Glassy-Eyed

Hidden in gardens
Sparkles something amazing.
Google and elsewhere.

I got the special treat of listening to Dale Chihuly at a tech talk today. He showed videos of installations he's done in places like Jerusalem, which is way awesome. I wish that I knew how to blow glass...

The intern lunch was yesterday! It wasn't so much of a success as I'd hoped for, but definitely everyone seemed to have fun, and the Cool People mailing list and calendar got publicized, and I met a couple new interns. The conference bike races were AMAZING. I think the blue bike is a little faster. There's a video of the race someplace around here... Taejin (the other knol intern; he works with the team in Korea, actually) took one, I believe.

Oh! Right! Google Serve! I went to San Bruno Mountain and helped keep control of invasive plants (i.e. I pulled weeds) for an afternoon. That was a lot of fun. Plus I got another t-shirt. I think I'm up to 7 now. And one guy who I was weeding with said that I can have one of his Google shirts, which is amazing. The shirt in question? All it says is "I have root @ Google". Badass.

New interns came on Tuesday to the farm area that I work in. One of them named his host Jimi. As in Hendrix. He has very much potential to be cool. ;)

Anyway, I think that this little deviation from my regularly scheduled work has gone on long enough. There will be more to post after this weekend, for sure.

And happy 21st birthday to both Pat and Mehul this week!

Extreme Soreness

Gah! My frickin' legs!
At least I got a nice tan
For compensation.

Right. Too bad that isn't good enough. I spent 5 hours (ish) playing Ultimate this weekend against people from Apple, Facebook, and Yahoo! It was an awesome tournament, to be sure, but I was awfully tired afterwards. Which meant, of course, that I had to go on a 20-25 mile bike ride with Steven and Evan through SF the next day. It was gorgeous! I didn't know that LucasArts was based in SF, either, so that was neat to see.

I have to say that biking across the Golden Gate bridge was pretty rewarding, too. Despite the fact that, while going around the columny pillary things, I almost blew off. Ridiculous wind!

And then there was Ghiradelli square. I got the MOST AMAZING ICE CREAM SUNDAE ever! Scoop of mint dark chocolate chip ice cream + dark hot fudge + scoop of dark chocolate ice cream + more dark hot fudge + whipped cream + nuts + little square of Ghiradelli mint dark chocolate = very happy Valkyrie.

I'm enjoying the sense of camaraderie that's beginning. Randomly on the train Evan, Steven, and I started talking to some guys who happen to be interns at Apple. We even had lunch with them. Gasp. But I think that all the inter-company intern things could be a lot of fun. I'm looking forward to the currently-nebulous Google-Apple soccer game or CTF game. :D