More "it's so cool to work at Google"
This week, Google took all its West Coast employees to Disneyland. Well, you actually had the choice of Disneyland or camping (in the desert, in February... in California, but still...) - I chose Disneyland. They flew us all down, put us all up in a hotel, gave us a 1-day pass to the park, and we had exclusive access to the park (i.e., they kicked everyone else out) for the entire evening - including free food, open bars, and a private fireworks show.
Yeah, I had a good time. Disneyland with no lines for any of the rides is a lot of fun. Disney has two adjacent parks in Anaheim these days - Disneyland and Disney California Adventure. DCA has more traditional thrill rides. The top-ticket ride there is the Twilight Zone Tower of Terror: a hotel with a haunted elevator. It does the kinds of things you'd expect a haunted elevator to do: go up and down erratically. Emphasis on the "down" - roughly 2 seconds of free fall, repeated a couple of times, with some intervening sharp ups and downs. It's a good ride, and I got to do it three times - the third time immediately after the second. About 10 of us were on the ride (which seats about 30) and when we were done, the attendant leaned into the elevator and said there was nobody waiting - did anyone want to go again? I was the only one who did... so I got to ride it solo. That was kind of spooky.
The other cool Google thing I did this week was attend a talk by Ed Lu, a relatively new Google employee. Prior to Google, he worked for NASA - as an astronaut. He flew on two shuttle missions (both times on Atlantis) and was in the space station for 6 months. The talk was great, full of anecdotes about life in zero-G, helpful tips ("never get into a vodka drinking contest with a Russian general"), and even a surprise celebrity visitor: partway through the talk, someone came in and said "I'm sorry to interrupt, but I heard Ed was giving a talk" - the interruptor was Charles Simonyi, an early Microsoft employee who also has space station flight time, in his case as a space tourist. (Apparently, according to Wikipedia, Simonyi has been dating Martha Stewart for 14 years or so. Just thought I'd mention that.) Ed Lu and Simonyi chatted for a few minutes; it was an interesting interlude.
[Edit: Oh yeah, for those of you who are programmers and have heard of Hungarian Notation, the use of suffixes to variable names to indicate the types of those variables: Simonyi is the Hungarian in question.]
Oh yeah, and last week I attended a talk by Bob Woodward (of Woodward and Bernstein, "All the President's Men", Watergate and Deep Throat) and got a copy of his latest book ("State of Denial", about how Bush is just plain not connected with reality with respect to Iraq) signed by the man himself.
And there's more interesting cool Google news but it will have to wait for a later post. It's time for bed.
Yeah, I had a good time. Disneyland with no lines for any of the rides is a lot of fun. Disney has two adjacent parks in Anaheim these days - Disneyland and Disney California Adventure. DCA has more traditional thrill rides. The top-ticket ride there is the Twilight Zone Tower of Terror: a hotel with a haunted elevator. It does the kinds of things you'd expect a haunted elevator to do: go up and down erratically. Emphasis on the "down" - roughly 2 seconds of free fall, repeated a couple of times, with some intervening sharp ups and downs. It's a good ride, and I got to do it three times - the third time immediately after the second. About 10 of us were on the ride (which seats about 30) and when we were done, the attendant leaned into the elevator and said there was nobody waiting - did anyone want to go again? I was the only one who did... so I got to ride it solo. That was kind of spooky.
The other cool Google thing I did this week was attend a talk by Ed Lu, a relatively new Google employee. Prior to Google, he worked for NASA - as an astronaut. He flew on two shuttle missions (both times on Atlantis) and was in the space station for 6 months. The talk was great, full of anecdotes about life in zero-G, helpful tips ("never get into a vodka drinking contest with a Russian general"), and even a surprise celebrity visitor: partway through the talk, someone came in and said "I'm sorry to interrupt, but I heard Ed was giving a talk" - the interruptor was Charles Simonyi, an early Microsoft employee who also has space station flight time, in his case as a space tourist. (Apparently, according to Wikipedia, Simonyi has been dating Martha Stewart for 14 years or so. Just thought I'd mention that.) Ed Lu and Simonyi chatted for a few minutes; it was an interesting interlude.
[Edit: Oh yeah, for those of you who are programmers and have heard of Hungarian Notation, the use of suffixes to variable names to indicate the types of those variables: Simonyi is the Hungarian in question.]
Oh yeah, and last week I attended a talk by Bob Woodward (of Woodward and Bernstein, "All the President's Men", Watergate and Deep Throat) and got a copy of his latest book ("State of Denial", about how Bush is just plain not connected with reality with respect to Iraq) signed by the man himself.
And there's more interesting cool Google news but it will have to wait for a later post. It's time for bed.