nice and friendly.

Found a place to live in California!!!

My new home!

Started house hunting Monday evening and went through N., C.L., S.D., 40 year old in 2001 claiming to be 28, and more (I have abbreviated the nicknames I made up for the people I interacted with to protect their identity and my ass since I gave all of them this blog address), and I secured the perfect place today! Just hours ago!

The place is amazing! Spacious! Really nice! Clean! Furnished! Well priced! Great location! Amazing roommate! I would not be able to get something nearly as nice for the same price if I was to get my own place.

I found the place on Craig's List. I consider myself very lucky for finding and getting this place. I responded to more than 25 listings on Tuesday and Wednesday. I included my webpage and blog in my replies, which I think helped me a lot because between the two, most of myself is laid out right in front of you. This is particularly important considering that I'm not able to see the place for myself or meet potential roommates in person. I figure that I have nothing to hide and people will find out anyways, so might as well just be frank about it. My webpage shows off my professional side (all that time spent redesigning my webpage paid off!) and that I'm responsible and successful (can pay the bills), etc. My blog shows my personal side and that I'm not some weirdo or hermit allergic to light and completely anti-social. Ok, I might be weird, but in a good way, at least that's how I like to think of it :)

The other good source to find information about and pictures of me is facebook. All you U of M'ers out there, sign up so I have more people from Manitoba on there!

Sarah told me that if I tell girls down in Silicon Valley that I'm an intern at Google, I'm set. If this is the case, I already like the place! A whole culture that appreciates geeks and intelligence (ok, and maybe money and free food)? Who wouldda thunk? It does seem like everyone in Silicon Valley's really techie (umm, duh...). I found it strange that like all the postings listed "wireless internet", not just "internet". I think it's great (since I have PoBo), but I was surprised so many listings were so specific about it. But then again, these are postings on Craig's List and you've got to be at least a little geek to post there in the first place.

This post was delayed so much b/c I hit the pub to celebrate! Just joking. It was Sasha's last time at Thursday volleyball today because she's moving to Ottawa to take up a job with Health Canada next week. Sad to see her go. She's a good volleyball player and a great person.

I'm not tanked I swear. I'm sobering up quite nicely. Regardless, I don't think my writing has suffered. This week is turning into a major booze fest (and very likely a personal record). Tomorrow's S-Dance, which is U of T engineering lingo for drinking A LOT.

I hate looking for housing

I find looking for housing to be a very frustrating, time-consuming, and stressful process. Damn it Google, you do search, why can't you do a good job of searching for housing??!?!?!?!?? Hmmm... maybe I should bring that up while I'm over there...

Anyways, here are some good things I got going for me to offset the lack of a place in San Fran:

Submitted my 3rd paper this year!

Started drinking really early this week - in the pub at 3 pm on Monday!!! Brendan took Inmar, Delbert, and I to O'Grady's to celebrate our recent paper submissions. I did however, do intoxicated coding until 10 pm at school :p. Hey, I was being productive and I knew that if I stopped to go home, I wouldn't do any more work. Plus I wasn't hungry b/c of the pub food.

Only 50 billion more papers to write this year.

Found the missing condom!!!

I was SO happy that I found my missing condom! I found it maybe 2 weeks ago (been meaning to blog about it, just kept forgetting). I put a bunch of batteries into one of the pockets on the side of my backpack meant to hold water bottles so that I could bring the batteries to school and put them in the recycling thing. I go to take out the batteries and I'm like, what's this? Who put garbage in here??!?!?! What?... MY CONDOM!!!!!!

The reason I like it so much is because it keeps my umbrella neat when not in use and it's cleaner to put in the side pocket of my backpack and also in my suitcase.

Chicken Noodle Soup... from scratch!

 

I love chicken noodle soup, but not the shit from a can. I mean like the stuff you get in a restaurant. I figured, how hard could it be to make it from scratch? Plus, it should be pretty healthy. Well, the answer is: pretty easy and pretty healthy. My first shot was about 2 weeks ago and I made it again last weekend.

Basically I just throw in 3 chicken breasts, onions, carrots, celery, and a couple black peppercorns into say 4L of water. Cook for like 2+ hours. Cut/rip up the chicken in the pot itself so as to not lose any precious juice. Throw in the noodles and simmer until done.

I cheated the first time and threw in a bouillon cube, though I'm not sure if cheating is the right word b/c I'm not convinced that it made it taste better, just gave it a little more colouring.

The second time, I added in more of the Italian herbs (from a shaker thingy), olive oil (mentioned in most recipes, but I just didn't have it the first time), and potatoes (inspired by my favourite Korean dish). The potatoes were definitely a nice touch. I love that the soup is so hardy. It's totally a meal in itself. More chewing than sipping and I almost needed a fork.

My next goal is to make my own noodles, then it'll be completely from scratch!

On a side note, I think I broke my camera while snowboarding (or should I say, falling while snowboarding). When I look in the view finder, it's always zoomed in, even though the camera's not zoomed in. It takes pictures fine, I just don't know what I'm taking a picture of. When I use the LCD, it looks fine, the problem is that that sucks up a lot of battery life and I can't use that when the batteries are low. My camera is also a couple years old so it sucks up batteries (AAs) pretty bad and my rechargeables aren't very good. I was thinking of getting new rechargeable batteries, but they're a little pricey and I'm likely going to be getting the hand-me-down camera from my family sometime soon (i.e. before I make my money's worth with the new batteries). For now, I have an extra set of batteries that I can keep charging and most of my pictures are just around the house anyways. For longer trips, I can just buy the photo batteries. Anyways, expect worse quality pictures from now on. At least I can now blame my photography on my camera :)

If it wasn't for my computer, I'd be one hour behind

Hop onto my computer after watering and trimming Vinaverra and adding soil to support it and spending 2.5 hours cleaning my rollerblades and bearings and rotating the wheels.

3:45 am???? What??? I thought it was only 2:45 am!!!! Oh right.... Spring forward.... Stupid daylight savings...