Askewed Thoughts

This blog is retired

2012-01-23T11:40:00.000-08:00

Considering how much has happened to me since I got married (which was my last post), it's obvious that I don't exactly update very often. =) So I am going to do the right thing and retire this blog.

But this doesn't mean I am not sharing my random thoughts online! On the contrary, I have transitioned to posting on Google+. So feel free to follow me on over there. I am also leaving the blog up so that the old posts are still reachable.

I am now married!

2011-03-20T18:01:00.000-07:00

Andrea and I got married on February 15th (Flag Day in Canada, Susan B. Anthony Day in the US in case you were curious and didn't want to read Wikipedia to find that out). I have been very slowly telling friends about the family-only ceremony which is kept a secret, but it's taking so long to tell folks one-by-one and I have been so bad about proactively calling people that I figured I should just blast it to the internet now before this drags out any longer.

The PhD is over

2011-02-01T13:58:00.000-08:00

I received by email my receipt saying that my PhD dissertation was accepted by the UBC library for archiving. That means I am no longer a student; I'm Dr. Brett Cannon.

It's stil quite the statement to be able to make. I started junior college in September 1997, and for about 11.5 years over these past 13.5 (forced to take time off between PCC and Berkeley, year off between bachelors and masters, and then time off during my three internships at Google), I have been in some form of post-secondary education. To have it finally be finished is somewhat astonishing. I am literally no longer a student; I'm flat-out done and will never be working towards another degree again in my life. That's almost unthinkable.

So the question that I have been asked over the past several months as I worked on my dissertation and towards today has been if I thought this was all worth it. My answer to that is "I don't regret it, but I would not have done it if you told me what it would end up entailing". Basically I would have stopped at my masters degree and gone to work for Google if I knew then what I know now.

Why is that? Well, you need to understand what a computer science PhD entails. You start by taking classes; the 2005-2006 school year for me. For me that was somewhat painful as I had to take an algorithms course for the first time and that is my weakest subject in CS. After that you try to find a dissertation topic. That took me some time as all of my ideas turned out to either be done, too small (e.g., masters level), or too big (multiple PhD students working for years on one massive project), or not enough research behind it (once again, more like a masters thesis). But I was lucky enough to finally have inspiration strike me in my supervisor's office in the summer of 2007. Then you live and breathe that idea until you get a published paper out of it; March 2009. After that you then expand upon the idea, quite possibly with more publications, until it is big enough to warrant a dissertation that is over 100 pages. In my case I diverged in my work and came up with another idea in around April 2009 which got published in April 2010. You then write up your dissertation, get your supervisory committee to sign off, defend it, make final corrections, and then get it to the university library to archive for eternity; that last bit happened today.

In that whole process, there were multiple points of frustration for me. A big one was getting published. It turns out that I don't write like most CS researchers. Coming from my philosophy bachelors, I have a natural writing style which is somewhat flow-y, with more of an emphasis on telling a story. CS papers, on the other hand, are very dry and to the point (something, if you have ever talked to me in person on a topic for any great length, I am not good at doing). As Eric, my supervisor, has always told me, write a paper like a program: repeat points as necessary, be very structured, etc. This drove me nuts. When I wrote CS papers I had to mentally force myself to write in a style that I did not like. If I had my way that stupid paragraph at the end of every introduction I ever wrote that outlines what each section was about would not exist; read the section titles to know what they are about! The paper is only 10 pages! You can flip through it to see what is coming up!

And then there is making sure a paper is done in a way that pleases the conference you are submitting to. You don't simply write a paper for yourself and then try to get it accepted at some conference in your field. No, you write a paper for a conference. That always pissed me off as I felt like I was no longer doing the work simply for the benefit of research, but instead to get a publication. It's an age-old problem with academia and it simply rubbed me the wrong way. It especially upset me when I got rejected for what seemed like bogus reasons because one reviewer just didn't like my approach.

And it didn't help that the programming was not always fun. Java is a blight upon computer science which has a stronger hold upon CS academics than it does enterprise programmers. The great irony of CS academia is that you are usually developing cutting edge techniques with old tech. Programming in Java, using CVS for version control (svn if you are very lucky), all on Windows. My security work was all in Java and I hated it. It's my own fault for coming up with an idea that required AspectJ and thus using Java, but that doesn't mean I have to like Java or my time programming. At least my object persistence work used JavaScript which is better. And thank goodness I got to write the server part of my object persistence work in Python on App Engine.

It was the frustration of being distracted from my research to get published, not always doing the fun stuff even when I was only focusing on my research, and just the amount of time I had to spend on a single idea that causes me to say that I would have skipped the PhD had I known what it was going to take. Had I got to simply focus on the research then I probably would have absolutely no qualms about the PhD.

And now here is where I act as the wizened old man, helping CS students decide whether they should pursue a CS PhD. First, you should make sure you actually enjoy programming. I know this seems like a silly thing to say, but I have met CS academics who actually find it really weird that I enjoy programming enough to do open source work in my spare time. But if you don't have that kind of love for programming you might end up going nuts.

Second, make sure you love research. Not everyone can stand to read research paper after research paper on the same topic. I know way too much about security in PHP for a person who has not programmed in PHP in years. But that's what happens when you have to be thorough.

Third, realize that you will have to do publications and that you will not enjoy it. Publications are just part of the game of academia. You will be expected to put the time in and it will be not a highlight of your academic career. If you want to become a professor you better hope that you can at least tolerate the publication aspect.

Fourth, don't expect your research to make any sort of impact. While the entire point of your PhD is to push the boundaries of mankind's knowledge, the amount you will push it is small. And the importance of the push is even smaller. I know I don't expect any of my work to ever be used for anything other than as something to cite in other publications.

Fifth, you need to be self-driven and organized. If you are not then the freedom afforded to you in a PhD will lead to you wasting a lot of your own time, postponing your graduation that much more.

My failure was liking research but not loving it combined with not knowing how much I would hate trying to get publications. But at least I met Andrea through all of this so that's a perk. Plus I get a spiffy title.

Why I would get an Apple iPad

2010-01-28T17:44:00.000-08:00

Back in May 2009 I wrote a post about how I would like to consume information from the internet from the perspective of what devices I would want to have. In that post I said I had a mobile phone and laptop which covers the two ends of the spectrum of devices, but that the middle was not filled. I had mentioned a tablet would be perfect and that I hoped that Apple would eventually produce one. Well, they are and it's called the iPad.

As with anything Apple announces, there has been a ton of online commentary as to why the iPad is (not) worth the minimum US$500 price tag. From what I can tell, most of the complaints against it are coming from the perspective that it does not fulfill all the needs one has from a laptop. Fair enough as Apple did make a direct comparison between the iPad and netbooks as the niche they were trying to fill. Complaints tend to be about things such as no USB port to connect external devices or the inability to do some heavy work like programming on it. All of these shortcomings are coming at the iPad from the perspective of comparing it to a netbook.

Since the iPad it meant to fill a niche it is important to be upfront about what that niche is. If you view the history of computer and mobile devices, originally people had a desktop and then a laptop for those times they needed portability. As the power of laptops have increased it has now become commonplace to find people have entirely filled their desktop needs with their laptops, leading to the desktop no longer being something people own at home. Netbooks have now come along to fill in the position that laptops once held: a computer that is more portable than one's primary machine -- the laptop -- but still able to perform all of the same functions if you are willing to do it more slowly. And then we have the mobile phone filling in the extreme end for those times where you want to do some task but didn't explicitly expect to need a computer. But with mobile phones at the absolute end of portability and power, one can only move up from there to try to fill in that gap between mobile phone and laptop. And moving up from the mobile phone is how the iPad is trying to take that gap between mobile phone laptop. It's a different approach from the netbook and thus serves a different purpose.

For me, I don't need a netbook. My MacBook weighs under 5 lbs which is light enough for me. Plus I have it set up nicely to fit my workflow for anything I need to do that's heavy duty. Having a netbook would require managing a second computer which I am not interested in. Plus my 13" screen is already at my limit for screen size for doing coding work. And I have big hands so I cannot afford to having anything less than a full-size keyboard (plus I can type damn fast so I am not about to want to give up that just for some weight and an extra hour of battery). So the netbook does not fit a niche for me by virtue of being a smaller laptop.

But what about all of those times I don't need a laptop but still want some form of a computer? At the moment I have used my mobile phone or my iPod touch. I don't know about the rest of you, but I spend plenty of time simply browsing the web; my nightly regime is to check Gmail for any new emails that came in since the morning, check Twitter and Facebook, and then go through my feeds in Google Reader, and maybe clear out some entries from Instapaper. Heck, in the morning before I roll out of bed I check my inbox on my mobile phone to help me wake up. Notice how none of those uses require anything that a mobile phone does not already provide? I simply end up wanting a bigger screen to make reading easier and to have a little bit better response to web sites and apps.

It's these situations where my mobile phone would suffice but I would like to have more that I think the iPad was designed for. There is a reason people were expecting (and got) an iPod touch XXL; it's the netbook/laptop connection in reverse for mobile phones. And I can think of two definite scenarios right now where I would love to have the iPad and where a netbook is just not needed.

The first one is my nightly browsing. This has become especially acute for me thanks to my girlfriend. Since my laptop is nicer than hers she has left her laptop at her place. That means when she is over she inevitably wants to borrow my laptop to check her email, follow friends on Facebook, and to do her homework. That means my laptop ends up being occupied. In those situations I either read on my Kindle or I pull out my mobile phone and do my usual routine on there. In the instances I use my mobile phone I inevitably wish for a larger screen and that's it. I browser mobile versions of web pages so performance is not a problem. I simply want more screen real estate to make navigation easier and to make the text larger to read. Nothing fancy. I definitely don't need a full keyboard as I don't do much more than maybe log into some service or jot down some Twitter-length comment. And getting to hold my mobile phone with one hand is somewhat freeing as I don't have to make sure to sit in such a way as to fit it on my lap like I would need to with a netbook.

My second scenario where an iPad would work well is travelling. In a typical year I take at least five trips; vacation, visit my mom, visit my dad, PyCon, and some conference. Once I graduate and have a full-time job I don't really expect that number to drop as the conference trip will be replaced with more vacations or filled in with visiting my brother. In all honesty I expect the number of trips I take to only go up once I have the money to afford to take more vacations, even if they are only for the weekend.

Traveling that frequently for multi-hour trips where I am not actively driving means I have needed to learn how to entertain myself for several continuous hours while away from home. And not only am I away from home, but I am most likely in an awkward chair (you try being 6'6" and sit on an airplane) where you are not near a power adapter for several hours (think five hours or more). At the moment I entertain myself on these trips in XXX ways: reading physical magazines (during the device blackout on flights), read a book on my Kindle (when I want to be thinking), podcasts on my iPod touch (assuming I have any to listen to at that moment), or watching a movie on my iPod touch (when I simply do not want to think enough to read). Once again, notice that none of this requires a laptop. The only devices I use are my Kindle and iPod touch. Both of these devices could be replaced by an iPad if I wanted to, although I don't expect to ditch my Kindle since I suspect for intense reading for hours on end it will still be easier to read than an LCD. But my iPod touch could definitely be dropped for an iPad's longer battery life and larger screen for movies.

But there is more to traveling than getting there. If I am traveling to give a talk I really don't need to have a laptop. When I am at a conference (other than PyCon) I am typically there to give a presentation and socialize. I really should not have so much time on my hands as to be sitting around coding. At worst I would need to make last-minute changes to a presentation, but since the iPad will have Keynote, which I already use, then I don't need to have my laptop with me. Granted a netbook could work in this situation if I used presentation software that could run on one, but it is not critical. Plus the idea of getting to use the iPad's touch screen over a laser pointer and such for dynamic markup of slides while presenting is intriguing.

The critical aspect, though, for wanting an iPad for travel is the fact that you cannot do everything on it. I have to admit I love to code, and I probably do it sometimes when I should instead be out relaxing. My girlfriend on more than one occasion has flat-out said that I cannot take my laptop with me on trips to make sure I don't get sucked into coding instead of enjoying my vacation. In fact I didn't pull out my laptop once on my last vacation with I took with just my girlfriend; I only used my mobile phone to check emails and get directions to places. When I visit my father, if I don't watch myself I very easily get wrapped up in a coding project instead of just relaxing and enjoying the break. If I only had an iPad I would simply not have the option to code (Mozilla Bespin withstanding), and that's a good thing. It even works well for visiting the family and sharing photos I have taken without having to bring the laptop.

I could also see the iPad competing with my Kindle as the thing I toss in my bag when I am going out to a coffee shop or any other place with WiFi where I will have some known downtime (although w/o paying for the 3G version, which I don't plan on doing, the Kindle still wins for sitting on a park bench). I could also seeing adding to my morning regime to reading the New York Times or Google News in bed in the morning as I wake up. Or you knows those quickie checks you do on your laptop or mobile phone (e.g. IMDb checks while watching a movie)? The iPad would be great for those situations (and the Chrome OS developers have found netbooks handy for those situations as well, but I would prefer the tablet form factor).

In other words I already have several compelling use-cases in my life for the iPad where a netbook would at best a comparable solution. Now the question is whether I can wrangle together the US$500 to buy the thing. I think I could get away with not syncing my entire music collection on it (want to do that on my mobile phone instead), so I shouldn't need more than the 16GB version for podcasts, movies, apps, and maybe keeping my favorite photos on it. Maybe an iPad can be a gift to myself when I graduate or something.

Paper accepted for the WWW2010 conference

2010-01-21T17:26:00.000-08:00

My latest research has been accepted as a research paper to presented at WWW2010! This is a big deal for me as it get me a publication covering the second half of my thesis work (the first half was published at AOSD 2009 earlier this year). Having both halves of my thesis published alleviates a good amount of burden for my thesis as I don't have to work quite as hard to prove it has good ideas to my thesis committee; other peers have already said the work is good. So I will be graduating some time this year once my thesis is finished!

CS papers need to stop publishing in the two-column format

2010-01-09T15:51:00.000-08:00

Ever since receiving my Kindle for Xmas and uploading a PDF of a computer science paper I have realized that the way that CS papers are currently being formatted and published needs to change. In the world of CS academia papers are traditionally formatted in a two-column format. This format compared to a one-column format works out well as it fits more per page.

But is reading a CS conference paper on actual paper the future? At AOSD 2009 where I presented my paper I received the conference proceedings on a USB driver. Even though I had to go through pre-print, meet a stringent formatting guideline designed for print, and work with a pre-print service, I didn't get my paper in a physical format (I actually can't get an official hard copy of my paper so I am going to have to find a printer in Vancouver to do it so I can have an archival copy for myself). If we are not even going to receive a paper copy why worry about how it will look on the printed page?

And this brings up to the second problem of how two-column PDFs look on a digital screen. If you read a two-column PDF on an LCD it is a real pain because you typically have zoomed in enough to make the text readable that an entire column will not fit on the screen at any one time. That means to read a single page you must start at the top of the first column, scroll down to finish that column, go back up the page to start the second column, and then scroll down again to finish that second column. As more papers are read on computers it makes less and less sense to format papers this way.

But what really makes the two-column format bad is PDFs inability to reflow its text on e-readers. If you put a PDF on an e-reader that is not the actual size of a sheet of paper the PDF must either be resized to fit entirely on the screen or software has to try to figure out how to reflow the text which can lead to bad results. On my Kindle I have to turn to landscape mode in order to read a two-column PDF, but that simply zooms enough to fit the width of the page on the reader which still leads to small text.

If CS papers switched to a one-column format these issues of reading on electronic devices would simply go away. PDFs would be readable on a computer screen as you would simply scroll in one direction: down. As for e-readers, I think honestly the best solution in all of this is to write text with reflow in mind and then have a standard way of converting from EPUB to PDF. This would be easy if people simply didn't embed table, charts, etc. directly in the paper but instead put them in an appendix and had links to the images. But even if they are inline, making papers simply one-column goes a long way as long as no one is doing crazy typography (which is typically frowned upon in conference papers thanks to length restrictions).

Luckily I am not the only person thinking about this. The journal Cell has begun developing a new paper format. While currently aimed at displaying better in the browser, that requirement should lead to easy packaging in EPUB for e-readers.

The security of your money in your wallet

2009-12-05T13:03:00.001-08:00

[edit 2010-01-02: see this Chicago Tribune article on debit vs. credit card security for purchases]

My girlfriend had her debit card number skimmed, which led to me thinking about exactly how secure the money we have in our wallets (cash, debit, and credit cards) truly is.

Take your credit card. It is vulnerable to having its number skimmed by a false card reader at a store. You could also end up with its number written down by a waiter who takes it to be swiped. And you know those portable card readers that are getting used more and more? They use Bluetooth for wireless communication which has no inherent security mechanism, leaving your number as vulnerable as the card reader manufacturer decides to leave it vulnerable (which means "very vulnerable" since good security costs money to implement). And if you make purchases online then your card is as vulnerable as the weakest web site you used (which is to say "very vulnerable" again since most people don't take the time or money to heavily secure where they store your credit card).

Your debit card is exposed to the same extent as your credit card, except for web sites (as long as you don't use your debit card's credit card feature to make payments with it). Your PIN can still be intercepted by a skimming card reader. And a waiter can still get your number and just watch you punch in your PIN.

As for cash, its only vulnerability is from you being robbed. Otherwise no one is going to forge your money and try to use it to pay for something like a card. And if you get robbed any of your cards can be used for quick purchases.

With all of this in mind, why would you choose way of paying over another?

For cash, it can only be taken if you are robbed. According to the Department of Justice in the US, you have a %0.2 (or 2 out of 1000) chance of being robbed these days. The problem with having your cash stolen, is that if it's gone, it's gone. Unless the police recover your money you have no way of retrieving it again. That would suggest that if you prefer cash over other types of purchases then you should minimize how much you carry around at any time to prevent losing your entire paycheck or something.

Cash does have two perks to it. One is that you are being nice to vendors as cash has no overhead cost. Using either a debit or credit card carries a transaction fee that merchants must pay which cash does not have. Cash also helps you manage your money by limiting you to what you have on hand. If you can't control your spending well, restricting yourself to only the cash you have on you is a good way to make sure you stick to a budget.

Although cash does make it harder to track one's budget. Thanks to web sites for your credit and debit accounts it is easy to log on and look at where you money is going. But in the instance of cash, you have to do that bookkeeping and analysis manually. If you are not good about that it can nullify the budget-restricting power that cash holds over credit and debit cards.

For credit/debit card fraud, I can't find any solid numbers in terms of victimization. Best I could find is that roughly $0.07 of fraud is done per $100 in transactions. But considering everyone I know has had a credit card or debit card number stolen but not been mugged, I think the chances are much higher than having your cash taken from you.

But what are the repercussions of having your cards stolen? In the case of credit cards, you report the bad charge, wait for a few weeks for them to figure out what happened, and potentially wait for a new card to be overnighted to you. For debit cards you go in to the bank personally, get your money back on the spot, and receive a new card. Obviously the speed of response is different between credit and debit cards as one gives you a temporary loan why the other is your actual, physical money. But in both instances you end up getting the fraudulent charges removed and have no loss of money short of inconvenience and stress. Plus credit and debit cards let you manage your finances easily with online reports of your expenditures.

What it seems to come down to is a tradeoff between the inevitable inconvenience of when your credit and debit card numbers are stolen compared to the possibility of being robbed of your cash. If you are fine with dealing with your bank or credit card company when your card number gets stolen then I would say use your credit card for everything. That way any issues won't directly affect you if for some reason the bank drags their feet. Plus you get perks typically with your credit card (cashback, frequent flier miles, etc.) that you don't get with a debit card. Otherwise use your debit card if you feel you can't trust yourself with a credit card. I would only use cash if you feel bad for merchants being charged fees by the credit card companies or you have real issues with someone knowing what you have bought.

Replacing FriendFeed

2009-08-10T23:39:00.005-07:00

[edit 2009-08-12: Google Reader now provides a page of feeds based on your Google profile, solving my first two issues]

It was announced today that Facebook bought FriendFeed. This is unfortunate to me as this puts FriendFeed's future in doubt as Facebook bought the company for the developers and their tech, not the site itself. While I totally understand why the FriendFeed guys sold the company, it does mean I need to come up with an alternative to FriendFeed as I don't trust Facebook to keep the site up and open to my liking.

FriendFeed provided me three services. One was aggregating my online content into a single account online -- my lifestream online. To fix this I have created a Google Reader lifestream bundle for myself. There you will find an aggregate feed (that works in any feed reader) for my two blogs, my photos, and my Yelp reviews. I am also giving twitterfeed a try to update Twitter directly from this bundle. If you want ALL of my content, including things that are extremely noisy , go to my Google profile and subscribe to what you want.

The second service FriendFeed provided was getting shared stuff from various people online. This is picked up by Google Reader shared items. Many things I liked that I found from FriendFeed came from people and their Google Reader shared items, so this service replacement works.

The third service was as a microblogging service and Twitter backup. I always preferred how FriendFeed handled comments, and I had enough people following me that I could post there and on occasion get a response. But the really handy thing was FriendFeed as a backup when Twitter was acting up. Posting a message to FriendFeed meant it would at least be up on FriendFeed immediately and eventually get to Twitter once the service stopped having whatever trouble it had. Plus FriendFeed has an IM and email interface that I would use on occasion. Replacing the backup I can do through identi.ca, but the alternative interfaces will take more work. And Google Reader's shared thoughts features is definitely not there yet.

I think most of the reasons I used FriendFeed I have found a replacement, albeit not quite as slick as what FriendFeed has provided me.

Vodka, slurpees, a waterfight, and a stripper pole

2009-07-11T19:38:00.002-07:00

There is a web site out there that lets you review local businesses; it's called Yelp (Canadian and UK versions are available). While I was interning at Google, Guido joined the site and told me that when he signed up the founders added him as friends since they use Python. As I had been looking for a site to post restaurant reviews in Vancouver and Yelp had the best listing of restaurants (most sites lacked a large portion of restaurant listings), I joined as well.

I then subsequently began to post reviews. While in SF I posted a couple, but didn't make it a habit. But upon returning to Vancouver I made an effort to post a review every time I ate at a restaurant. I caught the eye of someone named Crystal who was active in the local Yelp community here in Vancouver. She's so active, in fact, she became the new community manager for Yelp in Metro Vancouver two months ago. And when Crystal became community manager, Vancouver gained a Yelp Elite Squad, which I became a member of early last month just before the group's first event.

The great thing about being a part of the Yelp Elite is your local community manager organizes some free event every month. This month it was to attend the flash mob waterfight in Stanley Park. I went to this the first year it was held in Vancouver two years ago and had a blast, so I didn't pass up my opportunity to go again this year (I missed last year for some reason).

It started with us being picked up by a party bus right off the Burrard Bridge. We were then taken to three different 7-Elevens for free mini slurpees with vodka tossed in for those who desired it. My first slurpee was lime with vodka, the second one was a virgin orange. But I only partially got through my second slurpee because the vodka and sugar did not do great things to my stomach. Luckily someone thought to buy some chips that help settle my stomach.

We then hit the waterfight, and like the first year I went I just ran in guns blazing! I of course got soaked head to toe, all while having great fun. Couple hundred people turned out and all behaved themselves when it came to innocent bystanders. Did that for about half an hour and then headed back to the beach on the party bus.

But on the way back we made sure we took full advantage of our party bus. If you follow the link above for the bus you will notice that there is a stripper pole at the back of it. On the drive out of the park, Crystal tried to get the two other guys on the bus to dance on the pole as they were already sitting there with their shirts off. They said they were going to go for it, but didn't commit, so I said, "you pussies", and hopped on the pole and did a little dance. Now having all of our stuff sitting back there on top of my being taller than one could stand, it wasn't too much of a show, but it was enough to get me a Yelp shot glass full of vanilla vodka. After I broke the ice one of the guys finally went up. We then had two girls go at it together twice. That pair then had me join them and then later another girl on the bus. And when we finally stopped at our final destination I attempted one stripper pole move which I pulled off, and one I couldn't attempt because of a lack of upper body strength and general ceiling clearance. I actually did the one I could do twice because I got requests for photos, but that's when I learned why men typically don't pole dance.

Afterwards we went to Burrard Bridge for drinks. And from there I came home, showered, and took a nap. Overall it was a great day! And before anyone asks for photos, plenty were taken and will end up on the Yelp Vancouver Flickr collection sometime in the near future.

Reaching PhD candidacy and what it means

2009-06-13T21:22:00.003-07:00

In case you have not heard through phone, email, IM, FriendFeed, or Twitter, I have reached PhD candidacy for my doctorate. But since a bunch of people have asked me exactly what that means I figured I would explain it along with the overall steps needed to get a PhD from UBC in computer science (CS).

When I first arrived at UBC, the first thing I did was take courses. All other departments at UBC have comprehensive exams, which are exhaustive tests to make sure your breadth of knowledge is wide enough for someone who will have a PhD. This is done to make sure you are well-rounded as an individual for your field since your PhD thesis makes you an expert in such a narrow field it would otherwise be very easy to get your degree without knowing some core fundamentals.

Luckily for me the CS department at UBC is special. We don't have comprehensive exams, but instead an eight course breadth requirement. By making sure you take courses in some broad areas the department with an acceptable grade (I believe it is a B or better) the department makes sure you are in general a computer scientist. My first year was spent taking three courses to meet this requirement.

You also need to find a supervisor. The definition of the role varies from supervisor to supervisor, but in general that should help make sure you stay on the right path to graduate. I lucked out that my masters supervisor is friends with my now PhD supervisor. So I managed to get a supervisor within a couple of months of arriving at UBC. But apparently most people arrive knowing who they want to work this. I suspect this is partially because in Canada a masters degree is a separate step from your PhD, unlike in the States where typically you skip your masters if you go for the PhD.

Then you start hunting for a thesis topic. For me this was a long, arduous process. The ideas I came up with either were either not scientific enough (not enough research and so more like a big masters thesis) or too big (requiring multiple PhDs and years of work). But I did finally find one.

Once you have a topic you need a committee. You can add people because they would make a good recommendation later on when you apply for a professorship. You can ask someone who fills in a knowledge gap you might have involving related work. Or you can ask someone who you think won't cause you much grief. Either way you need a committee. At UBC you need three, although one of the members is almost always your supervisor, so you really only need to hunt down two more people.

With a topic chosen and your committee selected, you need to defend your thesis topic proposal. A defense (at least at UBC) consists of a half hour presentation, a round of questions from your committee, questions from the audience, and then more questions from the committee. The purpose in doing this is to make sure you are not going to waste time on a topic that will not lead to you getting a PhD. In other words, if you successfully defend your thesis topic the department has said it will grant you a PhD if you do what you said you would do. This is what I just did.

The last step is actually writing your thesis and defending that. The defense is just like the one you do for your proposal. The reason I am now labeled a PhD candidate is I am now a candidate to defend a thesis. Up to this point the university would not let me consider defending a thesis as I had other requirements to complete. But with all but one checkbox out of the way I am allowed to defend a thesis. Some universities also call the state I am in All But Dissertation (ABD).

Now obviously there is more to a PhD then what I have said here (primarily the actual research and getting publications). But the primary steps of courses/exams, supervisor, topic, committee, proposal defense, and finally thesis defense are what you need to go through to get a PhD. For me I now have a flag at the finish line that is visible from where I stand; I just can't tell how far away the flag is.

How I would like to interact with the Internet from a physical perspective

2009-05-24T21:30:00.003-07:00

Don't ask me why, but lately I have been thinking about how I would like to physically interact with the Internet, both in terms of producing and consuming content. With the proliferation of Internet access I think people will begin to come across more and more ways to access the Internet in their daily lives. Just a few years ago no one had unlimited data plans on their cell phones or netbooks that cost hardly anything. But now we can carry the Internet around in our pocket or backpacks without issue. But just because we can carry the Internet around in our pocket does not mean it is the best form-factor to actually interact with the Internet.

To begin, I think online content needs to be classified in small and large sizes. Small content is things like posts to Twitter, typical emails, or blog posts. Another way to think of it is it is no longer than two screens full of text on your typical smartphone. It takes no effort to scroll from top to bottom on a cell phone such that if you have to reference something at the top of what you are reading you won't think twice about scrolling back to the top. Everything else is large content.

For small content I think reading it on your cell phone is fine. The content is short enough that you will not be staring at the small screen for very long. Plus small content tends to be very timely and thus consuming it while out on the town makes sense as the longer it is until you get to it the less relevant it will be.

As for producing small content, your cell phone can also be fine, albeit only for really small content. I have no problem writing a paragraph or so on my cell, but I wouldn't want to go past that.

The next step up from cell phones is a tablet. If Apple were to create a tablet, it would be great for consuming all online content regardless of size. Something about 9" in diameter would be large enough to display text at a comfortable size for long-term reading. But it would also be small enough to easily carry around to any place where you might want to read such as the living room, bedroom, the local coffee shop, some bench outside, etc.

But I would not want to use the tablet to produce large content. While the on-screen keyboard would most likely be large enough that I could type several paragraphs without many errors, I would most likely get frustrated by how slow it would be compared to a physical keyboard (I am a fast typist). And so the tablet only slightly alleviates the content creation limitation of a cell phone, but it greatly improves the consumption experience.

This leaves us with laptop for consuming and creating all content. While it is not as convenient as a phone or tablet, it is still portable enough to carry around as long as you are not going hiking.

So, I want my cell phone for reading and writing emails along with reading short blog posts. I want a tablet for writing short blog posts but reading anything online. And I want my laptop for creating large content. Here is to hoping the Apple tablet rumor is true so I can actually start browsing the web on a tablet instead of having to always pull my laptop out.

Why I am so critical of women and their sunglasses

2009-05-02T11:01:00.001-07:00

I have come to realize something about myself when I judge women on how they look. Having figured this out it puts into perspective why I have been so harsh towards women on certain things and not on others. Certainly it is why I absolute abhor poorly chosen sunglasses. What is this realization? I am very picky about what accessories women choose to wear.

When it comes to one's clothing, we all have days where we just don't necessarily have the options we want for that day (my mother and her expansive closet withstanding). I know I have had those days where I just had not gotten around to doing laundry and so my clothing options were rather limited. And one cannot go out in public without a shirt and pants. So I can understand a woman choosing a top or pair of pants one day that are not what I would have chosen for them.

This understanding even extends to shoes. I currently have my casual shoes sitting in my entry hall waiting to be taken to a cobbler as the soles are coming loose. Because of this I only have sneakers and my shoes I reserve for slacks or days I want to take it up a notch. Typically, if I think the nicer shoes might be too much I dress it down with the sneakers. So I can understand a woman making a bad choice in footwear.

But sunglasses? I don't care how sunny of a day it is, you don't have to wear sunglasses like pants. This is especially true in Vancouver where the sun is typically not out even when people are wearing their sunglasses. When you put on your sunglasses you are choosing to wear them. That means you are choosing to look how you do with those sunglasses. So if you look bad in them it says to me you made that conscious choice to look like that. Thus I judge much more harshly on that choice.

Same goes for other accessories such as earrings, any form of piercing, tattoos, etc. This helps explain why I react why I do to nose and lip piercing; you choose to look like that voluntarily and I really don't go for that sort of thing.

Now admittedly I have never had a conversation with a women with a nose piercing where I was saying to myself, "this person is amazing, but I can't ask her out because I simply cannot stand her nose piercing". But when I walk down the street or sit on the bus and I am judging women on how they look, those that choose to wear accessories that don't look good definitely get judged more harshly than others.

The two types of clapping

2009-04-29T19:26:00.003-07:00

During my orientation at Cal Poly SLO orientation for my masters we had an ice breaker where you walked around the room trying to fill in a grid with names of people who have met some criteria (e.g. born outside of California). In the end completed grids were entered into a raffle and a winner was chosen. Once the name was pulled people clapped. I wondered why people were clapping, though, for someone who simply was lucky. Even if you assume it took some skill to fill in the grid (it didn't) people still clap when people when entirely random drawings that required nothing more than being present for the drawing.

I have asked people over the years why they thought people clapped to ackknowledge someone who has done nothing requiring skill. This question has actually been used by me to suss out whether someone actually thinking creatively about random crap like me or would rather shrug their shoulders at the question or ridicule me for asking "stupid" questions.

But regardless of the answers I have received I have never stopped thinking about it. But I believe I have finally reached an answer that I am happy with, and that is there is two different situations that cause people to clap. One instance is from the appreciation of someone's skill at something. When you see a performance that you consider great you will clap to let the person know how you feel.

The other instance is when you clap to let someone know you are happy for them. This is why we clap at weddings, when someone wins a prize that required no skill, etc. and this is what I witnessed all those years ago at Cal Poly.

Now I can't think of any actual difference between how we clap for the various instances of why we clap. People don't seem to use a different style or holler in one instance and not the other. It just simply happens to be two different reasons why we clap.

Which brings up an interesting point about clapping when you are happy for someone. What if you are not truly happy for them? What if you wanted to be the one who won the prize? You might begrudge the other person for winning, but you are not necessarily happy they won over you either. And yet we still clap. I think this is when people do the typical five lackluster claps and don't bother stretching out the applause. They don't want to come off as cold-hearted, but they don't really want to lie and say they are really that happy for you either.

This is exactly the type of stuff I contemplate when I stare out my window or go for a walk. How could I possibly still be single? =)

Fuck flying; take the train for short trips!

2009-04-27T21:38:00.002-07:00

For the first time in ages I took the train for a trip that lasted more than an hour; went from Vancouver to Everett, WA to visit my father for his birthday. The total trip took 3.5 hours and none of it was bad.

Me being me, I got to the train station more than an hour before boarding. I got the desk, picked up my tickets, and then got in line to go through customs. For the train is entailed a check of my passport and an x-ray of my bag (without having to take my laptop out!). Otherwise I walked on to the train and sat in my seat.

So much leg room! I couldn't believe that I didn't have any space issues with my seat! This alone helps beat out flying.

But there is also the view. Since the train from Vancouver to Seattle is in the evening I got a nice western view of the setting sun along the BC/Washington coast most of the way.

There was an extra stop in Blaine, WA for another customs check where they take your customs form and ask you if you are planning to leave anything in the US, etc. But the border patrol people seemed to be in better spirits than there highway counterparts.

Otherwise the trip was nice going down. Got a bunch of reading done and simply relaxed.

Coming back, though, did have the drawback of having to get up early. Since there is only a single train that goes up to Vancouver each day I had to take the train that left at 8:30 in the morning from Everett. I am not a morning person so that sucked. Once I got back I took a two hour nap.

And that is the big drawback of trains; the schedule and restricted destinations. Only having a single run in either direction each day sucks. Plus I can't take the train any farther than Seattle which is a disappointment as I would happily take it down to Portland or Boise to visit family at either location. Plus I would still rather fly for anything that would take a very long time on the train in the name of saving time. But for these short jaunts down to Seattle the train works out rather nicely.

Should I learn French or Mandarin?

2009-04-05T13:11:00.000-07:00

It's finally time to decide what foreign language I am going to learn: French or Mandarin. Each have the strengths and weaknesses, but I will try to learn one of them.

For French, it has the perk of me wanting to visit the country where the language is spoken. I have an interest in visiting France even though my father and Richard are the only people who seem to like visiting France and French is spoken in various other places in the world I might consider visiting. It also sounds rather nice; I have discovered over the years I prefer French jazz to any other form of jazz. I also happen to be living somewhere with a ton of reading material; walking through the grocery store I have plenty of French to read.

But French is not perfect. I have never been good at saying French words. It does not have the most reasonable grammar rules. I also will not have anyone to practice speaking with once I leave Vancouver.

For Mandarin I can actually speak the tones -- don't ask me how, I just can. I also have a lot of friends with whom I can practice with. Plus Mandarin would be a lot more useful in the Bay Area than French ever would be. The language is also much simpler when it comes to rules since it practically has none.

But reading Mandarin is not easy as it is all rote memorization. I also don't feel any great desire to visit China -- I would only do it if other friends were going who were Chinese themselves.

Anyway, I am going to see if I can't make a choice in the near future and then start learning by the summer.

I now have no car

2009-03-18T10:31:00.002-07:00

This has been an interesting week so far. I drove down Friday to visit my father for the weekend and to pick up the remnants of what I had from SF and take it back home. I had scheduled a bunch of appointments for this week since I leave for PyCon on the 25th and I wanted to get things done, including my car registration which required a smog check.

But while pulling back on to the highway after lunch at the south end of the island, I heard a pop in my car and a sudden rattling. I pull over and pop the hood in hopes that something obvious simply dislodged that I could somehow reattach. No such luck, though, so I close the hood and start to drive down the highway.

And that's when I notice the car doesn't do a lot in second gear. As soon as the car accelerated to 20 mph and the car shifted gears there was no speedup in the car and the engine began to race. That spells transmission problems which are never cheap.

After parking in a parking lot right off the highway I figured out where to have the car towed. The car and I arrived at the garage at 15:00; two hours left in the garage's workday. The garage said they would try to diagnose the issue by the end of the day, but it didn't happen. And because it is the island they were closed all weekend. That left me plenty of time to reflect.

Transmission repairs are expensive things. Typically you either end up with your transmission rebuilt or you end up buying one already rebuilt. Either way it ain't cheap as the part is expensive and it takes hours of labor to deal with. Knowing this I looked up the blue book value of my car: about US$2,000 in excellent condition, but more realistically under US$1,400 for fair condition. So I set myself a ceiling price; if the car repairs came in over $2,000 I would not bother to fix the car. A slightly bold move on my part considering I learned how to drive in Los Angeles and was an active driver for about a decade before I moved to Vancouver.

Come Monday morning I get a call from the garage about the price: $2,385 + tax. Being over my ceiling I ask if they know whether a car registered in BC can be scrapped in Washington State. They didn't know, but said they would look into it. While I wait I make a smattering of phone calls (I tried to stay off the line as my father does not have call waiting and my cell gets no signal here; not exactly cutting edge here in terms of technology) and I find out I can't donate my car as no one wants the hassle of dealing with BC stuff. But once 17:00 rolled around and I knew the garage was not going to be calling that night I began to investigate. I mostly get a bunch of numbers of places to call in the morning (thank you very much Washington AAA!).

Tuesday morning I get up and start calling around. Turns out the local recycling company will take the car (it also turns out the garage asked what it would take to tow the car back to BC which I didn't ever plan to do). So I go to my car one last time, clear out what I want to keep, strip the license plates off the car, and then drop off the paperwork at the recycling company (since BC has the same crown corporation run both the registeration and provincial car insurance there is no title for the car, just the bottom part of your current registration). And at that point I no longer owned a car.

I have now inadvertently extended my stay here at my dad's by a week (he is not available to drive me back until then). That means I only get one full day back in Vancouver before I leave for PyCon. Ironically, though, the only thing I had to really deal with before I left was car registration.

I also need to choose a carshare service. I am not stupid enough to think I will not want to have a car available to me on occasion. In Vancouver there is Zipcar and the Co-operative Auto Network (CAN). Basically Zipcar has a few cars really near me at Safeway, but CAN has more cars overall nearby, just not none quite as close as Zipcar. CAN is also cheaper than Zipcar. But the big issue is that CAN wants a BC drivers license which I don't have. Since I am a student I get to drive under my California license. Now I could take the written test and surrender my CA license for a BC one, but that would mean getting a new CA license in two years (assuming I stay on schedule to graduate, I still plan on working for Google in SF or MTV, and I don't meet some girl that causes me to not move back to the Bay Area). I don't think CAN will save me enough to warrant the hassle. Plus Zipcar is also in the Bay Area so I would be able to keep my membership when I move back to the States. I am giving myself a few days to think about it, but chances are I will go with Zipcar.

What the heck I did in SF

2009-02-21T11:21:00.002-08:00

November was not very eventful as I was sick the entire month. And at work there was a little bit of frustration as I was having to learn the Google toolchain again which slowed me down. But I did manage to see some friends during the month (as I did throughout the visit).

December I was finally up to speed at work and thus actually contributing. But during my off hours I was busy working on my AOSD paper as it was only "conditionally accepted" which, according the email, meant it was actually rejected (not exactly a positive way to inspire someone to put work into their paper to improve it). But in the end it was accepted and I will be the absolute talk given at the conference.

January was good. With nothing taking up my free time but what I wanted, I actually was able to relax. I actually noticed that I was laughing out loud again, which was odd feeling since I had not realized I had stopped.

February was more of the same. The release of 1.1.9 of App Engine actually contained code by me which was neat.

During my trip I managed to go to SF MOMA and the de Young. SF MOMA was rather contemporary, which meant I didn't like a decent chunk of the stuff. The de Young I didn't get to see enough of.

It was nice to see my friends again. I actually managed to see almost everyone at least once. One friend just never responded to my emails (taking that as a hint) and the other fell ill both times we were going to meet up (not taking that as a hint).

From this trip I remembered why I do and do not like having a roommate.

Overall the visit was good. I definitely was fine with the idea of just staying, but with two years left on the degree I once again fought the temptation of just staying at Google and came back to Vancouver.

Explaining what Google Latitude is

2009-02-05T14:05:00.002-08:00

(I do plan on writing a blog post about what I have been up to lately just like Vivian requested, but not right now; but do know I have actually started to laugh out loud again, so that's a good sign)

Google Latitude just launched and I have had some friends ask me what it is and other express some worry about its privacy implications. So first: what is Google Latitude? It basically places you on the map based on where you are. You can either set your location automatically (through your cell phone if it is supported or from an iGoogle gadget) or you can set it manually.

The other part of Latitude is you can see where your friends are. You can invite people (and obviously people can invite you). You then end up with a list of people who you are sharing your location with.

And this is when I help calm people down about privacy. To begin, only people you have explicitly cleared to see your location can know where you are. This means the general Internet cannot find out where you are. If I invite Vivian to see where I am she can, or she can invite me and I can say I am okay with saying where I am. But otherwise Vivian cannot figure out where I am even if she is listed in Google Talk for me, etc. I can also let Vivian know where I am but set specifically for her that she can only know what city I am or actually hide my location from her. So even for people I am willing to let know where I am, I can limit to the city level or actually turn it off.

Or I can totally lie for everyone. Since I can set my location manually or turn it off entirely I can globally control for everyone who I have said can know where I am where they think I happen to be (if anywhere). In other words you can very easily control who knows what about where you are.

So why use Latitude? For now there is no special service tied into it so its usefulness is purely based on looking at a map and seeing where people are. But I already know of some ways I plan to use it. For one thing, if I have a friend I am meeting and I am wondering if they are going to be on time, I can look at the map and see how far away they are. That can help prevent me from calling them wondering where they are or how late they are going to be if they have not called (which you should still do =). I can see if my friends are hanging out at home and thus potentially available to just hang out and some random evening. I could see who is on campus for going to lunch with. If people really get into the service then I could start setting my status message to something I plan or want to do and people can respond based on whether they want to participate and are close enough to (e.g. "want to watch tonight?"). I am even willing to share what city I am in with my parents so they know whether I returned from a conference or something yet.

For me the question becomes who do I share my location with and to what level. The easy one is my parents who can know what city I am in (sorry Mom and Dad, but you don't need to know what nights I happen to not spend at home). The brother and step-sister can know where I am exactly (and they already do). But what about everyone else? For right now the litmus test for me is whether I would tell the person where I am if they called at 4:00 in the morning, sounding kind of down, and they asked me where I was right off the bat. I would assume they were feeling crappy about something and wanted to come over to talk. If I wouldn't hesitate to the person where I was I am willing to let them know where I am exactly on Latitude. Now if there is someone I would not be willing to do this for but if they knocked on my front door I would immediately invite in on-site then they can have city level knowledge. This applies to people I know from the PyCon community and have actually met in person multiple times. In other words Latitude is not like Facebook and I will not approve just anybody I just happen to know.

I think Latitude is a rather cool thing. It definitely isn't new since brightkite, Loopt, and Plazes all did this before Google. But the as with all things Google, there is the Google effect thanks to everyone I know having a Gmail account means they can easily get on the service. Plus I trust Google to not abuse knowing where I am and to also keep it safe from leaking out accidentally.

Hopefully some of my friends will get into using the service to make it more useful. Plus I am looking forward to when the Android application gets pushed to my phone in the next software update. We are definitely moving towards a more connected world and knocking down that geographic barrier will help with that.

Received my PSF Community Service Award today

2009-01-27T15:16:00.002-08:00

Today in the mail I got my Python Software Foundation Community Service Award! I received this for some community stuff I did which took about two years to complete and taught meaning of the word "delegation" and for writing stuff.

This award means a lot to me. There is really only one other award that is given out in the Python community which is the Frank Willison Award and I don't know if I will ever get that one (the people who have received that award have been involved with the Python community for a time much longer than me). It's really nice to know that people really do appreciate the work you do. It's one thing to know that your work is good and useful just because you personally know it improved things, but it's another to get external recognition through an award like this or have someone walk up to you and shake your hand to thank you for something you did.

This award ranks up there with getting commit privileges and PyCon 2005 where lots of people who I respect as programmers complimented me on my masters thesis work.

How US Senate seats compare to population representation

2008-12-31T16:07:00.003-08:00

The other day I created an organizational chart that shows the five most populous cities in America and the states that it takes to equal that population. The reason I did that was to visually illustrate how out of whack the Senate seems to be for representation of the US compared to population. Looking at the extreme example, NYC has the same population has the nine least populated states in the Union. That means that the people in NYC who share two Senators with all of NY would have 18 Senators if they were instead those people from the nine states.

Now before people start to get after me about the House of Representatives being population-based, let's think about the balance of power here between the House and the Senate. If the federal government is meant to represent all of America, why does the Senate which disproportionally represents the populace, have equal say, if not more, in national matters? The Senate is where a filibuster can occur. The Senate can block and amend any bill the House passes. Why does someone from Wyoming get to be represented by 1/257,502 of a Senator while someone from California is represented by 1/18,228,774 of a Senator? That's over 70 times more representative power for the person from Wyoming compared to California!

The funny thing here is comparing all of this to Canada. In the US, the federal government actually does a lot of things for the nation. In Canada, however, most power is devolved to the provinces. And yet in Canada Parliament is based on population! So the country where the federal government does less has a more balanced representation than in the country where the federal government does more!

Maybe some states could be merged together so that the balance is a little bit more reasonable. Put Wyoming and Montana together. How about merging North and South Dakota? And don't tell me that there is too much of a cultural block; if East and West Germany can become a single country again then some states can merge.

The point of this rant is that the representation at the federal level should not be inverted when the federal government is powerful. If the US was more like Canada and the federal government didn't do that much then fine, I could live more with the imbalance. But that is simply not the case here.

Oh, and if you read some comments in another blog post I did in one of my two blogs this entire post makes me come off slightly as a hypocrite. =) As with all of my ranting blog posts, take what I say with a grain of salt.

Things I want to do in SF and Vancouver

2008-12-26T00:13:00.002-08:00

I decided to shift my todo list for SF and Vancouver that I had on my web site to Google Maps. If people have suggestions of what to add to the list, feel free to email me or leave a comment.

View Larger Map

View Larger Map

Started a photo album for random photos

2008-12-18T17:00:00.003-08:00

I tend to take random photos with my cell phone as I walk around town. And with my Android phone having direct upload abilities to my Picasa Web Album account I figured I might as well start an album for those random photos. I won't post after every photo since FriendFeed will pick it up as well as the news feed from Picasa Web.

Alive in SF

2008-12-08T22:34:00.002-08:00

I move in on a Saturday. I come down with the flu that Monday night that's so bad I miss my second day of work. How can it get worse? I get a cold shortly after starting to recover from the flu. I didn't consider myself basically over all of my illnesses until the US Thanksgiving holiday weekend. My first month living in downtown SF and I fall ill to the point that I don't get to go out and take advantage of the situation.

But I tried to make up for it the first week I was ill. I went to a San Jose Sharks game with other Google interns the Tuesday following Thanksgiving. Although throughout the game we were constantly shifting seats out of mix-ups with sitting in the wrong seats, it was still fun. Took CalTrain for the first time; 1.5 hours to get to the downtown SF station from HP Pavilion.

Wednesday I attended the Python SF Meetup. While the beginning of the meeting was a little slow as I didn't know anyone there, the talk was good. Plus I stuck around until they kicked us out talking with various people which was great. Python 3.0 was also released that day which was a big deal for Python in general and for me since since I put a lot of work into it.

Thursday was clothes shopping with my friend Anna. Ended up with a pair of Ever designer jeans from Bloomingdales.

Friday was the SF Google Xmas party for my teams and others that fall within a larger group. Took Anna along so I didn't go stag. It was held at Medjool in the Mission. The view from the roof was great. After Google's time at the club ended and the vibe didn't go the way we wanted, Anna and I walked down the street to Bruno's and danced for a couple of hours. Have not had a chance to do that in a while and it was a lot of fun.

Saturday was sleeping. =) Accidentally slept in until 14:00. Eventually got out of the apartment and did some work on my thesis proposal and a Python project.

Sunday was brunch with Henry and Sandy in Chinatown. I also got a bunch of work done on a Python project.

Today was my first session with a personal trainer at the gym. While I didn't work up a sweat, I am sore; session was about strength measurement.

Work has been fine. Last week I was getting frustrated with what I was working on as none of the solutions I tried were working. Hopefully I can figure something out this week as I want to move on to the next part of the solution.

Getting the flu just before you start work sucks

2008-11-05T21:33:00.002-08:00

I came down with the flu Monday night. Not the best time since the next morning I had to take the shuttle to Google in Mountain View. Orientation went well; supposedly I was the fastest person to ever go through it in about an hour. Just had to fill out the usual paperwork (I-9, W-4, NDA, etc.).

After that I had lunch with various people I know at Google from the MTV campus. Once that was done I exchanged my t-shirt for a bigger size and then hung out with Bryan for a couple of hours. We chatted for a bit and then I sat at a co-worker's desk and hacked on Oplop while I waited for a friend to get off work.

My friend and I went and had what might be called Chinese American food. Think American dishes, but with a Chinese twist (e.g. a club sandwich with egg, or peanut butter french toast).

By that point I was feeling horrible. I took the Google shuttle home, emailed Guido that I would most likely not be coming in for my first day at the SF office (which was a big disappointment to me as I was looking forward to it), hit the NyQuil, and proceeded to sleep from 21:00 until about 12:00 today.

I am feeling much better at the moment and will be going into the office tomorrow. Luckily this flu hit hard early. Should be pretty much over it by the end of the weekend.

In SF

2008-11-03T20:35:00.002-08:00

For those of you who follow me on identi.ca (and thus by extension on FriendFeed, and by extension yet again on Twitter), you know that I have arrived in SF. Have orientation tomorrow at Google to fill out paperwork. So far, so good!