Pepper's Previous Posts

This weekend, I played in the Google World Series of Poker.  A friendly game where 25 googlers got together and played a $100 tournament for 2 seats to Event #4 at the World Series of Poker.

I took first place and am pretty excited to get to play in the series even if it is likely to be a field of > 5,000 players and even though my odds are long.

First, let's get this out of the way.  If you are wondering what the "correct" but less funny answer to this weekend's whiteboard puzzle was:
"Why are mailboxes round on top?"

It seems that the upper-left dashed black line didn't translate into everyone's mind as, "If they were flat on top..."  The main reason I posted was because I was imagining an archeologist from the future finding that whiteboard and wondering, "Hmm, why did that ancient civilization make this marking?"  I wasn't sure if I needed to leave annotations for said archeologist.  But, now that the board has been rubbed clean, I guess there isn't really a need.

In other news, Sarah and I made pasta from scratch last night.  Where scratch is defined as a cup of flour, an egg, and 1/4 teaspoon of salt.  It came out a little undercooked, and a little too thick, but other than that, it tasted just like pasta is supposed to taste.  We took some pictures of Sarah's bow-tie pasta and my disfigured snakes pasta, but they are still on the camera, so I'll have to post them later.

I have no idea if this is going to be a no-brainer or seriously interesting, but I thought I would put it out there and see if people like the puzzle.

What question was asked which resulted in this drawing being drawn on my whiteboard at home?


 

Sarah and I voted this morning.  The line was long.  I felt like yelling "Hurray Democracy!"  It just feels so nice to know that there is a way for everyone to have their voices heard.

Voting itself was 5 pages of candidates and ballot measures.  These are not small pages either.  They almost ran out of alphabet for the San Francisco city measures.  But I freaking loved that my opinion was being sought on all of these matters.  Some of them weren't very important, but others really were.  I feel like even without running or campaigning, I really am getting to participate in government.  "Hurray Democracy!"

Actually, there was only one thing that happened on Sarah and my recent birthday trip to Mazatlán, Sinaloa, Mexico, that would qualify it to be part of a movie by National Lampoon.  But, we'll get to that later.

I decided that Sarah had spent enough time being mildly chilly in San Francisco, and that what she really wanted most for her birthday was a trip to a tropical location.  So, on my birthday, I booked us a trip to Mazatlán, Sinaloa.  We stayed in a really cool botique hotel.  Called Casa Lucila.  It was really awesome.  I especially loved the shower.  Pictures will probably be on PicasaWeb before too very much longer.  Don't worry, they aren't pictures of me in the shower.

The whole trip was quite relaxing, and we got to go in the ocean a couple of times.  The beach was a little dirty, but the ocean was nice.  We did pretty well with our broken Spanish.  Which reminds me of another funny story.  On Friday night, while we were packing, I said something to Sarah in Spanish, and she responded and said something else clever and appropriate in Spanish.  This was odd, because we had pretty much determined that my Spanish skills were better than hers.  So, I looked surprised.  Sarah noticed and said, "Oh, yeah, I learned Spanish" in that kind of definitive way that implied that she could now speak the language fluently.  I laughed and said, "When did you learn it."  She smiled and said, "On the bus, yesterday and today."  Ah, good times.

Anyway, the most eventful part of the trip was on Sunday morning when Sarah went down to get her massage that we had scheduled for 9:45.  I stayed behind to pack up the clothing explosion that had happened in the hotel room since we would only have about ten minutes after her message before we needed to catch a cab to the airport.  Then, at 10:15, Sarah comes back up to the room.  She is all disappointed because the masseuse didn't show up.  We kind of shrugged it off and decided that in Mexico, they don't run on as tight a schedule as Americans.  Oh, well, maybe next time.   She went and sat out by the pool as I finished packing the bags.  Then, we went downstairs around 11 to get our ride to the airport.

Once at the airport, we found out that our plane was supposed to start boarding at noon, and it was already 11:45, so we kind of hurried through security and got to the gate just before noon.  Well, nobody else was there, so we looked around and made sure we were at the right gate.  We were.  Then, Sarah went to try and find a bottled water, and then, she came back and said, "That clock over there says it is 11AM."  Apparently, Mexico did the whole time change the weekend before America.  So, we were an hour early to the airport and Sarah was an hour early for her massage.  Kind of funny.  But, mostly, the trip was just very relaxing.

Sarah and I are getting married on the 11th of July, 2009, the year of your lord.

Save the date.  We're gonna get married in the Beautiful Wells Theatre in downtown Norfolk, VA.

Reception site to be determined.  Hopefully later this week.

Well gang, it's official. I am now engaged to be married!

Last night, Sarah and I took a walk up to Buena Vista park near our apartment in San Francisco. We stopped and picked some flowers to wear in our hair, and then climbed to the top of the park. It is a beautiful setting with tons of trees and stellar views of the city.

We talked about various things on the walk, and then, just as we were about to leave the summit, Sarah pulls out this card that she had made me. I opened it up, and it said, "Why keep gambling on happiness?" and had an attached lottery ticket. On the next fold of the card, it said, "When you've already won with me?" Then, there were these three little doors over on the left that showed all of the ways I have won with Sarah. How much we love each other and how we can talk until 2AM, and how she wants to share everything with me. But before I opened the last door, she made a little speech. She isn't usually very verbally expressive of her feelings toward me, so it was great to hear her saying that she wanted me to be her "partner and husband." Then, I opened the third door (marked Door #7 for comic purposes), and read "Will you marry me?"

I was very moved, and dropped to a knee and pulled out her grandmother's engagement ring and told her how lucky I would feel to be able to spend and share my life with her. We both hugged a misty-eyed hug, but didn't really break out crying or anything.

Then, as we were leaving the top of the park, I shouted to some lady who was walking her dog across the way, "We just got engaged!" and she shouted back, "Awesome!" Then, we called a bunch of family members to share the news.

We went home and celebrated with pizza and Bellini's. It was a night I will remember forever. I can't wait to start working on the wedding planning with Sarah. We are so happy together, I know it will be fantastic to spend our lives together.

Side-Story: So, as we were walking down out of the park, there was this guy in the middle of one of the paths who was doing push-ups on a down-hill slope. He was doing a lot of them, and didn't seem to be getting tired, but when he noticed that Sarah and I were close, he stopped and stood up to let us pass. I said, jokingly, "Wow, 600 push-ups." He said, "Sorry" and kind of looked away as though he was embarrassed. I said, "No, it's okay, I just wanted to congratulate you on all those push-ups you did." He said, "To be honest, I'm stoned. I just wanted to do some push-ups cause I'm high." Only in San Francisco.

Sarah and I went to Maui at the beginning of this month.  It was a blast ... for me.  Sarah was terribly sick with some sort of chest congestion, coughing, sore throat, so it can ruin your vacation bug.

I had a good time relaxing at the bed and breakfast where we stayed.  There were lots of Germans staying there. So, it was interesting not knowing what everyone was talking about at breakfasts.  Oh, well.

The highlights of our trip were:

• Warren's Magic Show
• A Zip Line Course
• Riding a Trike (Powered Hang Glider)
• Whale Watching

Lowlights of our trip were:

• Annabell's Piano Super-Boring Hour
• Eating boring food cause Sarah couldn't taste anything and Pepper didn't care.
• Sarah's head almost exploding as the plane landed, and again when we were descending Haleakala
• Sarah not Scuba Diving
• Not Snorkeling

For those of you who are thinking of going to Maui soon, I highly recommend the trike ride.  Here are the pictures from mine displayed on that really cool Flickr map thing.  That was really a huge blast.

Another thing worth mentioning was that when we went whale-watching, we saw at least 6 or 7 whales, and most of them pretty up-close and personal.  Two of the whales swam under our boat causing us to have to shut off the motor and wait for them to leave.  It was awesome seeing creatures that big so near by.

Even though Sarah was sick, she was a wonderful travel buddy, and really didn't come close to spoiling my trip by her being sick.  I will post more pictures from the trip later.

Hi, I just wanted to drop everyone a line and let you know about this great emacs client called ljupdate It is pretty slick. I think.

We'll have to see if this post actually makes it out into the wild. From my computer. Anyway. I think this might be a way for me to post more frequently, as I am almost always looking at an emacs session anyway.

Upcoming-Post Teasers:

• Pepper And Sarah's Trip to Maui
• Friend Feed

See, if I say that, I'll have to post again soon.

Hey Gang. Sorry it has been so long since I wrote. What's been going on?

Well, Sarah is still living out here with me. This is a such a fundamentally positive part of my life, it really does make any of the other things going on seem like background noise. However, since I am sure that you guys don't want to just read a long blog post about gooey lovey dovey stuff, I'll mention some of that background noise as well.

( Missing Folks. )

( Work. )

( Vacation. )

( Obama@Google )

What else. Oh, Sarah and I will be landing at RDU on 12/22 and flying out of RDU again on 01/01. We are interested in seeing everyone we can for as long as we can. What are people up to? Any New Year's Eve parties to die for? We are probably going to be in Winchester, VA for 3 or 4 days after Christmas, but we will work something out.

Okay, I guess that is enough for now. Just know that I am having a good life, and that I think of you often.

You know what's awesome? I'll tell you what's awesome. Living with a person with whom you are madly in love. Sarah moved in Saturday night. It is amazing how natural it feels to think of the apartment as our apartment. It just seems like things are as they should have been for months. She and I get to hang out together and have adventures together and share our thoughts and ideas about life with no impediments. Life is grand.

We went to Biscuits and Blues last night followed by a BYOB comedy club at 8PM, and then desert down near Castro and Market. Joining us were skajedi63 and katiebosken and a former roommate of Sarah's from college. It was a very enjoyable evening. The venue at the comedy club was very intimate, so I was happy to have several chances to interact with some of the more competent comedians. The headliner was an absolute riot and referred to me as "Muppet man" because I responded to one of his questions with a somewhat fake-sounding or garbled voice. He said something like, "What are you thinking? If you use a fake voice, I'm not going to be able to tell it's you? You're sitting right there. If you talk like Kermit the Frog I'm still going to know it's you Muppet man!"

Anyway. I am having a wonderful life and I hope that all of you are too.

Tomorrow, I get to go to what should be a really cool training session. First cool thing about the training session is that it is in San Francisco which means that it will take 2 hours less of my day than riding the bus down to Mt. View and back.

The next, and way more cool thing is that the training is on Presenting Information, and is being presented by: Edward Tufte! Yes, Edward Tufte! I know at least one reader, pedro_picasso is at least a teeny bit envious right now. But, I have to say, I owe him for having planted enough familiarity in my brain about Mr. Tufte for me to recognize this opportunity for what it is. Thanks man.

I have another post in me, just dying to get out, but I don't think I have time for it right now. Enjoy learning why no one should use powerpoint (at least not how it has been used in the past.)

Connecting To A Running Emacs Via SSH

If you are one of those readers of my blog who really likes hearing about how my life is going, but you don't really care about interesting technical problems, please pardon the rest of this post.
( Read More ... )

Happy Monday Everyone. I am sure everyone will be happy to know that I am actually doing real work on a regular basis now at Google. I have already done a smattering of Quality Assurance (QA) releases for some of our advertising products. So far, the job is very operational in nature. What I mean by that is that I come in and sit down and start following a recipe to get a desired result. I know that if I push button one, flip switch B, and then twirl knob 5, ... out comes a new release of my product. Frequently, development teams will say, "Hey, we need a new release of our product! Somebody do that!" Then, I talk it over with my co-workers figure out who is least busy at that moment, when it is me, I set into action. "Push button one ... flip switch B ... twirl knob 5 ... and DONE!" Rock on! Okay, so, I am a pretty efficient button pusher and pretty efficient switch flipper, but I am also beginning to notice that if I will open up the machine and tie a rubber band from one of the gears to knob 5, I won't even have to twirl knob 5 any more. Wow, that will really save some valuable time.

Nothing terribly exciting yet, but by the time I am done, I am pretty sure I will have coded myself out of job. In the future the scenario will work like this. The development team fills out a small web-form requesting a new release of their product, an hour or two later, an e-mail goes to that developer telling them that their release is available to their QA team. Later, the QA lead checks a little box on a web page and submits the release of the product for deployment to the production servers. This sends an e-mail to the Site Reliability Engineers (SREs). They are the gatekeepers for the production environment. The SRE on duty asses all of the pending product releases and picks a time to have them automatically deploy to the production environment, again, by interacting with a web page. That is soup-to-nuts automation. And what's more, this is all going to come about rather quickly. Google has a habit of telling its employees over and over again, "If it is broken, and you know how to fix it, just do it." And that is pretty darn exciting.

Life outside the Googleplex? Well, I get to talk to Sarah on the phone for at least an hour each night which rocks out loud. I have been spending a lot of time on financial planning to make sure that I can get out of debt and start amassing a fortune as quickly as possible. I have occasionally tried a new restaurant or walked to the nearest grocery store (8 blocks.) I have seen some movies and generally just hung out around the apartment. Life is good, but I do miss all my friends and family on the East coast. Sarah is coming out to visit this Friday, and I am incredibly pumped about that. I am almost certain that I will have enough time to finish unpacking all my stuff and getting the place organized before she gets here.

I know this post doesn't really paint a picture of the outgoing socialite "living-it-up" in the City by the Bay, but I am doing what is right for me right now, and I think life is going swell. Until next time, buh-bye.

Hat tip: shedmun:

If you are not yet familiar with the 1992 lyrical masterpiece "Baby Got Back" by the vocal artist Sir-mix-a-lot, please do check out the Musical Video. If you are familiar with this song, please skip right on to this incredibly funny parody of that song.

shedmun sent me the later in an instant messenger window several days ago, and I still occasionally find myself on an infinite loop of, "NIV with a ribbon bookmark. NIV with a ribbon bookmark." I've watched it through about 7 times, and I still laugh at "Oh baby, I wanna read with ya, cause your Bible's got pictchas." Oh me. So funny.

Hat tip: The Coding Horror Guy

Geni is AWESOME, considering that it is still in beta. I am really impressed with this approach to creating a family tree. Mostly because it works very similarly to how I was thinking I might design a site to work. Everyone is basically responsible for entering their profile information and then entering data about the members of their family. If you ever enter a member of your family who has been entering data already, then your trees are merged at the appropriate junctions. Sorry, dmg, I think they beat you to the punch.

Happy Birthday to niamhncsu! My this day bring you a perpetually happy baby, and a husband who is able to make the lack of the former bearable. Tons of west-coast love.

John Edwards For President!

I just walked out of a giant room filled with people interested in hearing John Edwards speak about what he thinks the next president of the United States should be doing. I really like what I heard. Edwards repeated over and over again that one of the main things he wants is an open and transparent executive branch. This is very important to me. Edwards kept emphasizing that building a stronger America was not a job that a President can do. He expressed that his view of the role of the president is to provide leader ship, guidance and, ultimately decision-making, but that it was up to the efforts of Americans to actually make change happen. This is a breath of fresh air.

One concern that I have is that I was really persuaded that I should vote for John Edwards in the primaries. The concern I have is that I might have been equally persuaded to vote for Obama or Clinton if either of them were speaking. I wish I had an opportunity to hear each of them speak as well, but for right now, I think that the political machine is working, and I am probably sold on Edwards. He just seems so incredibly honest and direct. I really hated the first thing we saw though. We saw two television ads that Edwards's campaign sponsored. These ads basically said, "Bush is stubborn, Congress is speaking for America. Don't back down Congress." I know that these advertisements have to try to persuade the Democrats watching to vote for Edwards in the primaries, and that the easiest way to do that is to present strong conviction on an issue that you think is universally held in the party, but it is a real shame that I don't think that they do a good job of showing what is different about this specific candidate.

Apartment Woes

The shower at my new apartment is abysmal. It would be lying to say that the water pressure is weak because that would indicate that the water is coming out of the shower head with some measurable amount of pressure. But, even more frustrating than this fact is that the knobs are retarded. They don't work like any other shower I have used before. On most faucets which have both a hot and cold water knob, you can turn each of the knobs either all the way in one direction for "fully-opened," or all the way in the other direction for "fully-closed." This is how it should work. But not these knobs. No, these knobs can spin in place and you can just spin it in that direction indefinitely. What happens as you spin? The cold water goes from "fully-off" to "half-on" "fully-on" to "half-on" to "fully-off" to "half-on" ... That is INSANE! It wouldn't be so bad if I didn't really want to take a shower where the hot water is like 3/4 on and the cold water is like 1/2 on, but since that is what I want to do, I have to figure out if I am adding cold water or taking it away as I rotate the knob in a given direction. That really, really blows.

My current plan is to talk, first with my landlord and then secondly to a plumber about what can be done to resolve each of these problems. As many of you know, I do some of my best thinking in the shower, and I am highly distracted in this current state.

Also, there is only one heater in the center of the apartment. It works pretty well, but there is no ventilation to the rest of the apartment, so it gets really hot in the dining room to keep the bedroom from freezing. This is also quite annoying. However, the easy fix here is to get an electric space heater for the bedroom, and not run the heater in the dining room as frequently. Unfortunately, the heater in the dinning room is not regulated by an automatic thermostat, so I have to manually adjust when it should be heating full force, and when it should be off. Oh, well.

Being a New Hire at Google

Okay, for anyone who hasn't already been debriefed on this, "Noogler" is the term for a New Hire at Google. I am pretty sure this stems from the trend on internet message boards to call the uninitiated people, noobs (newbies).

So, I'm a Noogler for at least a month. As I am sure is no surprise to anyone who has talked with my mother, this honor also comes with my own Noogler beanie, complete with propeller on top.

Being a Noogler is a lot like I remember the first couple of weeks of college. There are about 10-15 training sessions over the first couple of weeks. Unlike, at college, most of these sessions are about technical issues that are considered super-secret. They are really useful though.

One the first day, we were pretty much doing work with the HR department. One of my personal favorite moments was when we were going around introducing ourselves. We were supposed to state: name, position, manager, previous employer, why you joined Google. I was about the 20th person out of the 50 new-hires there. When it came to me, "My name is Pepper, I will be working as a Release Engineer. Previously, I worked at SAS, and I joined Google because everyone else was doing it."

That was pretty funny to the crowd as a whole. It was a good break from the monotony of everyone saying, "I wanted to work with smart/passionate people." But, then something that I found to be personally very funny was when one guy said, "Wait, you worked at SAS? But, nobody ever quits at SAS? Did you quit at SAS?" Oh my.

The other cool thing about the HR day was that all of those nasty forms you have to fill out to work at a new company were, wait for it, filled out online! This was really well put together. There was this website for filling out the forms and you only had to put in your basic information once and it was propagated to all of the forms that needed it. Then, at the back of the room, the forms that needed signatures were printed out and an HR rep walked it over for a signature. Nice!

Okay, I guess that is all for now about being a Noogler. I think everything else can be covered under, "All It's Cracked Up To Be."

All It's Cracked Up To Be

So, Google rocks. I know I have only been working here for a week, but, it is living up to my expectations so far. Here are the things about which I was somewhat doubtful, but of which I have been convinced.

Google is engineering focused. Boy are they ever. First of all, it is not uncommon for a manager to be managing a large group of direct reports. This is awesome because it forces the manager to have to trust the employees to know what they are doing, and it relegates management to the tasks they should be focused on anyway. Finding resources and unblocking log jams. Engineers are, in turn, asked to come up with what the company should be doing and figure out how to do it. There are all kinds of tools for talking abut new ideas and communication is extremely open within the company. This is vital. There is a real sense of group ownership when everyone is encouraged to know at least a little bit about everything.

Google asks engineers to spend 20% of their time working on a project that is not their main assignment. Sure enough, this is true. However, it should be noted that the first official communication I got on this topic was less than ideal. The message was basically this, "Nobody is going to stop you from working on a 20% project, but nobody is going to find one for you, and nobody is going to carve out some time in your schedule to do it. You have to take the initiative to keep your 20% time working." Okay, so, if I end up not getting to spend 20% of my time working on something, it is my own fault. Actually, that kind of makes sense.

The food is good and free. That's right. Three square meals a day in the Google cafeterias. My only gripe here is that dinner starts a bit later than I would like to be eating it. I will survive I suppose.

Google brings intellectually stimulating speakers to campus to talk about things going on in the world. Oh, man, this has to be the coolest thing I have experienced so far. For example, yesterday (05/29) I went and listened to Aubrey de Grey speak about his foundation's plan to extend healthy human lifespans into the thousands of years. I had read an article about Dr. de Grey's work in MIT's periodical, Technology Review. I had watched an interview on some news website. I had pretty throughly browsed through the foundation's website. But, somehow, having the guy right there in front of me to ask whatever questions I happened to have was something altogether different. Oh, and today (05/30), I am going to go hear John Edwards talk about his running for president. That might be fun too.

I'll let you know what else is going on later.

Okay, and now for the final installment in this three night marathon of getting everyone up to date with what is going on out in the Valley of the Dells. (Just made that up, although a quick Google search shows me that I am not the first to do that.)

Omissions from "Still Here"

Sarah and I really had a great time driving across the country. I was reminded several times of how much fun it used to be as a kid to go to Kelher's Convenience Store and pick out some candies and snacks. Sarah and I definitely "let ourselves go" a little bit with the human fuel for the road. Sarah went out on a limb and tried Nerds Rope for the first time. If you like Nerds, it has that going for it. If you are looking for a really novel way to eat Nerds, what is wrong with you? We tried a lot of different convenience store fare, including some spiced dried mango. Well, I didn't actually try that because it was clear from Sarah's face that it wasn't very good.

What else? Oh, yeah. We sang. We sang way more than either of us should in front of an audience. However, in the absence of an audience, we did stirring renditions of everything we could think of the words to. As we were passing through O-K-L-A-H-O-M-A, I couldn't help but burst out with, "Where the wind comes sweeping 'cross the plains!" This is unfortunate, because I think that is all I really know of that song. I had to just do that on infinite loop. I was also really fond of that part of the Green Acres Theme Song that goes "Land, spreading out so far and wide! Keep Manhattan, just give me that countryside." We sang and sang. We couldn't remember how "Low Places" starts, but my iPod leaped to the rescue and we screamed along with much gusto. The best part was probably the two atheists singing, "Go and Tell it on the Mountain." We got a good chuckle at the humorous juxtaposition.

"Still Here" ... Continued

So, when last we left our heroic couple, they had finished dinner at the Afghan restaurant, walked around the pond, seen the oak tree, and spotted building 42 on Google's Campus.

Santa Clara, CA (05/17/07)

After this, we thought it would be a good idea to grab some desert. The Safeway across the street from the corporate housing held many wonderful things like a donut for each of us, an honest to goodness transvestite, and 4 "Grapples. The Grapples are a beautiful example of good marketing. They are basically Washington Reds with a spritz of diluted grape flavoring sprayed on. I mean, I like apples, and I like grape flavoring, so I thought they tasted fine, but it was really not the kind of think I think you should try and base a business on.

Bay Area, CA (05/18/07)

Hmm, I can't remember what we had for lunch when we finally woke up and got out of the apartment on Friday morning, but I can tell you that I was happy to have slept in. We spent the early part of the afternoon at the Winchester Mystery House in San Jose. That was far more interesting than I had anticipated. We had an excellent tour guide. He was this jolly little man with excellent dramatic infections. I am sure he had memorized most of the things he was going to say on the tour complete with the rehearsed inflections, but he still seemed to be very lively and connected to the tour group.

After the Mystery House, Sarah and I drove up to San Francisco and picked up the keys to my new apartment from the rental agent. We got the keys at about 5:55 and went over to the apartment to look around. I think Sarah liked the place. I had forgotten that it had a claw-foot bathtub. Anyway, Sarah and I were planning on catching a play at 8, so I suggested that we grab a quick bite and start trying to wade our way across town to the theater. We had a couple of great slices of pizza at Fat Slice. It is really good pizza and on the same city block as my apartment.

After the pizza, we drove across town, and after a VERY brief sidetrack the wrong way on a one-way road, we parked and made it to our seats at the Shelton Theatre. The name of the show was Beyond Therapy. It was a pretty funny comedy about the a modern relationship in which two pretty neurotic people are both in therapy with even more neurotic therapists. The couple meets and comedy ensues. The acting was pretty good if not a little bit shallow. The characters were all pretty one-dimensional. The actress playing the leading man's therapist was very good. She was completely committed to the role and made some really good choices for her character.

After the show, we got to have a brief chat with a guy who had been in a friend's wedding earlier that night. I started talking with him because I believed he might have been carrying some sort of deadly vile of poison. But it turned out to be one of these.

SJC (05/19/07)

Saturday was the day we knew would eventually come. It wasn't as bad as it could have been. Letting Sarah out of my site was tough after having spent so many continuous hours basking in her presence. I mean, there were rare moments when we were more than 30 feet from each other for a full 8 days, and now she was leaving to be more like 15,011,040 feet from me for more than a month. This is not a fun experience. And so, it was with watery eyes and lumpy throat that a watched her duck out of site through the metal detector.

Here ends the romantic tale of a cross-country adventure with a beautiful woman. At that point, I was all alone, and I had returned my rental car, which means, "Welcome to the world of Mass Transit."

Bay Area Transit

Now, before I get my feathers all in a ruffle, I would like to point out that this story is not about mass transit in general. It is really about mass transit in the Bay Area and the unreasonable expectations of Pepper Jobe.

SJC Airport to 1426 Waller St. (48 miles / 3 hours - One Way)

This trip wasn't so bad. There was a free VTA (Valley Transit Authority) bus ride to the Santa Clara Caltrain station, and the train was there within 10 minutes of my arrival. The train ride was efficient, and it didn't take too much fumbling around in SF to figure out that I needed to take the T Line Muni (Municipal Railroad) to Emarcadero Station to transfer to the N Line to get to Waller St. Seriously, I was not unhappy with the efficiency of this trip at all.

The big problem here is why I was taking this trip. I had planned to go get my electricity turned on. PG&E (Pacific Gas and Electric) had tried to turn on the power earlier that morning, but had not been successful because I hadn't been there to let them through a locked gate. The technician indicated that I should try to reschedule it for later in the day when I could also be there. No knowing how long it was going to take me to get there, I didn't call PG&E to reschedule until I was on the N Line approaching my new apartment. At this point, I was told that it was "too late to set an appointment up today, but they could set something up for Tuesday!" Not wanting to have to try an negotiate that trip again on the second day on the job, I asked them to schedule something for Saturday the 26th. They did.

I got back on the N Line and three short hours later, I had found my way to the VTA Bus Route #59 bus stop at the corner of Lick Mill Rd. and Tasman Dr. I waited there for about 15 minutes before I noticed that bus #59 doesn't run on Saturdays. Ah, ha! Okay, so then I walk down Lick Mill to Montague and over to Agnew. That get's me home around 7:30 at night after having dropped Sarah off at the airport at noon. Oh, well, I didn't have any other plans for Saturday anyway.

Taxi Cab To Work (9 miles | $25 + tip)

Not really feeling confident that I could navigate mass transit successfully on the way to work, I took a taxi cab in on Monday morning. The 9 mile drive costs $25 in a taxi. So, I was determined to either take one of the free Google Shuttles after work, or to at least get close enough on a Google Shuttle to ride mass transit back.

Alas, none of the Google Shuttles really goes anywhere near my corporate housing. Considering that I am probably not the loan new-hire that Google is putting up in the corporate housing, I would say that this is a fundamental oversight in Google's Shuttle Route plan. But, never-fear, I can take the Google Shuttle to a bus stop and then grab the VTA Light Rail system up to Lick Mill Rd. and then grab the #59 bus down to my place. Or so I thought.

Google Campus to Agnew and Montague (9 miles | 3 hours)

The ride home went poorly. I left Google's campus around 6:15PM I got confused about where the local Google bus loop really ran, and I ended up having to walk a couple of blocks to get on the right bus to go to the light rail station. That bus took a long time to arrive, and I ended up at the bus stop for route #59 at about 7:50PM. The #59 bus goes out of service at 7PM on weekdays. At about 8:05 I read that on the schedule. At about 9:15 I had walked home and picked up some dinner. I think I could have walked the whole 9 miles in 3 hours. Yeesh!

As a result of Monday night's frustrations, I grabbed another ~$30 cab ride on Tuesday morning. Tuesday evening, I got a ride home with the patron saint of carpools. She is a perfectly lovely woman who lives very near where I am staying, and is already carpooling with an intern from UNC-CH. I was very happy to be home 12 minutes after we left work Tuesday night. I carpooled to and from work on Wednesday.

Agnew and Montague to Waller St (48 miles | Immense Frustration + $119.75 + tip)

So, on Monday, I had gotten a call saying that my movers were going to be at my apartment with my stuff on Thursday. So, I told my boss that I would be missing work on Thursday to go help the movers.

By the time I went to sleep on Wednesday night, I also knew that the movers would be there between noon and 3PM. I was pretty excited that I would be able to take the #59 bus after having expected to be able to take it on two other occasions, and having found out that it wasn't running. I knew it ran during the working hours, so I was really stoked.

Thursday morning, I woke up a little later than I had planned to, so I dashed out of my apartment and went down to the #59 bus stop right across from my apartment and started waiting around 9:50AM. I was non-to-happy about my late start. If this trip went the way Saturday's trip had gone, I was going to make it to my new place until just before 1PM, but that would be just have to be OK. It could definitely be alright if the movers weren't right on time. But, where is the bus, shouldn't it have come by by now (10:20)? So, I called the automated VTA bu information line, and found out that the next #59 bus was leaving its starting place south of me at 10:32 and ending its trip at 10:54. That was very frustrating, now I was beginning to think that this wasn't going to work out at all. I sat and waited very impatiently until about 10:50. I called the automated information line again, and actually got to talk to an operator. He informed me that the #59, while it was running, doesn't run its "full" route at non-peak times. Only during the busy commuting hours does it actually come to the stop at which I am waiting. The operator tells me of an alternate route I can take, and it will get me to San Francisco by 3:40PM!!! I'm boned. I call a cab.

The cab driver is very efficient and picks me up at 11:22, and drops me at my new home at 12:15 for the low, low price of $119.75 plus tip. The movers get to my new place around 12:25. They unload the stuff, having inflicted on the the most minor amounts of damage to my furniture. Everything is present and accounted for at 2:45PM, so I hop on my good friend the N Line Muni down to the T Line, to the Caltrain, and head back South. Luckily, I woke up in my seat on the Caltrain having only missed my stop by one station. I hopped on the next North Bound train, took it to the VTA Light Rail station in Mountain View, caught the VTA light rail to the Lick Mill stop, and finally actually got to ride bus #59 back to my apartment complex and was eating dinner by 6:50PM.

The Moral

I am in eternal optimist. I still think that all of this money on taxis and all of this time on Bay Area Transit is not really how life is going to be once I live in San Francisco. I will be catching the Google Shuttle at Cole and Carl (2 blocks from my apartment) and riding it all the way to and from work. I will pretty much be using Muni exclusively in the evenings when I actually need to get anywhere, and life will be peachy. Really, I think that the Relocation company should just say, "Hey, we're putting you in corporate housing 9 miles from work, but you are really going to want the rental car we offer while you live there. Trust us, it is hard to use Mass Transit from that particular spot."

... To Be Continued

Well, it turns out this is not really the last post in this series, sorry. It is well past my bedtime again, so I am going to have to cut it off here. Check back tomorrow for "Being a New-Hire at Google, Inc." and "Is it all that it is cracked up to be?" I am actually glad that I have run out of steam here. I probably need to review the blogging guidelines and also talk with someone on the internal mailing list dedicated to helping Googlers understand what is appropriate and inappropriate for blogging before I accidentally get myself into trouble. Section IV bullet "e." of our code of conduct states, "loose lips sink ships."

So, I am thinking that I am still going to leave you wanting more. I am pretty darn tired, so, this post is basically going to just be an outline of tomorrow's post. Sorry, but here is what you have to look forward to/wait on.

1. Omissions from "Still Here"
   In this section, I will talk about some of the things that Sarah thought deserved special recognition, but which were not touched upon in last night's update.
2. "Still Here" ... Continued
   This section will basically pick up on last Thursday night's grocery store run to Safeway, and finish with a watered-down version of the otherwise unbearably mushy egress of Sarah from the story on Saturday at the San Jose Airport (SJC).
3. Bay Area Transit
   Here, I will depart from the day-by-day nature of the catch-up posts, and just generally rail against the Bay Area "Mass Transit System." (pun intended)
4. Being A New-Hire At Google, Inc.
   This section will cover what I am allowed to share with you about the assimilation process at Google. I am sorry to say, but I think this part will be much shorter than many of you may be hoping. Google is very serious about confidentiality, and I am not about to go breaking the rules. At other companies, I might think about trying to fly under the radar, but Google is pretty good at searching for stuff. Dang! I've already said too much.
5. Is it all that it is cracked up to be?
   Sneak Preview: YES. This company is set up brilliantly. I am going to tell you everything I can about why I think Google is possibly even more than it is cracked up to be.

But, for now, I have got to get some freaking sleep. Hey, here is a good idea. If you have something you would like to see added to the outline above, ask a question in the comments, and maybe I will squeeze it in somewhere.