Mo Movember

November 2nd, 2009

In an effort to incentivize people to donate, I will post photo updates of my Mo every morning after I reach $100 of donations. So if you want to see my face every morning, go and donate! Remember, it’s all for a good cause.

Here comes Movember!

November 1st, 2009

Today is November 1st. This means a few things:

  1. We got an extra hour of sleep yesterday (yay!)
  2. It’s almost winter (boo!)
  3. It’s the first day of Movember (woot!)

I hear you ask “what’s Movember?

Movember is a way to raise awareness of prostate cancer, and raise money for the cause. It’s also an excuse to grow a moustache! Here’s an excerpt from the website:

A Mo Bro starts Movember – the month formerly known as November – clean shaven, and grows a moustache all month long, garnering support from friends and family in the form of donations.  What’s more, a Mo Bro is a walking billboard for the cause as his new look opens the door for him to talk about prostate cancer – making the moustache a symbol, much like the pink ribbon is for breast cancer.

Anyways, I’ve donated $50 to the Movember foundation to start the month off, and will donate $5 for each of the remaining days of the month if I shave before the 30th of Movember. If you’d like to donate (and I know you would), just go to my donation page and go for it! I’m also part of the Google Canada Movember team, fondly called Mo’ogle Canada.

Lets get Mo’ving!

Linux Fest tomorrow

October 23rd, 2009

I’m going to be at linux fest tomorrow. Anyone else going to be there?

Igor’s decorating show continues

July 6th, 2009

This time, our minimalistic bedroom decoration :-)
Bedroom

Photo series: Life in Russia

June 25th, 2009

I received a link to a photo series called Life in Russia by Russian phtographer Aleksey Petrosian, depicting his view on modern life in Russia.

Lots of very powerful photographs in there, worth a look.

Robert J Sawyer at Google Waterloo

June 22nd, 2009

A few weeks ago we hosted Robert J Sawyer over for lunch and he gave a pretty interesting talk about his upcoming book Wake. The books is about the Web gaining consciousness. I’m not even a huge sci-fi fan and I found it pretty interesting.

Decorating the living room

June 15th, 2009

We spent the weekend doing some much needed decoration at the apartment. The most porminent of which is buying a lamp (several actually, but some are being delivered) for the living room and putting up circular mirrors on the living room walls at semi-random spots. Here’s a shot:

Our living room

Oh yeah baby! (It looks even better in person).

We also put up a bunch of photos, some regular-ish mirrors for the entrance hall and bedroom, and also put up the remainder of these awesome circular mirrors in the study room.

First two weeks

January 24th, 2009

I just spent 2 very warm weeks in Mountain View, CA as part of my orientation at Google. Unfortunately it’s time to go back to the -18C temperatures of Canadia. A bunch of people keep asking me how it was, so here’s the lowdown:

  • Awesome food (I made a counscious effort to gain 5 pounds in 2 weeks, lets see how it worked out)
  • Sweet weather (yeah I just have to say it again to rub it in)
  • Went on a 3-day trip to Vegas (we can call this my starting work bonus vacation)
  • I’m going to be working in the AdSense group (that’s where Google supplies ads for third-party sites and both Google and the publisher site make money from the clicks)
  • I don’t really yet know what I’m going to be working on, but even if I knew it’s possible I’d have to kill you if I told you
  • Orientation wasn’t super-useful because I’ve seen about 60% of it before – the other 40% was actually pretty awesome
  • Hanging with people I haven’t seen for 8 months was a lot of fun
  • I’m going to be working mostly in C++ so I spent a bunch of time in the past week cramming up on C++
  • Google rocks
  • This is all

Changing levels safely fail

January 24th, 2009

To change levels safely with luggage cart, please use elevators…

…is what I just heard over the announcement system at SFO International airport. I think the main question here is: are people who take luggage carts on stairs/escalators actually smart enough to listen to announcements?

Fail.

Progress: no longer homeless

November 6th, 2008

Even though I enjoy the hobo life as much as the next guy it was finally time to try and get myself some sort of habitat – no, the cardboard box doesn’t count. I’m happy to announce that in one short day of looking (and a couple of months of frantic checking online) we found a kick-ass apartment for January. So don’t worry, I won’t be hoboing it up and freezing in the cruel Canadian winter.

Now it’s time to use Planning Wiz to plan our apartment layout!