Randall Munroe @ Google

The author of xkcd came by Google to give a talk. I got to watch this live, but you can watch it on YouTube.

New Desk

Waterside Desk

So our new office in Fremont is finally open. I thought I'd share some pictures of the view from my desk.

The Onion: Google Launches The Google

http://www.theonion.com/content/news_briefs/google_launches_the_google

You've Got Mail! Google Webmaster Central Gains Message Center

You've Got Mail! Google Webmaster Central Gains Message Center

Moving

Its been a month, so time for an update.

I'm moving! I found a nice place in Fremont. It is a 2 bed 2 bath that I will be sharing with Becca and Neil. Should be fun.

Now to clean and pack. I'll be moved in there by the end of the month.

Why have I been so busy?

This is why.

You people are dedicated.

I don't post anything new for almost two months and you are still checking it. I appreciate the loyalty.

Bachelor Chow Recipe #1
Chili Cheese Rice
1 packet of Trader Joe's Precooked Brown Rice
1 can of Trader Joe's Chili
some Kraft singles

Microwave the rice for 60 seconds in the pouch, dump it into a bowl.
Pour the can of chili on top of the rice. Top with a few Kraft singles (helps keep the chili off the roof of your microwave). Microwave for another minute or so.
Serve. Feeds two of you or one of me.

Seattle has a hockey team?

Why yes they do. They are called the Seattle Thunderbirds and they play in the WHL which is one of the Canadian major junior leagues. The major juniors are where a lot of the NHL players come from. US college hockey is starting to produce more NHL players, but the majority still come from the major juniors. After watching a game I'd say the skill level is on par with the college game.

The Thunderbirds play in the Key Arena (where the Sonics play). We headed down there on Saturday to watch them play the Everett Silvertips. We had no idea, but turns out this is quite a rivalry. Everett is leading the division that Seattle is in by quite a margin. Seattle has been hot and as of this post has won eight in a row. It was a fun game to watch and the Thunderbirds were victorious 4-1. That was nice considering the Badgers' performance this weekend, which we won't mention.

Google Ski Trip Kirkland Edition 2007

From Mt Crystal

So it seems that people enjoy tying pieces or wood or fiberglass to their feet and sliding down mountains. To facilitate this activity Google sent us up a mountain for a few days.

My trip got off to a bit of rough start when I had to pull an all-nighter to fix some stuff and didn't get a chance to go to sleep before I had to catch the bus up to the mountain. We went to Crystal Mountain which is in Mount Rainier National Park. I decided to give snowboarding a try since everyone said it was much easier than skiing. Now besides being sleep deprived I had also worked out with my personal trainer the day before and he didn't quite listen to me when I said I needed my legs the next day. So my legs were pretty trashed.

I had signed up for the beginner snowboarding class. I made it about an hour in before my legs just weren't doing what I told them to do and decided I should give up before I hurt myself. I headed back to my room and tried to get a nap. I was having a lovely nap until the pool party started just outside of my room. Since I wasn't going to get much more sleep with the party going on I got up and got cleaned up and went to find some lunch. I had missed the normal lunch, but there were snacks to hold me over until dinner.

For the non-skiers they had setup a game room with table tennis, air hockey, and a couple Wiis. I entered the Wii Tournament and all of the practice on Neil's Wii paid off and I made the finals. Next up was happy hour at the Snorting Elk. We had a few drinks and some fun.

Finally it was time for the dinner party. There was a nice buffet with prime rib and an open bar. They also had a mechanical bull, that bungee race thing and a casino. I settled in at a poker table and started taking everyone's fake money. I started with 30k and ended up with 521k. That wasn't even close to enough to win the thing since you can't take the house's money playing poker, but I had a lot of fun. The Wii finals were also held during the party and I came in third and got a nice little trophy for my efforts.

I slept in the next day and just got up in time to grab some lunch and my bus back to Kirkland. I forgot batteries for my real camera so I apologize for the low quality of the camera phone pics above, but I wanted to show just how picturesque it was up there.

I had a good time and am very thankful I work for a company that treats us to stuff like this.

Warcraft III is now Universal Binary

Blizzard released patch 1.21 for Wacraft III: Reign of Chaos and The Frozen Throne wich make the game runs natively on both PowerPC-based and Intel-based Macs.



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Google Releases New Link Reporting Tools

For years, Google's link: command has deliberately failed to show all the links to a website. This came out of Google's fear that site owners simply wanted the data to try and manipulate rankings -- which was pretty true. Instead, they only provided a sampling of backlinks. Today, that changes. Google Webmaster Central is rolling out new ...



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I know, I know

I know, I know I haven't posted anything in a while, but to make it up to you all I give you "Nox In A Bag." He crawled in there all on his own and was pretty happy till I started flashing bright lights in his eyes. Nox recommends Cascade for that creepy glowing cat eye effect :-)



So where have I been? I picked up a new project at work and its been kind of insane every since. I spent last week down in Mountain View meeting the team I'll be working with. They are actually making me work so there hasn't been much time to post and I can't really talk too much about what I'm doing.

Things are going really well. I still like Seattle. Especially after looking at the weather this week with our temps hovering around 45 while its in the single digits in Madison. So keep warm you lucky lucky people in Madison.

Staring school in the morning is cruel

Finally a doctor standing up for some common sense. Teenager's brains don't really start functioning until at least 10am. I knew it wasn't just me :-)

Snow again

The weather has decided to grace Seattle with a bit more of the white stuff. It wasn't quite as bad as the last time around since it stayed above freezing until after the commute was done. However the office was pretty empty today as most people stayed home. I braved the treacherous sidewalks to come in to the office where there is actually food. I really need to go grocery shopping, but the 911 isn't going anywhere till the roads thaw or I get snow tires.

Josh from the Something Awful forums has very sound advice for my neighbors and some good excuses of why this is a big deal here. Seriously if it actually snowed on a regular basis here no one would have built a city here. Or they would have at least flattened all of the hills before they did. Also King county might have more plows than Dane county since they have about 10 times the population.

My coworker Andy took some pictures of the actually decent amount of snow he got out in the boonies.

My name was in the paper

This is the story about the Running Fool in the Oregonian I was talking about in the last post.

Human Baton/Running Fool Seattle to Portland

Sunday was the day for me to help the Running Fool on the penultimate leg of his journey. I dragged myself out of bed at O'dark thirty, which this being Seattle in the winter was about 7:30. I got cleaned up and ready to go. I gave Luke a call and he was at a diner in Wallingford, so I looked up directions on Google Maps and headed out.

Luke was waiting with his brother when I got there. We loaded Luke's stuff in my car, said goodbye to his brother and hit the road. Traffic wasn't too bad, but it was raining the entire way down to Portland. The tires on my car really don't deal with standing water very well so it was a bit of tense drive down with lots of little hydroplaning incidents. Luke was pretty tired and slept most of the way down.

We got to Portland right on time around noon. With one wrong turn aside we found the Kennedy School with little trouble. The Kennedy School is a very cool place. It is an old elementary school that they have turned into a bunch of bars and restaurants. It was even one of the stops for Dave Attell when he was in town doing his Insomniac show.

The people driving Luke from Portland to Eugene were already there waiting for us. We had a nice lunch and a reporter from the Oregonian was there asking us questions. I guess we are going to be in the paper tomorrow. Many pictures were taken by others, but I didn't take any. I'll post links when they others post their photos someplace.

Luke wanted to get to Eugene by four, so we wrapped up lunch around two and I headed back to Seattle. Thankfully the rain had let up and it was a much easier drive back.

It was a fun day and the 911 is pretty nice for long runs when there isn't standing water on the roads. I'm glad I was able to be involved in this amazing trip.

New URL

I'm taking advantage of the new custom domain feature of Blogger and this blog is now at http://blog.halfast.com/ the old URL will redirect to this new URL.

Ze Frank is a genius

I really like Ze's explanation of what causes a hangover.