Interesting Stuff

My apartment has not had internet access since Friday evening. I have called Time Warner Cable about this, and eventually managed to get an automated response saying they were aware of the problem. In the meantime, I’m writing this from the office. I have no idea how long I will be without service, nor how often this problem is going to occur (I never had any problems with Adelphia; they were bought out by TWC a couple months ago and this is the second major outage problem I’ve had). and even when I have service, it is noticeably slower than my connection with Adelphia was. I’m very dissatisfied with Time Warner Cable right now.

and you wouldn’t believe it, but they’re the best ISP in Minneapolis, hands down. Go figure.

I just found a pretty neat Facebook group. It’s called the I Give a Crap Coalition, and if you join the group you are expected to donate a dollar per month to the charities they feature. This month is the Louisiana Disaster Recovery Foundation. This seems like a really great idea: each person only spends $12/year (which is practically nothing, particularly for the upper-middle class people who frequent Facebook), but this adds up to several thousand dollars for the charity of the month. They’ll even send you reminder emails if you want, so you remember to check the site and see the new charity. I don’t mean to sound preachy, but it would be pretty cool if more people joined this group. I have no affiliation with them, and had not heard of them until this evening (when I discovered that several of my friends were already in it); I just think it’s a pretty great idea.

I realize it’s old news at this point, but President Bush is still out of touch with the world.

This evening after work, Dustin, Josh, Caitlin, Dave, Dominic, Nick, Nick’s boyfriend whose name I never caught, and I went out to dinner at Houston’s. We then walked around the Third Street Promenade for a bit, looked at the Puzzle Zoo (a game store), got some gelato, and went back to Google. Why would we go back to work at 9:00 in the evening on a Friday, you ask? On the second floor, we have a lounge complete with pool table, ping-pong, foosball, 2 XBox 360’s, a GameCube, a PS2, an Atari, and probably some other video game systems (I should point out that the video game systems are all owned by individual Googlers who have permanently lent their stuff to the lounge; I don’t think even Google would buy that stuff for its employees). This is enough entertainment to keep all of us, along with several other people who stopped in, busy for the whole night. I left work around 1:15 AM, and there were still 4 people playing foosball when I left. I still can’t believe how lucky I am to be working at such a great company, with such fantastic benefits and perqs.

One of the coolest parts of the evening was how nerdy everyone was, but at the same time how intelligent and comfortable they were with their nerdiness. Some very nerdy examples →

This evening, I had dinner with 5 other Googlers at a wonderful Indian restaurant. We all work on separate projects, have no directly work-related interaction, and each of us met at least 2 of the others just this evening. However, we had a surprising amount in common:

• 3 work at the Irvine office (the other 3 work in Santa Monica)
• 3 were born in the eastern hemisphere
• 3 have cooked in a tandoori oven (only one of which can claim any semblance of Indian heritage/past)
• 3 have lived in Boulder, Colorado
• 3 have bumped into the same Romanian dude up in the Mountain View office (1000+ employees), even though none of us have been there for more than a week at a time
• 3 were Mudders (classes of ’85, ’99, and ’06, respectively)

All of this came up in normal conversation, without purposely trying to find weird stuff we have in common. How cool is that!?

Another interesting tidbit from tonight: “tikka masala” means “spiced patty,” and is typically a vegetarian dish. The chicken variety, despite its popularity, is unlike any traditional tikka masala, and was invented less than 50 years ago.

There is a fantastic tech talk about how to teach computer science to kids. Too often, they see the name and think it’s about programming, and are consequently turned off to the subject. This kiwi teaches CS without using a computer, but has all sorts of fun, hands-on activities for kids to do as they learn about sorting and compression algorithms, error-correcting codes, DFAs, and other parts of CS. If you ever need to inspire kids, this video is definitely worth a watch!

Speaking of videos to watch, check out this Dove commercial. I’ve gotta give them props for that.

On a newsier topic, Bush has begun to admit that the war in Iraq is going poorly and is starting to accept the parallels between this war and Vietnam. Might this be the beginning of someone in the Republican party taking a look at reality and then accepting responsibility for what they’ve screwed up? Not likely, but a man can dream, can’t he?

By the way, please, please register to vote (and then actually vote) in the elections on November 7. In California, you need to register (which can be done at your local DMV) by October 23 (this coming Monday). As John Stewart once quipped, “this country is run by extremists because moderates have shit to do.” However, voting doesn’t take up much of your time, and can help shape which direction the country will go, even if it’s still being run by extremists. No matter which parties/candidates you support, please vote. and please take 10 minutes and read up on the parties/candidates you plan to vote for, and make sure that they really do represent your interests; too often people are elected by an ignorant population that doesn’t realize what it’s doing. You want to vote for the communist party? That’s fine, so long as you know what they stand for and agree with it. You wanna vote for someone because the politicians tell you to? that’s not so good.

So learn about your favourite party, and then vote for them!

I was surprised to discover that less than 2 miles from my house is a shop called the Giant Robot Store! Unfortunately, they seem to sell only comic books and Japanese action figures. Oh, well. I think I’m gonna try getting into another FIRST program here… it looks like the Lego League actually focuses on autonomous robots, which could be pretty great. In case you haven’t heard of them, The Bobs are a pretty fun a cappella group, who inspired the title of this post.

I read an article the other day about Chrysalis, a company that helps the homeless find jobs. They believe that many homeless people want jobs, but cannot get them because they have no home address (which they can’t afford without a job…). Chrysalis finds them a local, unskilled job (and gives the employing company a guarantee that they will have a worker). I believe that many of the people seen on the streets advertising local restaurants and businesses with large signs are employed through Chrysalis. According to their website, people who go through their program really change their lives. They operate throughout the western LA area. I think I might print out some “business” cards about Chrysalis to give to the people on the street who ask me for money.

Finally, I’ve mentioned tries to several different people (it’s a data structure that’s kind of like a cross between a tree and a hash table). If you’re interested in learning more about them, here is the first paper I read about them. It’s not the original trie paper, but it’s a pretty good overview, if you overlook the fact that this person doesn’t really know English. On a semi-related note, here’s the original paper on V-Lists, which are like a cross between a linked list and an array.