Category: California

Posts about California.

Maker Faire

I attended my first Maker Faire today. If you want to see some of the fun stuff I experienced, check out my photos and videos.

Some of my favorites:

Ever see two large Tesla coils in action? It’s pretty fun, and they’re my second favorite thing named after Nikola Tesla:

Monkey Lectric was letting people draw on bike wheels using LEDs. I drew this:

From Maker Faire 2009

After my design was scanned, it appeared on a spinning bike wheel:

From Maker Faire 2009

EepyBird was there too. They’re famous as the “Diet Coke and Mentos Guys.” They explained why they use that specific combination, since putting just about anything bumpy (like your finger) in a carbonated liquid will cause some amount of bubbles to appear in a process called nucleation. You can read more about it, but the basic takeaways are that mint-flavored Mentos are blasted with over 40 layers of sugar, and therefore especially bumpy. Diet soda is used for the performers’ sake, because it is sugarless and therefore healthier not sticky. Here’s a shot of them in action:

From Maker Faire 2009

And one of their more recent experiments, which has been seen by the inventor of Post-it notes:

I didn’t buy any crafts to bring home, but there was one that I wanted to:

From Maker Faire 2009

I’ll have to bring more cash next time.

Special thanks to Tiffany and Mohit for giving me a ride back to my (non-electric) car.

My apology to Ai

Ai, Nelson‘s favorite pronoun, is mad at me. Why? Because she’s offended by weather. Yeah, it sounds crazy, but this is how girls think. So, Ai, allow me to say here on my blog, from the bottom of my heart, that I’m sorry.

Here’s what went down. Last night, at an event organized by Ai, we surprised Nelson with a birthday dinner at Vung Tau in San Jose. It was my first time at a Vietnamese restaurant, and while I was terrified of what I might eat, the food actually very good, including some spongy vegetable I had never seen before in an unidentified soup. That part of the evening went pretty well, and I even brought a sufficient amount of cash for when it was time to pay the bill, although I did have to ask for change. (I still I can’t believe that in 2009, cash is something I find myself using, but I could write an entire series of blog posts about how I hate carrying around paper and why restaurants should be better equipped to handle multi-card payments.)

After dinner, we headed to the Peacock Lounge in Sunnyvale. It’s a bar, the type of venue I could write countless more parenthetical complaints about, but I was happy to attend and support Nelson on his birthday. Things were going pretty well, I was doing okay with talking to Nelson’s friends in between segments of faux interest in whatever sports they were showing on the TVs, but then Ai confronted me about something.

“So I was reading your blog,” she said.

“Uh oh,” I replied, secretly thrilled that anyone had read it, regardless of whether or not it was about to lead to me getting yelled at.

She then told me that she had serious issues with what I had said about California in one post. She claimed that I said that I wouldn’t miss my friends, and called my description of weather and seasons (for the benefit of Californians) “condescending.”

She schooled me a bit on her history with, “I spent some time living in Illinois. I know what weather is.”

My post was meant to exclude Californians who had spent some time living in Illinois, but I forgot to explicitly state that so again, Ai, I’m sorry.

At the time, I was fatigued and not thinking straight, so I attempted to get out of trouble using logic and not just apologizing. After I pointed out out several flaws in her accusations with quotes from my post, like “I like California,” and “I will miss some people,” she said that it’s not her fault if she misunderstood what I wrote. At this point, I may have, if one interprets my words a certain way, subtly implied that she has poor reading comprehension skills when I told her, “You have poor reading comprehension skills,” and noted that I write at an advanced level. Eventually, when the conversation got to the point of “Oh, boy, she might not be taking this argument as a joke like I am,” (this happens to me a lot) I came to my senses and added this to my Gmail Tasks list on my iPhone: “Apologize to ai because girls are scary and I always agree with them as a life rule.”

So why did I decide to apologize? It’s a defense mechanism I’ve developed over time, and it’s part of a (previously) strategy that I think I’ve only shared with Ted until now. Two main rules of this strategy are:

  1. In an argument where you are forced to take sides, always agree with the girl.
  2. When in doubt, apologize.

Let’s go over #2, since it is the relevant rule here: When in doubt, apologize. Even if I think it’s a situation where there is no argument and nobody should feel guilty, I just play it safe and fill any awkward silences or otherwise confusing moments with an apology. Let’s see if it saves me this time around.

#bayareaquake030209

I thought of a fun experiment tonight but decided not to go through with it. It would most likely be a complete dud and a waste of 140 characters or fewer, but it also had the potential to have unintended bad consequences.

I thought it would be fun to tweet something like this:

Did you feel it? Tag your tweet with #bayareaquake030209 and include your coordinates. Some back/forth, no damage at 37.428746,-122.170672

I might have also asked a few friends to play along to get things going. Then I would sit back and see if, by the power of suggestion, others “feel” a quake. And since I would have location data, it would be interesting to see where the “epicenter” ended up.

I figured an earthquake would be good because its lack of noise. “Did you hear it?” or “Did you smell it” questions had a might higher potential for legitimate non-suggested “Yes” answers. I also thought it would be safe. An earthquake generally lasts for less than a minute and then is over, so if someone read my tweet and wasn’t injured, they would know that they did not need to worry about it.

But you just never know. I’m not a psychologist, and even officially sanctioned experiments can get out of control, as anyone who has taken Psych 101 has already learned. So, I decided to just share the idea in a blog entry.

Speaking of experiments going bad, a couple of weeks ago I turned on the TV and found that Howie Do It was on. I think it’s NBC’s way of punishing people for staying at home and watching TV on a Friday night. Anyway, in one segment of the hidden-camera show, they convince someone that he’s a contestant on a crazy Japanese game show. As part of the game’s rules, he needs to shock his teammate. The first few shocks appear temporarily painful, and the last one “kills” the teammate, who is really just acting. I really can’t believe that none of the producers, writers, or legal staff stopped this from happening, as it so closely mirrors an infamous experiment from the 1960s in which participants believed they were shocking (and possibly killing) another person. Read about the “Milgram experiment” if you want to learn more.

Also related is a show on ABC called What Would You Do? which is actually quite interesting once you get over the absence of Marc Summers. What I like about this show is that (I hope) people who watch it are more likely to take action in situations where they might have otherwise turned a blind eye, even if they are only doing something with the hope that they are being taped and will appear heroic on national television.

Ok, back to my personal study on sleep deprivation.

A night in the big city

Last night, Mike and I headed up to San Francisco to have dinner with Dan and Beah at The Monk’s Kettle. Let me first get the negative (and probably more interesting) part out of the way. I’m not a city person. I never have been.

If I’m in a city for too long, I feel trapped. There are people everywhere and there is no escape. I feel like there’s never a chance when I can let my guard down and truly relax. Being raised in the suburbs (the near-rural farmland type, not just townhouses and cul-de-sacs), I’m used to going home to peace, quiet, and open space. Cities are where I go to work or have a night of entertainment, but not live. I understand that other people have different thoughts on this, but this is the way I am and good luck convincing me otherwise. I don’t have a problem dealing with a city for a night, short trip, or even a few years like I did in Baltimore, but I cannot see myself living in one on any kind of permanent basis.

Call me insensitive or whatever you want, but one of my biggest issues with cities (and I have several issues) is the crazies. And by “crazies,” I mean anyone who doesn’t understand that in most cases, it is not socially acceptable to approach or engage a stranger. This brings me to my story which I recently referred to in a tweet.

We were standing outside of the no-reservations (don’t get me started on that) restaurant minding our own business like normal people when a man approached us, speaking in a language which was not English. He seemed frustrated about something and then walked away.

The same man came back a second time, this time mixing in some English, asking if any of us wanted a job. He wanted to “team up” with some people since apparently his friend who was supposed to help him out with “the job” didn’t show up. This was in San Francisco, so I think we can assume he was looking for people to help with his Internet-based social media startup. All of us were already employed, so we politely declined and he left us alone again for about a minute.

The third time he came back pretty angry, using language which is not used on this all-ages blog, and to the best that we could understand he was accusing us of making comments about him, even though I believe at the time we were talking about cats, dogs, and goats. At this point I think we all started to feel a little uncomfortable, but fortunately the guy soon left. This time, the host at the restaurant noticed him walking away and asked us if the job recruiter was bothering us, and noted that he had seen him with a knife in the past. He suggested that we wait inside, and then called the cops.

The host kept an eye on the guy as he paced up and down the sidewalk, and within a few minutes several cop cars showed up, and about seven or eight cops surround the guy. I didn’t really see much of what was going on as by this point we were inside, but I think Beah saw him sitting down in handcuffs. I assumed we would be questioned about what happened, but the cops never came to talk to us. I’m not sure what happened to the guy.

According to our waiter, the crazy guy goes around threatening to stab half the city. They think he has a grudge on someone who worked at a restaurant which was previously located where The Monk’s Kettle is, and keeps coming back even though that place hasn’t been there for years. Oh well, at least they’re aware of him and know to call the cops.

But anyway… The Monk’s Kettle gets a thumbs up from me. The beer was surprisingly good (I’m usually not a fan), so I need to start giving it a chance more often. We had Fuller’s London Porter-Nitro. I’m not good at describing tastes, so I’ll use a description that was given to one of my professors when he was buying wine: “It tastes like a wet barn.”

For dinner, we started with an appetizer of a giant pretzel, served with ground mustard and cheddar ale sauce. The mustard was good, but the cheese sauce was amazing. I don’t often get excited about food, but I really loved this. I wanted to make out with that pretzel. We tried to guess the sauce’s ingredients, and while the waiter was pretty sure it was just a blend of soft cheeses, we came up with cheese, butter, and possibly even mayonnaise.

Next up, we all ordered BBQ pulled pork sandwiches. I really like these when they’re done right (I like the sauce really mixed in well and no noticeably hard or fatty meat), and these were done right. Each was served with a side of fries, which Dan identified as “suspiciously like McDonald’s fries.” We all agreed that this was not a bad thing. They were crispy, salty, and delicious.

All things considered, I would totally go back to this establishment, even if it means getting stabbed. Of course I would only tolerate a minor flesh wound, with no infection or anything. Maybe more of a prick than a stab… and I’d love to see the attacker get taken down by the cops afterward. I’d also like to go without getting stabbed; in fact that would be preferable.

I totally need to do more with Beah and Dan in the future. They know how to have a good time.

Free delicious food

Looks like Patrick’s new blog is going strong, so it’s about time I gave it a quick mention. He’s not the first blogger to document his meals, but since it’s mostly posts about lunches at Google, I can actually use it as a practical source of information. Plus, you gotta love the title: Free Delicious Food.

I’m a creature of habit, so I don’t mix up my café visits as much as some other Googlers. On most days I default to The Lunch Box, my café of choice, with awesome made-to-order sandwiches and homemade ice cream. I even have one of the hats that the staff wear. And I never miss a Reuben Tuesday.

While Tuesdays are reserved for Lunch Box, on Thursdays I head to the world-famous Charlie’s Place and meet Mike for some potstickers. And, more recently, I’ve even been eating David’s bacon fried rice. Yes, rice.

The next café I need to look into adding to my weekly schedule is BigTable. I’ve checked it out after hours but still have to make it over there for a meal. Looks pretty nice. They have LEGOs.

Heading east

CC: Arnold Schwarzenegger

I’m preparing to leave California and move back to the East Coast. I don’t know if this will happen in a five months or five years, but considering I had multiple dreams last night about being back, I’m hoping the move will occur sooner rather than later.

Before I continue, let me make two things clear:

  1. I fully intend to remain employed at Google.
  2. I like California.

I am moving because I miss the East Coast, and I know I want to live there eventually. I’ve organized my thoughts into a few sections. Let’s start with the most important:

Location:
California is isolated. I’m close to everything in Silicon Valley, but far from everything else. If I were on the East Coast, I’d feel closer to the rest of the world, where I actually can drop into a different major city for a day or weekend without booking a flight. Since my family is for the most part all on the East Coast, this is important to me. Sure, I’ll fly in from California for Christmas or a college graduation, but if I lived on the East Coast I could be around for impromptu family dinners or the birthday parties of my cousin’s kids.

I do not regret spending time here. I’ve had two years to take advantage of living in the heart of Silicon Valley. I work at Google’s headquarters, I’ve had lunch at Caffé Macs, and I’ve watched Woz play Segway polo. I live close to my friends. There are at least three international airports less than an hour away from me. I can get In-N-Out anytime I want. There are plenty of things this area has that I will miss, but I miss being home more.

Weather:
I’m not saying that the East Coast has better weather, but at least the East Coast has weather. Last year, it did not feel like Christmas was approaching until I stepped outside at the Philadelphia airport. This year, summer came and went without me noticing at all. Yes, in California it is incredibly convenient to not have to worry about rain, and to be able to eat outside nearly any time of the year. But there’s no flourish of flowers in the spring, no colorful leaves in the fall, and no amazingly spectacular sights of snowfall in the woods. Everything is just shades of green and brown.

Let’s take a break from the text and look at some pictures that I’ve taken on the East Coast:

Pink flowers
These are flowers. They arrive in the spring. They're kind of like the flowers you see in California, but are generally soft and not attached to a cactus or other dry thorny plant.
Red leaves
The leaves on those trees are usually green, but as you can see in this picture, they have changed. And see the grass? Acres of that stuff just grows on the ground without the aid of a sprinkler system.
Snow
This is snow. For those of you from California, allow me to explain: It falls from the sky like rain, but is frozen. Rain is like that stuff that comes out of sprinklers, but it falls from the clouds. Clouds are like the fog in San Francisco, but much higher.

Timing:
Now is an excellent time for me to make the big change of moving across the country again. Last night, after a quick assessment of my living situation, someone asked me if I am lonely. I prefer to say that I’m independent, and this will make the move a lot easier for me than it would be for less independent people. 

I have no significant attachments to my current location other than my job. I’ve always known that I am going to leave the area, so whether it’s been at the front of my mind or not, I’ve always seen everything here as temporary. Moving would be a simple matter of packing up the stuff in my apartment and shipping it east. I will miss some people that I now get to see every day, but I used to see my family every day and I was still able to move to California.

When I’m living on the East Coast, I hope I can finally feel comfortable enough to start settling in and progressing things in my personal life. One thing I’d like to do is own a house. I don’t see that ever happening here. On the East Coast, I’ll actually have realistic options within a few years, and have choices other than stucco for the exterior.

Exactly where I end up living will be determined by a combination of where I find a job and where I can afford to live. Google’s New York City office looks promising for a job. Those of you who know me know that I don’t want to live in a city, and as I just mentioned, I’d like to own a house, so it’s likely I’ll end up somewhere within commuting distance of Manhattan. I’ll miss my current 10 minute commute, but it’s something I’m willing to give up.

I have no other details to announce at this time, but California, consider this your fair warning that I’m looking to get out. It’s been fun.

Update: The exodus begins.