Lawnguy's Life

So horribly lazy

2007-11-07T13:25:00.000-08:00

Eesh. I was really hoping to keep up this blog. But I haven't. I'm so lazy!

I'm only here to make a really small post though, nothing big. One of the biggest problems I've had here at Google is getting used to being in a room with multiple other people. All of the common noises are hard for me to work through. One solution is to play some nice white-noise through my headphones. I've gone to Youtube and made a custom player and supposedly I'll be able to plug it into my site now. Here's to hoping!

Why "Lawnguy"?

2007-10-17T23:33:00.000-07:00

My wife just recently informed me that my "Lawnguy" handle is confusing.

Ya, I was wondering about that to. Where did that come from? Do you mow lawns? Do you like to sleep on the grass? Was Prawnguy already taken?

All great questions. Except the last three. I do not mow lawns. Well, I used to have to once every couple weeks at my place in Albuquerque, but the back yard was pretty small and it wasn't too bad a job. In my new apartment, I don't have to anymore. There are certainly benefits to living in an apartment.

I don't really like to sleep in the grass. Bugs love me to much and they want my blood. They really are greedy bastards. Give them a taste and they come back for more. Well that's it, no more Mr Niceguy for me. But I digress.

It's funny you should mention prawns. I don't know if I've ever eaten a prawn, but yesterday for lunch Google gave me some very yummy fried shrimp (which are quite prawnlike... or is that prawnesque?).

The actual etymology of Lawnguy is far more esoteric and magical.

You don't say? Actually, I do and I did. Touche.

When I was about 10 (actually, I totally forget how old I was), I had just purchased my very first modem. I recall it like it was yesterday (except for the forgetting how old I was part). I had a choice. Either I could get Joust and Dig Dug *or* I could get a 1200 baud modem. The two games were amazingly temping. However, I had a strange feeling deep in my soul that a modem would somehow be cooler than two games (certainly not than three though).

So I went home and called the only number I knew for a local BBS. At the time, I had an Atari 65xe. It was really an amazing machine (if you compare it to an abbaccus... with broken beads). The BBS I knew was for an Atari board called The Insane Asylum. That's crazy! You don't have to tell me, I was there.

The handle I picked was, I thought, quite apt: Atari Man! Unfortunately, that didn't have the affect of getting me all the babes. Weird! Who could have known? Ya, seriously?!

Anyway, it become somewhat apparent that I would have to come up with another handle. As it turns out, while I was walking home with my soon-to-be coveted modem, I passed a yard with like 20 lawn flamingos in it. Of course, the picture to the left isn't of the actual yard, but it should help to demonstrate the point. Which is? A yard full of lawn flamingos is an amazing and powerful phenomina! What do they want? Where did they come from? If you were engauged in a staring contest with their strongest competitor, who would win? So many unanswered questions.

After the failure of Atari Man, I recalled the magical and mystical even that my bewildered eyes feasted upon before reaching my house with the modem days before. Lawn Flamingo was born. I was quite happy with this handle for a while, but then something curious happened. As BBS servers were getting more powerful, had more memory and were running more and more advanced BBS software, the number of allowable characters in my handle was reduced to some lowely ridiculuous number like 12. Whatever it was, Lawn Flamingo could not fit. Using the amazing sack of neurons that is my brain, I quickly came up with Lawnguy. And ever since then, I have been known to the secret world of geeks, computer nerds and BBSers by my magical secret name of Lawnguy!

In freman, Lawnguy is pronounced, Buewsul, which translates into "The strength of the base of the pillow". Little did I know that my handle was a word of power!!!

I will kill him!

Yikes! I gotta go!

Uh oh. I gotta go now!

I hit the 2-day mark!

2007-10-16T23:28:00.001-07:00

One of the main reasons I decided to start this blog was so that I could stay more in touch with some of my friends that I've had to leave behind.

But where did they go Lawnguy?! That's an excellent question. They actually didn't go anywhere. I am the one that went somewhere. You see, I recently finished my PhD. Unfortunately (and nobody told me this), after you finish, you have to go and get a job.

When I had finished my PhD, I hadn't got a job. This was not to worrisome, as my thesis advisor offered to let me stay for a semester and find a job. Yay and kudos to you Mr Thesis Advisor.

I was definitely worried that I would go the whole semester without getting a single job offer. Luckily, several month into the semester, I ended up having two job offers. How fantastic!!

But how are you going to work at two different places Lawnguy?! Another excellent and poignant question, you really are smart! Thanks. The answer is cloning. By the way, the writing style where you have some dialog between two people (whether they are imaginary or not), is referred to as the... humm, I can't remember. It's called the Socratic method. Thanks!

So, a funny thing happened to me on the way to the cloning center. Google apparently found me. I don't recall ever letting them know I exist. However, my curriculum vita was online (that's academia talk for a resume), and apparently Google knows something about searching for things on the web. Ya, funny that.

So, after making my deposit at the cloning center, I promptly told them to cancel my order. I decided to have an interview with Google. Long story short, forget it... you're hearing the long story. I got the job. (The short version is simply the letter b and a period.)

Yes, we're all super impressed with you Mr Big-Shot-I-work-at-Google-now, but how does that relate to wanting to keep in touch with your friends? Well, even though Google apparently wanted to hire me, they didn't want to hire me so badly that they were willing to open a new office in my home state. Yes, I agree, that is quite selfish of them.

So I decided to pack up and move to California. Unfortunately, this meant I was leaving my entire life behind. All of my friends. All of my family. And most importantly, my beautiful wife. She is not staying behind for good (I hope!), but just for a while. We wanted to make sure everything would work out in California before she left her job and relocated with me.

Unfortunately, living without one's wife after being with her for 10 years is a drastic and thoroughly unpleasant experience. Especially if you don't have any of your friends or family to help you through it.

How are you possibly coping? You must have a will of iron! Well, I am quite excited about my work at Google, which does help. Plus, I get to fly out and see my wife on Friday (3 more days!). We'll each take turns visiting each other every 2 or so weeks. Further, I still talk with my wife every day and she quite patiently puts up with all of my blathering about how lonely I am and how much I miss her.

Enough of my iron will though.

At the end of today, I've completed two entire days at Google. I am now what some would call, a Google expert. However, the set that encompasses those people consists of 3 people. Two of them are split personalities of mine and the other one is a dust bunny.

Wow! A bunny! That's great! Well, I know that sounds cool, but a dust bunny is actually just lint. It's not a bunny at all. Oh.

Well, that's all for now. I'll check in tomorrow and write about my current experiences at Google. One little teaser snippet: the food is amazing. Unbelievably amazing. Absurdly amazing. I seriously cannot believe some of the things Google does for its employees.

My first Blog Entry

2007-10-15T23:23:00.000-07:00

Hello everyone out there. You don't know me. You likely don't exist as to exist you would have to be reading my blog and I cannot remotely fathom why such a person would exist. However, my inability to fathom your existance is surely not a requirement of your existence. So I welcome you.

More posts to come in the future. But first, I should point out that the character you see on the left is not actually me. I'm much more fit and handsome. I'm also not a cartoon character from City of Heroes (insert tradmark , copyright notice, patent number, whatever...).