The walk home.

Posted by Michael D. Mooring on Aug 4th, 2011 in Daily Entries | 0 comments

A Droid 3 sits on the kitchen table for 2 days as my mother convinces my dad that he wouldn’t leverage the phone’s abilities. I walk my dad through the features of the front facing camera, duel processors, as I download Google Goggles and Google Skymap(which is still my favorite). It takes a long time to setup a new Droid(aprox 3-4 hours for me). I gave in and signed up for evil Intuit’s Mint.com (OMG I just got bit up my mosquitoes, had to back inside, turns out if your not actually in the rain, the mosquitoes can get to you and they did, get to my feet, so despite how romantic it was for about 30 seconds, now my feet are going to itch for the rest of the time I am writing this blog post, discipline -> applied.)

I get a connection via PDAnet to my Lenovo S10 (w/ 2gb ram) on the NJ Transit to NYC Javascript App script Meetup. An hour into the ride, I get tired. I’m not moving enough and despite the fact that I’m getting stuff done, I was up till 5am roaming Mint.com and opening a Ally bank account and didn’t get enough sleep, so it kicks in and I have to tick out. So I do get a decent 30 mins of sleep on the train. I’m getting better at it as the new NJ transit train seats aren’t too sleepable in my opinion. I get out, gotta pea. Go to Sabrarro, spend 5 to be un-hungrey and pee and figure out where I’m going. I’m going to 17th Street. I’ve already spent 35, I had 69 in my account. Damn. It’s raining. I am wearing a yellow rain jacket, but I have no hood and no umbrella. It’s not even raining to hard. I like walking the city. Everything is so close. It takes me longer walking home from the Hamilton train station than is does for me to get across the city but we’ll talk about walking home later, that’s the special part.

I get to 15th St. after walking into a CVS selling umbrellas for 10.50 as the avid umbrella sales men outside NY Penn Station don’t take credit card, and I was just introduced to the rain running into them, not knowing how much of a asset it’d prove. I even had a small umbrella in my hand before leaning to the train to NYC. There is a lesson there.

After arriving at 15th and 8th for the second acknowledged time in my life for 1 minute. I logic that 111 8th is across the street in a small golden entrance, judging by a green bush I see from Google Map’s of the street. I walk in, nerds galore. I can see the doormen at Google arnt even used to such a rush of nerds all at one time. As nerds get out of the rain, other nerds, along with females, leave Google, looking tired, not talking to each other, out the doors into the rain. Non of us nerds are talking to each other either yet. This is “Google Space” and it’s a new enviroment for all of us and naturally we’re all “off”. But the lobby isn’t branded Google. infact, we go direct from the unbranded lobby, to the 10th floor, where 1 turn later, we’re already signing a NDA past a narrow hall and into the large, 4 projector lecture hall. I am ahead of 4 guys at the NDA signing table, they all sign before I finish as I diligently supply my address as the form requests(did they even write theirs?). I check again with the NDA man, the bathroom is to the right, right after the doors. I duck in. Wow. lockers, but wait that wasn’t the Wow, a shower, with towels and it smells good. I use paper towels on my hair and attempt to dry off. My shorts are still soaked. I walk out and down the stairs into the lecture hall. There is food to the left, I go straight for the barely occupied front row and grab a spot at the far right. I plugin my laptop and get food. The presentation begins. Ning welcomes the group and intros the Goolger who is to talk about Google App Script.

JavaScript in the server side. Wow. This is becoming a hot thing. JavaScript for all. So App script, lets you access all the App Engine stuff, as if it were data, and then script it. Like ASP.net as one person pointed out at the end, but not like ASP.net cause it’s better. I agree just cause it’s not MS.

Saurabh Gupta was the Googler. He was a Googler. As you see in all the videos. Confident, mostly fluent, and with that Google smugness that seems to be a natural side effect of being anything Googler(even the janitor was a tad smug via Googleness auras/t-shirt). Google App Script, access your email, your calendar, and your spreadsheets. So you can click here and start scripting:

Wow, yeah that’s in Google Spreadsheets. and you can just start coding all kinds of crazy javascript stuff. It’s powerful agreed, it’s just a matter of imagination on what to use the power of being able to script/”automate” Gamil,Calendar,Docs together. A million things but…. what…well the million office task things…. You can’t receive Gmail into another place besides gmail.com so it’s like half powerful after that fact and… it can work with third party stuff easily, supposedly. POWERFUL, agreed. There are uses for Google App Script.

At the end, Saurabh asked us, the 100 or so Javascript nerds on what we thought of “Node” (node.js).

“Well I use it only for Web Sockets”

Agreed. Node.js is web sockets and a big community, that’s it.

When Saurabh asked us about Node, his face changed. It was clear Node is a competitor of sorts for Google’s sever based “App Script” Javascript product even though when I asked him alone, one on one, if he thought Node was a competitor, he said “it’s not” plainly and that he likes Node alot, so I asked if then App Script should be friendly with Node and he said “it’s not on the road map” as he said for a couple other harder questions asked to him earlier, a very political brush off technique.

Hey, Saurabh was cool(despite the natural Google smugness) so pardon this journalistic depiction of him.

About 8 or so of us went to the “beer garden” in meat packing afterwards. It was open roofed with a cover and it was still raining. The nerds were extremely friendly. Remember I was/am a nerd too in this context(nerd = smart person). We get there and all proceed to pay $8 for a single beer. Steep. They’re used to it. My bank account cries out and so does my possible crypto-Jew roots. I take the blows. We all get to know each other. Two work for Rock Star games, their awesome. One has a iOS app that is 4 players and attracts many people as we sit around a table and flick animals at each other in his iPad game. Everyone likes the app and we use it to open sets of attractive women, it works, they love the game, everyone does, it’s a promising app/game that this guy(nerd) came up with and if he plays his iOS cards right, he’s set.

This place was very nice. Two pong tables, the bathrooms allow for extremely easy if not accidental sexual encounters as a flimsy see through drape separates male and females. Dyson hand insertion hand dryers, fun. Cool podies. Just cool. Mirrors winding the walls into the bathroom, cool. We all realize how cool we are as we get to know each other better. We all say how cool we are at the table of nerds and how great it is to be able to get together like this and nerd out successfully. Thanks Ning. Half the tribe leaves. Leaving the Rockstars and the one female. We talk more. For some reason I can’t talk normally and can only talk in a loud annoying manor, which was annoying even for me. Meh.

We drink another beer. Talk and part ways. We’re cool. lol. I walk back the 29 blocks to NY Penn Station. I get there and go to the shop to get a coffee. Two Japanese girls site at a table. The tad bit of physic in me confirms they are Japanese(or maybe just the extreme left brain analytics, I don’t know yet, maybe both allow me to predict odds so well). I open with “Konichiwa”. We try to understand each other for like 3o minutes and I miss my train easily for this opportunity to try to learn Japanese beyond my free “Learn Japanese” app that I am using and did use during this interaction. They correct me on my dictation for 30 minutes. I ask them how the radiation is doing. They say it’s fine and I give them high fives twice for winning women’s soccer cup. I was a tad drunk. I improved my Japanese. I got on the train and proceeded to sell html5 future web to a group of young bmx riders. One is inspired and writes my name down to follow me on the web as I talk of the future of programmers in flotation tanks programming at 5x the normal human capacity via clear brainwave signals. They bump into a older friend who just got back from a concert. He’s been drinking like I have and he proceeds to ask if I can hack this girls’ tumblr and Facebook ect.. “cause she’s messing with the potential marriage” of his friend and I say “yeah, no problem” and we start to search the girl to get info on her accounts. I’m the worst hacker ever. The farthest I get is to say, “look, here is her Facebook info” that you showed me, “I can go from here”(NOT). lol. I’m not a hacker(yet).

I get to the Hamilton train station. I forget to call home units for rides. My new drunk friend cannot supply ride neither, but he does give me half a cigarette which I smoke walking across the bridge. I proceed to walk home from the station again. Second time doing so. This time in the slight drizzling rain at about 3?am.

I philosophi that you, yes YOU. You are alone in this world. As am I. We all are, we can’t depend on anyone. Even Christ may appear to us, and then departed. Have faith, it’s all a test. Keep walking. I walk. On the white line on the street. It represents the straight and narrow. I resent smoking that cigarette. I feel so alone that I am not over there. Yes there, the there there that you would know what there I am talking about if you know me. I am not there so I am alone so I figure life is to be alone and in those moments, in that NOW, I was alone with myself and God observing. I was content, and I walked. I will walk, forever, towards the end of that midnight street, towards an unknown goal, alone, without her, until I sleep and dream.

Dream.