I attended Google IO over the past 2 days, chronicling the event on my Twitter and Flickr pages. I’m incredibly tired currently, barely running off coffee and my thoughts are a mess so I will wait until this weekend to post my thoughts, but quickly: it was an excellent event, well run with great food and great ideas all around. Here’s a shot of my swag below.
This morning, I walked down from my room and remarked that it was a horrible day outside, one of the worst days I’ve experience so far in California.
It’s about 66 degrees outside and mildy cloudly and I call this terrible. It’s amazing how jaded I have become thanks to California weather, it really is perfect here 99% of the time. In the 2 months that I have been here, it has rained about 3 hours total. It’s amazing and I never want to leave!
I attended Bay to Breakers this Sunday, a 12KM race across San Francisco, aptly named because you from the bay (the Embarcado) to the breakers (the waves breaking). It was a great race for me, not just for being the first time I have run in a legitimate timed event, but for the fun I had running it. Bay to Breakers is half-party half-race. People dress up in costume and run the race, along with many, many people drinking and walking the race. Literally 20K to 30K people flooding the streets. It was a great time that and I will definitely plan on attending it again.
Despite the party going on, I tried to run the race my best and not partake in the drinking. For 12KM, 7.45 miles, I ran it in 1 hour 16 minutes exact. Average of 10 minutes a mile, which isn’t too bad, but I was aiming for 8 minute miles. I started late in the morning and got caught in the crowd at the beginning, so there wasn’t much I could do. Overall, I’m glad that I ran it without stopping.
Here are some pictures from the race, another amenity of an official race:
Today was Bike to Work Day in the Bay Area and I did my part! It was a bit of a let down to me, since I bike everyday, but the sentiment wasn’t lost. Some bikers had a booth setup at CalTrain and I grabbed some free water and stickers.
I was most disappointed by the lack of other riders out on the street, although I regularly head into work around 10AM and I imagine most normal people are already at work by then. Two amusing sentiments of the day were 1) seeing a rather large man biking down one of the main streets in San Mateo wearing just shorts, no shoes, no shirt. 2) Having a guy on a Harvey come up next to me at a streetlight and give me flak for not riding a “real” bike. I was totally not expecting it, but it brought a smile to my face.
After moving out here to CA, I immediately started my job and slept in a hotel for 2 weeks while looking for an apartment. My friend Mike, also staying in the hotel, drove me to work for those weeks. After we had found a location, I settled upon the bike as means of getting to work. I didn’t have a car out here and public transport was far too inconvenient for my location. Biking was always a big activity of mine as a child, so why would it be different now?
My first few weeks were interesting. I rode to work the first few days in street clothes and regular shoes, but that was a terrible idea. My commute is around 10 miles total a day, 5 miles there and up a hill, 5 miles back and down a hill! It was workout and I did get very sweaty. I quickly bought some workout clothes and a windbreaker to help out. The hill was the toughest part, about 8-12 blocks of 45 degree incline. I just rode slowly and kept working at it, improving day after day. The first day that it was windy almost made me cry. Biking against the wind, exerting all your energy, and moving no where is one of the most frustrating things ever! Especially, when the cars around you are going 25-35 mph like the wind doesn’t even exist.
Speaking of the cars, riding my bike on the streets was another interesting challenge. I ride a major 2-3 lane road for a few miles, I ride through a 101 overpass, and face several bridges. I read the rules about riding with traffic, to just act like a car, but let me tell you, it takes balls to actually do it in tough traffic situations like those. The 101 highway is a major corridor in CA and just being anywhere near that means people are always driving fast and recklessly, even though traffic is probably at a standstill. Most but not all, drivers hate your guts and barely miss running you down while going twice as fast as you in their BMW. You need to know the traffic patterns and stoplights, so that you can plan ahead and merge properly. It’s something that has taken time to be less afraid of, but it’s still crazy sometimes.
After about 2 months of biking to work, I really enjoy it. I’m already in great shape from the exercise and eating properly and I usually have time to listen to podcasts during my commute. Also, I’m not paying $4.50/gallon for gas! Total win.
I am back for the 3rd or 4th revision of this website! Lots has happened in my life causing the delay in getting things running sooner, but things have stabilized now and it’s time to share. Here’s a list.
Currently I’m sharing a 5BR house with a few friends from RIT, also working at startups in the area, and enjoying myself immensly. The West Coast is an awesome coast and everyone is very friendly out here. My internship is going well and life is good.
To change things up a bit, my new goal for this website is brevity and in line with that, more information on my situation will be coming shortly. Enjoy!
So, I haven’t posted much lately, but I’ve been busy focusing with school and “work” in general. I’ve been reading a bit more lately, staying off the computer more, and socializing more. When I sit at the computer, I like to focus and use my time usefully, not just waste it reading blogs. I’ve also been twittering more, rather than lengthy blog posts!
Big news is that I found an internship in San Mateo, CA and will be heading out there for the next 6 months. I was alerted to the position by an RIT alum and things moved pretty quick, so I’m looking forward to the position. It looks like it will be some great experience, with some equally great people.
That brings me to today. To get to SF, you can either fly or drive, and as chance would have it, a friend of mine, Mike, was heading out to SF in a similar situation! I will driving cross-country in a few hours, check out the map below for the general route. A night in Vegas, a night in St Louis, and OK City food will be a great time. I should be out in SF in 4-5 days, but who knows, it’s the journey that matters.
Recently I’ve been doing a fair amount of reading and it’s been a great refresher, for both getting me thinking about random ideas and exploring some new areas. It has also certainly helped changed my perspective toward college, in regards to just wanting to learn for the sake of learning.
Knowledge and time are two things are finite. Everyone has the same amount of time in a day to learn and nearly everyone can learn the same basic knowledge now, thanks to the Internet. However, not everyone spends the same amount of effort learning. After overloading myself with some really good books, I just started to notice how much more insightful I was becoming and how useful those books were for shaping my ideas. I think reading is something that more people should practice on a daily basis. Becoming lazy and unmotivated is terrible in the long run and such a waste, when your time here is limited.
Something else that I began to notice while reading these good books was the simple joy that I was getting just from learning about a topic in an organized and thought-out manner. I think this is something key that I have begun to use at school, to appreciate things more. I’ve been taking a class recently that is a general computer class, covering almost every function of a computer and how it all works. I wasn’t exactly happy at first because I thought the class would be more focused on one area in specific, but afterwhile, I became quite satisfied with the depth of the knowledge and the manner in which it was presented. My teacher was quite good at what he does and the slides and book combined are great resources. After getting over my initial disappointment, I really just began to appreciate the class for the knowledge that I was learning. It’s great to be able to just appreciate knowledge for the sake of knowledge and get something out of that. This is definitely a lifelong philosophy that I will try to improve.
I sit here tonight with a glass of wine, watching a wonderful movie called “The Gods Must Be Crazy.” It was released in 1980 but I’m still salvaging something of value from it.
It follows the story of a simple tribe of hunter gatherers in Africa, a group of people who take life for what it is, living in the harsh desert and enjoying life. There is no hate, no greed, no possession, just life and survival. It’s something that I wish I could enjoy. The movie then contrasts modern day life, with how modern man adapts his environment to suit him. Modern man must spend 18 years in school learning to adapt to his environment and as someone in school, learning to adapt currently, I found this quite amusing. Why do we spent almost a quarter of our lives to learning how to live, how to adapt, rather than just enjoying what we have. I’m torn sometimes between continuing my education and stable environment versus moving to Canada and enjoy the simple pleasures of life. I think it’s smart to always challenge what you hold dear and this was simple movie provides another interesting example of doing so.
As an addendum to Shared Hosting Sucks, I’d like to share what my research found and where my new future host will be:
Slicehost.com is a small hosting company located in St. Louis that fits my needs perfectly. $20 a month gets you 256mb ram, 10gb storage, and 100gb bandwidth! Once you pay, you have a choice of several different Linux distributions, of which I chose Debian. It builds the image for you and then within 15 minutes you have a fully functioning server with an IP address and full root access. They have an extremely slick Rails management backend featuring all the important stats about your server, an AJAX command prompt tied to the hardware, rebooting and shutdown buttons, and a great wiki/tutorial section to get you started on securing your server. it’s all very clean and exactly what I need.
One of the other awesome thing is the option to rebuild or switch your distro, not that you would probably use this frequently. Say you get tied of Debian and want to install Ubunto. 2 clicks and it will delete your current image and install Ubunto. So simple!
This really is a great solution for a good price. I can’t to switch, once my current shared hosting contract runs out…
