Brain protection

I've been worried a lot about the upcoming zombie attack. At first I thought a machete would be enough to protect myself with, but then I discovered:


see more pwn and owned pictures

Commuting

We had an "onsite offsite" this week for Google Docs (which means 6 floors up from where we normally sit). Turns out most of the cubicles on that floor are completely unused and we have 7 people in our office! So people have been lobbying for us to move to that floor. My only hesitation is that it would double my commute to work :).

Fun board game

My co-workers and I have been playing this game called Pop 5 quite a bit lately. I'd recommend it. The basic idea is that you draw a card, choose one of 5 ways to give clues to your team and then your team guesses what's on the card. One way to give clues is to sculpt with (purple) clay.

Venting:
WARNING: Card spoilers below.

If the category is ACTOR and you sculpt a frying pan with bacon in it and you get your team to guess "bacon". How come they can't get to "Kevin Bacon"?!

If the category is TV SHOW and you sculpt the USA, then California, then "hills" and you get your team to say all those things. How come they can't guess "Beverly Hills, 90210"?!

Who is this teammate?

I just filled out a little bio questionnaire for the offsite we're having next week. Mad props to the first person to guess what I wrote under the following question:

My friends & family would say I'm: ______________

Please refrain from guessing if you've seen/heard my answer.

So say we all

Well BSG is now gone, leaving behind a feeling of disappointment and free Friday nights. I got closure in that I was reassured that the writers lost steam in the second half of season 4. I've watched a few season 1 and season 2 episodes recently and they are so much better!

Now I'm taking suggestions for what to do with my Friday nights... :)

First tecnical presentation

It was a warm sunny day in California today. A perfect day to give your first technical presentation.

The story went like this. A co-worker from Mountain View said we should give a technical presentation on my project to the folks in Mountain View. A co-worker in NYC said he'd do it and I said I'd help make the presentation and answer questions and the like. You know just be a friendly face...

Apparently that was not the plan Fuzzy had for me... He just put me in front of the fact that not only am I going to be the one to give the presentation, but I'll also be going to Mountain View to do it in person. My response of course was to guilt him into putting together the presentation, helping me practice and coming with me to California :). And that's how I ended up here this week giving a presentation in front of 30-35 people.

Thanks to my being completely sleep deprived, I wasn't nervous at all and it went great!!!

Fuzzy pouring Steven and I ice wine in celebration before catching the shuttle to San Francisco:



P.S. Fuzzy got the wine from a fellow Googler for letting her tape him answering some questions on "Risk Management" (what goes around comes around). The wine is home made! (This is apparently a common hobby out here.)

HAPPY 50th BIRTHDAY MAMA!

You're twice my age this year! Don't worry, next year you'll be less than twice my age :).

Nicknames... again...

From now on please call me Comrade Lolgatsbear!

I talk funny

Once in a blue moon I say a phrase, which seems perfectly logical and apropos (or is it appripro? j/k) to me, but not so to everyone around me.

Example #1:

I come into work last Thursday around lunch time:

Val: OMG, guess what I saw on the street today?
dramatic pause
Val: A man carrying a surfboard! Typical NYC winter!
Yay, man with surfboard - whatever, this is New York where the last thing I was impressed by was a man with a cat sitting on his head. However I argued the point that its winter, because I consider spring starting on March 1st.
Val: It's winter! People are still wearing hats and gloves!
I happened to be wearing a hat that day...
me: I'm not wearing gloves and my hat is purely decorative!

I guess calling your hat "purely decorative" is a weird way to phrase the point I was making, because it stuck with my co-workers and they're still making fun of me for it.

Example #2:

I used to have a photo of Cheburashka as my desktop background in college.

J or k: What is that?
me: It's a lovable Russian character.

To this day (by which I mean last night) they remember Cheburashka's name and my describing him as a "lovable Russian character". Again, why does that stick? In this case for years!?!

JOk reunion

As I've posted before, some people at the office call me Olgabear. Well aside from that, I've only really had one nickname - Big-O, which my 7th grade Social Studies teacher gave me. This nickname was re-bestowed upon me when we learned about Big-O notation in our CS classes.

So as we were making plans for dinner, k challenged J to the fact that I was missing from the Big-O page in Wikipedia, after which point for 2 proud minutes that Wikipedia page had the following bullet:

• Olga B[...] - a fictional character from Russian folklore.

Good times!