1 week down

So that is one week done at google. Wow this place is wild. I like how we get free unlimtied beer starting on 4:30 on friday. My kinda place. Also, this is probably my first bar free friday in a long assss time. I caught Shrek 2, which was decent. Tough to top the first but worth a couple bucks I guess. The animation is pretty fucking sweet, you'd probably miss a lot of that if you just grabbed some video cam divx.

David Lachapelle

http://www.davidlachapelle.com/gallery/01.shtml some really cool photography. (stolen from jess3)

meeting some billionaires

so today I'm at work and all of a sudden I here some band playing below me... turns out there was a going away party (complete with live band) for the secretary of the Google founders. This was not bad as it netted me a free margarita at dinner (the hurricanes were gone by this point). I also got my first look at the google founders, and well that counts the first time I was 2 feet from a pair of billionaires.

Who would have thought a search company could make all that money? Well, no one but them I guess.
I guess I've been in the same room as a billionaire before. But that really doesn't count because bill gates might be the the devil.

Clear and Present Danger

CNN.com - Ashcroft: Al Qaeda intends to attack U.S. - May 26, 2004 This sounds way too much like that harrison ford movie.

Trip Photos

I was going to drop all my photos into the blog, but I set up a separate place for the photos. Check them out here: photos.erikn.org. There are some cool shots from the last two days of my driving. I starting taking pictures in Wyoming where I visited three national parks. The last sets of pictures are mainly from Yosemite National Park and Sequoia National Park in California.

Google Day 1

Google is.... the best place to work in the world. Free food. Free Massage. Free Computer Equipment. Free Doctor. Free Baseball. It goes on. Free Gym. Plus I am working on a really cool project. (I can't say more.... gotta love those NDAs)

Drive to California Day 2

On Day two I actually stopped at three national parks to break up the drive. Check out the first couple of pictures at photos.erikn.org.

• Des Moines - 1000 miles - 7:12 CST
  
  The rest of Iowa was pretty uneventful.
• Nebraska - 1136 miles - 8:55 CST
  
  Nebraska was the first "big state" that I crossed. Luckily, the speed limit ramps up to 75mph at this point. You can do about 90-95 without much trouble since the road is pretty flat, you really don't see any mountains or even hills. There was a lot of farming going on though. The first two national parks that I visited Chimney Rock and Scott's Bluff provided some great pics of the surroudning country side. This was the first off interstate driving that I did, which was a welcome change. Some people in the visitor center at Scott's bluff told me that it was impossible to get to salt lake city in the time I had left from there. I almost made it...
• Wyoming - 1620 miles - 4:15 MST
  
  I stopped at one more national park in Wyoming, where I got to see Fort Laramie. I think I had visited this during my trip out west in 6th grade, but it seems to have improved since then. I took some cool pictures through the ruins. I like this pic
  
• Evansville, WY - 2046 miles - 10:30 MST
  
  Had to crash here... could not quite make it all the way to SLC. I also noticed that as you get into Wyoming cell phone service becomes a little trickier...

Drive to California Day 1

These past couple of days I drove to california from DC. 3,000 miles of driving... what could be better? Well I started by driving the 450 miles from Boston to DC on Monday after finishing a 6.041 final...No pictures on the first day.. didn't see anything worthwhile. Here's the short story: Wednesday, May 19th

• Arlington, VA - 0.0 Miles - 6:20 AM EST
  
  Too bad the drive in my favorite state was the shortest.
• Maryland - 14 miles - 6:36 AM EST
  
  Not much to report here... except that urban sprawl around DC is sick. 40 miles out I-70 there was bumper to bumper traffic at this hour.
• Pennsylvania - 102 miles - 7:45 AM EST
  
  The PA turnpike is ugly. This state doesn't know about having a non concrete divider in the center of the roadway.
• Ohio - 286 miles - 10:46 AM EST
  
  Fuck this state. 10 miles into Ohio, I got my first ever speeding ticket. After over 65,000 miles of driving, I finally got hit. 80 in a 65. $85.00. Ohio sucks.
• Indiana - 523 miles - 10:46 EST
  
  Not much to report here... Indiana is flat.
• Illinos - 673 miles - 4:10 CST
  
  Could have stopped in Chicago I guess... but I was determined to make 1,000 miles in the first day.
• Iowa - 834 miles - 8:00 CST
  
  Iowa is flat also. There are farms.

I stopped in Des Moines, Iowa after almost exactly 1,000 miles.

First Post !!!111

So... I have a web log now. It's really hard to keep in touch with everyone that I want to so hopefully I can chronicle my california adventure using this blog business. I'm using Blogger to do this. It's a comapany ownded by Google, for whom I start work tomorrow.