Newsletter

10-month post!

This newsletter's release cycle seems to have lapsed from biannual to nearly annual. In keeping with tradition, to cover a lot of material quickly, I will just bullet point the highlights since the last real update (which was about 10 months ago).

Last school year

As I haven't really talked about last school year at all (other than 10 months ago, which was only a week or two into it), I suppose it's fitting to begin there. Dang. That's a significant chunk of time.

For a very broad overview, here is what consumed most of that time. I took the following classes: Program Design & Development, Algorithms and Data Structures, Intro to Operating Systems, Principles of Microeconomics, Formal Languages and Automata Theory (my favorite class), Practice of Database Systems, Artificial Intelligence, and Biblical Prophecy. I was also involved in the TAC project doing CS research. We are researching Autonomous Trading Agents in Supply Chain Management scenarios. Furthermore, I am still the System Administrator for the astronomy department, and I was (and still am) a Community Advisor (what nearly every other school calls a Resident Assistant, or RA).

The classes were fun. I definitely enjoyed the more mathematical side of computer science (Formal Languages and Automata theory stands out), and my world perspective definitely shifted a lot after taking Biblical Prophecy. I found myself unable to really dive in to the research I was doing, as it didn't seem to particularly captivate me. Nevertheless, I think it's important to do what you commit to. Haha.

I think the most significant part of the year last year for me was the Community Advisor job. It was really ingrained into me that not only am I perfectly capable of taking initiative, I can be pretty good at it. So, that's great news. :) But that's not the most of it. The most of it was that my staff of CAs was awesome, my house of residents was awesome, and I made a bunch of what I think will turn out to be life-long friends. Hooray!

As is typical of my life, the rest of the year can be easily described by a number of disjoint stories highlighting either my stupidity or, uh, I don't even know.

• For the first 8 hours of November 19th, 2006, I was in the cold in Minnesota, wearing 3 pairs of socks and many other clothing layers, outside of a Target with Richard and Amber's fiance Justin. At 8:00 am, the Target opened, and 160 people filed in to be the first to buy the new Nintendo. So, I bought one. I think we were in the 30s if one were to index all the people who had been in line, but I don't remember. I got home later that morning, saw the very same Nintendo's on sale at JC Penny's website, and bought another one. I figured if my siblings couldn't get a hold of one, they could have that second one, but otherwise I could sell it. They never got a hold of one. So, the second Nintendo ended up being the big ticket Christmas gift :). I wanted to get it home without them noticing that I was bringing home two, so I decided I would be clever and ship the second Nintendo home separate from my plane flight. Of course, I get caught up in the details of things, so, when I was told that to get it there by Christmas I would have to pay 40 dollars, I sighed and did so, not remembering that I could just alter my plans and wrap it in a blanket or something in my duffel bag that I would personally be bringing to Utah the very next day. So, 40 dollars in the hole so far. I fly back to Utah, and a few days later, my box arrives. Excitedly I showed my mom the box and whispered to her what it was, and ran upstairs to go open it. Right then, a pale, sickening feeling came over me as I realized what I just had done. So, I had two Nintendo boxes in my dorm room the week before. One was empty, because my Nintendo was connected to my TV. The other was unopened. As I opened the box that I shipped to myself, I recoiled as my suspicion was realized. The box was a little too light for a reason. I mailed an empty box to myself for 40 dollars. Another 40 dollars and a few frantic calls to my dorm building later, UPS picked up the nonempty box from my dorm room in Minneapolis and got it to Utah the day after Christmas. Endless thanks to the CA who was still on duty there, Liz, for keying into my room and handing it to the UPS guy. I'm such an idiot.


• I don't even have any completely working laptops anymore. Of my last three, I have never seen so many blue sparks in my life than when the first one went out. That will teach me to try and fix a laptop with pliers. The second one looks like someone dropped a train on it. It wasn't me. I don't even have a train. I honestly don't even know what happened to it. The last one I did drop, but it still works mostly. The screen doesn't work, but if you connect it to another screen, it's just fine. So, this last laptop that actually works at all I got in 7th grade, making it my oldest laptop. It's a friggin' dinosaur. It's huge, unsightly, and slow, but it works. So, when I'm running the front desk of my dorm building, I like to stream my music from my dorm room computer to this laptop so I can listen to it. I spent forever trying to get the sound to work on this dinosaur computer. At 6 in the morning on the day of a test, after 8 hours of recompiling kernels, playing with interrupt register addresses, reflashing my BIOS, and a variety of other attempts at getting sound to come out of the speakers, I thought to turn up the volume.


• Two months after I had even been on a plane, I ordered the Spineworx from Skymall. Boy that thing is ridiculous. What was I thinking?


• Apparently, if you try and turn fast in Utah, going up Parley's canyon in a blizzard so you don't miss the last exit before you're stuck going up I-80, you will spin a number of times and slam your car into a ditch on the side of the road. Go figure. Luckily, Saturn brand sedans from 1996 are incredibly resilient and incurred no damage in any of the tests I did. My sample size for testing wasn't very large though. I would like to point out that I had my car inspected. The mechanic said it was in great shape. So yay!


• Something that I had never seen before was remote car engine starters, but apparently they're very common up north, such as in the Dakotas, for when the weather is cold. However, when that is not something you've seen before and one of your friends starts his car from 10 yards away, it's very hard not to exclaim "Whoa!!! Who are you?!? Batman?!?"


• I've developed a tendency to collect free furniture, and I've gotten exceedingly good at it. This last year I had my entire room furnished with free stuff. I had free coffee table for my free 27" monitor. I had a free LCD monitor for my computer and free cardboard everywhere. I even had a free VCR so I could watch free videotapes on my free couch! I was pretty excited about having more movie room, but that usually ended up meaning I just had an empty spot next to me. And so things go. Next year it looks like I'll upgrade from free couch to free futon.


• I was a very big stickler for keeping the bass down in my hallway. Just so you know, if you're reading this and I'm your CA next year, I'm totally laid back about most things, but, deep bass music just goes straight to my bones. Argh. Which is why it was so awful that I was completely hypocritical about noise levels. I got a Mandolin last Christmas, and have since taught myself a number of great accompaniment pieces on it. It's like I actually play a musical instrument now. Not well, but sufficient enough that I can be quite loud. It never even occurred to me that my Mandolin strumming could be louder than bass music, and therefore, once I discovered this I felt like a complete idiot. I will be making good use of music rooms next year.


• I discovered that I can pay much better attention in class if my hands have something to do. I fiddle or bounce my leg all the time, and long ago I decided that taking notes is worthless for me, so just sitting there for 2 hours is admittedly jarring to my sense of focus. So, once I started teaching myself how to solve the Rubik's cube, I found myself much better at remembering what happened in class. I could sit in the back, frustrate myself with a Rubik's cube, listen to the teacher, and comprehend what was going on, making my class attendance useful! So, after a few weeks of this, I finally figured out how to solve the Rubik's cube. Hooray! So, I can do that now. It's a good thing I figured that out before I figured out that my professors could see me fiddling with a Rubik's cube, which is admittedly quite disrespectful, as I probably wouldn't be able to solve it still. So, I don't do that too often anymore, but yeah, I was completely oblivious to being respectful to the professors.


• I also discovered how awesome Google Calendar is. I haven't had any need to use it this summer, but during the school year it has revolutionized my life. I can manage such complicated to-do lists on that now. Dang, best thing ever.

The summer

Since January, the ball had been rolling for me to become employed by the big G themselves. It was very back and forth, and many times all the way up until mid-May I was either sure I was getting a job or sure I wasn't. Admittedly it was somewhat frustrating. However, I did end up getting the actual internship that I wanted at Google, and so, since June 5th, I've been in California working in sunny, sunny Mountain View. It's been amazing. I am convinced that the utopia that is the Googleplex is assuredly either the best thing that has ever happened to engineers and will grow astronomically with phenomenal success, or it is a complete anomaly. The benefits I get working there as just an intern are incredibly insane. I have never eaten such gourmet food in my entire life, which doesn't even make light of the fact that that very food is free. There are on site laundromats, dry cleaners that bring your clothes right to your office, on site dentists, on site oil changes (particularly useful to me), 16 restaurants (all free for Google employees), bean bags everywhere, hardware departments where you can request free hardware upgrades and walk out with them, never-ending swimming pools (pools with jets so while you swim, you stay stationary), public-use bicycles and electric scooters everywhere, full exercise gyms, volleyball courts, basketball courts, free Google shuttle service to most of the bay area, and countless other things. Working there feels like you are at the epicenter of the future. Just two weeks ago I tripped over a former secretary of the treasury. I felt bad.

I drove out to California early June from Utah, which happened to be an awesome drive. Before I came out to California, though, the following things happened.

• I moved out of my dorm room in Minnesota, only to discover that next year I will be in the same room. Even with that knowledge in mind, I still couldn't leave my stuff in there because the room would be occupied by summer programs. So, all my stuff is in what was an empty closet down the hallway from my room.


• I went back to Utah, and really enjoyed being with my family. I was only there for about two weeks, unfortunately, which wasn't nearly as much time as I wanted to spend with them, but I just really like being there. Utah is fun, and my friends and family there are really hard to part with every time I have to leave there.


• I broke my second racquetball racket playing racquetball with Nick. I've since had it fixed here in California, but dang.


• Last Christmas, I installed a new CD player in my car. It's super awesome. It's an MP3 CD player, and so I'm never, ever tied into a situation again where I have to spend that much money to just attach CD audio to my car speakers (it really shouldn't be more than 20 bucks, in my opinion), the CD player has audio input. I'm stoked about it. I've never installed anything with a hammer and a wood burning kit before, but there's a first time for everything. Anyway, while I was in Utah between Minnesota and California, I burned the majority of my music onto a bunch of MP3 CDs, and I still haven't finished going through them. I think I listen to the most music in my car, and what's funny is my voice is always hoarse when I get out.

While I've been in California, I haven't actually spent all my time at Google (though I just read a description recently of how it would be feasible, zoning laws aside), so that leaves nights and weekends to find things to do. I brought my Nintendo and happened to show my grandpa how it was cool that it detected motion, etc. He has now ordered his own controller, his own game, plans to order his own Nintendo once he can find one for sale, and has achieved Pro status at Wii Tennis. Awesome huh? I often come home from work to find my grandparents playing video games. So, lots of Wii Tennis. And eating. My grandma is an amazing cook!

I also decided to start over on my Dr. Mario game.
It was really crappy before, but now it's way better. So I spent a while making sure I got that right (or at least, better than the first time), and plan on adding internet play. I'm very close to making internet Dr. Mario a reality. Getting back into a fun programming problem really reminds me why I spent all of my middle school lunches in the computer lab. It's fun to problem solve!

I also redesigned my website, which might be apparent if you're reading this.

I've spent a few weekends at the beach and one walking all over downtown San Francisco. I also spent some time trying to figure out why my car had run completely out of oil and how I could fix it (turns out, when no oil is left on the dipstick, there's still a quart or two left). I'm getting an incredible farmer's tan while I'm enjoying the nice weather. There's actually a list of life goals I have, and I'm making quite a bit of progress on that as well.

It's great out here, but for some reason I think I'm still most looking forward to seeing my siblings if/when they come out here and next school year.

Anyway, so, yeah, awesome, awesome summer. I haven't even explained my work at Google, but that's amazing as well.

I signed up for a service called Nowthen, and they basically run personal photo-blogs that you can update directly from your cellphone camera. I have an account *gasp* and I've been updating it *more gasping*. So, if you want to see a sort of visual look at my summer, check out nowthen.com/jtolds.

Next school year

I'm currently signed up for the following classes for next semester.: Persuasion Theory, Operating Systems, Natural Language Processing, Intro to Computer Networks, and Modern Cryptography. I'll probably drop one. My schedule is awesome. I have a four day weekend every week, and my earliest class is 11:15. The most class I have in a day is 2 classes, and only one on Wednesday. The sucky bit is that Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays are all full of night classes. Oh well.

I'll also probably be involved in more research, and I'm signed up for the year-long Senior Software Project, which should be exciting. I'll be a Community Advisor again with what looks like will be an awesome new staff (half of it is returning from last year), and though I'm still the System Administrator for the Astronomy department, I will be training in a new guy to take over for me. I'm going to be taking a very large interest, I've decided, in the technically-oriented workings of Campus Crusade, such that they end up being very tech-savvy and run smoothly, while at the same time factoring myself out of that equation. So I'll be leading up the tech team there (again) until we can find a good replacement for me.

Yeah, I'm really excited for next year. It's crazy that it will be the last one. As far my future plans go, I'm thinking grad school. I've been very informally told by a previous employer that they will pay for me to go, so that's exciting. But I'm flying by the seat of my pants, so we'll see what happens.

Dang, I would hate for this to be the last sentence on my newsletter for the next 10 months, but given precedent, it very well could be.