*Fairy tales and anecdotes*
*Both dangerous for amateurs* [1]
When it feels like I'm boiling oceans I spin up Doomtree's Marathon. 6 verses of poetry with amazing beats.
.. and if you missed Doomtree at SXSW you can see them tonight. [2]
#nokings _crash y'alls server..._
[1] http://genius.com/Doomtree-marathon-lyrics
[2] http://www.songkick.com/concerts/24476944-doomtree-at-oakland-metro-operahouse
It has a Dory-like system where listeners can up-vote the questions they want answered. I have to wonder if this system combined with crowdfunding could provide an alternate funding model for in-depth news reporting.
Even the SF Chronicle is exploring similar techniques:
http://www.beaconreader.com/projects/the-faces-behind-the-h1-b-debate
- First time I've seen Recruiters targeting expat folks. What next, will they contact my family to put pressure on me to move back?
- Including a Youtube video in your emails is a good way to get your message visibility in Inbox. Even if it's this dorky thing.
- It also appears that Target makes it's recruiters use their DJ name. In da house with *DJ Luke Doubler* and his sidekick *Talent Scout*.
http://rumandmonkey.com/widgets/toys/namegen/3675
---
Paul,
My name is Luke Doubler and I’m a talent scout for Target Corporation.
I’m reaching out to you because I see that you went to the U of M and I’d like to see if you’d consider coming back.
I found your name on your GitHub profile (http://github.com/lindner) and see you are a full stack developer with contributions in JavaScript, full stack products, Apache, Amazon Dynamo and others. I also see via your LinkedIn profile you are with Google. I’d like to see if you’d consider a leadership role with Target.
Our corporate office located downtown Minneapolis has an engineer leadership position open in a very agile/scrum development team building products that will propel Target.com as the premier online retailer.
Would you be open to connecting Paul via phone? Your full stack development experiences appears to be exactly what we’re seeking. I can make myself available based on your schedule.
I look forward to connecting.
Today's inspiration: *Curiosity enabled Products*
So happy to work at a place that values and enables curiosity.
GPMAA and now Youtube Music generate curiosity. What's this song? Oh who's that? What are they saying? *Waynes World III*??!?
Google Search satisfies my curiosity.
And what do you know it's a song about curiosity: _I think about anything and everything, like a child_.
http://lyricstranslate.com/en/comme-un-enfant-child.html
_Je chante et je pleure, comme un enfant_
_Je joue à me faire peur, comme un enfant_
_Je pense tout et son contraire, comme un enfant_
_Je danse, j'ai le coeur à l'envers, comme un enfant_
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5c-GeBqUgAA&feature=youtu.be
Digging into some Sharing patterns wrt to Reddit.
This reddit thread:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Android/comments/3mh63x/artem_russakovskii_3450mah_battery_confirmed_on/
Posted by some random user:
https://www.reddit.com/user/sajdx1
Contains a link to a post by an Android Police author and prolific G+ user:
https://plus.google.com/+ArtemRussakovskii
That link in Reddit was clicked on 28k times (probably much more since these logs are only web requests..)
select top(request,15) as h, count(*) as c from
gfstmp_oz.tmp_oz_fe_weblog.20150927 where AppsFrameworkExtension.action_class = 'PermalinkedUpdate' and referer like '%reddit.com%';
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------+-------+
| h | c |
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------+-------+
| GET /+ArtemRussakovskii/posts/T9fdFDBp1fd HTTP/1.1 | 28917 |
| GET /+ArtemRussakovskii/posts/hpc36iQuRSR HTTP/1.1 | 3665 |
| GET /u/0/108441771977176576567/posts/QQNFtAeEjTY HTTP/1.1 | 2088 |
| GET /100098741112799154035/posts/Lavu4mVTvpX HTTP/1.1 | 1899 |
| GET /+ArtemRussakovskii/posts/bA4ryjrT9MJ HTTP/1.1 | 1827 |
*Someone send Artem a cookie, or some G+ swag...*
https://www.reddit.com/r/Android/comments/3mh63x/artem_russakovskii_3450mah_battery_confirmed_on/
Pretty close to just adding this to my .bashrc:
alias xargs=parallel
I'm sure this will make some people nostalgic..
_Our October board report will be due in a couple days (Oct 7th) and due to the lack of activity with the project over the past few quarters (and general decline for even longer than that) I think it is time Shindig gets moved to the attic. Please respond with your vote, thanks!_
Whenever I do nasty Infrastructure work I repeat a BASF mantra about making the products that you use better...
Stronger, tougher, more durable, and yes, more colorful.
Today's inspiration: *Thunderball* by the Man in Black.
h/t to the CBC's Day 6 which covers rare Bond theme songs and likes SEO'd URLs.
I had a support call last night and it went really well.
Thermostat displayed E24 error code. The diagnostic tool on the web site was well done. I got to the end where a support ticket was opened. Called in and went through diagnosing the faceplate. At the end it wasn't the thermostat, the furnace had a faulty safety sensor that caused the fan to run and cut the voltage to 1v.
Suggestions:
- The clunkiest part of the process was telling the rep my email address. Also the email I entered in the ticket was different than my Nest account email.
- Could we surface the diagnostic tools on the Nest App? Tried on mobile web and it wasn't working well so then I was running between my desktop and the Nest.
- There's a good opportunity to refer to HVAC repair technicians (Nest Pros?). I spent an hour calling around to find someone that would come out at 9pm in the evening. [Of course this is hard in general; Google search really failed here too. Yelp at least had an 'open now' filter on their business listings.]
In any case thanks again for the good support experience - I hope other teams can learn from it.
http://googleplex.com link previews now available
Googlers sharing to G+ with googleplex URLs will see much improved previews. And yes, that means you can now start a G+ Collection of favorite Memegen links .
But it also means that many other internal sites support better sharing. For example, the devsite.googpleplex.com staging site you see below allows for testing G+ web integration before a prod deploy. It also means Teams, Ariane, EasyOKRs, YAQs and more don't generate random login.corp page previews.
That said, note that not all googleplex sites are supported. The default acl for Googleplex requires a Machine Cert, which G+ doesn't have. If you want your googleplex web app to work well with this new feature you can follow the guidelines here:
https://sites.google.com/a/google.com/uberproxy/user-docs/howto/requesting-an-acl-change
Once that's done you should follow the G+ Snippet guidelines below to generates awesome preview titles/descriptions and images.
Please feel free to contact me if you have questions about this feature. Happy Sharing!
Yesterday 165 people clicked through to G+ from just from this Pin.
According to referrer analysis Pinterest traffic to G+ is starting to overtake Twitter traffic.
[Note: I dare you to find this video using Google Search. I used search.twitter.com to find this]
This is a new Facebook TV Commercial set to House of Pain's Jump Around. Of interest:
- square aspect ratio (on tv it's on a seamless white background)
- there is no opengraph markup on this page. No markup at all really.
- Except for meta tags for: https://w3c.github.io/webappsec/specs/referrer-policy/ which I did not realize existed.
- It makes me want to see if it's possible to animate our own app UI at 60fps.
https://www.facebook.com/facebook/videos/vl.515712155263726/10153943242676729/?type=1&theater
50% increase in sharing actions.
https://dasnav.corp.google.com/dnlesnav/#label_id=lbas4&view=default
Share link replaced Copy Link in the Y release. The chart below shows both actions and the the combined activity.
The +1 button uses SVG to render the G+1 you see on the button. When I was adding the new logo I could tell that it was going to be much smaller. Turns out you can actually see the effects in our graphs. Over 512 bytes per response savings, which adds up at 100kqps. That's 50Mbps transit. [Can someone translate that to milliSWEs for me?]
In the future web-archeologists will analyze html to identify the age of a page by the widgets they include.
Here you have a web site built circa 2012 with the very rare plusone button with a G+ on a grey background.
Today's Inspiration: Bay Area Funk Compilations
If you're a Bay Area transplant like me you owe it to yourself to learn a little of the musical history of the place you live. I bought these on CD a while back and it had very educational liner notes. I wish we could get that into digital form somehow.
Sadly volume 1 is not available on Play Music. Volume II is. Recommended.
And here's some details on volume 1...
_On this first volume of Bay Area Funk 16 tracks represent the best of the infamous Bay Area scene. Ranging from the boogaloo and shing-a-ling sound of Marvin Holmes and the Uptights to the psychedelic funk-jazz of P-I-R-Square. The compilation covers the period from 1967 to 1976 and is packed with music from the key originators and characters including a 12 year old Little Denice produced by blues legend Jimmy McCracklin, rhythm and blues hero Rodger Collins, KSOL radio station director "Hard Punching" Herm Henry, and Sugar Pie Desanto, former opening act for James Brown who is still pulling back-flips on-stage even in her late 60s._
https://www.ubiquityrecords.com/shop/products/BAY-AREA-FUNK.html
Things are still a little rough but I'm finding value in the reports and the cleanup CLs it helps me generate. See the doc below if you want to play.
You can see an ugly sample report at
and here's a partial list of CLs that Cargocult generated:
https://critique.corp.google.com/#search/&q=%23cargocult&type=cl
Fail to pay down your technical debt? Let _The Helping Hand Acceptance Corporation_ remove your OWNERS files.
I jest, I jest...
When I search for a Phone (say Sony Xperia) show the music videos where it's been product placed.
This Avril Lavigne vid must be the worst yet. The video starts with "oh, my new Sony phone is ringing!".
Also: I wonder if Forrester includes these payouts in total digital ad spend?
I didn't realize that the crazy Chiat Day "virtual office" concept happened in our Google LA offices.
I'm reading _Tog on Design_ (1996) since it contains so many eerily accurate predictions mixed in with some totally wrong ones.
More details here: http://www.asktog.com/books/tosd_detail.html and in the non-volatile storage medium (which I've ordered)
Till then there's plenty of interesting Tog reading...
https://drive.google.com/a/google.com/file/d/0B_PwfdG5fY41cVFPR0tDTjE4d00/view?usp=sharing&_esca...
When I walk into the office I see row after row of screens, empty and lonely. I want to change that. I want a world where ambient passive consumption helps eliminate the blank screen.
Solving one piece of this puzzle is Malika's intern project. It starts with rich, compelling, G+ Android Daydream support. If time allows we may be able to add interesting things like:
* Interactive hooks, voice action (Choose your own adventure!)
* Whisper/Copresence support
* Kiosk mode, add QR codes or NFC support
* Vendor support,
* Rich Video/Audio
If you're looking into something like this we'd love to hear more. (I did some searching and didn't turn up much other than http://go/showy ) If you have specific features you'd like to see in such a system leave 'em in the comments. Maybe we can add it!
Boing Boing's Xeni Jardin covers everything.
*Autoawesome CLs* - Project Cargocult
I'm going to formalize/automate all the dirty hacks I use to generate hundreds of CLs. Wish me luck, and I'd love suggestions/feedback.
Driverless cars / sentient station wagons circa 1984
http://www.murderhewatched.co.uk/post/73453995895/season-1-episode-9-hit-run-and-homicide
Just got the final Second Opinion report and I'm quite impressed. [See http://go/secondopinion - it's a great perk] I liked that they chose people that are advancing in their careers and researching the specific field. You get a clear, well written summary of your medical record, actionable data, and citations for specific background information. There's pragmatism and optimism, including this quote:
_Finally, if one can outpace the innovations in cancer that are taking place right now, survival may actually be substantially better._
If you're considering this service please let me know. We're happy to share our report, just ask. For everyone else here's an outline of what's included.
Expert Selection Process 2
Letter from Physician Case Manager 3
Summary of Clinical History 4
Questions to the Expert 20
Report by Vijayakrishna K. Gadi, MD, PhD 21
Report by Komal Jhaveri, MD 28
Curriculum Vitae for Vijayakrishna K. Gadi, MD, PhD 33
Curriculum Vitae for Komal Jhaveri, MD 37
Legal Terms 40
Not sure what's more annoying -- waiting 1.5h for Kaiser to burn radiology CDs or realizing that I actually didn't have a working CD *reader* at home.
Managed to get something working:
Parts:
- 1 SATA<->PATA converter from old server
- old ATX power supply
- my trusty Rackable home server, w/ internal AHCI adapter
- An ancient Sony CD drive. [Broken]
- A CD drive pulled from an old AMD K6 tower [working]
And of course 1 of the CDs is defective and I'll have to get that again. oof.. CDs deserve to die.
*Free to be you and me* [in 2015?]
[apologies for the banjo earworm...]
Just finished the Unconscious Bias self study. It brought me back to age 9 and how these songs and videos (and other positive experiences) formed who I am.
I wonder what a 2015 version of FTBYAM would be like? The ideas are good, but it feels really dated. Who'd be today's Marlo, Rosy, MJ, or New Seekers?
... was my response to Julie's oncologist giving us the bad news that she has breast cancer that has spread to her bone marrow. It certainly explains the bleeding, the bruising and the anemia which required multiple transfusions.
No treatment plan yet (tests, and more tests..), but it looks like my future will involve lots of WFH where H == hospital. I'm going to do whatever I can to improve the 1-2 year survival time odds.
I'm interested in hearing from you if:
- You have dealt with Kaiser's Cancer care and treatment. tips please!
- You have 2nd opinion referrals.
- You have a Caregiver story -- how did it impact you and your career?
Thanks again to everyone that's offered support and flexibility. Googlers are the best, most supportive people in the whole world. Proud to work for this company and with you all.
I don't have my #firstgoogleremail - but I do have the email that started the ball rolling towards my eventual employment. Seven weeks later I started at Google.
*Date*: 8/7/10
*Subject*: Interesting moves
_I'm intrigued the recent social moves coming out of Google and wonder if there's some part for me in all of this, either from the inside or from the outside._
_Truth be told, I'm not getting my "change the internet for the better" satisfaction at the moment even with the independent time I spend on Opensocial/Shindig/OAuth._
_Would you like to have a short chat in the next week or two?_
*Thirteen Ways To Save Orkut* February 2004
_With its integrated personal, social, and business functions, Orkut has an opportunity to outstrip it competitors—but only if its creators make smart choices that support the genuine needs of real people._
http://www.digital-web.com/articles/thirteen_ways_to_save_orkut/
*You might be a Googler if...*
You start writing a postmortem when you arrive at the ER.
So. Many. _Areas for Improvement_
#protip if you're going to need dental/medical treatment do it in an area where lots of old rich people live. #medicaltourism
Note: All is well now, we extended our stay and Julie is recovering.
A long, well written retrospective by the former Salon _Ask the Pilot_ columnist Patrick Smith.
h/t Rohit Khare
Some feedback on Collections after actually using them for realzies:
- The aspect ratio of the cover image is really hard to deal with. You can't crop regular images easily and you can't letterbox easily.
- I'd like to make a collection as 'Draft' so I can get it looking nice before I send it out to the world.
- I'd love to see a 'People mentioned this collection' in the sidebar. [and other aggregates, like places, hashtags, maybe a word cloud?]
- I wish I could back-date things. Or at least allow for manual ordering.
- What about Pinned/Hero Post for a Collection?
- Will public collections have non-obfuscated URLs?
- Do we filter these oddball urls for naughty words?
*Ursquake* March 2010
@113057531893316771155 states
_The social web is revolutionizing the world, and this is our chance to create what will be the most useful and most used set of socially connected products in the world, with the best user controls on privacy and data portability. We have an incredibly strong starting position. It’s rare that we’re being given an opportunity to have such a big impact in such a short time, so lets seize it!_
Not sure where to get feedback for this so tossing into the ether...
I've been getting many PM interviews for Technical Hat; I wonder what others think of this line of questioning?
- We have a SMB with 1000 devices and 20 servers
- These machines generate log files (1st question, does candidate know what a log file is?)
- Your product needs to meet the needs of the following users
- Sysadmins need to be able to diagnose problems, do postmortems.
- Auditors need to enforce rules on system usage
- A security team wants to detect intrusions, malware etc.
I then ask the candidate to ask clarifying questions and try to get them to give me any/all of the following through progressive probing:
- Min viable features of the product
- Do they suggest graphs? notifications? email alerts?
- What about user provisioning? Admin features?
- What kind of UI? Web? Mobile? Command line?
- Search?
- A high level technical design showing how the we get from Logs -> UI
- Push vs pull?
- Where/when does parsing happen?
- Technical
- How do you store the data? How do you transform it? Batch?
- What database? How many QPS?
- Redundancy? Failover?
- On site / off site?
- Insights
- Does the candidate understand privacy/security concerns? (Mention wipeout, retention for the auditor use case)
So far I've gotten some decent responses, but most fall into the run reports on files and store those.
For the good candidates we are able to progress to phase II where we design for a multinational fortune 500 scenario.
So WDYT? Good question?
PMs? How do you think you'd do on my question?
Enjoying all the historical info I'm finding on oaklandwiki.org
Found my way there after researching the Sacramento Northern Railway...
It's so fast and smooth you might think you're using a native App.
Originally shared by Danielle Buckley
Today we’re excited to announce the new and improved Google+ experience for mobile web. We focused on making everything faster, more beautiful, and more intuitive. To check out all the new updates, visit plus.google.com on your phone or tablet’s browser.
As always, we’d love to hear what you think!
Was discussing potential for location-based sharing and remembered this gem. Despite all the sucky things happening I'm still excited about what's possible in the future.
Setting up a Personal Weather Station was easier than I thought and pretty fun. I can now stare at graphs at work and at home.
http://www.wunderground.com/personal-weather-station/dashboard?ID=KCAOAKLA79
