Blog o' Doom

For those of you haven't heard the very, very sad news, George Carlin passed away yesterday at the age of 71 due to heart failure.

George Carlin was not only a fantastic comedian but a hero who accomplished much for free speech and bringing awareness of the importance of our principal freedoms.

For those who haven't heard of him (if you're outside of the US this is entirely possible), see this video and this video for a small sampling. In addition, if you've ever seen one of the many variations of the usage of the word fuck videos - that's George Carlin (well, the videos are added by others, but the words are written and spoken by George Carlin in most of the videos). He truly was a brilliant and amazing man who I hope history will remember forever.

Rest in Peace - I miss you already.

Four years ago, when I first started this blog, I spent a while looking at WordPress (WP) and b2evolution (b2evo). At the time, even though I felt b2evolution was a bit too cumbersome, WP was simply not feature-rich enough - so this blog runs on b2evolution. However I preferred the look of the WP skins, I took a WP skin and sorta forced it into b2evo (which is why some pages don't look quite right).

In the last few years I've grown increasingly dissatisfied with b2evolution. So I decided to take another look at WordPress. And I like what I see. So, I've setup a test blog and imported all of my posts/comments/etc.

I'm curious what you all think, though. So check out the test blog and let me know! If/when I switch, I will wipe that one out, re-install and re-import all the data from here - so don't post anything there that you would like to last.

Moving to Word Press will provide several advantages: easier upgrades, I can switch to a supported skin (I could do this in b2evo as well, but I don't like most of the skins), and there was a reCAPTCHA plugin as well (there may be one for b2evo now, I haven't looked since my last upgrade). In addition, the WP developers seem more geared towards smooth upgrades and transitions than the b2evo developers.

As most of you know, I started with Google last week as a Site Reliability Engineer (SRE) ^[1].

Lots of people have asked how my first week went (and have usually thrown in either "I bet all you do is play pool and Rock Band all day" or "I bet they're working you to death" - neither is true). I figured rather than answer everyone individually, I'll just post about it.

The short answer is that I am absolutely loving it. The people, the atmosphere, the attitude, the technology - it's all fantastic! Without sounding like I got the proverbial chip-implant, Google is a great company to work for that really does put a lot of effort, time, and money into not being evil. That translates into a company that genuinely cares about its employees and coworkers who genuinely care about each other and the company. It's a very unique and awesome place and I'm very happy.

My first week, in addition to lots of fun, was also quite busy. I'm in a lot of training classes, and reading a lot of papers and documentation ^[2]. I've also opted to stay a bit late many nights because I find I can pick up a lot of info from chatting with people after dinner. And in these first few weeks I just want to absorb as much information as I can. Not only am I very excited to learn about the environment, but this is also very practical for me: I don't yet have my stuff or my apartment, so I have lots of time to devote to learning. It may not sound like it, but this is all a lot of fun!

In a few weeks my work schedule will probably normalize, but then I'll be preparing to move into my new apartment. And then I'll be actually moving. And then I'll be setting up my new apartment. And then things should calm down a bit.

¹ Wondering what an SRE is? I describe it as basically a senior sysadmin with skills in development, networking, system architecture, and a large understanding of your applications. For more details see a Engineering Reliability into Websites: Google SRE (pdf) - or the Google conversion to HTML.

² For those interested in the more technical stuff, unfortunately, I really can not talk about it. At all. And yes, I'm serious. I can point you to some public papers on some of the technologies we have developed and use which should give you some idea. Not all of these papers are as well known about as they should be, but they are in fact public (we also have a lot of code we've released: list), and so I'm happy to point you to that stuff, which is really interesting (I know, because I've spent a lot of time reading it lately).

So I've been here two weeks now. Well, just shy of two weeks, anyway. I start my new job on Monday, and I'm incredibly excited!

A hillside picture of Zurich I took today.

I realized this week that it hasn't really sunk in that I've moved here. I'm currently in a temporary apartment. Since I don't start work until Monday, I haven't yet gone to work. And with all the travel I've done in the last 4 months, this feels very much like just another vacation. I don't think it will really sink in that I've moved until I have all my stuff moved into a real apartment and I have made myself a real home here.

Speaking of apartments, on Friday I signed a lease for an apartment! As of July, I'll officially have an apartment! This is really big; it can often take people months to get an apartment here due to the competition. Once I have the place, I will of course post pictures. My stuff won't get here until late July or early August, unfortunately, but at least I'll have a place to have it delivered to!

What about my list of things I miss? Well, it's changed a bit.

First of all, I need to take creamy peanut butter off the list. As I mentioned, I can now get this.

Grape jelly is still on the list, but I'm modifying the entry a bit to just be "jelly." The jelly you get here is more accurately called jam. Jam's nice, but I'm missing jelly. Grape would be fantastic, but even a real strawberry jelly would be fine.

But I'm adding a new, and more important item to the list. It's now at the very top of the list: good sandwich bread. The thing that makes my sandwiches here much less satisfying than they ought to be, I figured out, is not the peanut butter or the jelly. It's the bread. It's hard. It's just not good bread. What California bread is to New York bread (NY bread being way better), Swiss bread is to California bread. Now, mind you, this is only sliced sandwich bread I speak of. Loaves of French bread or rolls or other breads that you get here are great. But sliced sandwich bread of any size or brand that I've found is just significantly sub-par. It's my only complaint on the list. The other things are simply adjustments I'm making... this one is a complaint. But one complaint isn't so bad.

Mountain Dew is still on the list. Though, I have a comment about this. My original assumption was that they only got the major types of soda from each brand out here - probably due in part to shipping costs, and perhaps less overall interest in soda. Well, in addition to Coke, Diet Coke, and Sprite (and the Pepsi equivalents), they also have Coke Zero! And as you look, you will occasionally see other soda items here and there. Thus, I now think even more firmly that Mtn. Dew should be included in the available sodas.

Cheese is still included, but now at the bottom and with a chance of being pulled off of the list altogether. As I mentioned, I found pseudo-American cheese. It doesn't taste quite the same on its own, but it's fairly indistinguishable when melted on something else. And without Mtn. Dew, I can't have my favorite kraft-singles-and-dew snack anyway, so no huge deal. Additionally, I've seen various restaurants with cheddar on something on the menu, so I'm assuming cheddar is around once I know where to look for it. Thus, cheese may soon fall off of the list.

Well, I will now leave you with my review of my second Swiss sight-seeing trip from today. There's some fantastic photos and experiences there, so check it out!

This is even better than Kitten Huffing! In the Spanish village of Castrillo de Murcia, is an annual festival to mark the Catholic feast of Corpus Christi. As part of this festival is the rite of baby jumping, in which the men dress up in costumes as the devil and leap over rows of babies in order to ward off the devil! You read that right - real, live, human babies, in rows, on a mattress. And you jump over them!

Wow, move over kitten huffing, this has my vote for the next new Olympic sport! I can see it now, "Ladies and gentlemen, he's broken the world record and cleared 9 rows of babies! Sadly, we'd setup 10 rows, but he takes the gold home anyway!"

Update: Oh! And what a great slogan it could have: Baby Jumping: Now there's a sport you can really sink your feet into!