The post office inspected my mail recently. The envelope was neatly opened at the top and taped closed again.
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.
If Randall Munroe released an XKCD image without title attribute, the ensuing confusion would result in the equivalent of a single nerd mousing over an image and checking source code for an entire week.
Whenever I travel for work, I’m expected to write a trip report. I also like to blog about my trips, so I’m going to be efficient and write my trip report here on my blog.
Last week, I went on a trip for work which included visiting the Google offices in Ann Arbor and Cambridge, teaching fellow Googlers about search, with a focus on SEO. I know that may sound a little silly, but while many people at Google work on web search, not everyone does. The basis for the training is our SEO Starter Guide, which we distribute internally and also share with any webmaster who cares to read it. Our actual presentation was pretty close to this. Traveling and speaking was both exhausting and energizing at the same time. Fortunately, I think our presentations were well-received since the audiences were quite engaged despite the fact that the sessions were longer than most meetings at Google.
Visiting other Google offices (which I had never done before) was pretty cool. In many ways, once you’re inside it’s just like being in Mountain View, which is a good thing. The technical equipment is standard across all offices, and Googlers are Googlers. The only major difference within the walls of Googles offices is that the conference room names have a local flair. As the other offices are smaller, there is less of a variety at lunch time (one café to choose from instead of… well, I’ve lost count in Mountain View), but the food is still good and free. In Boston, they had made-to-order pasta dishes (you choose the ingredients), and the chef recognized us as visitors and checked in with us to make sure we were happy.
Ann Arbor
It was fun to be in a real college town. It looks like the residents have plenty of dining options, and the neighborhoods, while containing the quality of housing typically rented by students, were still nice to walk around. But seriously, Ann Arbor, get some sensors and pedestrian buttons for your traffic lights.
We didn’t have a lot of downtime, but after our first day in the office, we stopped by Zingerman’s Deli. I had Frank & Kathy’s Half-Italian Sub, and Evan had Lisa C.’s Boisterous Brisket, which is Oprah’s favorite.
Because it was move-in week at the University of Michigan, we were unable to reserve hotel rooms for our stay. Instead, we stayed at a bed and breakfast called the Burnt Toast Inn, which was within walking distance of the office.
I had never stayed at a B&B before, and, being someone who sleeps through breakfast to avoid it, was a bit nervous about staying at a type of place which has that meal as 50% of its identity. It turns out that a bed and breakfast is actually pretty nice, and at least in this case, was incredibly affordable. One nice feature of this particular house was that two large dogs (one was a St. Bernard) are permanent residents. I had never seen a St. Bernard in person, and he was pretty fun. He was a “puppy” at just about a year old, and acted like it, gently chewing on the closest hand. The dogs had a comically large water bowl that was even larger than what you’d use for serving a salad family style.
As for breakfast, I tried to set expectations upon arrival that I would likely not be participating, so that way nobody was confused or offended.
I can certainly see why many people would prefer it over a hotel (especially someone looking for a relaxing getaway), but I’m pretty self conscious about disturbing people, so creaky floors and even letting people know in advance whether and when I’ll be eating breakfast isn’t really something I like to deal with. I enjoyed my stay, but it was also a relief to get to the hotel in Boston, which turned out to be “one of Boston’s most stylish nightlife venues,” according to Jessica Gioglio of the Examiner.*
Boston
Even the cabs ride in Boston were done right. To pay, just swipe your credit card and select the tip amount manually or based on percentage. I’m constantly amazed at how hit-or-miss basic features like GPS, credit card processing, and a driver who doesn’t hate you are in the Bay Area.
We stayed at The Liberty Hotel, which used to be the Charles Street Jail.
Here’s a shot of the exterior.
The lobby.
There’s still original brick from the jail on some walls.
Nice desk.
View from the window of Room 427
Their version of a “do not disturb” sign.
The office, located in Cambridge, was a walkable distance from the hotel, so the workday started with a pleasant walk across the Longfellow Bridge with a great view of the Charles River.
The Liberty Hotel turned out to be quite the spot. When I asked my cousin for a dinner recommendation, she suggested Scampo, which has the rare combination of being a nice place and serving food that I like. I had a Caesar salad and spaghetti bolognese. It was a bit pricey (expected at a hotel venue, but it was good.
As we left the restaurant, I could hear that there was still a good amount of activity outside of the restaurant (which on its own was lively), but I assumed that it was just the hotel bar that would soon quiet down. I didn’t walk through the lobby, and headed straight to the elevator.
When I got to my room, I had a voicemail on the fancy touchscreen phone informing me (well, actually Evan, who made the reservations) of the fashion show that would be happening in the lobby that night and offering a different room if I didn’t want to be bothered by the noise. I had heard that there was going to be a fashion show before, and while the personal voicemail seemed a bit odd, I saw no need to move for a quick fashion show in a hotel lobby.
At about 10:00, when I was winding down checking my email and getting ready for bed, I heard, very clearly inside my room, some bumpin’ music. I opened up my door, and the first thing I saw as I headed down the hall towards the balcony was a spotlight operator, shining a light down to the lower level. I looked into the lobby, and saw this:
It’s pretty dark, but I think you can at least get the idea that that lobby was packed, complete with extra bars and a DJ.
There were models walking along the balcony, which brought me into an interesting position, because besides the models, the only people who had access to the upper floors were hotel guests and crew members. After standing at the balcony for about a minute, casually observing the scene while wearing my Façonnable shirt, Gap 1969 jeans, and Nike sneakers with Adidas socks, I noticed that two girls were looking up at me. When our eyes met, they waved. If I were in a sitcom, this would inevitably lead to a hilarious scenario where I pretend to be a model and use the misunderstanding to impress the girls. In reality, I just played it cool and strolled back to my room. I eventually fell asleep around 2 AM, when the music was still playing. I was happy to be on the East Coast and didn’t need to get up early the next morning, so I actually didn’t find this event to be annoying.
New Hampshire
Seven weeks ago, we had a new member join our family. Since my family in New Hampshire is only a couple of hours away from Boston, and I had not yet met Marek, I moved my return flight to Sunday and drove up to New Hampshire on Friday.
Marek seems pretty cool, so it will be fun getting to know him. Being raised by a doctor and a teacher, I think he’ll turn out just fine. He’s already pretty good with computers, as he introduced himself to my grandparents (his great-grandparents) in Pennsylvania via video chat with iChat. That was a really cool moment.
I didn’t just catch up with humans in the family. I got to hang out with Xander and Willow.
Xander is super-playful and an expert stretcher.
Willow is more of the “Hey, is it cool if we just hang out on the couch while you pet me?” type.
New Hampshire has always been one of my favorite places to visit, and we had great weather for the entire weekend. I hadn’t been there since just a few weeks before I joined Google, so it felt great to be back. I was relieved to learn that even though I hadn’t waterskied for over three years, I was able to get up after only one false start and have a nice run. To avoid freaking out any of my friends who probably think that I’m incapable of participating in anything resembling an athletic activity, I’ll skip the pictures and video of me, and instead show a snapshot of my uncle’s graceful “dismount,” which was inspired by my aunt and cousin’s technique:
Southwest
It used to be cute whenever Southwest did something different like have casually friendly flight attendants or an open seating policy. But recently, even traveling without my family, the whole open seating thing is just annoying.
Virgin America
Man, I love this airline. I was so comfortable that I didn’t even use the service-wide Wi-Fi, which would be a welcome distraction on any other airline. Virgin, please add Philly service.
* They’re totally not getting a link from me. I was about to reference the particular article when I got a pop-up ad on their site. In 2009. Seriously.
I’m a picky eater. Until a less than a year ago, I didn’t even eat rice, which as a coworker pointed out is “what they give kids when they don’t like anything else.” Now, I do eat rice. I randomly decided to go for it one time at Shabuway, and I liked it. After that, I started eating bacon fried rice at Google.
Since I had successfully eaten rice that had been prepared by others, it was time to see if I could incorporate it into meals that I make myself. I went to the store and found this in the rice section:
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| From Rice |
As you can see, it comes with a teriyaki sauce, which comes in powder form mixed in with the rice.
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| From Rice |
This is what it looks like before it’s cooked, mixed with some oil and water.
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| From Rice |
The next step is to boil the mixture and let it simmer for seven minutes. After that, the instructions say you’re finished, but you’re left with this:
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| From Rice |
As you can see, it only looks like a flavorful serving of rice. We can do better. Wysz can do better.
What I do at this point is open up my cabinet and refrigerator, and pull out anything that looks good. I think of this as “Joey logic,” based on the “It tastes like feet” segment on Friends.
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| From Rice |
Teriyaki sauce, ketchup, Worcestershire Sauce, garlic powder, and BBQ sauce? This all looks good to me. Let’s add it to the rice.
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| From Rice |
Now it’s looking much better. I think there’s just one more thing to add.
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| From Rice |
Yes, bacon. Put it on:
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| From Rice |
Stir it up:
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| From Rice |
That’s how I make rice. Add egg to taste.
A year ago, I got a plant for my desk at work. It’s called a China Doll, and it looks like this:
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| From China Doll |
I think it’s doing pretty well after a year under my care. I put my 15″ MacBook Pro near it for size comparison. When I was in Santa Barbara a few weeks ago, I spotted a nice-looking tree:
It had an identifying plaque in front of it, and to my surprise I learned that I had been looking at a China Doll!
Have you ever noticed that people often yell a concerned “careful!” (or the “ooh, careful” variation) right at the moment when the advice is no longer helpful? Try slipping and falling* sometime. At some point after you begin to lose your balance, someone will likely tell you to be careful, as if your fall may not be enough convince you that some extra caution is necessary.
Here’s a typical scenario:
[Thwap!]
Victim: Ouch, that hurt! Too bad there nothing I could have done to prevent it.
Helpful stranger: You should be careful.
Victim: Oh, yes, thank you. I certainly will be very careful the next time I’m WALKING.
* Do not try this
I wanted to try out the new screen recording feature in Snow Leopard, so I recorded a video about how to sync Google Contacts and Google Calendar with Address Book and iCal. It’s an easy way to get up and running on a new Mac.
I’ve been pretty harsh on California in the past, and I’ve been criticized for it. Even though I opened one of my most controversial posts with “I like California,” I still get the feeling that I’m somehow sending the message that I dislike or even hate California. The truth is, I like it, and I’ll try to explain a few reasons why.
The climate
Having no significant weather is incredibly convenient. When an outdoor event is scheduled during the summer, the chance that it will be affected by rain is nearly 0%. Back east, I think my family is batting about .500* for graduations. As I’ve more recently discovered, the absence of winter means that I’m able to comfortably ride my bike all year. Which brings me to…
Bicycle access
As both a driver and an “avid cyclist,”** I’m a big believer that bikes and cars don’t mix well. But even though there seem to be more bikers here, the situation is better than most other places thanks to extensive coverage of bike lanes and some pretty good bike trails. I can ride from my apartment to work on a route that’s mostly a paved trail, with only a short portion on the roads which have 100% bike lane coverage.
The people
The people here are pretty chill. In fact, they’re chill enough to use “chill” as an adjective. If you use your turn signal, for example, there’s a pretty good chance that someone will allow you to move into their lane. (I’m of course talking about Northern California.) In general, there is a distinct lack of urgency in everyday activities, and I think it helps people to avoid stress. Of course like some other items in this list, this trait isn’t always a positive.
The work thing
Purely based on my work situation, I’m in the perfect location. My commute to work is less than 10 minutes. Even though we have offices all over the country and around the world, I’m pretty sure that Mountain View is the only place where I’d be able to get away with having such an easy commute and not having to live in a city. And once I get to work, I’m at the famed Googleplex. Even after over three years of going there nearly every weekday, I still often sit back and think to myself how cool it is to be where I am.
In-N-Out Burger
It’s usually the last meal I have before I leave the state and the first one I have when I return.
* I know very little about sports, but I’m pretty sure I used that correctly.
** I’ve joked at work that this is a requirement for being in a product demo video.
This post bored me as I wrote it, but I’m publishing anyway in case it is useful to someone.
As I mentioned in my video archiving post, finding a good online backup solution was pretty difficult when dealing with files of the size required for my project. Mozy didn’t like my flaky connection and had poor support (they did give me a full refund), and Carbonite capped my bandwidth. I even emailed a popular hosting company asking them to consider offering a private storage solution that wasn’t against their terms of service. (The CEO politely sent a personal response, but told me not to count on it anytime soon.) I rejected CrashPlan at the time because I thought it was only a piece of software that let you back up to a friend’s computer, but after reading a recent review of it I’ve discovered that they’ll host your backups as well, inside a former bank vault. I’ll have to look into it in about a year when my current solution expires, which is LiveDrive.
LiveDrive is a bit more expensive than the other backup solutions I looked into, but it comes with some extra features. First off, it’s not just a backup solution. It’s hosted storage, which means they’re cool with you using it as extra space, and not just for backups. They even have a web interface where you can access your files or even choose to share them with others.
The Mac solution
They don’t have a Mac version yet, but they do have an FTP option, which I’ve decided is even better than a piece of backup software. Of course “better” doesn’t mean “flawless.” First off, it is FTP, and though I won’t pretend to be an expert in network security, I’ve not heard great things about FTP and security. They say SFTP is on the way, so for now I’m willing to accept the risk that someone may view or delete my backups. I’m just uploading video files and just backups, so it’s not like a hacker could mess with anything super confidential or essential. The other issue is that their FTP support is still in beta, which means that it is sometimes unavailable. A little bit of downtime is usually not a big deal, but when dealing with such long transfers, it can be frustrating if it’s being flaky at the time I’m uploading something, which right now is all the time.
Why did I decide FTP is “better?” First of all, it means that LiveDrive will always be compatible with my system. I can upgrade to Snow Leopard the day it comes out and not have to worry about it breaking my backup software. The other advantage of FTP is that I can decide to move my files around (to different folders or even different drives), without worrying about a piece of backup software freaking out and thinking that everything is different and re-uploading files that I’ve already backed up.
FTP Client
Update: I emailed LiveDrive about my FTP issues and they recommended FileZilla, which is free. It has an ugly definitely-not-born-on-a-Mac UI, but so far it seems to be working out well with the following preferences:
Connection -> Reconnection Settings -> Maximum number of retries: 99
Transfers -> File exists action -> Uploads: Resume
It looks like my connection gets reset by the server every hour, but the transfer is completed eventually. I’ll send my log to LiveDrive and see what they have to say.
The FTP client I’m currently using for these large uploads is an old friend to anyone who has done web development on a Mac. That’s right, I’m using Fetch. I first used it when I was in middle school, allowing me to access my school’s mirror web server from home. An FTP account was one of the benefits of being in [nerd alert!] the Internet Club. I usually use Cyberduck, which is free, for managing my website, but Fetch is the only client I’ve tried which has been able to successfully upload my large video files. I don’t know if it’s just a coincidence (the uploads have failed with Fetch too), but at this point I’m willing to accept superstitious features if they get the job done. The good news is that if you’re using a Mac and you’re looking for a nice FTP client, there are plenty available. I tried a bunch and liked all of them. In fact, I think Fetch is the only one I would have passed on if it wasn’t the only application to complete the transfer. Its UI just feels a little clunky compared to the other solutions. The custom cursor was cute back in the ’90s, but I’ve moved on.
Service experience
The service has been tolerable. Things got off to a pretty good start before I even signed up. I sent them an email saying something like “I want to upload files that are over 20GB each, I want to upload a bunch of them, and I don’t want my bandwidth to be capped. Is this something you can offer?” A few days later, I received a non-canned reply addressing all of my concerns. And they seem to be telling the truth. As far as I can tell, my bandwidth is not being capped on their end; I’m getting about what I get on other services with my same Comcast connection. Each two-hour video takes about 30 hours to upload when it works.
I have a pretty stable Internet connection now (my old modem was one of the reasons things didn’t work out well with the other services, but I was so disappointed in Mozy’s customer service that I’m not going back), but many of my uploads to LiveDrive do fail. Based on what I’ve read from others, and from my own stress testing (yanking the Ethernet cord out of my router) of the FTP clients, I think I can assume this is due to LiveDrive’s FTP service having problems. I hope this situation will improve in the near future.
Why this project is still worth the trouble
Oldest video I found: Christmas 1986. It looks like my parents recorded it over a tape they had been using to record TV shows. After the home video was over, I was treated to commercials for both the Magnavox VideoWriter and the Sega Master System.
A few weeks ago, I spent a week at home in Pennsylvania and it was awesome. For the past three years, whenever I’ve gone home, it’s been for an event, such as a holiday or a graduation, which means lots of running around. That’s fun, but I wanted to spend some time back home without any big plans, so that’s what I did. I got to see my sister on her birthday, visit my grandparents, spend some time with our cats, eat lunch at Dilly’s and dinner in Doylestown, hang out with a vertically gifted friend, hike along the Delaware Canal, and see a bunch of family for a dinner at our house.
They* say that you don’t know what you have until it’s gone, and that’s true. Like lightning bugs. Such a small thing, but they don’t have them where I live in California. In fact, they don’t even have lightning. Well, while I was home I got to ride through a passing thunderstorm and then 20 minutes later find myself sitting out on a balcony on a beautiful afternoon. And man, Beah is right. Pennsylvania is green. That’s really the first thing I noticed on the drive home from the airport. Big yards full of green grass. When I first stepped out onto our patio, I felt like I was in a rainforest. The humidity certainly helped add to this feeling, but the plants were really doing well this year thanks to the rain.
The nature theme continued when we walked along the Delaware Canal’s towpath, where within about an hour or so we saw a deer, a bunch of turtles hanging out on a log, a big snapping turtle, a blue heron, and some ducks.
Sitting outside at night, I really noticed how much of a luxury the quietness of the country is. I’m so used to hearing my neighbors coming in and out of their apartments, plus the traffic, trains, and planes that I could actually “hear” the silence at home, plus the sound of crickets. Another perk of being away from everyone else is the lack of light pollution. I was sitting out on our patio with my family when I randomly looked up at the sky to see the stars. Just moments after I looked up, I spotted a shooting star. Maybe next year I’ll try to be home during the peak of the Perseids.
Besides just enjoying being in the area, I also took care of some stuff I’ve been meaning to get to. I packed up a bunch of negatives of family photos to be shipped to ScanCafe (I’ll certainly blog about my experience with them at a later point), and I also got a box of home videos to send to California for a similar project. I didn’t send them all, but I should have enough to keep me busy until the next time I go home.
* The Amish, I think.