Google: Week 7
Last week wasn’t too shabby if you ignore the worrisome Wednesday. Not too much really happened, however I played volleyball on Thursday and that evening there was a booze cruise for the interns and, their hosts. As seemingly common with Googler only events, beer and wine were free. A few hours of Rock Band followed the bus ride back to Mountain View so we could sober up from the few drinks consumed on the 2000 person yacht.
Friday we had a TGIF which we followed by playing a little Rock Band. This weekend I was pretty lazy. as I watched a few movies, some Star Trek and finally a ton of Olympics. In addition I finally went through three years of papers I needed to file. Since I recently stopped receiving paper statements it was less filing and more shredding as I decided the majority of the stuff could be trashed. Thus I rid myself of approximately 4.5kg of paper. By the way on a side note I feel strongly that we need to switch to the metric system. So I’m going to attempt to use the metric system in all my writing.
I also finally backed up my pictures to Amazon’s S3 service. Currently I’m using s3fs along with rsync to handle this backup. This worked well for my pictures, however there were complications for some of the video files I have which are over 200MB. The next step is to backup all my College work and various projects, however the rsync method is less desirable for this as there are many small files, and I’m better off packaging them up into a larger compressed file.
I ended Sunday night by looking at a ton of cars and listing my car on craigslist. Having driven a Porsche for the last 6 years I have become accustomed to cars with exceptional handling. Thus I’m currently looking at Volkswagen Golfs and Audi A4s. I’m really open to anything, but we’ll see. I drove a 2003 Golf this afternoon which I really like. As one should be though, I’m concerned with what potential future issues the car will have. Fortunately I’m fairly frugal and with working at Google (perhaps I should surname my next car McDougal?) I’m not terribly worried about paying for future car repairs, but I would still prefer to avoid it as best as possible.
Well I think that’s all for last week. Hopefully I’ll have a car to write about next week. I’m open for unique car names as I never named my 944 and I think I should start off my next car properly.
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Comments
Comment from Adam
Time August 12, 2008 at 9:23 am
I was using rsync for a while for backups, and I need to return to that. I have very good onsite backups, but nothing offsite, so if the worst happens (fire, flood, theft), I’m basically fucked.
As for cars, I’ve always liked VWs. They handle well, the non-turbo models are reasonable on fuel economy, and the hatch models are pretty decent in terms of interior space vs. exterior size. The biggest concern I’d have about getting one is reliability and repair costs. Ever since the late 1990s, VW has been slowly slipping in terms of build quality (though it has come up quite a bit in the last 3 or 4 years), and part costs are still fairly high when compared to domestic or Japanese models. However, as much as Kristen dislikes them, I love the GTI MKVs in terms of styling and handling. About the only reasonably priced car that I’ve driven that had such good handling was the 5th gen Civic SI.
The Regal is getting pretty long in the tooth (11 years old, 95k miles), and in the next year I’m possibly going to be replacing it before it loses all value. I’m considering a Vibe like Kristen’s (yeah yeah, I know - same car as my girlfriend is pretty nerdy), but I’m going to see if I can find a 2003-5 GT model with the 1.8L 180hp engine as it’s the same high revving (8200rpm) 2ZZ-GE as the Toyota MR2.
Comment from Bryce Boe
Time August 12, 2008 at 9:51 am
Cheri:
I like the Brycemobile, but doesn’t that name transfer to whatever car I drive? I suppose my next car could be the Brycemobile 2.0, assuming my first car was only a beta car, and thus couldn’t be the 1.0 which the Porsche is 
Adam:
Thanks for pointing out the VW problems. I’ve read a lot about the few models of Golfs I’ve been looking at, and with any German car I expect to pay more for parts and labor. Fortunately for most things I can handle them myself. Kristin’s car is pretty sweet so it wouldn’t be too nerdy if you both had one. If you both had old VW Beatles, that would be a bit nerdy
Comment from Cheri @ Blog This Mom!
Time August 12, 2008 at 8:00 am
I had named your Porsche the Brycemobile. Just so you know.