Back at School

I haven't updated my blog in a long time.
2 Fridays ago, we presented our diversity projects to Google workers and to 10th graders. Later that afternoon, we met up with the students again for a cookout. I was in the middle of a massive volleyball game of about 30 ppl when we were first introduced to Dennis Hwang, he is the guy who draws the Google logos. And then we were later introduced to Sergey Brin, one of the co-founders of Google.Most of the younger students went crazy and crowded him.

The following week we spent most of our time working on final projects. Eric and I were partners and made a Celebrity Tracker site which would let a user search for a celebrity and the results would return blogs, sites, pictures, and videos about the person all in one window. We presented our final projects last Thursday then we went to the Computer Science History Museum where we had our final party.
The next day we all flew back home. I was only home for a few days and now I'm back at school.

The CSSI was a fun experience where I learned a lot and where I saw the cool side to CS.

Projects Update

Today the first project with the memorization game was due. It was a crazy night since almost all of the groups stayed up really late. Nobody wanted to stop working because other groups would be able to spend more time to make better programs. We ended up having everybody come to the same room together to program and that way everybody could help each other because we wanted everyone to finish the project.
We were all expecting a single winning team but there ended up being a tie between my team and Jerrica/Johnathan team.

So today was a long day for everybody since most people didn't get any sleep at all. After class, we went on a boat cruise in San Francisco. It was a lot of fun cuz it was our first time in the city and we saw Alcatraz and the Golden Gate Bridge.

Over the past few days we've met some cool Google employees and employees from other companies. We met professors from colleges and progammers from EA Games, Pixar, and Google. We also met a woman who said that she was the 23rd employee of Google which now has about 20,000 employees. It was cool to hear her stories of how Google transformed from a small startup to the company it is now.

It's 1:30am and I'm going to go to sleep because we will be presenting our diversty projects tomorrow.

Projects

Today was another long day at Google. We went through a few classes including data structures, history of the internet, and javascript.

We were also assigned two projects for this week:
1) We paired up in partners and have to complete the concentration game by thursday morning. It's my first time coding in html, javascript, and css but my group is still going to win. I paired up with Kenechi, also from CMU, and we're gonna show everyone how we do at CMU! Whichever group wins, can go to the google store and get something for free. So when I win, I'll be going for the $100 jacket.
2) In groups we will create presentations about diversity to give to any Google employee who wants to come by but the presentation will be focused to 10th graders.We are presenting on Friday.

I'll update later in the week how these projects went.

First Day at Google

Today was the first day at Google. I got there around 7:30 am. We walked around the campus and saw most of the outside areas. At 9, we began our first class where we learned about abstraction. Later classes that we had today were history of computing, html coding, and using css to format pages written in html.
Today was my first time coding in html so it was cool to be able to learn it.
Across from our class is the Google store which has a lot of cool stuff to buy in it.

Today we also met our Google buddies who are full-time employees who will help to mentor us. Coincidentally, my mentor and I are from the same small town Gaffney, SC.

One of the coolest things at Google is that ALL OF THE FOOD IS FREE(except for the junk food in vending machines. The more unhealthy the food is then the more it costs). But besides that everything is free for all of the employees and guests. Every employee works less than 150 ft from a kitchen that is always stocked with fruit, vegetables, drinks, coffee, snacks. There are also 18 cafes around the campus that serve the free meals. So at Google you never have to worry about forgetting your lunch money or forgetting your lunch at home.

Google is more like an adult playground than a workplace. I've seen a ball bath, a toy area, and lots of video games, pool tables, a volleyball court, and a pool.

I also found out that the Carnegie Mellon West Campus is close to here so I might go check that out.
I'm going to go to bed now because I was at google from 730am-930pm so now im tired.

First Time in Cali

Today was a long day spent traveling. I spent most of my day yesterday packing and getting organized.However, several severe thunderstorms passed over SC and knocked out power to a few cities. My house was without electricity for the whole night so I was forced to pack my bags by using a flashlight. Ironically, the lights in the house came back on when I was leaving.

When I got to the airport I was told that my flight from Columbia to ATL would be delayed 30 minutes because the flight crew needed more rest because of the storm last night. Because of this delay, I only had about 15 minutes between my two flights. The flight to SF was a huge 767 and I was the lucky one with the seat in the very last row.

For lunch, a few of us walked around looking for food and got lost but we eventually found Burger King. I was surprised at California's high price of living-gas here is about $4.40 a gallon and around $3.50 back in SC. We also walked by a Chinese lunch buffet for $11,99 when I can get a buffet for $3.99 back home.

For the rest of the night, we chilled around the hotel and got to know each other. I've been up for a long time after flying from east coast to west coast so I'm goin' to bed to get ready for the big first day at Google.

Work

Last night was finally my last night of work at Michelin Tires. This past week I've been working on night shift and I never got that much sleep during the daytime cuz I was doing other stuff. Now I only have 2 days to start packing and get everything ready for this trip and for school.

Besides working, I've been preparing for CSSI and school by refreshing my programming skills and doing a lot of theory problems. During my freshman year, theory classes were the hardest for me so I'm working hard to improve in these classes. I used the summer free time to fix some of my older programs and to make new ones. Most of the programs that i made this summer were GUI's.

Besides working and studying, I've been hanging out with a lot of friends. As soon as I get back from CSSI, I'm heading to school in Pittsburgh. I will not be back home in SC until Winter Break so I've been spending a lot of time with family and friends.

2 more days until California!

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Hello World.

This is my first time ever doing a blog. My name is Brett Harris and I attend Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, PA. If you want to know more about me then check out my "about me" section.

This blog is focused on my trip to San Francisco to study for 2 weeks at Google. I will be leaving in 12 days from today. I'm excited because this will be my first time ever going to the West Coast.


Youtube is my favorite Google application. It was founded in February 2005 but not officially launched until December 2005. Google was not the original developer of Youtube but Google purchased it a year after the site's launching.
I researched Youtube and found out a lot of stuff that I didn't know.
-Youtube is not profitable.
-Youtube's bandwith usage costs are about $1,000,000 a day!
-Ten hours of video are uploaded every minute.
-Around 84 million videos and 4 million users
-Youtube is blocked in several countries.

The reason that I like youtube is because I listen to a lot of music on this site.Youtube is better for music than downloading/cds/ or online radios because Youtube has many upcoming music artists with covers of goods songs and their original music. Several people have been offered record deals and gained publicity for their videos on Youtube.
Eventually I will record some songs on my instruments and upload them to Youtube.
I also watch Youtube to laugh at people do crazy stuff. Everyone tries to dance in their videos but most of 'em cannot. haha