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Posts from — June 2006
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Overheard at work:
“You know the saying: don’t question a gift horse”
Worked a long day today, but got a lot done (or at least figure out a lot of what I’m going to do for the next couple of weeks). Going to a Giants game tomorrow night, heading to Avon on Friday.
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I won’t give too much backstory, not because it’s secret, but because I’m lazy, but each Friday at google we have a TGIF meeting. Larry and Sergey talk about what’s going on at the company (releases, recent events, new hires, etc), and answer questions. There’s also beer and wine and food, and is generally fun. Anyway, sometimes we just have social TGIF at which there is no business discussed, it’s just food and drink. Last week was social TGIF was Star Wars themed, so they got this cake:
I wasn’t there when they cut it, but I thought the cake was pretty neat.
They had jello shots there with real fruit in them… pretty classy.
I moved to a different building today. I have less space than I did in the old building, but I’m closer to the center of campus, so it’s probably for the best.
We finished up version 1.2 of runstoppable yesterday, with a bunch of new features that I’m not going to bother writing up here. They’re pretty good, though it took longer than I would have liked. The feature list kept expanding, so the release seemed to be perpetually a week away. We’re hoping to not reproduce this problem in the future.
On an unrelated note, I apparently left the country during my bike ride to work.
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So today I checked my yahoo mail, and was surprised to discover:
NOTIFICATION….. YOU HAVE WON
Needless to say, I was floored. It turns out, I won the UK NATIONAL LOTTERY (yeah, I know!). The winnings are £552,000,00 (ABOUT A MILLION BUCKS!!!!).
They asked for a bunch of non-financial email, too.
I decided that instead of deleting the email, I’d make some replies and try to lure them into an increasingly frustrating exchange. So, I crafted a response to their caps-heavy email:
THIS IS VERY EXCITING. I AM VERY EXCITED. WHEN CAN I EXPECT WINNINGS? LOOK FORWARD TO YOUR REPLY!!!! God Save The Queen, Matthew
Upon returning from the hot tub, I got a reply:
Dear Winner,
Compliments of the day to you.
Your email address was among the email addresses sellected all over the world for this draw and you eventually emerge one of the lucky winners.Do adhere to all instructions so that your funds will get to you on time.Fill the form and reply a copy to me so that we can proceed in the processing of your funds.
Provide US with the information below:
1.Full Name:
2.Full Address:
3.Marital Status:
4.Occupation:
5.Age:
6.Sex:
7.Nationality:
8.Country Of Residence:
9.Telephone Number:
10.Fax Number:
11.Ticket Number(above):
12.Reference Number(above):
13.Batch Number(above):
For due processing and remittance of your prize money.
Thanks for your understanding.
Barr. Henry Price(esq.)
The draft of my next reply (which I’ll send tomorrow) is below:
DEAR BARR,
THIS IS TRULY THE MOST FORTUNATE NEWS!! THIS MONEY WILL BE A BIG HELP BECAUSE I PLAN TO RENOVATE MY HARDWARE STORE SOON!!! I AM SO PLEASED YOU HAVE TAKEN THE TIME TO CONTACT ME, AS I DO NOT OFTEN GET EMAIL BESIDES THE OCASIONAL PICTURE OF THE GRANDKIDS! MY ADDRESS IS 10 PARK ROAD, CENTERTOWN, MO 65023 IN THE UNITE DSTATES OF AMERICA. I AM MALE, MARRIED, AND 62 YEARS OF AGE (BUT HEALTHY AS AN OX!). AS I SAID, I OWN A HARDWARE STORE IN TOWN. OUR PHONE NUMBER 314-526-2997, BUT I THINK YOU WILL NEED SOME INTERNATIONAL CODE TO GET IT TO WORK. WE DON’T HAVE A FAX MACHINE, BUT WE’LL BE RICH SOON ENOUGH, SO IT WILL NOT BE A PROBLEM!!
MY REFERENCE NUMBER IS UK/839030X2/14 AND MY WINNING TICKET NUMBER WAS 023-1111-790-458.
LOOK FORWARD TO HEARING FROM YOU SOON!!!
MATTHEW
Any ideas for other things I should include?
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I guess I’m part of the problem by writing this post, but whatever, here goes…
I haven’t tracked the news too much outside of the daily show and colbert report. Via a blog, I caught another good clip from keith olberman about a bestselling conservative author whose name I don’t even want to write here. Upon seeing the clip, I thought, “wow, I sure hope not too many people buy that stuff”, so I went over to the NYT bestseller list to discover that her book is the #1 nonfiction hardcover bestseller in the country. I don’t know how I keep getting surprised by stuff like this, but it really scares me.
Even (especially?) if I were very conservative, I would be embarrassed to buy or carry around such a book. Seriously. It’s just name-calling and rhetoric, caricaturing the opposition as an army of staw men. Apparently liberals are the ones who refuse to confront the fact that “[darwinian evolution] is bogus science”. I don’t even know how to respond to that… every response I wrote gave the statement too much credibility. I guess I shouldn’t, it’s just flamebait.
Ugh.
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I had Barracuda for lunch yesterday. It was ok… just tasted like fish. To be honest, I didn’t even know people ate that until I saw it on the menu.
I got a bike last weekend. There’s a picture of it and a few other things (some recent, some not) on my Picasa site. I just tried picasa for the first time, and it’s actually quite good. I hope to take more pictures soon.
It’s 9pm and I’m still at work. I decided I wouldn’t leave until my code worked, and it’s getting quite close. Hopefully it’ll be done soon so I can get to the hot tub before the Daily Show is on.
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“The Bush Administration argued in U.S. District Court on Monday that it cannot defend itself against accusations that a domestic spying program is illegal and unconstitutional because details of the program would be revealed, rendering it ineffective and jeopardizing national security.”
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Today I went to Google with several interns to get some work done, explore a bit more of the surrounding area, and ride on the electric scooters a bit. We took a bunch of pictures, including one of me on the scooter, shown here. I got new batteries for my camera, so I hope to be taking pictures of my own soon. I’m hoping to make a time-elapsed video of riding through google’s campus on a scooter… I need to take a closer look at my camera’s capabilities first.
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This optical illusion is amazing. Seriously, try it as many times as it takes for you to believe it.