This week was all around awesome. While I wasn’t 100% yet, I was mobile enough to head down to Utah for a week of chillaxing, with some recruiting in the middle of it.
Saturday morning I caught a cab to the airport and flew on down. Waited in a super long and slow line at the car rental desk. Only one out of three self-serve kiosks was operational; the others had generic errors on their screens. I wandered over and flipped the switch on the power strip they were connected to, on the off chance that a power cycle would be enough to get them back in working shape. Sure enough, after seven or eight minutes of booting (during which the line moved maybe five feet) I was able to get all checked in.
Ended up getting upgraded from a sedan to a minivan, with a couple free tanks of gas for my trouble. And what nice minivans they make these days; all the bells and whistles.
Driving on I-80 for the first time in nine months, well let’s just say I wasn’t about to win any manly-man awards.
Made it home, and Scout barely recognized me. He was pretty standoffish at first, didn’t bark at me but didn’t try and tackle me either. Finally after sniffing me a while he got the idea and was properly overjoyed.
That afternoon we headed to an escape room where we prevailed with absolutely no a teensy bit a fair amount of hints. From there we had dinner, then dispersed for a time.
Sunday was a broadcast, so we watched that from home, given my back situation. We later went and got family pictures taken, and had a blast wandering around Fort Canyon. That evening we had fun up at the Davis’ cabin, good food and good family.
Monday I went with Mom to go assess the physical security of the Adobe Lehi office. Read: waltz in and have breakfast ’cause they don’t badge-check you in that part of the building. From there we went… clothes shopping. Spent the rest of the day working from Google’s SLC Fiber office.
Tuesday was another work day, but decided to take it easy and work from home.
Wednesday and Thursday were recruiting days. There were four of us from the Kirkland office visiting. We kicked it off with a small grad student info session. I recall sitting on the other side of the table at these things, weird feeling.
Afterwards I caught up with my old professor, Dr. Seamons. His lab now has three students, none of whom know me at all. Weird how the continuity breaks so soon.
I went from there to meet Aunt Lisa and bring her along to a catered lunch with the Women in Computer Science group. Gender and tech, wasn’t surprised in the slightest that she had a blast chatting with everyone.
Next up was the Cloud tech talk. I prepared some slides based on a blog post that recently went live. The talk wasn’t terribly well attended, but I’m pretty happy with how the presentation went. I mostly sat out on an info session that followed, to give my back a rest. The last thing of the day was a demo where an engineer got interviewed on stage, to demonstrate what a Google interview looks like.
Thursday morning was mock interviews, where we each interviewed students for ~20 minutes. Nothing official came of the interviews, they were just to help students get a feel for what it’s like to be in a technical interview.
From there we went out to a local pizza place to have lunch with a few professors. I met a few old faces, one of whom ended up being Mattie’s CS professor, a neat coincidence.
Mostly sat out on the sessions later that day. We wrapped things up with Google Games, a puzzle-hunt-style competition, where code can help solve some hints, but not all.
Friday morning I went with Dad to do breakfast at Adobe, then worked for a while before heading out to War for the Planet of the Apes, with Dad, Steve, and the Thomases. Delightful film, glad it’s still in theaters.
Shortly after that got out we all (sans Hayden, sniff) met up for dinner in Provo, had a grand old time. Afterwards us siblings went off to go see Mattie’s apartment, meet the roomies, etc.
Then a major highlight for the week. Ever since I scoped out the trip I’d been terribly excited to go back to the Provo ice rink for some Friday night broomball. One of my favorite parts of going to school there. I was a bit late getting out there, and was dismayed to see how full the parking lot was. When the line gets long it gets long. Parked across the street, ran swiftly hobbled in, and turns out the crowd was there for a dance party of sorts going on in one of the other areas of the rink. I hopped in on a nice little game going on, and oh it was just fantastic. Swingin’ my stick, blocking balls left and right, girls cheering my name from the bleachers, totally worth the pain.
And oh deary me was there pain. I did a fair job of protecting my back, but it turns out that when you don’t do anything strenuous at all for one and a half months, hopping into a [broom] hockey match does not do your extremities any favors. I was left hobbling for the remainder of my stay in Utah, from burning muscles.
Saturday morning I went on a drive with Mom & Dad up the canyon to go see Tibble Fork and Mutual Dell. Afterwards I watched a movie at Grandma’s place with Steve, then darted down to Provo to do some tech consulting for Aunt Lisa and see a couple friends. One just recently got married and the other just recently bought a condo. Both on my todo list.
Sunday I packed and got ready to head out. Stopped by a dinner at Grandma’s for a while, got to see a few more cousins.
Now that I’m back in Washington I just can’t wait to be back in Utah for Thanksgiving. The other night I accidentally dropped some cheese on the ground, and knowing full well that I was alone in the apartment I still called out, “Scout! Get your food!” And nothing happened 🙁
I’m just now getting back to the level of mobility I was at when I landed in Utah last week, so at least that’s improvement. Today I worked from home in the morning, then headed in in time to compete in a science/math trivia contest. Got some help from a couple of classic movies (I know what “perigee” means cause they use it in the Recess: School’s Out film, and I know that CD player lasers are red cause it’s used as a weapon in A Kid in King Arthur’s Court (well, and also just cause I knew that one, but still.)) Killed myself though, when I failed to remember that in Battlestar Galactica, a show with obvious cues taken from Mormonsim, the home planet of humanity is known as Kolob. Though, even given that and a few other missteps, we were still able to pull off a victory.
Onwards and upwards.