A few weekends back — before it became cold and wet — we had a wicked day playing frisbee in the park. Tessa had her camera and took some cool photos, here’s one I like of me :)
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14 December 2005
There have been a few of us with birthdays recently and Monday saw my first as a resident of the United States. My birthday began as Aaron’s ended and a bunch of us celebrated the switch with tequila and pints of Stella at a "dive bar" in the Mission District. Things went down hill rapidly and we all crawled into work on Monday nursing hangovers.
Apart from not celebrating birthdays on a week night here are some things I want to do/achieve next year:
- Travel to Hawaii
- Get a good first aid qualification
- Firmly find my feet at Google and find a super-cool project where I can really make an impact
- Learn to sky-dive when Laura visits
- Spend a weekend in Las Vegas
- Visit JJ et al. in Canada
- Drive down the Californian coast
- Climb in Yosemite
I’m just not sure when I’ll find time for it all. For now I will be busily working, and my family is coming to visit within a week for Christmas and New Year, so I will be spending time with them and exploring California a little more.
Like, totally
6 December 2005
I’m pretty certain my accent hasn’t changed, but even my internal monologues are featuring the words "like" and "totally" way more than they should! Dagnamit.
Six weeks in
4 December 2005
It is crazy to think I’ve been here 6 weeks already! Time is flying. It doesn’t seem long ago that it was summer and I was diving in the Caribbean.
Last Friday night was the Google Holiday Party. It was pretty nuts. Hosted in a huge warehouse on a pier in downtown SF, the theme was Google Air. When we arrived we passed through a pseudo-check-in system, guided by "stewardesses", then once inside we had access to a number of huge rooms. Each room represented a different location; there was Bombay’s Bazaar, Google McDougal’s Irish Pub, Tokyo’s Bento Box, Plaza do Brazil, and (my favourite of course) London’s Underground. Each room had its own food, music, activities and decorations pertaining to the theme. So Ireland had ham sandwiches and real chips (not fries), pool and darts. Japan had sushi and karaoke. London Underground was a dance club in "Baker Station", etc. etc. It was pretty damn cool. It finished at 12 then we went to an after party. I got back around 3 in morning, but then was woken at 7 by pneumatic drills outside my window — headache!
This is my first proper weekend in my apartment, it’s a hell of a relief to have found somewhere to live and to be settling in properly. The next month proves to be very busy in and out of work. I’m not going to mention the work reasons, but outside there are a whole host of parties (my roommate Amy and I are having "Cocktails at Sunset" on our roof) and my family are coming over for Christmas. We have a condo booked on the banks of Lake Tahoe, which should be amazing.
Right, I’m off to climb Twin Peaks and watch the sun set.
Now with XML
14 November 2005
I’ve been meaning to add XML feeds for a while now, but was prompted recently by people at work to finally do it.
You can now get a feed for my log and also feeds for my photos (in ATOM format). The photos feed supports filtering, so for example you could get a feed for my latest travel photos or a feed with only photos of San Francisco.
For the non-techy people reading this: XML feeds such as these are used by third-party websites and applications to bring together content from multiple sources such as news sites and weblogs. This allows users to easily find posts and entries from all the sites they are interested in. Example services are Blog Lines and Google Reader.
San Francisco
7 November 2005
I’ve wanted to write something for a while now but have been waiting until I got a better handle on the various policies at work. But now I’ve been here a week I think I know what’s going on.
So I said goodbye to the UK 10-days ago and started work last Monday. It’s been pretty intense, but things are looking good. Work-wise I can’t say much, but there are some crazy things going down here and it’s exciting to be part of it. The learning curve is steep, but everyone’s really friendly and helpful. I’m really liking San Francisco and am looking forward to moving up there; I am currently in temporary housing in Mountain View, which is convenient for getting to work but it’s a pain to drive back to from the city at 2am in the morning :)
One of the coolest things I’ve noticed here is that the sky is nearly always blue, maybe it’s the time of year, but it’s a welcome change from the grey autumns of the UK.
I have uploaded some photos of San Francisco if you’re interested.
