Is Andrés Missing In Action?

If you have been following my blog, you probably have noticed that it has been kind of slow lately. This does not mean that I have ran out of ideas or that my enthusiasm is melting away, rather, this is merely a result of me selling my computer.

Since every engineer at Google gets a desktop and a laptop, I decided to sell my 1st Gen MacBook Pro. It was about time to renew it anyway. So, I have joined the ranks of the computer-less. Luckily, I have access to my wife's laptop, but most of that time is used for wedding, honey moon or other time-critical issues.

So, I apologize to my faithful readers if they have been waiting for my next story. I already have a few drafts I want to finish, and I promise I'll work on them as soon as I get my Google laptop and have some spare time.

In the mean time, if you would like to stay up-to-date on the happenings of my life, you can subscribe to my Twitter feed. I tweet frequently, as I can do it from my iPhone.

Gotta go. My wife wants her computer back.

Gimping out my Facebook profile pic

I love this picture my wife took in our first visit to the Googleplex. Still, it bothered me that the bottom of the sign showed some pretty visible wear and tear. So, what to do? I simply downloaded the latest version of Gimp, played around with the Clone Stamp a bit, and below is the result.

Google Docs it is!

Just came back from a very nice tour of the Googleplex and my recruiter broke the news to me: I'll be working in the Google Docs team! I'm very excited to be working on a product I use (and love) so much. I already have a few improvements in mind...

First visit to the Googleplex!

Yesterday, my wife and me visited the Googleplex for the first time. I'm still not an official employee (my start date is 04/20), but we still managed to walk around and take some pics. Click the image below to see them!

The "mobile post" label

As I started to publish more and more posts from my iPhone, I realized that I wanted to keep track of which these were. So, I've created the "mobile post" label, with which I'll mark any post I publish from my phone.

The "Googley" Way

It's awesome how Google has become not only a verb now, but also an attitude.

All the tourist guides and books in the Google corporate housing have this label:

Be Googley...
Leave This For The Next Guest.
Thanks!

I guess we should all be a little Googley.

Humans and our fight against nature

Every life form on the planet affects its surroundings. Birds pick up twigs to form nests; ants dig the earth to build incredible underground cities; orangutans make trails between trees after walking them for years. And humans are no different. We transform our environment to fit our needs. We build roads and buildings, we turn forests into crops, we make huge underground dumpsters. The difference between us and the rest of the living organisms is that our impact on the environment is harmful. Any other life form's impact of its surroundings can be tracked down to benefit other organisms or even the environment itself. And nature is so well designed that whenever someone is taking a little bit too much of the pie, she gives them a slap in the hand. But again, in this sense, we are different. Or are we?

To understand this concept, we can turn to the most perfectly balanced ecosystem in the planet: the rain forest. Rain forests abide to this balance rule so well that, ironically, they are the most fragile and easiest to destroy by someone who doesn't play by the rules. Namely, us. In the rain forest, no single organism may overpower another. Resources are carefully managed so each may have their place in the sun, but no one may stay there more than what's necessary. This is done in several forms, from competition between species to some pretty fascinating techniques. My favorite is one that I like to call "natural pest control". For every insect in the rain forest, there's a specific and targeted parasite that flourishes when its "assigned" insect is getting out of hand. The parasite is deadly and highly contagious. Ants are so familiar with theirs, that when a fellow ant shows early symptoms, they quarantine it far away from the colony, and let it die where it will hopefully not infect anyone else. This parasite is so well designed, that during the last stages of the infected ant's life, it disorients it and makes it climb as high as possible and tightly grip the tree (or whatever it ended up climbing) with its jaws. The ant dies and its body remains clamped high above the ground. Why? Because shortly after the carrier dies, the parasite grows outwards like an alien plant from a horror movie and then releases its spores into the air. The higher the release, the wider the contaminated area. Smart, huh?

So as soon as an insect starts to thrive a little bit too much for comfort, its parasite arrives to control its population and let the rest of the insects live without this insect affecting them. This is that "fragile balance" we hear about all the time, since we're screwing with it big time. If Mother Nature does not let a single species dominate to protect the rest of them, regardless of whether they are ants or apes, imagine the kind of damage we inflict when we wipe out countless acres of rain forest everyday.

I believe our actions will not go unnoticed. If there is a "natural pest control" for humans, we're asking for it. Or maybe it is already in effect, yet we have managed to overcome it. Since the beginning of our history, we have always relied on tools and technology to fight against nature's power. Cold? Wear a fur. Threatened? Build weapons. Hungry? Grab a Snickers. And this is because without all our clever inventions, we are doomed. We don't have powerful fangs, warm fur or killer stingers. Hell, set a human against a few insects (bees, for example), and we are no match.

So, using our precious tools, we manage to survive. That is, until Mother Nature gets tired of our stubbornness and comes up with a pest control so effective that no human invention may fight it. Don't get me wrong. I'm a Software Engineer and I'm all for technology and science. But we must come to terms with our exploitation of this planet and learn how to live in it without destroying everything else in our path.

This post was inspired by the "Jungles" episode of the Planet Earth documentary series, which I HIGHLY recommend! ... but the one narrated by David Attenborough, unless you want an Aliens feeling to it :-p

Wearing in my new Google-sponsored Visa

So after about 3 hours of my departure by bus from Monterrey, I arrived at the border and got ready to enter the US with my brand new visa. I knew beforehand that the officers at the border are way pickier than the ones at the airports (I guess they deal with tougher crowd), but this guy really made me sweat it.

When I gave him my passport opened on my spankin' new visa, he looked at it skeptically, then looked back at me and said, "So... You've got your documents?" I wasn't expecting that at all. "Um...", I hesitated. "Sure... What do you need?" So he asked: "What do you have?" "Crap", I thought. I had given most of the documents to my wife so she wouldn't have any problems, and I wasn't expecting to have to show anything at the border. I fumbled in my bag and said "I have the offer letter..." and handed it to him.

He read it carefully and started asking typical questions about the job, which then led to "So, you've got a degree in Computer Science or something...", and I proudly replied "Yup", but then "You have your title with you to prove that?" Jay-sus... My title?? I never travel with it, precisely because it has no validity for the US government. That's what the cedula is for, and I handed it to him, but this bozo said "you really need your title. I can't look at this little card and know you have a degree".

So then I started to get a bit frustrated. He obviously had not seen a cedula before, so I explained that I had to get that because my title has no validity for them, and that in all my travels as a TN, they've never asked to see my title. "Well, they have not been doing their jobs right" Son of a... "Does this say your degree?" he asked while holding my cedula up as if it was a Blockbuster membership. "Yes... Right there... Ingeniería en Tecnologías Computacionales. That is Bachelor in Engineering in Computer Science" and then he said "My spanish is not very good, so I can't verify that" Argh! I just stared at him in disbelief and said, trying to keep my temper "The title is a huge and priceless document. I never travel with it and the cedula has always been what proves my degree to CBP officers..." He seemed to notice my frustration and honesty, because he just said "Give me a minute" and he took the cedula and walked away.

A few minutes later, he walked back and said "Seems like I was wrong" and I couldn't help but exclaim "Good!" He said "You've already shown your title at the consulate..." Finally. "Right! They've already verified all this" Duh. That's what the visa is. Rookie. So then we were getting somewhere. He entered my info in the computer, took my picture, but as he was about to stamp my passport, he hesitated and said "Lemme just verify something..." and walked off again.

When he came back, he sighed and said "Bad news". "What?", I asked, trying to hide my nervousness. "My boss uses Yahoo. So you're screwed." I let out a relieved laugh and then he just told me to pay the $6 fee and I was good to go. Ka-ching, stamp, success.

PS. I'm currently about 150 miles from Houston and decided to try out the posting-via-email feature in Blogger. Let's see how it goes.