Post Thanksgiving Dump

Yeah, totally doesn’t sound right, but it’s my blog :)

• I sat still this morning, and magically, the short in my USB adapter allowed my photos to download. I need to buy a new cable, but this is my third or something. It’s really crappily manufactured, but it’s also not that expensive. I guess I should get a new one, but I bought a book on dependent types instead. :(

Anyways, here are some forgotten pics!

• I will try to tell ALL THE STORIES!

ICFP

• Will, Larisse, Ivan, Marienela and myself went to get rolled ice-cream before heading to the City museum. Well, it started out being myself and Marienela, but we said ice-cream and ended up grabbing a few people along the way. There were post-it notes in the ice-cream store for anyone who wanted to say something, and Will put this up. It reads “If you won’t take risks, then f**k off” with a smiley-face.

JPL lectures

• I went to two. These two images (above) are from the data analysis mapping lecture. The one below is from the DSN (Deep Space Network) one. My mentor’s brother actually used to do the scheduling for the DSN satellites before they became computerized. He is actually a really interesting guy; he’s a mix of musician (he still gigs!), business owner and electrical engineer.

Google Summer of Code

• Google invited us to attend their Summer of Code get-togethers based on location. The closest to me was in their San Francisco office. Phil told me I should definitely go, so I did. I didn’t regret it.
• I also spoke to a bunch of Googlers who had done Summer of Code (which makes sense as I was recruited shortly after completing GSoC; Gabe told me to focus on learning instead so I told them another time), and met fellow peers applying for grad school, so I was able to get some good advice and cough check out my competition :D

• Yes, there was a chocolate fountain. I lost a few mini-marshmallows in there!

Chrome Dev

• As I had mentioned, I obtained a travel grant via Google to attend Chrome Dev Summit this year. Here are some pics! Oh, I randomly ended up in the hotel where there was some leather festival going on for the day in the lobby. That was pretty funny.

• This was a random slide I really enjoyed.

I’m working on a browser

• And the theme this year was on browsers. They really did a solid job of presenting various parts of the browser at Chrome Dev, and how it works. I think moving forward, this will help me. Some of it was very framework-y, but I also got a lot out of it.

Midi Trumpet

• This was one of the things I most enjoyed at Chrome Dev in the Expo area.

Other stuff at the event

The glasses had chrome logos etched into the ice

• When I left Chrome Dev, I had a bit of time before my flight so I went to the SF Mozilla office and went to see one of the talks on flatbuffers. It was really interesting! I didn’t understand protobuffers or flatbuffers before, (even though my friend has been writing articles breaking the internet about them) but after this talk I had a better understanding.

Other

The Pac Man game came back! :D

There was a booth making coffee and lattes and stuff.

• I had oat milk for the first time. Apparently, it’s the new hotness. I wouldn’t really know about that stuff, though, even though it’s good to know because in the US I’m lactose intolerant (long story about how milk is pasteurized here).

Corgi Love

• This (below) is Cami. She does not belong to me, but she found my leg at Chrome Dev and fell asleep. Fortunately, after a few hours, I got it back.

I had a really great Thanksgiving

• I usually go by one of my best friends in LA. Her husband is also in tech, and also a member of MENSA. Her brother doesn’t work in tech, but went to Caltech briefly before transferring to Harvard. We like board games a lot, so we usually have a good time, and the conversations are intelligent but witty. I know if I have to do a big move, she’ll miss me, but I told her I’d work over breaks so I can save up to come visit them and spend Christmas or Easter with them (tickets aren’t that expensive if you buy them at the right time).

• I’m also looking forward to visiting my parents, but I have to find out some things before I can take my next trip to Trinidad. A few things are still up in the air and I really need to tie them up before I can book solid dates. I’m probably going to spend the rest of my weekend learning some Haskell (I’m about 1/3 through Sandy’s book) and starting to go through applications to see what applications are 100 percent completed (ie all recommendations were received). I’ll also have to follow up with each University to ensure nothing falls through the cracks. One of my professors said “wow..you really aren’t taking any chances.” Well, at the end of the day, it’s still up to the school to make a decision, so all I can do is do the best on my end to make sure they have what they need.

And that’s it