It is imperative that I get this post finished in the next
2 days 1 day, since I'm leaving for Las Vegas after that. On to the action!
Thursday night was intern/mentor trampoline dodgeball. Basically, people formed dodgeball teams of interns and their mentors to play against one another in a best of 3, double-elimination style tournament. The winner got bragging rights, which was EVERYTHING to us. Unfortunately, my mentor was out of town, so we put a picture of his face on a cardboard cutout of Justin Bieber (no joke) and had him watch from the sidelines. There was even a foam pit you could do flips into, so we brought Bieber with us:
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| I wasn't joking |
It wasn't long before the tournament started. We barely lost our first match, which sent us to the losers bracket. Luckily, I was able to salvage the situation. In game 2 of our second match, I was the only person left against a couple people on the other team. Somehow, I managed to come out alive so that we could win the third game and keep going. It wasn't enough, though, as our stamina wouldn't hold out and we lost for the final time. This was mostly due to the fact that they made matches a single game instead of best-of-2-out-of-3, but we had already played a decent amount, and I was content to each pizza and watch the other matches (which meant I also got to take pictures).
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| Lining up... |
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| Dodgeball! |
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| 1-on-1 |
During the tournament, my friends and I were joking about how awesome of a combination this was. Imagine the genius that thought "Hey, let's take two ridiculously fun activities (trampolines and dodgeball), and combine them!" This is second to maybe only the microprocessor, with peanut butter & jelly at a close 3rd. In any event, it was a really fun night, and next time I'll be sure not to wear jeans.
That Thursday night, my mom finally landed in San Jose. At one point, we were going to try and meet that night, be she was tired from traveling/time difference and we didn't get back until around 9:30pm. So, we decided to wait until Friday instead. That day, I showed her around the office and all the cool things that happen. I think she was most amazed by the fact the people actually ride scooters around the office. We went out to dinner at an Indian restaurant that was really good.
On Saturday, we had tickets to see a semifinal match of the Bank of the West Classic women's tennis tournament at Stanford. We stopped by the office to grab lunch before walking over - it was only about a mile away so it didn't make sense to drive over. The singles match was supposed to start at 1pm, but when we got there right on time, we found it had been cancelled. Dominika Cibulkova was forced to withdraw due to an injury, and so Marion Bartoli would automatically qualify for the finals. The crazy part about this was that Bartoli also won her previous match since her opponent had to retire early as well. After we left, we heard one of the guys say that because she also got a first-round bye, she was guaranteed at least $75,000 for just 1 set of tennis at the point.
What they did instead was invite a couple of kids to play tennis with Bartoli. There was a little girl sitting with her family near us, and she ran up to play. She must have been so excited. There was another girl, a little older (maybe 12-13) that was actually pretty good. When she returned, the crowd was "ooh-ing" and "ahh-ing," which was insane considering Marion Bartoli was on the other side of the court. I imagine that made her summer.
As a result, they moved the doubles tournament up to 1:30pm, and that was all we got to see. On the bright side, my mom is able to exchange the tickets for another pair to next year's tournament. So, in case I'm still out in Silicon Valley then, she'll have another excuse to visit and watch the tournament. The match we did see was really good. Maria Kirilenko and Victoria Azarenka won, and we actually happened to see them leaving when we went back to Stanford on Sunday.
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| Maria Kirilenko |
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| Victoria Azarenka |
I was really surprised how reluctant they were to sign autographs and take pictures. Maria claimed she was really late for her flight, and Victoria just looked flat-out upset. At the time, we weren't sure whether or not that had actually won the tournament, which might have explained that. But we looked it up and sure enough they had won.
Before heading Back to Stanford on Sunday, we stopped by the HP garage which was just a few blocks away from my apartment. The HP garage is where the first reliable electronic oscillator was invented by Hewlett and Packard. Most people probably don't realize it, but this piece of equipment is one of the most important in modern electronics. Pretty much anything that contains a microprocessor (which is practically everything) runs off of an oscillator. I could go on about it, but I'm sure you would just rather see the pictures:
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| The garage |
After a quick stop there, we headed back to Stanford to explore a bit. We didn't have any particular destination(s) in mind, and just decided to wander. At some point, my mom pointed out where the engineering buildings are, and how they're all named after famous engineers (Hewlett, Packard, Gates, Allen). We decided to zigzag our way over there, just exploring as we went.
This made me realize how different some schools can feel. Stanford is a massive university that is practically it's own town in terms of size. Bicycles are the primary form of transportation, but there are also bus shuttles that run during the year. Also, the fact that it's in California gives it a completely different feel since there are so many wide, open spaces in between buildings. It also allows it to have 1 main campus for all the schools, whereas I'm using to graduate schools beings spread out due to space constraints. It was really awesome to walk around. I am definitely considering it for graduate school, although I'm sure it's one of the most competitive schools to get into, especially for something like computer science.
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| Bill Gates never went to Stanford - he just donated $6 million for the building |
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| He's famous, studied what I study, and I built his invention! |
It was great to have my mom visit and spend the weekend with her. She left on Sunday night to stay at a hotel near the airport for an early-morning flight on Monday. This week at work is awesome as always, but I'm really looking forward to the weekend. My roommates from Boston are planning to arrive around noon on Thursday. I'll be showing them the office and Palo Alto, and then they'll stay over on Thursday night. We'll drive out to Las Vegas on Friday morning, and then I'll fly back here on Monday afternoon. I'll have my camera with me as always.
