Wednesday, January 20, 2010

Hey all,

So, today was the day of days. We got to go to Google. The Google-plex is a really awesome place. We went on a quick tour and then sat down for some presentations from people from various aspects of Google's empire. They were all really interesting, and really made me want to work there. Our host was a Luther Grad, and totally boosted my confidence in getting hired there. From what people make it seem like, Google is nothing by PhD's running around having a good time. Really they only have about 10% PhD's which is still a very high percentage but not as high as I would have guessed. The rep from the University Relations part of the company honestly made it sound like everyone in our group had a very good chance of getting hired there. Granted, I don't think any of us are going to apply for a job there straight out of college, but most of the developers in the group would love to work there. After we saw some very interesting presentations we got a little bit more of a tour. Then it was time for lunch, we went to Charlie's. It is one of many restaurants at Google, and is more of a cafeteria type of place. We had a table reserved for us, and when we looked at the table behind us, it was reserved for the Executives of Wal-mart, so we were in some good company.

After Google, which I can't even describe because it was so awesome, we went to the computer history museum. Here we got to see something pretty rare. We got to see a working Babbage Difference Engine. Not only are there only two of these in the world, we got to see a demonstration of one. It is a machine that can calculate different functions to 31 significant digits. It is all mechanical and run by a hand crank. The people who were doing the demo were both specially trained volunteers, and they were trained specifically to do this demo. It was really cool to see, since Babbage never got to see a working model, nor did anyone else from the Victorian age. Finally a museum decided to make a working copy, from his plans, and just as he had directed in the drawings.

From there we went and spent some time downtown Palo Alto. I went and looked around a sports memorabilia store. They had some really cool things, like a signed, game worn, Joe DiMaggio jersey ($7,000). After the time downtown we headed to a private country club to meet with a '55 Luther alum. His name is Al Brudos, and he was a professor and CPA among other things. He did a lot of investing, and made quite a fortune there. He wanted to meet with us and just talk about his experiences as well as answer our questions. We asked him about all kinds of things, from what he liked about Cali to what he looked for before investing in a company. He was a very interesting man and made for a great ending to the night.

Tomorrow we head to Facebook, Microsoft, and Intel. Three giants, should be fun.

Thanks for reading,

Aaron

Tuesday, January 19, 2010

Hey all,

Today was a pretty fun day. We went to two different companies, Benetech and Sierra Ventures. Benetech is a company that helps people with disabilities get the things they need. Sierra Ventures is obviously a VC company.

Benetech told us a lot about their bookshare program. It is a really cool program where they are allowed to distribute books, even copyrighted books, through a copyright 'loop hole'. This loop hole is a copyright law that says that you may distribute books to the learning disabled, or those who have a disability to learn /read without permission of the owners of the material. So what Benetech does is kill the books. Then scan them into their computers at a rate of 90 pages per minute. The machine that does this scanning is very impressive, and we were all wowed by it. 'Killing' a book consists of removing the cover and then taking off the spine as well. I was able to kill the book for the demonstration that we got of the process. I have the binding to the book, which will be uploaded at a later date, well a picture will be.

They acquire their books through donations. If they receive a book they have already scanned they will just put it in the donation piles and ask people to take them. Once they have scanned the book it can be read on their special devices. These devices are made to make the process of reading easier for those who have disorders like severe dyslexia. It is very good at helping with this because it will both speak the word and highlight it as it moves along, by activating both senses at once, the effect of dyslexia is lessened, thus helping the person learn and read better. The one thing that is a bit of a downside is that for textbooks to get uploaded they have to pay nearly $1,000, whereas a bestseller costs around $20. When a book is uploaded it is given a difficulty rating, and these ratings help define how hard it will be to proof read the system that interpreted the text, and put it on the screen.

When the machine goes through the text and reads it, it cannot decipher between part of the book and a footnote, or an indexing number. So if there is a blind person listening to a book being read, and they start getting random numbers, or a completely different subject in mid-sentence, they will be very confused. So the more of these types of things there are, the harder the book is to proof read. This makes textbooks very hard to proof read, and make sure that they are correct; there are not very many people who volunteer to sit and read, while proof reading, a text book.

After Benetech we had some time to go and get something to eat. I was boring and went to subway, something a little more normal, but also a bit healthier and more diverse in the food groups than I have been getting normally.

After lunch we headed over to Sierra Ventures. We met with an investment specialist who focuses on solid state lighting. He is a big believer in the ideology of LED's. He gave us a nice background about the company, and the lighting industry. He was a very smart person, and really gave a lot of good overviews about the whole VC business as well as the LED world. I don't know what else to say about his presentation. It was very complete, and super interesting but it is so easily summed up in what I have just said.

The internet is still being very touchy and not letting me get pictures of videos up, but when I get back to Buffalo or Luther they will all go up. I will make sure that they make their way onto here so you can all see them.

GOOGLE TOMORROW!!!

Thanks for reading,

Aaron

Monday, January 18, 2010

Hey all,

So today was a pretty chill day. We did not have any companies on the schedule so today was a free day. We decided to go to the Monterey Bay Aquarium despite the fact that there was some terrible weather. So as we were heading down to the Aquarium, we were stopped at a red light. Suddenly a big tree branch falls just in front of our van, hitting the car in front of us. When it hit the other car it took out the back window, and really surprised us quite a bit. But, after that the drive was pretty uneventful save for the constant tsunami we were in.

The rain let up enough so that we could get out at the Redwood State Forrest and see some of the old growth Redwoods. These trees were pretty cool, and very impressive. I would highly recommend seeing these trees to anyone who has not. The Redwoods and Sequoias are two of the most awe inspiring things I have ever seen.

After the forrest we headed the rest of the way to the aquarium. We got there, got our tickets and then decided we wanted to go eat first. We all headed back to a nice little Thai restaurant, I had Pad Thai (sp?) like always, and it was amazing, like always.

Once we got into the aquarium and actually started looking around it was pretty cool. We got back just in time to watch a penguin feeding, which was pretty cool. The workers just walked into the exhibit with a big bucket of fish and started feeding the penguins. The penguins were not scared at all, they actually swarmed around the workers, fighting for food. After we watched that for a little bit we started to wander. We found our way to the jelly fish exhibit. This was the coolest exhibit in the whole place if you ask me. They had a bunch of different kinds of jelly fish, and had some really interesting different kinds. The rest of the aquarium was okay, the otters were cool because they were so active. I really didn't get to spend a lot of time anywhere else because I stayed in the jelly fish area for so long. The one thing that I really didn't like about the aquarium was the huge political agenda. That is not the function of the aquarium, it is not a political outlet, and should not be spewing politics all over the visitors. It is there to educate and show what we might not be able to see for whatever reasons. Politics have no place in museums, zoos, aquariums, anything like that.

After the aquarium we headed back to the hotel. It was a long drive and most people slept on the way back. I read my book, The Accidental Billionaires, about the founders of Facebook. We were all pretty hungry by the time that we got back, and we decided on pizza. We walked down a few blocks and went a place called Applewood Pizza, or something like that. We just hung out here, had some really good pizza (best crust like ever) and just talked. Once we left the pizza joint, we were all pretty exhausted and had a real day coming up, so we basically all came back and blogged / slept.

Thanks for reading,

Aaron

P.S. The internet here is not cooperating with me, so I will make a pure pictures post here when I can get it to work.

Sunday, January 17, 2010

Hey all,

Today was pretty uneventful. I got to sleep in until about 9:30 which was nice. After I finally decided to get up, I showered and got packed. By this time the Vikings were on, and I had to go watch them. Brad, Megan, Kaitlin, Adam, and I all watched the game in the lobby, it was the biggest screen. We were all very vocal and even drove away a few Dallas fans in the process; well, the Vikings helped drive them away. The Vikings winning really made the day great, not to mention that we had pizza delivered directly to us in the lobby. When the game was over we packed up our van and headed down to Menlo Park.

The drive was pretty short and boring, I just read my book the whole way down. Once we got here, we checked in and then had free time. Megan, Kaitlin, Jeni, Bryan, Adam, and myself went down to the Laundroworld or something like that and did some laundry. This was a nice time to sit and relax and read my book some more, not to mention get rid of my stinky dirty clothes. After my clothes were all done I was very excited when I realized that I was able to get all of my clothes back into my carry on bag. This is only a small victory because I am terrible at folding clothes and don't have a check bag. You have done well teaching me to fold Mom, thanks.

For dinner we went to a Turkish restaurant and I got Adana Kabob (sp?). It was very good, a mix of ground lamb and beef with some added spice, served with Bulgur and a garlic yogurt. Bulgur is a lot like rice, except red, more chunky, and larger 'kernels', if you will. It was really good, the only sad part is that I forgot to take a picture. Basically it looked exactly like a long skinny steak, with red rice and a salad. Everything else that people got looked really good, and I wanted to try it all.

After that we went back to the hotel and played some cards in Brad's room. We played Up and Down, I did pretty good the first round and got first place in my group. In the second round I sucked it up and got last, it was rough. But I know a new game to play with people and I am actually kinda good at it. Now we are in the process of figuring out where and when we are going to watch Shawshank (sp?) Redemption. One of my favorite movies indeed. Now, I must go and figure out what is wrong with the DVD player in my room so that everyone can pile in and watch the movie. Hope everything is going good for everyone else, and am really looking forward to seeing you all soon. I would like to hear from a lot of you, and to know what is going on with you.

Thanks for reading,

Aaron

P.S. Please let me know what pictures you would like to see from earlier dates so that I can post what people wanna see and not just try and get them all on here, or post random things that I think are interesting.

Saturday, January 16, 2010

Hey all,

So today was Saturday, a day that should be relaxing; however, we decided to bike across the Golden Gate Bridge. After that, we made the decision to go out to Point Bonita. All in all it was about 20 miles of biking. Now, 20miles doesn't seem too bad if you are just biking on some nice flat surfaces, but we all know what San Francisco is famous for...hills. There were some very nasty hills. For those of you who have been to the Virgin Islands with me, remember the hills that the truck couldn't make it up, yeah, now bike up those. Also, remember that while you are biking to one side there is always a nice big drop into the water. This was, to say, a hard bike ride. The ride was totally worth it, once we got out to the point the views were great, and I can always say that I biked out there.

After biking for about 4 hours we headed back to the hotel and then to In and Out so Brad could get a taste of heaven. Then we had to get back to the hotel so we could get ready to go to Alcatraz.

Alcatraz was pretty cool. We got the night tour so we got to see some things that are unique to the night tours. There is an audio tour that is narrated by four ex-employees and four ex-prisoners. It was really cool to hear the difference in views from the correctional officers and the cons. There was always a story behind where ever you were in the prison. One of the really cool rooms that I got to see was Robert 'the bird' Stroud's cell in the medical wing. It was relatively large compared to the other cells. One really cool thing was a demonstration of the cell doors.

The hospital was surprising large for the relatively small number of inmates. They had a dentist, x-ray room, surgery room, and a few other rooms. This part was only open for about 30min, and was rather creepy. A lot of the rooms just had camping lanterns for light, giving them a very very dim light, and casting some very long shadows. The best was the surgical room. They had a table and some other stuff, but the room had no lights. The only light in the room was from the one open door in an adjacent room. It made for a very scary room, that most people avoided.

That was pretty much our day today. Tomorrow is going to be another short entry, since all I really have to do tomorrow is watch the vikings win, and move to our other hotel in Menlo Park.

Here are a few pictures from various parts of the day.

Alcatraz, this is Broadway. The aisles of cells all had road names. You can see how it is dark, and a little creepy.

I was a bad bad boy...

The view from Point Bonita. Totally worth the grueling bike ride.

The owner of this house has one of the best locations in all of the U.S. And, if you look in the background you can see what I had to bike through.

Thanks all for reading, I hope you are enjoying the posts. Please let me know if there is anything else you would like to see hear about.

Aaron

Friday, January 15, 2010

Hey all,

WE MET ROBIN WILLIAMS. Just had to get that out there. I shook his hand, talked to him, and was in a picture with him. Not to mention a bunch of other famous comedians. But, back to a semi-chronologically ordered post here.

We started the day off at Porter Novelli. They are a PR firm who work with clients like Mt. Dew and Monster.com. The women we met with was very excited to host us, and gave us some very good cookies. We didn't really talk about anything too technical here. It was really more of her just telling some stories and how their company operates. It is a company that deals more with corporations instead of people. They are big on the social network advertising. Their clients tend to ask them for help with setting up and using Twitter accounts, Facebook adds and things like that. They find that there types of advertising are much more effective that conventional types of advertising. As many of you have probably heard Pepsi is not doing a Super Bowl commercial this year. Pepsi co. is one of their clients and has shifted the money that would be spent on a Super Bowl commercial to their social networking budget instead. Many companies are starting to spend more and more money on this part of their budget, and it seems to be yielding some very nice results.

From Porter Novelli we had some time to go get lunch and to wander the town. I got a snack at Union Square and then walked every street in about a 4 block area around Union Square just looking at stuff. I still had a little time and ended up at a Borders Books reading a book about the National Parks. It had a really cool picture of Half Dome on the inside cover, made me happy knowing that I had been on top of it. While I was in Union Square eating my snack, there was a crazy lady who was yelling at random people and talking to herself. She would randomly do some dances moves as well. Then, she ran up to some random guy and started making out with him. He looked surprised, kissed back for a minute, until finally pushing away and getting away. As I was leaving security was trying to get this lady to leave. It was an interesting lunch for sure.

We finally all met up and headed over to Creative Commons. CC is a digital copyright company. If you visit their site you can get a free copyright license for anything you put online and have the rights to. It is a license that always allows others to use your property, but you can change the restrictions that are placed on your stuff. They really believe in sharing everything on the internet and juts giving credit to the correct people. This is another place that I am going to try for an internship at. Despite being a non-profit they operate much like a normal business, and are very driven to give out these licenses. They pay their bills through donations and grants. Unlike Kiva who is almost collecting enough on their own to pay their bills, CC is not even trying to get that 'tip' that Kiva asks for, or anything else to help pay their own bills. This is one thing that I really wish they would change. There is no reason that a non-profit can't be independent and pay their own bills. The ideology that you have to get grants, and that is the only way you will be able to operate is putting a lot of pressure on people outside of your company, and maybe outside of your ring of supporters. This puts them on some thin ice, if people decide they don't wanna give money anymore, CC is going under.

After CC I headed to China town with Jeni, Bryan, and Jake. We wandered around a little bit and then ended up at a really nice restaurant that was recommended to us by a cashier at a random store. I got some Fried Rice and it was some of, if not the, best fried rice I have ever had. Then, it was time for us to head back to the hotel to start the night, the best night of the trip, and the best night of comedy I have ever been a part of.

We, Jake, Adam, Jeni, Kaitlin, Kiflu, Drew, Megan, and I headed to "The Purple Onion". There were two shows that night, sketchfest and Joke-e-oke. When we called ahead of time to see if we should buy tickets early or anything, we were told that there would be no problem getting in at all. When we got there, we were in the front 1/5 of the line, and barely got in. We had to wait in line for well over an hour and a half. This would have been terrible, except that we met Robin Williams while standing in line. He came to watch his friend perform, and walked right by us in line, and even stopped and talked a little. We will see more of him later. After we finally get into the club there are no chairs and Jake, Jeni, and I have to stand in front of the bar. This really wasn't a big deal, because the comics were very funny and generally showed up at the bar after the set. When they would show up we got to talk to them, and get to know them a little. It was awesome to be talking to the people you just watched perform.

After sketchfest was over, we had to exit the club while they set up for the next show, Joke-e-oke. It sounds a little funny, but it is exactly what it sounds like, karaoke with jokes. There were a few people who signed up and picked one of their favorite comedians and did a skit of theirs, while trying to impersonate them. The first person to go was Alley, she had picked Chris Rock. She actually sounded very much like him, and did his skit at least as good as Chris could have done it, maybe better. This was a competition based comedy show. So, there were three professional comedians as judges. I got to sit directly behind the judges. So I had a lot of interaction with them, and one of them even found me after the show to see if I was from the area. The judges were, (I think these are the right names) Rick Overton, Paul Provenza, and Harmon Leon. Paul and I talked a lot during the show, and he was the one who came and found me after to see if I would be attending anymore shows.

In the end it came down to Kazoomie (Sure I spelled that wrong) an Asian girl, and Alley a little white girl. They ended up having to have an 'insult off' to see who would be crowned the winner. In the end it was Kazoomie, with the winning line of, "Why don't you go slip into something a little more comfortable? Like a coma." Everyone who went in our group could not believe how amazing the night turned out, especially after we almost left because we were frustrated with waiting in line. It was honestly the best comedy I have ever seen, and probably will ever see in a very long time. While we were hanging out before Joke-e-oke started, we finally decided to go ask Robin for a group picture to which he gladly accepted. He is a little shorter than my shoulder, and every bit as hairy as he is in the movies. Also, he is very funny and rather understanding and nice in person. There are a few pictures below, enjoy. Sadly, the good pictures with of me with other people are on someone else's camera.

My fried rice at the Chinese Restaurant we went to in China Town.

Just us hangin out with Robin Williams, no biggie.
The sign at the Purple Onion, a very important comedy club historically.

Thanks all for reading, I will get more pics from this night up later.

Aaron

Thursday, January 14, 2010

Hey all,

Today we visited two companies. The first was NetVibes, a really cool dashboard company that I am going to set up after I am done writing this blog. Basically what it allows you to do is have all the information you need from all the websites you check on one page. It is very comparable to an iGoogle page. What they do is really very simple, but it has been done in such a way that it works very well, and across all platforms. The page is basically an open space that allows you drag and drop the widgets you want into place. These widgets are things as simple as the weather or a facebook / twitter feed. They can also be as complicated as tracking the activity of your page, or when certain buzz words are used in a given forum database.

The site is free for individuals to use, and is completely open source, so we could all go write a java script widget and upload it to the site for everyone to use. They also do white label sales to companies that want to run this for their company, and keep it more internal. They will do these white label sales in one of two ways. Either they will keep all of the software on the cloud and allow the company to access it; or, they will send out the actual software to the company so that if they have secrets they don't want floating around, they can keep it completely internal. a prime example of the second case would be this: they just closed a deal with the defense department, and it was focused on the defense department intelligence or something like that. So they will have a lot of eyes only, and top secret things that they do not want NetVibes to have access to, or to be floating around the web.

Chris Damsen, the guy from NetVibes, was very open about the company, and himself personally. One really cool thing about NetVibes is that they are based in Paris, and do not do internships here in the states, BUT, he said that if we got a hold of him and expressed interest in an internship he would put us in contact, and a good word, with the Paris department responsible for the internships. So, I am really going to try for that, see if I can get an internship in Paris. It would be extra nice for me, since that is really an area of development I would like to head towards.

The second company we visited was a non-profit called Kiva. They are basically the middlemen between loaners and companies that do micro-financing. They are active in tons of countries (I forget the number), and they do some pretty cool stuff. They really try to help people from the developing world get money, as a loan, and then they pay it back. Once you have been paid back on a loan you give, you can take the money back or continue to invest it. You will not gain interest on this loan, because the SEC said that they should not be paying people interest on these loans. Personally, I think that there would be more incentive for people to loan money if they were able to gain a little interest; nonetheless, they have incredibly high rates of the number of requested loans that get funded. The number sited was 99.9%, but I find that a little hard to believe. This was a super cool meeting, since we met with seven members at once. They had people there from all the departments so that every question was answered by people in that field. The only thing that I did not like about this meeting was some of the presentation content. At the start it really felt like they were trying to "sell" us their company. They kept talking about all these good things they did, as if they had to legitimize themselves to us. Also, they threw out a lot of 90+%'s on very important statistics, and I feel like these were more stats meant to impress than convey a truthful business.

After this meeting we had about two hours to roam the city. After about 30min my classmates were boring and went back to the hotel to rest. I, on the other hand, went on a rather long walk around some of the piers and around a few blocks in the city. I saw some very interesting things, from artwork, to a car driving down the dedicated trolley tracks. This part of my day was a lot of fun. A great time for some introspection, and to see some things my friends might not have wanted to walk to. I ended up out on the pier, just sitting in the quiet watching the water. Very relaxing, and totally worth some extra walking. Since we were meeting for dinner at 6:00, I had to get on the trolley about 5:40. I was at the stop I needed a few minutes early. I saw the trolley coming, and got up and stood by the tracks ready to board. The driver looked me in the eye as he drove right by the stop. So I had to wait until the next one came around, and that made me a bit late to our dinner meeting. An interesting trolley experience.

For meals today, most of us went to a burger joint that was supposed to rival In and Out. Brad's spies had told him that this was the place to go, and that these burgers were way better than IaO. Taylor's, as it was called, was pretty good; however, it was no IaO (don't worry Adam, I didn't cross over). For dinner we went to Scomas for some sea food. This was a great meal. I had a special for an appetizer, entree, and desert. I can't remember the appetizer, but it was something like Ascannini. For an entree I had wild swordfish. And, for desert I had Tiramisu (spelling?). They were all amazing. I would highly recommend Scomas to anyone in the San Francisco area. There are pictures of my food at the bottom.

Now, we are all having our nightly Blogging Party in the lounge. We are thinking about going out to a bar to just sit and talk for a bit after we are all done here. We don't have to meet until 10:45 and only have two short meetings tomorrow. There is not a lot else going on for me. The weekend plans are still pretty up in the air. We might go see Wicked, and we are pretty sure that we are going to head to a comedy tour that is coming through town. A few of us are also planning on renting some bikes and riding across the Golden Gate Bridge and exploring over around there some.

Something I forgot to mention about Kiva was that while there, I got to hold one of the Olympic torches from the Beijing 2008 Olympics. Picture below.

One of the videos from the Exploritorium. This is the spinning table, and one of the cool things a ring to do. Kaitlin then tried to sabotage my awesomeness with that ball.



Me, picking some statues noes. He looks very taken aback by my actions.

Holding the Olympic Torch at Kiva. Yes, it is real, and yes it is heavy.

These are the pictures of the food, for those of you who like to look at the great food I got.

I will do my best to get more videos up, but I am very surprised that that one even worked. I will try again tomorrow night, or morning when I have some time.

Thanks for reading,

Aaron

P.S. Brad - "Show me time, please!"