This morning, I found myself sitting at my desk wondering where the stapler was that I had seen earlier. I then realized that I didn’t actually have a stapler at my desk… last night I dreamed that I had one at work.

The package, however, frustrated me as I initially tried to open it without scissors. I hate tough packaging.

But this made me laugh:

Related

The bad news: Comment spammers are trying to get links on my blog.
The good news: One of them leaves spam containing corny jokes.

Twitter
I refrained from posting any travel-related or anti-California tweets.

GA
I spent a day at my alma mater, Germantown Academy, talking about Google. It was a lot of fun, and I enjoyed learning about how their technology program has grown since I graduated. Here’s what they wrote about my visit. I still need to go back, though, as my schedule was so busy that I didn’t even have time to “make my rounds” and talk to my teachers!

Beah, Dan, and Jake
I got to see their new house! It was awesome (especially as I think about it now sitting in my apartment where I am always hearing my neighbors) and makes me want to move back to Pennsylvania even more. But don’t worry, Californians, the long & expensive commute to Google’s New York office is keeping me here. During my visit we walked through Lansdowne a bit (it’s pretty cool and friendly), and even went to Wawa! Jake is really happy with the move. He didn’t have time to show me the woods that he likes to run around in, so I’ll have to check that out some other time.

Christmas lights
My dad and I hung our usual Christmas lights on the house. It was pretty warm this year (often our hands are freezing as we struggle to clip them on), so my dad says it’s like we cheated. We hang those icicle lights that suddenly became popular several years ago. Even though we use the same strings every year, and they’re packed away in bags labeled for their location on the house, the hooks never seem to line up just right and require some adjustment. I understand that the bushes we put lights on will grow, but I really thought that gutters would stay the same length. I guess I’m no good at science.

We also put the candles in the windows, which as I mentioned last year are all on a single timer. However, there’s still a lot of maintenance that goes on with these candles. The filament in the tiny bulbs easily comes loose during the unpacking process, plus it just burns out over time, so we’re constantly replacing the bulbs. This year, I’d love us to start going LED. If anyone has recommendations for LED versions of traditional C7 bulbs that have the light output a of 5-7 watt incandescent, let me know. I’d also like to move our tree lights to LEDs as well.

Family
Of course being with my family is always awesome. Thanksgiving dinner was delicious (as were the leftovers that lasted until I left), I went out to dinner with my grandparents, which I don’t think we’ve ever done before as just the three of us, and we got to celebrate a couple of recent engagements at my aunt and uncle’s house. And the cats are doing well too.

Ted
I got to hang out with Ted at his house, and finally met his dog Minnie, who I think is already like three or four years old. With him going away for college (he had very little time at home due to the demands of being a famous basketball player) and me moving to California, it’s been over seven years since we’ve both lived in the same state.

4G/WiMAX
On the way to the airport, I heard three ads for broadband mobile Internet access, from three different providers: CLEAR, Sprint, and Comcast. I moved out here to be close to the Internet, yet none of these services are available (for general use) in Silicon Valley. Weird.

Phone booths
At the gate in Philadelphia, there were three phone booths. Two of the seats were being used by iPhone users, and the middle one by someone on a MacBook Pro.

Shooting star
On the flight back to San Francisco, while we were flying over Colorado, I looked out the window and saw a shooting star. It was a very bright white light that lasted for about five seconds (which is probably the longest I’ve seen), and at the end of it I could see so clearly that I saw a trail of white burning particles behind it. I’m not sure how close it really was to the Earth, but from my perspective it looked like I was seeing it at eye level.

1. A funny presentation at work
2. A Halloween costume

I’m having a tough time coming up with useable ideas for both. I have never been good at this. Even back in high school when I made funny videos, I was rarely responsible for coming up with the initial idea. I loved to help develop other ideas and do anything else for a project, but I never really cared if it was my idea.

This is my third year of having to deal with the recent burden of coming up with a Halloween costume. Until I joined Google, I had not dressed up since sixth grade. I had 10 years off, but at Google, Halloween is a pretty big deal so I’d feel bad if I didn’t participate.

I thought that I would have a good Halloween costume this year. I was going to be Zeke the Plumber from Salute Your Shorts, because referencing minor characters from Nickelodeon shows is cool. For months, I thought I was all set. I even had a document with screenshots from the show, things I could say, and a list of items to buy. This past weekend, when I was about to start picking up items for my costume, I realized that it was stupid. Not only did nobody remember Zeke, but I would have to wear a mask. Wearing a mask is fine if one is going trick-or-treating. I did that many times when I was a kid. But this year, the only times I’ll be wearing my costume are at parties where I’ll want to be able to eat and drink. So now I need to come up with an idea that doesn’t require a mask. Here are some ideas I’ve had:

• Someone wearing a suit
• Hatman, the guy who wears a hat
• Mustache guy, who wears a fake mustache
• A Halloween costume, which would be something simple like a ghost, but with a hanger and price tag attached. Maybe the entire thing covered in plastic wrap and some sort of label if I want to go all-out. (This was my alternate idea when I came up with the Play on Words costume.)
• Anything from that old SNL sketch where Dan Aykroyd plays the salesman pitching children’s costumes

The funny thing is, my first year at Google, Matt was basically a combination of Someone wearing a suit and Mustache guy.

If you have any suggestions for what I should be for Halloween this year, please leave them in the comments. If it involves chef pants and/or a hard hat, that’s cool, because I already have them.

Now my boss didn’t get to where he is today with out a critical eye, and as you can see by some underlining added by my boss, he wasn’t content to simply take my note at face value when he discovered it. When he pinged me about the note, suspecting that I left it, I went over to his desk to discover him trying to decipher a secret message spelled out using the first letter of each word. You can’t get anything past this guy.

I wonder if it was a random grab or if they were looking for something. It was a presorted mass-mailing, so I’m guessing it was just a random check. Lucky me.