TripLog - Silicon Valley - Sept 4th

This is part of my continuing series where I recount my trip in September instead of doing the work I need to do today.

(The tense continually switches while I write these for reasons I haven't quite figured out, please try not to let it annoy you too much. Still trying to work out the whole active writing that still allows for brief asides from the present to plop into the middle of the text when needed issues.)

This is the second entry in the series of entries on my trip. You can follow the whole series here

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<center>Recall from last time</center>
At this point I've just gotten into the Bay Area and crashed at the aptly named Chez Fun, where IPv6 internet, spare couches and a few of my friends are all easily accessible. Having gotten into town around 6am, I went inside and passed out on a couch rather quickly.

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<center>Sept 4th — Around 10:30am</center>
After 5 hours of what seems to be satisfactory sleep, I wake up to an unfamiliar ceiling in the middle of silicon valley. I'm surprisingly oriented and after an attempt at getting my bearings, am in the car driving towards Stanford.

The night before, I had printed out directions on how to get to Stanford, a campus map and a few names of some professors that appeared to be doing interesting work. Since I was in the area, I figured I might as well stop by and see the school and maybe bother a professor or three. Since this was the closest to where I was staying, I figured it was a good place to start.

After wondering a bit on the campus, having made the foolish mistake of assuming that the top of the campus map would point north, I finally find my way to the Gates Computer Science building. As it turns out, this was not nearly as helpful as I hoped it would be. None of the professors I wanted to talk to were in their offices. It was break for them, so this wasn't entirely surprising, but still disappointing. On the upside, I take the chance the see the campus and the offices of a few people of note. Walking around the building and seeing some of the names on the doors was fairly interesting.

Having mostly failed to do anything other than give myself a tour of their campus (which I found interesting enough to make the trip worth it) I go ahead and get online briefly to reconnect with my friends in the area.

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<center>Sept 4th — Ten minutes after Noon on #sdcolleges</center>
12:10 < DJCapelis> HA!
12:10 < DJCapelis> I couldn't get on the wireless here... but I found an old sun workstation.
12:11 * DJCapelis doesn't have a real console emulator
12:11 * DJCapelis needs to change his password on his workstation :(
12:12 * DJCapelis is at stanford
12:12 < Tautoz> stanford?
12:12 < Tautoz> what are you doing at stanford?
12:13 < numist> DJCapelis: at home I have an open AP with the SSID: <omitted>
12:13 < numist> should work fine on the desk-side of the house
12:13 < numist> Tautoz: he's here for the Graton Invasion
12:13 < Tautoz> well, yes
12:14 < Tautoz> oh, right, it's up by where you guys live
12:14 < numist> it's walking distance, yeah
12:14 < numist> although, when I left there were no cars at Chez Fun, so he probably drove
12:15 < DJCapelis> I did, I parked at the hospital
12:16 < DJCapelis> I decided to bother some people here and see what I could see
12:16 < DJCapelis> no one is in their office :(
12:16 < DJCapelis> On the upside, I found Knuth's office.
12:17 < DJCapelis> btw, Tautoz... lunch?
12:18 < Tautoz> DJCapelis: I carpooled, so don't have a car
12:18 < DJCapelis> I do

And so it was settled. I arrive about an hour later at Yahoo, where Tautoz is working. We run out to a nice Pakistani place in the middle of the Valley and have a good lunch. When we get back to Yahoo, Tautoz is nice enough to show me around a bit. It's an interesting campus and I can see where it gets a reputation on being one of the companies that define the traditional working environment in Silicon Valley. Many are remarkably similar to each other. Yahoo's rendition is pretty good.

Before I leave Tautoz, we call a mutual friend and let him know we were coming to dinner. I make some plans with Tautoz for him to skip his carpool and we plan for me to come back later and grab him for dinner after he's done with work.

After saying goodbye to Tautoz, I grab my map and see which of my friends is working closest. I make a phone call.

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<center>Sept 4th — A little after four</center>
I pull up in one of the myriad of Cisco's many parking lots and try and figure out where I am. Cisco opts for the "many small buildings (and by small I mean four story buildings) scattered about over a bunch of land" approach to building office space and so it can be a little disorienting to figure out which building it is you need to go. The other thing that's odd about the campus is while you walk around, you notice almost everyone is Indian. No one seems to be exactly sure why that happens at Cisco, but it is interesting nonetheless. After clarifying with my friend which building he works in, I take off towards his building and arrive in the lobby.

I get a visitor's badge (needed one at Yahoo too) from the receptionist, my friend arrives downstairs, signs me in and we're off. Being both a prick and a security guy, I do what any security person would do when given a visitor's badge and put it out of sight in my pocket. My lack of badge did not cause a stir, or even a glance, through our entire visit. In my experience, this was fairly typical of most Silicon Valley companies where they require a visitor's badge at the perimeter but do little once you're inside the doors.

It seems to be a reasonable enough approach. The only exception to this was Apple and VMware, which each represented the "we really care about building security" and the "we don't care about building security" extremes of the spectrum. I'm still not sure which is the approach that makes more sense, there's certainly an attractiveness to the VMware open environment and one wonders if the cost/benefit of what Apple does is really worth it. That said, these environments probably are the right choice for each of these companies as they have some different kinds of needs and attitudes towards secrecy in general.

Anyways, since my friend happened to be working in the core routing group, the story picks back up in the server room for his floor: Racks stretch across the entire expanse of the room just full of routing equipment, which perhaps makes it more of a router room than a server room. I stare at the amazing number of differently colored fiber cables just strewn about the place. While the room isn't exactly disorganized... it's clear they use the place.

My friend shows me the equipment his project and as we're walking down the racks I turn to him and ask "hey are those HFRs?" They were. Two HFRs just sitting there, side by side. They weren't the only pair in the room. For those of you who haven't clicked on the wikipedia article the link points to, the official name for the router is "Carrier Routing System" but the codename is much more simple, and apt: HFR, or Huge Fucking Router. The marketing group vehemently disagrees and says it stands for Huge Fast Router. Sure.

Anyways, that was one of the most impressive rooms I've ever set foot in.

After chatting a little bit more about what it was my friend was actually up to all summer, I leave about an hour after I came and wandered back towards Yahoo to pick up Tautoz.

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<center>Sept 4th — Dinnertime, San Jose</center>
Tautoz, a San Jose native, guides me through a dizzying number of surface streets to reach downtown San Jose from Yahoo without actually going on any freeways. We arrive at Ben's place in time for dinner. After knocking on the door, we're shown in, get a small tour and meet their new puppy. As new puppies are prone to do, it's both loud and quite cute. I have to say, it was pretty interesting to see my friend in an apartment, with a puppy and a boyfriend. He transitioned from college student to stable adult pretty damn fast.

So then we went out to dinner in Japantown. We pick a place that Tautoz and Ben agree on, so the fact that the place was good was hardly a surprise. We all have an excellent dinner and after dinner walk back to their place and continue discussing random topics for awhile. We eventually part, I drive Tautoz back to his place and end up back at Chez Fun for the night.

I get online, get a little bit of work done and finally get my second full night of sleep for the week. (September 4th was a Thursday, for those keeping track.)

Syndicated 2008-12-01 14:24:55 (Updated 2008-12-01 14:43:31) from djcapelis