Robot elves?! Just like in the stories!

One thing that's consistently floored me about Google: it really is the way they say it is. Both the good and the bad — or at least, the bad-ish.

Like the whole "don't be evil" thing. I've heard it cited three or four times as justification for the way something works. People really seem to have taken it to heart.

For the people who've freaked out about GMail "never deleting your email," they've stated publicly that the disclaimer is because they can't guarantee it will instantly vanish, not because they're saving it up. I doubt anyone would seriously want to keep old emails; that's a lot of storage.

Anyway.

Woke up Tuesday to a semi-sunny day in Santa Clara. Got ready, got on the road, and hit a fog bank.

Apparently, about halfway between here and Mountain View, there's a semi-biome-shift. (According to my coworkers, north of the line you don't need residential AC; south of the line, you do.) So, on this cold Norcal morning, that translated to an opaque wall of gray across the freeway.

The down side: it really didn't help my cold. The up side: it felt like Phoenix. In Phoenix, the fog is brown, and is called "dust storms," but other than that they're quite similar.

...well, except that in Phoenix, if you breathe the "fog," it hurts. But that's okay, we never get out of our air-conditioned cars anyway. :-)

Spent most of Tuesday in orientations of various sorts, learning about all sorts of internal stuff. Stayed for the free dinner. Mmm.

Wednesday we learned about the web search system. We have quite a smartass group of new recruits, but, judging from my coworkers, this isn't unusual.

Presenter, talking about odd things the search engine must deal with: "We're not sure why, but some guy keeps gzipping his hard disk and putting it out where we can find it."
Me: "Yeah, so I can quit having to back it up. Just use the Google cached link."
Presenter: "..."

Most of Wednesday afternoon was free, and I spent it learning more about our source-control system, network architecture, and the like. Someone emailed me out of the blue to see if I was interested in working on a project, so I guess some folks have heard of me. (No, I can't tell you what.)

So, things are starting to ramp up. If my cold clears up the rest of the way, I'll be a happy camper.